"No; I assure you, Tim. Don't think me such a prig. Why, I came all the way from the Guinea coast just to meet you."
"It's a fine boy you are," said Tim, stretching out his huge hand; "it's only joking I am. If you didn't recognise an old friend, it's thrashing you I'd be, as once I did at school."
"If I remember rightly, it was you who had the worst of that little encounter," retorted Philip, gripping Tim's hand strongly.
"It was a draw," said Peter, suddenly; "I remember the fight quite well. But we can talk of these things again. I want to know what Tim is doing."
"And this is fame," grunted Tim, nodding his head. "Haven't you seen my letters about the Soudan War to The Morning Planet, and my account of the Transvaal ructions? Am I not a special correspondent, you ignorant little person?"
"Oh yes, yes; I know all that," replied Peter, impatiently; "but tell us about your life."
"Isn't that my life, sir? When I left school, I went to Ireland and became a reporter. Then I was taken up by a paper in London, and went to the Soudan—afterwards to Burmah, where I was nearly drowned in the Irriwaddy. They know me in Algiers and Morocco. Now I've just returned from Burmah, where I parted with my dear friend, Pho Sa. He's in glory now—rest his soul! They hanged him for being a Dacoit, poor devil."
"You seem to have been all over the world, Tim," said Philip, when the Irishman stopped for breath, "it's queer I never knocked up against you."
"Why, you never stayed one day in one place. That boat of yours is a kind of Flying Dutchman."
"Not a bit of it; she has doubled the Cape lots of times. I was just trying to persuade Peter to take a cruise with me."