"Oh, Kershaw! How glad I am, how very, very glad to see you again! How were you saved?"
"The steamer for the Andamans, with passengers from Rangoon, picked us up, and carried us straight on there. It had some sort of big bug on board who could not be hindered on his way for such a trifle as the announcement of our safety, and we have been brought back here as fast as our own news could have flown. So, like the clown in the circus, 'Here we are again.' But, Denham, I'll go back to the Andamans, if they expect us all to practise Banting here. What have you done to yourself? You are as thin as a whipping-post, and your face is all eyes."
"Oh, I've been ill! but I shall pick up fast enough now. People are so kind to us. It is a very good world, after all, that we live in, Kershaw, in spite of what some folks say."
"'It is a very good world that we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow, or get a man's own,
'Tis the very worst world that ever was known,'"
sang Kershaw.
"Oh, most wise and sapient third mate," cried Ralph, "you are easily hoisted with your own petard! If folks lend, spend, and give, do not other folks receive?"
"Let me be among the other folks then. I have lost all the locks of hair of all the young ladies,—the dear creatures who adored me. There's a loss, Denham! Black, brown, golden, grey,—they have all gone to disagree with the sharks."
"Ugh! don't talk of sharks, they haunt me in my dreams yet."
"They use them for policemen in the Andamans. Fact!—the blue ones, because of the colour like the uniform, you know. They loaf about, round and round, just like bobbies on their beat; and if any poor devil of a prisoner tries to escape, and swim to the mainland,—hey, presto! they nip him up, and have him in a tight place in no time!"
"Your experience of life has been enlarged since I saw you, evidently."