“No, sir,” cried Tom Long. “A box containing two bottles of pickles.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” roared Bob. “What were they? Walnuts, or onions?”
“Neither,” said Tom, with great dignity; “one was piccalilli, and the other mixed.”
“Well, I dare say he was very glad of them,” said Bob. “I consider a good bottle of pickles, out in this benighted place, one of the greatest luxuries one could have.”
“Yes,” said Tom Long, who had on a supercilious fit that day, “I suppose it would satisfy you.”
“All right, my noble friend,” thought Bob to himself; “I’ll take you down for that some day.”
They strolled out and about the fort together for a time, and then out to the upper end of the island; for though longing to go to the lower portion where the residency stood, both of them carefully avoided that part. But it so happened that soon after, when they directed their steps towards the landing-place, they found that the ladies were there, in company with the major’s wife, talking to a couple of Malays in a sampan laden with fruit and flowers.
The ladies were making liberal purchases of the delicious fruit and sweet-scented flowers, when, to the astonishment of Bob Roberts, he saw that one of the Malays was the man who had made so fierce an attack upon Tom Long over the durian affair.
Seeing this they both stepped forward, when the Malay recognised him, said a few hasty words to his companion, and they both leaped ashore, the man of the kris salaaming profoundly, and remaining half prostrate before the young ensign.
“Dullah asks pardon of his excellency,” said the other man in good English. “He thought him an enemy who had insulted him, and he drew his kris. He asks now that his excellency will forgive him.”