“I’m sure it’s not my wish to be bad friends,” said Ensign Long. “I think the members of the two services ought to be like brothers.”
“So do I,” said Bob. “I say, sentry, keep a sharp look-out for the captain, and I’ll stand a glass for you at the canteen next time I come ashore.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sentry. “But p’raps, sir, I mayn’t see you next time you come ashore.”
“There’s an artful one for you, Tom,” cried Bob, getting his hot wet hand into his pocket with no little difficulty, and throwing the man a fourpenny piece. “Now, look here, Tom,” he continued, as the man cleverly caught the tiny piece and thrust it in his pocket, Ensign Long carefully closing his ear and looking in the other direction the while, “you and I might have no end of games if we could only keep friends.”
“Well, let’s keep friends, then,” said Tom Long.
“Agreed,” said Bob, “and the first one of us who turns disagreeable, the other is to punch his head.”
“No, I can’t agree to that,” said Tom, thoughtfully, “because we could not settle who was in the wrong.”
“Then we’d punch one another’s heads,” said Bob; “but never mind about that. Look here.”
Ensign Long undid a few more buttons, of which he had a great many down the front of his mess waistcoat, just like a row of gold-coated pills, and then he proceeded to look there, that is to say mentally, at what his companion had to say.
“Do you know that young Malay chap, who came on board yesterday with his father, the Bang-the-gong, or Tumongong, or whatever he calls himself?”