“I think you’re more likely to turn out a fish, Dick—a shark, than anything else,” said Bob. “But I don’t mind. Will you be half, Tom?”
Tom Long nodded; and the men went off laughing to the canteen, to drink the health of Frank Murray, late Private Gray, and ended by saying, through their mouthpiece, Dick, that,—
“This here is a werry strange world.”
Chapter Sixty Three.
The Last of it.
There is not much more to say about the various people who formed the little world at the jungle-station.
Despatches were sent home, in which Major Sandars and Captain Horton dwelt most strongly upon the bravery of the young officers serving respectively beneath them. Captain Horton said so much respecting Bob Roberts, that poor Bob said he felt as red as a tomato; while Tom Long, instead of becoming what old Dick called more “stuck-upper” on reading of his bravery, seemed humbled and more frank and natural. Certainly he became better liked; and at a dinner that was given after the country had settled, and Colonel Hanson and his force were about to return, that officer in a speech said that from what he had heard, Mr Midshipman Roberts and Mr Ensign Long would become ornaments of the services to which they belonged.
And so they did, and the truest of friends, when they did not quarrel, though really their squabbles only cemented their friendship the stronger.