“There, it won’t do, Bob Roberts,” said Tom Long; “say it’s horrible, like a man. You can’t deceive me. What does it taste like?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Bob trying the second piece.
“What a jackass you are to torture yourself like that, to try and take me in, middy!”
Bob helped himself to a little more.
“Well, what does it taste like?”
“Custard,” said Bob, working away hard, and speaking between every dig of his knife; “candles, cream cheese, onion sauce, tipsy cake, bad butter, almonds, sherry and bitters, banana, old shoes, turpentine, honey, peach and beeswax. Here, I say; give us a bit more, old cock.”
Tom Long was astounded, for after finishing the first piece of the evil-smelling dainty, Bob had begun the second, and was toiling at it with a patient industry that showed thorough appreciation of the most peculiar fruit in the world.
“Tipsy cake, bad butter, old shoes, peach and beeswax,” and the other incongruities, rang in Long’s ear; and to prove that he was not deceiving him, there was Bob eating away as if his soul were in the endeavour to prove how much he could dispose of at one go.
It was too much for Tom Long; his curiosity was roused to the highest point, and as the Kling was smilingly watching Bob, Tom signed to the Malay to give him a piece.
The solemn-looking Asiatic picked up another fruit, and while Tom looked impatiently on, it was opened, and a piece handed to him, which he took, and with Bob’s example before his eyes took a greedy bite—uttered a cry of disgust—and flung the piece in hand at the giver.