“Not I. I said laly.”
“Spell it then.”
“Is it shpell it. Well then, l-e-l-a-h, laly. It’s a big brass blunderbush thing on a shwivel. There’s two of ’em on each of their prahus, and they send a ball about two pound-weight sometimes, and other times a couple o’ handfuls of old bits o’ broken iron, and nubbles o’ tin, and shtones. Annythin whin they’re spiteful.”
“But do you mean to say they’d have dared to fire at a boat with two Englishmen in it—I mean a man and a boy?” cried Ned, flushing.
“Oh, don’t go aiting yer wurruds like that, lad. Shure ye’ve got the sperret of a man in ye, if ye’re not shix feet high. An’ is it fire at a boat with Englishmen in it? Why, I belave they’d shute at one with Irishmen in, and I can’t say more than that.”
“Then we’ve rowed right into a nest of Malay pirates?”
“Oh no. You people at home might call ’em so, perhaps, but the old un’s jist a rale Malay gintleman—a rajah as lives here in his own country, and takes toll of iverything that goes up and down. Sure, we do it at home; only gintalely, and call it taxes and rates and customs. And they’ve got customs of the country here.”
“But, I say,” said Ned, as he found that he was getting a deeper insight into their position, “the rajah will soon let us go?”
“Will he?”
“Come, answer me. How long will he want us to stay?”