“Yes; I’ve tasted worse,” said I. “They’ve cut us rather short with the fish, though, Ned. I think they might have served out enough for a fellow to put his teeth through.”
“Perhaps the old chap can’t afford it, you know, Jack; and yet, he doesn’t look badly off. That hat of his would fetch something in an old curio shop, and so would his breeches too. By Jove, they’re big and baggy enough for a Dutchman twice his size.”
At this we both laughed, whereupon the old chap, thinking we did so in high appreciation of his viands, smiled and nodded, patting his fat stomach and saying in his guttural tones, “Bono, Johnny, goot—goot!”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Ned, quite startled. “You speak English?”
“Mi one piecee can do,” replied the other, with a broader smile that made him look quite venerable, the deceitful old wretch! “No goodee number one chop!”
“Oh, you can speak it well enough,” replied Ned, as our friend said this in “Pijin English,” implying that although he could manage a little of our language he was not a first-rater at it. “What wantchee can do, my one two?”
Ned pointed at the same time towards me, and then indicated himself, requesting in this idiotic jargon to be informed of our fate.
“Yellow hat’s” reply was not of a reassuring character, although he uttered no word. What he did was, to draw the forefinger of his dirty hand across his throat in the most unpleasant manner.
Ned shuddered at this; and, I confess, so did I. Seeing the effect his gesture had produced, the old chap, smiling affably, proceeded to justify the extreme course he had suggested.
“Yang-kei-tze catchee one Chinaman, one piecee shootee chop chop,” he argued, on the retaliatory principle, which, of course, held good in war, although no comfort to us at the moment. “Chinaman one piecee catchee Yang-kei-tze, mi takee Pekin.”