“I never laugh,” said Findlayson. “But tell me, old chap, are you really human? You talk as if you were.”
“No,” returned the Donkey Engine, sadly. “I am neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. I’m a bivalve—a cockney bivalve,” he added.
“Oh,” replied Findlayson, with a gesture of deprecation, “you are not a clam!”
“No,” the Donkey Engine replied, as with a sudden inspiration; “but I’m a hoister.”
And Findlayson burst into a paroxysm of mirth—it must be remembered that he was English—the like of which the good old liner never heard before.
And later, when Peroo returned, having won at Pok-Kah with the Drummerz, he found his master sleeping like the veriest child.
Findlayson was saved.