“A Christian,” I answered, “who has lived three months among the apes.”
“Are you an ape, then?”
“No, my lord. This skin is not mine.”
“We are perfectly convinced of that—perfectly sure of that,” exclaimed a young Irish lieutenant who was standing behind me, loud enough for me to hear.
“But how comes it that you are wearing it? How the deuce, too, have you got here—you, whom, if I am not mistaken, I left bird-fancier at Macao, since I think I recognise you?”
“My lord, it is a very long story, so long that I should not dare to relate it to you if it were not intimately connected with your own.”
“With mine!”
“Yes, my lord, with yours.”
They looked at me, and then burst out in another fit of laughter.