"Now Sam an' me can never agree
What happened to Curry and Rice.
The whole affair is shrouded in doubt,
For the night was dark and the flare went out,
And all we heard was a startled shout,
Though I think meself, in the subsequent rout,
That us bein' thin, an' him bein' stout,
In the middle of pushin' an' shovin' about,
He—MUST HAVE FELL OFF THE ICE."
"That won't do, you know," began the Puddin', but Sam said hurriedly,
"It was very dark, and there's no sayin' at this date what happened."
"Yes there is," said the Puddin', "for I had my eye on the whole affair, and it's my belief that if he hadn't been so round you'd have never rolled him off the iceberg, for you was both singing out, `Yo heave Ho' for half-an-hour, an' him trying to hold on to Bill's beard."
"In the haste of the moment," said Bill, "he may have got a bit of a shove, for the ice bein' slippy, and us bein' justly enraged, and him bein' as round as a barrel, he may, as I said, have been too fat to save himself from rollin' off the iceberg. The point, however, is immaterial to our story, which concerns this Puddin'; and this Puddin'," said Bill, patting him on the basin, "was the very Puddin' that Curry and Rice invented on the iceberg."
"He must have been a very clever cook," said Bunyip.
"He was, poor feller, he was," said Bill, greatly affected. "For plum duff or Irish stoo there wasn't his equal in the land. But enough of these sad subjects. Pausin' only to explain that me an' Sam got off the iceberg on a homeward bound chicken coop, landed on Tierra del Fuego, walked to Valparaiso, and so got home, I will proceed to enliven the occasion with `The Ballad of the Bo'sun's Bride'."
And without more ado, Bill, who had one of those beef-and-thunder voices, roared out—
"Ho, aboard the Salt Junk Sarah
We was rollin' homeward bound,
When the bo'sun's bride fell over the side
And very near got drowned.
Rollin' home, rollin' home,
Rollin' home across the foam,
She had to swim to save her glim
And catch us rollin' home."
It was a very long song, so the rest of it is left out here, but there was a great deal of rolling and roaring in it, and they all joined in the chorus. They were all singing away at the top of their pipe, as Bill called it, when round a bend in the road they came on two low-looking persons hiding behind a tree. One was a Possum, with one of those sharp, snooting, snouting sort of faces, and the other was a bulbous, boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that marked him down as a man you couldn't trust in the fowl-yard. They were busy sharpening up a carving knife on a portable grindstone, but the moment they caught sight of the travellers the Possum whipped the knife behind him and the Wombat put his hat over the grindstone.
Bill Barnacle flew into a passion at these signs of treachery.
"I see you there," he shouted.