"If you went to Heaven you'd turn up at the gate, and sign your name in old Peter's book with a pair of wings on and a mouth-organ!" the Sub snorted when he saw him; and Uncle Podger suggested that "he probably had a tail, with a sting on it, and a brand-new shovel, stowed away somewhere on board, lest, "in case of accident", he found himself in the other place."
The whole Honourable Mess concerned themselves with the fitting out of Bubbles and the Lamp-post. Proper khaki was unobtainable—at that time—so they dyed their white uniform in Condy's fluid, and as it shrunk in the process, and the resulting colour was a dirty yellow, streaked with brown, the effect was not good.
"Most unsatisfactory!" said Uncle Podger, when they first tried it on and he saw the Lamp-post's ankles and wrists sticking out far beyond the ends of trousers and sleeves, and Bubbles hardly able to breathe in his. "Most unsatisfactory! It will be an insult to the Honourable Mess if either of you are found 'corpsed'."
"You mustn't tell them you belong to the Achates when they come to bury you," the others shouted. "You must promise that!"
"You're perfect scarecrows," roared the Sub when he saw them—"a pair of confounded convicts!"
Everybody laughed at them and devoutly envied them—and they laughed at each other.
Rawlinson, who prided himself on being a really great poet, burst out with:
"Two little convicts going out to fight,
One had his clothes too short, the other much too tight!"
There was a roar of laughter as the Honourable Mess lifted up their voices, chanting this, and dancing round the quaint pair, whilst Rawlinson, exhausted with the production of this exquisite couplet, retired to a corner to think out something which would rhyme with khaki.
The Lamp-post, grimacing, and trying to twist himself so that he could get a back view, didn't know or care what he looked like, but said he felt "like a prize idiot".