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He was half lying down, half sitting on the edge of one of the bunks, nursing the big stray tortoise-shell tom-cat which had shared his lodgings in the forepeak, and he had mistaken it for a rat as it crept up and down the chain-pipe to see what it could pick up in the cook's galley at meal-times, which it seemed to know by some peculiar instinct of its own; and although thus partially partial to Ching Wang's society, the cat now appeared to have taken even a greater fancy to his bed- fellow in his hiding-place below than it had done to the cook, looking upon the stowaway evidently as a fellow-comrade, who was unfortunately in similar circumstances to himself.
"Bless you!" as father would say, every one of them knew her and recognised her as a friend and fellow-comrade, for she would sing to them sometimes like a lark, which always set them all on the twitter; goldfinches, linnets, and bullfinches, of which mother kept a large stock, hopping about their cages trying by every means in their power to attract her notice on her entering the shop and coming near them; while the lemon-crested cockatoo, who was christened `Ally Sloper, on account of his fine flow of language, and a habit he had of ruffling up the feathers round his neck when spoken to, making him look as if he had a particularly high and stiff collar on, would shriek out `Say-rah! which was mother's name, just as if father were shouting for her to come downstairs in a sort of `reef topsails' on a stormy night sort of voice.
I was often asked during these jubilee days, "how I felt about it all," and I never could answer sensibly. The strange thing is that I don't know even now what was in my heart. Perhaps it was one of my chief joys that I had not to say good-bye at any of the celebrations. I could still speak to my profession as a fellow-comrade on the active list, and to the public as one still in their service.
I recollect saying at the time, "Well done, front-rank man, thee doesn't fall at that stroke," and unfortunately for the Frenchman, a fellow-comrade, who was lefthanded, came up to me very soon afterwards, and asked me how I was getting on.
He shook hands with the two workmen, who hastily rose from their seats. It was embarrassing to meet the doctor as a fellow-comrade, when at the hospital he was wont to treat them as his inferiors. Goschienko, looking rather annoyed, then began.
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