Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/274

254 CHAPTER XX.

DESCRIBES A RETREAT AMONG THE HILLS.

us turn now, good reader, to a scene more congenial—namely, the garden in front of the British consul's country residence.

One evening, two weeks after the event just narrated, Ted Flaggan and Rais Ali chanced to meet at the gate.

"Ye've got stirrin' times of it here intirely, Mister Ally Babby," said the tar, whose familiarity almost verged on impudence; "what betwane you an' the 40,000 thieves—more or less—in the town, I find it rare entertainment."

"Yoos complimentary dis marnin'," returned the interpreter, with a smile.

"It's always the way with me. I howld that purliteness is chape.—Ye've heard the noos, I s'pose?"

"Wat noos?" demanded Ali.

"W'y, the noos that the war betwane this Raigincy of Algiers an' Tunis is goin' on raither