Cradock
would never have sent you that errand to Romana if you could not have
talked enough to have made yourself understood. You could never have jawed
those mutineers and put them up to getting hold of the arms. If Dicky Ryan
and I had been sent on that mission we should just have been as helpless
as babies, and should, like enough, have been murdered by that mob. There
was no luck about that, you see; it was just because you had done your
best to pick up the language, and nobody else had taken the trouble to
learn a word of it."
"I see that, O'Grady," Ryan said, dolefully. "I don't envy Terence a bit.
I know that he has quite deserved what he has got, and that if I had had
his start, I should never have got any farther. Still, I wish I could go
with him. I know that he has always been the one who invented our plans.
Still, I have had a good idea sometimes."
"Certainly you have, Dicky; and if I have generally started an idea, you
have always worked it up with me. Well, if you will get up Portuguese a
bit, and I see a chance of asking for another English officer, say as
adjutant, I will see if I cannot get you; but I could not ask for you
without being able to give as a reason that you could speak Portuguese
well."
"I will try, Terence; upon my honour, I will try hard," Ryan said. "I will
get hold of a fellow and begin to-day.
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