Jack was right; the boy sitting in the reading room was indeed the
formerly ne’er-do-well son of the man who had headed the plot to steal
the naval code, though what he could be doing in Bomobori neither of the
boys could guess. But so changed was he in appearance from the
flashily-dressed, aggressively-conceited Donald Judson they had known,
that for a moment both boys doubted the evidence of their eyes.
Donald had always, in the past, been inclined to dudishness in his
clothes. Now his clothing was dilapidated and torn, his shoes were old
canvas ones that looked ready to fall apart, and he had a scarecrow of a
battered straw hat on his head.
Moreover, his face was careworn and his cheeks hollow and one eye
appeared to have suffered a blow of some sort for it was blackened and
swollen. Altogether he was a most woebegone looking specimen of
humanity, and the boys wondered he was suffered about the hotel.
Donald’s presence there, however, was later accounted for, although
this, of course, the boys did not know, by a long tale of disaster and
suffering he had sustained while gold hunting in the interior. Donald
said he was expecting remittances from America and on this account had
been accommodated with quarters.
“My gracious, what a change,” exclaimed Billy under his breath. “He
looks like a regular scarecrow.”
“He must have been in mighty tough luck,” rejoined Jack. “But what beats
me is what he is doing here. It’s a very odd coincidence that we should
run into two of our old enemies on this trip.”
“It is, indeed. But see, he is looking at us. I suppose we ought to
speak to the poor chap.”
Donald had dropped his paper and was staring straight at the two lads as
if they had been ghosts. Then he got to his feet and came toward them.
“Jack Ready!” he exclaimed, “where did you come from?”
“We might ask the same question of you, Judson,” said Jack,
“but—er—you’ll excuse my saying so, but you look as if you’d been in
hard luck lately.”
“I have been, oh I have been,” said Donald, in a voice far different
from his old bragging one. “I got out of a job and shipped for a sailor.
I’d heard it was a fine life. The ship I was on sailed away from
Honolulu while I was still ashore after overstopping my leave. Then I
got a job on a schooner that had a bad reputation, when I was nearly
starved, but I had to live somehow. The captain of the _South Sea Lass_
was a brute. He——”
“Here, hold on,” cried Jack, seizing his arm which was thin and bony,
“was his name Broom——”
“Yes. ‘Bully’ Broom. He is little better than a pirate. He treated me
worse than a dog, and finally, after blacking my eye, put me ashore here
several days ago. He——say, hold on, what’s the matter?”
Jack and Billy had seized him one on each side and were dragging him
across the floor of the hotel office.
“There’s somebody here we want you to tell your story to,” explained
Jack. “It’ll be worth something to you, but be sure to tell the truth.”
“As if I could lie, no matter what I said about that wretch, ‘Bully’
Broom,” declared Donald. “I’m sure he was mixed up in some illegal
business. Why we put into an island called the Pommer-Pommer——”
“The Pamatous?” came from Billy.
“That’s it.”
“And some men were taken prisoners from a schooner called the
_Centurion_?” demanded Jack.
“Yes, but see here Ready, how in the world——?”
“Never mind that. What became of those prisoners?”
“He locked them up in cabins. He said that they were bad men and pearl
robbers and that he was bringing them to justice.”
“Did you ever talk with them?”
“No; except one, and I never got a chance to say much to him. Broom
watched me very closely. He’d have murdered me if he’d thought that I
was trying to pry into his affairs.”
“What was the name of the man you talked to?”
“He was a kind of a leader of the party, I guess,” was the reply. “I
used to take him his meals and there were precious few of those too, for
we were on short rations ourselves.”
“But his name—his name?” demanded Jack.
“Oh, Flukes—something like that, anyhow. I never was good at names.”
“Was it Jukes?”
“That was it,” cried Donald, snapping his fingers.
“Well, boys, what’s the matter?” demanded the missing man’s brother as
he finished with the register and turned amazedly to face his two young
followers grasping Donald’s ragged figure on each side as if they had a
prisoner in custody.
“Mr. Jukes, this boy has seen and talked to your brother within the last
two weeks,” was the announcement from Jack that sent the millionaire
staggering back against the hotel desk, for once in his life giving way
to uncontrolled amazement.