“Well, I’d like a few minutes private conversation with that scoundrel, Walla,” said Captain Mosher grimly. “Where is Walla?” he asked of one of the head man’s guards.
“Walla him gone ’way,” was the answer. “Him gone far ’way. Him say him got very bad pain, no come back long time.”
“Pain!” cried the captain. “I’d give him a worse one, if I had the scoundrel!”
A little later Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield, and all the castaways were aboard the Sea Queen, where they were made comfortable, and given decent clothes in exchange for the rags the natives had forced them to wear. Then, as the storm broke, Captain Mosher rode it out in the coral-locked harbor.
“And now for Melbourne, and then for home!” cried Tom, a few days later, when calm weather prevailed. “Oh, it will seem good to get back to the United States again.”
“But it’s too bad so many were lost from the Silver Star,” spoke Mr. Fairfield. “Tom, you proved yourself a man! Oh, what a time you must have had!”
“It wasn’t so easy,” confessed our hero, as he thought of the days aboard the derelict and in the open boat.
The voyage to Melbourne was uneventful, and to Tom’s delight, when he reached there, he learned that little Jackie’s father had reached home. He and a number of others had been picked up in one of the lifeboats, taken to a distant port, and had only just reached Australia.
News was also had of the others of the ill-fated ship that had struck the derelict. Nearly all of them, including the captain, were saved, but chief of all Tom rejoiced in that Jackie’s father was safe.