With what delight the chums received news of their comrade's safety may be imagined and they boarded the first available train to meet him at the Astor House in New York, where Billy had agreed to be at the appointed time.
As the young reporter hastened from the wharf, taking good care—as he thought—not to let old Barr and his two accomplices see him, he almost collided with a seafaring man who was hurrying down the wharf to board a Boston steamer that was about to pull out. The next instant his hand was caught in a mighty grasp that almost wrung it off.
"Wal, I'll be hornswoggled, Billy Barnes!" was the exclamation of the stranger.
"Ben Stubbs!" exclaimed the amazed Billy, almost knocked off his feet at the sudden encounter with the brave adventurer who had shared the boys' perils in Nicaragua, the Everglades and in Africa. "What are you doing here?"
"I might ax the same question of you," was the reply, "but one at a time as the feller said when they all wanted to shoot him at once for stealing a horse. I've got time and I can wait."
"You are the same old Ben, I see," laughed Billy; "but seriously, what are you doing here?"
"Why I was just on my way to Boston," was the rejoinder. "I seen this 'ad' in the paper where it said, 'Wanted, brave man, ex-sailor preferred, to assume dangerous mission—Big pay. Apply No. 46, Charlton Street, Boston.'" And Ben flourished a clipping.
"But, Ben," remonstrated Billy, "you have plenty of money from your share of the ivory. I thought you had invested it in a rubber plantation in Central America."
"That's right," said Ben, with a sorrowful air. "I invested it all right—sunk it, maybe would be a better word, fer when I gets down there to start in developing my plantation, I finds that you couldn't see my noble estate fer the water that happened to cover it."
"What!" exclaimed Billy, "you had been swindled?"