This was soon explained, and then Mr. Jukes, turning to the frail-looking youth, said:
“This is my son, Tom. Tom, this, as you know, is the lad who saved your sister from drowning.”
“How d’ye do!” said Jack, gripping the other’s slim white fingers in a grasp that made the lad wince, for, sick as he was, Jack’s grip had lost none of its strength.
“Tom’s not very strong, but he’s crazy about wireless and the sea. Now I’ve got to be off. Big meeting downtown. Tom, I’ll be back and get you for lunch. In the meantime, stay here and get young Ready to tell you all he knows about wireless.”
“That won’t take very long,” laughed Jack, which remark brought from Mr. Jukes a repetition of the observation that it would be “hard to kill” the young wireless man.
Mr. Jukes rushed out of the room as if there was not an instant to be lost.
“That’s his way,” laughed Tom Jukes, as his father vanished, “always in a rush. But he’s got the best heart in the world. Tell me all about your trouble with those firemen and your life on the Ajax. I wish dad would let me follow the sea. I’d soon get strong again.”
Jack, in the interest of having someone to talk to, forgot about his damaged head. He gave a lively, sketchy account of life on the big tanker, not forgetting the surgical operation performed by wireless, and wound up with the story of the night raid on the tobacco smugglers and his encounter of the night before with the revengeful firemen.
When he finished, Tom Jukes sighed.
“Gracious! That’s interesting, though! I wish I had adventures like that. But they are doing their best to make a regular molly-coddle out of me. The yacht and Bar Harbor in the summer, Florida in the winter and a private tutor and a man-servant! It makes me sick!”