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——”