The man had by now finished telling what Jack had said to him. He again turned with a look of expectancy on his face, waiting for the second “installment of the story,” as Josh afterwards called it.
“We are American boys,” continued Jack, “who have come over here on a vacation. In our own country we own three motorboats, with which we often cruise up and down the Mississippi River and others. So, having heard so much about your beautiful blue Danube, we made up our minds to spend a month or six weeks voyaging down it. This boat does not belong to us. We hired it from a man in a town part-way between Vienna and Budapest. We can show you the paper both parties signed proving how we paid a certain sum in advance for the use of it until we reached the Black Sea. Now tell them all that, please, while I get our American passports ready to show you, as well as letters we have received from our home while in Budapest.”
It took the interpreter a long time to translate all this. He struggled heroically to master every detail, though Jack feared he might get mixed more or less in his endeavor to find words to express the English meaning.
The crowd listened intently.
It would have been amusing to watch their faces as seen in the bright moonlight had the danger element been lacking. As it was, the boys were still on the anxious seat, not knowing “which way the cat would jump.”
Jack was the exception, it may be said. He felt that his tactics and the frank way he was taking the crowd into his confidence had already made a favorable impression upon most of the men. They in turn would be apt to suppress any of the more boisterous spirits who might feel like getting out of bounds.
Truth to tell, it was as much the manner of Jack Stormways as what he said that worked this change in the feelings of the populace. No one of intelligence could very well look upon his smiling face and believe ill of him.
By the time the man had managed to translate all that second batch of explanations to his fellows Jack was ready for him again. He had meanwhile collected from the other three their passports, properly vised through the efforts of the American consul in Vienna, and also several letters addressed to the general delivery at Budapest, with the American stamps and postmarks to prove where they had come from.
These papers he now handed to the man who could speak and read English. Each one Jack opened and explained, after asking Josh to fetch the lamp forward so that its light could be utilized.
Meanwhile the crowd listened and pushed and gaped, some exchanging low comments; but Buster was delighted to see that the threatening gestures had stopped. From this he felt that Stormways’ stock was rising fast and would soon bull the market.