Motor Boat Boys Down the Danube; or, Four Chums Abroad

Jack went a step further, after the boy, first pointing to his map, smote his own chest proudly and smiled, as if to proclaim that he belonged in that country. By various gestures he tried to ask the other what he was doing here in a hostile land.

The other watched his every gesture and seemed to be reading even the expression on Jack’s face. It is surprising how much can be learned that way. Whole conversations may be carried on by instinct and intelligence. One who does not know a single word of Italian may be able to sense the general meaning of many paragraphs in a newspaper war item by the similarity of words. Try it, and you will see that this is really so.

By slow and laborious degrees Jack began to pick up something of what the other was trying to tell him. The further he proceeded the more intense did the boy seem to become. Buster, glancing that way from time to time, filled with curiosity, considered that they were using their hands almost as cleverly as a couple of mutes did whom he had once watched talking in the sign language.

Of course, Josh had before then managed to whisper to each of the other two what a “mare’s nest” he believed he had unearthed, so that both George and Buster had begun to look on the intruder in the light of a dangerous fellow. George kept caressing a stout cudgel of which he had become possessed, as though determined not to be caught entirely defenseless in case of a sudden raid.

“Do you suppose Jack’s really finding out anything?” Buster whispered to Josh when the other leaned down as if to ascertain how the supper was coming on.

“Sure he is,” replied the other, “though chances are the cub’s giving him taffy just to keep him quiet.”

“But Jack seems to be interested a whole lot,” objected Buster.

“I think Jack means to join us presently, from the way he nodded to me just then,” Josh went on to say hastily, “so don’t hurry on the supper more than you can help. For all we know we may have to share it with four instead of one.”

It proved to be just as Josh had predicted, for presently Jack left the side of the dark-faced young stranger and come over to the fire.

“Well, how did you manage to get on with him?” asked Josh impetuously.

“It grew easier as we went on,” said Jack. “He knows just a little bit of English, after all. When that failed he resorted to the paper and pencil, or else made gestures. When I shook my head to tell him it was all a mystery to me, he would try again in a different way, and we always succeeded in getting there by one means or another.”

“Did he own up in the end, Jack?” asked Josh.

“If you mean about being one of the four Serbian youths we thought he might be, he denied it absolutely,” came the reply.

“H’m! What else could you expect, since their game had been knocked on the head by the breaking out of the war and they found themselves being hunted like rats in a hostile territory, afraid to ask for anything to eat because they’d like as not be grabbed? No wonder he looks hungry, say I.”

Jack looked at the other and shook his head.

“This time you’re away off, old fellow,” he told Josh. “He didn’t come up into Austria-Hungary on an errand of blood, but one of mercy.”

“As how, Jack?” asked Buster, already deeply interested.

“He has a little sister,” the other went on to say. “She seems to be just so high,” and he held his hand about three feet from the ground, “from which I’d judge she might be something like six or seven years old.”

“A sister, eh?” George remarked skeptically.

“Listen, fellows,” continued Jack, “here’s the story he told me as near as I was able to make it out, for lots of times I had to just guess at things; but it ran fairly smooth, after all. He lived in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. There was his mother, a widow with some means, and one little sister. This girl, it seems, was blind and the pet of everybody who knew her.”

“Gee! that sounds interesting,” muttered Josh.

“Some time ago the mother learned of a celebrated surgeon up in Budapest who had performed wonderful cures with people afflicted just as the little child was. It was determined to take the girl to him, and an appointment was made; but just then the mother had the misfortune to sprain her ankle and could not walk a step.”

“Tough luck,” said Buster, “and I can see what the boy did. He looks like he had the grit to carry anything like that out, sure he does.”

Apparently Buster was taking stock in Jack’s story and changing his opinion again with regard to the dark-faced young stranger.

“Yes, there was nothing for it but that the boy go to Budapest with his little sister and stay there while the operation went on. From what he tells me he was in the Hungarian capital nearly a month. The surgeon operated, and the thing turned out a splendid success. You ought to have seen how his face lighted up when he told me in sign language that she could see now just as well as any one.”

“Then why didn’t he start home right away, knowing how anxious his mother must be?” asked George incredulously.

“First the surgeon would not allow it for a certain time after the bandages were taken off. Then, as luck would have it, just when they were about to start, a thief broke into their apartment and stole every dollar, or whatever money the Serbians use.”

“Oh, how tough that was!” exclaimed Buster sympathetically.

“A likely story, I call it,” muttered George.

“On top of it all the war broke out, and he knew that unless they hurried off from Budapest the Hungarian authorities might arrest them. So they sold a few of their things and get enough money together to carry them part of the way to the Serbian border. Then they had to leave the train and start to tramp the rest of the way. Neither of them have had a bite this whole day. Seeing us land, he became desperate and determined to appeal to us to help him, if we looked as if we were kind people. Then I chanced to run across him. That’s what he told me, as near as I could make it out.”

Jack saw that while Buster and Josh were disposed to believe the young stranger, George still hung back.

“It makes a pretty interesting story, that’s right,” was what George said, “but there’s a fishy part to it. That little sister sounds like an invention to get our sympathy. Where is she at, I’d like to know; let him produce the kid, say I.”

CHAPTER XIV

FRIENDS IN TIME OF NEED

“That’s so, Jack; unless he can produce the little sister we’ve got to believe his fine yarn is all a fraud,” Josh observed seriously.

“Did you say as much to him, Jack?” questioned George.

“I did,” came the ready reply.

“And what was his reply to that?” asked Buster.

“I gathered from his gestures and actions,” explained Jack, “that he stood ready, yes, and anxious, to go into the woods near by and get his sister, if only we gave him permission. So I thought I’d put it up to the rest of you first.”

“Oh, tell him to go and fetch her along,” sneered George. “If he really has got a little sister, and she’s hungry, why, I’d be willing to go on half rations myself to help out. I may be suspicious of him, but there isn’t a stingy bone in my whole body.”

“We know that, George,” Jack told him quickly, “and since you seem willing I’ll let the poor fellow know about it right away. You can see how eagerly he’s watching us now, because he understands what I’m telling you.”

“Tell him supper’s about ready, and that he ought to hurry,” explained Buster.

Jack had another short interview with the young Serbian. Then the other sprang hastily to his feet and ran off, looking back once or twice, and smiling as he waved his hand toward Jack.

“Good-by!” called out George derisively, and then, turning to the others, he added: “Because I hardly expect to see him again, unless he comes back with the other three. Chances are he knew we’d got on to his game, and means to slip away now so he couldn’t be nabbed by the authorities.”

“Shame on you, George, you old unbeliever!” cried Buster.

“Wait and see who’s right,” warned the other sturdily, for George always clung to his belief until convinced that he was wrong, when he would frankly confess his error of judgment.

A minute, two of them, passed, and still the boy did not return. It would really seem as though he had had time to go to where he left his sister concealed at the time he crept toward the landing spot of the cruising party in the motorboat, and come back again.

George was grinning with that important air of his, which, being interpreted, meant the usual “I told you so.”

Then Josh, whose sharp eyes had detected a moving figure in the semi-gloom, exclaimed:

“There they come over yonder, I do believe!”