Baseball Joe Around the World Part 28

"Some muscles on that fellow," Joe remarked to Jim.

"Biggest c.h.i.n.k I ever saw," replied Jim, "and not a bit of it is fat either. He'd make a dandy highbinder. You saw what he did to the Terrible Turk in that match last night. He just played with him. And the Turk was no slouch either."

"Look at those arms," joined in Larry, gazing with admiration at the swelling biceps of the wrestler. "What a slugger he'd make if he knew how to play ball. He'd break all the fences in the league."

"He sure would kill the ball if he ever caught it on the end of his bat,"

declared Red Curry.

"I've half a mind to give him a chance," laughed Joe.

"Go ahead," grinned Larry. "I'd like to see him break his back reaching for one of your curves."

"He might land on it at that," replied Joe. "A wrestler has to have an eye like a hawk."

He beckoned to the wrestler, who came toward him at once with a smile on his keen but good-natured face.

"Want to hit the ball?" asked Joe, piecing out his question by going through the motions of swinging a bat that he picked up.

The wrestler "caught on" at once, and the smile on his face broadened into a grin as he nodded his head understandingly.

"Me tly," he said in the "pidgin English" he had picked up in his travels, and reached out his hand for the bat.

"Have a heart, Joe," laughed Larry. "Don't show the poor gink up before the crowd. At any rate let me show him how it's done."

"All right," responded Joe. "You lead off and he can follow."

Larry took up his position at the plate and motioned to the wrestler to watch him. The latter nodded and followed every motion.

Joe put over a swift high one that Larry swung at and missed. He "bit"

again at an outcurve with no better result.

"Look out, Larry," chaffed Jim, "or it's you that will be shown up instead of the c.h.i.n.k."

A little nettled, Larry caught the next one full and square and it sailed far out into right field.

"There," he said complacently, as he handed the bat to the wrestler, "that's the way it's done."

The latter went awkwardly to the plate and a laugh ran through the crowd at the unusual sight.

Joe lobbed one over and the Chinaman swung listlessly a foot below the ball.

"Easy money," laughed Denton.

"Where's that good eye you said this fellow had?" sang out Willis.

The second ball floated up to the plate as big as a balloon, and again the wrestler whiffed, coming nowhere near the sphere.

But as Joe wound up for the third ball, the listlessness vanished from the Chinaman. A glint came into his eyes and every muscle was tense.

The ball sped toward the plate. The wrestler caught it fair "on the seam"

with all his powerful body behind the blow.

The ball soared high and far over center field, looking as though it were never going to stop. In a regular game it would have been the easiest of home runs.

The wrestler sauntered away from the plate with the same bland smile on his yellow face while the crowd cheered him. He had turned the tables, and the laugh was on Joe and his fellow players.

"But why," asked Jim, after the game had resulted in a victory for the visitors by a one-sided score, and he was walking back with Joe to the hotel, "did he make such a miserable flunk at the first two b.a.l.l.s? Was he kidding us?"

"Not at all," grinned Joe. "It's because the Chinamen are the greatest imitators on earth. He saw that Larry missed the first two and so he did the same. He thought it was part of the game!"

CHAPTER XXIII

AN EMBARRa.s.sED RESCUER

On the long trip to Australia the tourists encountered the most severe storm of the journey. In fact, it was almost equal to the dreaded typhoon, and there were times when, despite the staunchness of the vessel, the faces of the captain and the officers were lined with anxiety.

After two days and nights, however, of peril, the storm blew itself out and the rest of the journey was made over serene seas and under cloudless skies.

One night after the girls had retired, Joe and Jim, together with McRae and Braxton, were sitting in the smoking room. The conversation had been of the kind that always prevails when baseball "fans" get together.

After a while Jim accompanied McRae to the latter's cabin to discuss some details of Jim's contract for the coming season, leaving Joe and Braxton as the sole occupants of the room.

Joe had never been able to overcome the instinctive antipathy that he had felt toward Braxton from the first, but he had kept this under restraint, and Braxton himself, though he might have suspected this feeling, was always suave and urbane.

There was no denying that he was good company and always interesting. In an apparently accidental way, Braxton, who had been scribbling aimlessly upon some pieces of paper that lay on the table, led the talk toward the subject of handwriting.

"It's a gift to write a good hand," he remarked. "It's got to be born in you. Some men can do it naturally, others can't. I'm one of the fellows that can't. I'll bet Horace Greeley himself never wrote a worse hand than I do."

"I've heard that he was a weird writer," smiled Joe.

"The worst ever," rejoined Braxton. "I've heard that he wrote to his foreman once, ordering him to discharge a printer who had set up a bad copy. The printer hated to lose his job and an idea struck him. He got hold of the letter discharging him and took it to Greeley, who didn't know him by sight, and told him it was a letter of recommendation from his last employer. Greeley tried to read it, but couldn't, so he said he guessed it was all right and told him he was engaged."

Joe laughed, and Braxton tossed over to him a sheet of paper on which he had written his name.

"Greeley has nothing on me," he said. "If you didn't know my name was Braxton, I'll bet you wouldn't recognize these hen tracks."

"You're right," said Joe. "I'm no dabster myself at writing and I can sympathize with you."

"It couldn't be as bad as this," challenged Braxton, slipping a pen over to Joe, together with a fresh piece of paper.

"No," said Joe, as he took up the pen, "I guess at least you could make mine out."

He scribbled his name and Braxton picked up the paper with a laugh.

"I win," he said. "You're bad, but I'm worse. You see I am proud even of my defects."