The last words had scarcely left Larry's lips when Olan Oleson drew back, at the same time putting forth one of his broad feet behind the youth. Then came a sudden and heavy shove, and Larry tripped over backwards, to fall with great force at full length.
As the youth went down, his head struck the ground, and for a few seconds he was stunned and bewildered. Then he leaped up and gazed around him. The Norwegian was running down the highway as rapidly as his heavy weight and natural awkwardness would permit. He was off in the direction of the shipping.
"He's going to get aboard of his boat and hide, if he can," thought Larry, and made after the man.
Several squares were passed, and Larry was slowly gaining in his pursuit, when Olan Oleson turned and darted into a side street which was but little better than an alleyway. In a few seconds more the boy reached the spot, to find the fellow had disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up.
The side street was filled with little shops, kept by Chinese and the poorer class of Kanakas. It was a foul-smelling and vile-looking district, and Larry went in but the distance of a block.
"I'll not run any more risks," he reasoned, as he retraced his steps. "Some of those chaps look evil enough to knock a fellow down on the slightest provocation. I might be robbed again, and that wouldn't pay."
Nevertheless, as he walked away, and sought a respectable lodging-house in another part of the city, he determined to keep his eyes open for the Norwegian so long as he should remain in Honolulu. But never once did Larry dream of the important part Olan Oleson was to play in his future life, causing him some amazing adventures, and placing him in a position to take part in one of the greatest naval engagements of modern history.
CHAPTER IV
LARRY RECEIVES TWO INTERESTING LETTERS
"Hurrah! Here's luck at last! Two letters, and from Ben and Walter, by the handwriting!"
Larry was standing in the handsome structure occupied by the Honolulu post-office department. He had just asked for letters, and the gentlemanly clerk had handed him two, each of goodly thickness, one marked New York and the other Boston. Both had come in on the mail steamer from San Francisco, which had arrived the evening previous.
Hurrying to a secluded corner of the building, he tore open the letter from his oldest brother Ben; for both Larry and Walter had looked up to Ben ever since they could remember. The letter ran as follows:—
"My dear brother Larry: After what seemed a long wait, I received your letter from San Francisco, telling how you had run away, and what trials and troubles you were having. I guess we are all having our hands full. I know I am.
"Getting to New York was no picnic. I tramped as far as Middletown, where I found work in an auction store, working four days and earning my fare to the metropolis and a dollar over. When I reached New York I tramped around for three days without so much as a smell of an opening. By that time I was out of money, and I can tell you I was pretty well discouraged, too, when who should I meet on Broadway but Mr. Snodgrass, the man who used to have the hardware store in Buffalo. He asked me what I was doing in New York, and I told him I had come to seek my luck, but didn't tell him how badly off I was. He told me he was in the wholesale hardware business, on Canal Street, and I could come and see him. I went, and am now working for him for six dollars per week, with some chance of a rise sooner or later. My boarding-house address is at the foot of this letter. The lady is very nice, and she cooks a good deal better than Mrs. Rafferty did.
"I haven't heard from Uncle Job since I left. and don't want to at present. But some day I'll go back and tell him what I think of him for treating us like so many dogs.
"I suppose this letter will find you in Honolulu, or some other out-of-the-way place. What possessed you to turn sailor? In a letter I received from Walter he seems to have pretty much the same fever.
"I see by the papers here that Hawaii may be annexed shortly to the United States, so if it is, you'll still be somewhere in the Union, won't you? The papers are also full of our trouble with Spain. Wouldn't it be queer if the two nations should go to war? If they did, I think I'd drop my job and turn soldier.
"I don't know when we three will ever get together again, but I trust it will not be long, and in the mean time I intend to write to you often, and I want you to write also, both to me and to Walter. Write again as soon as you get this.
Your loving brother Ben."
Larry drew a long sigh when he had finished the letter. It was written just as Ben usually talked, and in his mind's eye he could imagine his elder brother standing before him. So Ben was settled in the great metropolis, with no notion of a change, excepting he might be called upon to turn soldier. Well, there was small fear of there being any war with Spain, or any other country. So thought Larry, and his thoughts were not much different from those of many others until the thunderbolt broke.
The letter from Walter took longer to peruse, for Walter always had so much to say, and wrote such a twisted hand, and Larry was compelled to laugh outright ere he was done. Certainly Walter had had his full share of adventures.
"What in creation made you ship to Honolulu?" he wrote. "Why, it's almost half around the world, and you'll make me a beggar with buying such high-priced postage stamps when I'm writing to you. I shouldn't know where Honolulu was, only we're all reading so much about the Hawaiian Islands these days. Why didn't you ship to Alaska, or the North Pole, while you were at it? Better strike Peary for an opening on his next expedition to the land of ice.
"Perhaps I didn't have it as hard as you, or Ben? After I left Ben—I got a ride on the train from Middletown to Albany—I just struck the worst luck a boy could imagine. My hat was the first thing that went—the wind blew it from the train—and on the outskirts of Albany I encountered a bull-dog that tore my clothing nearly to bits. A tramp saved me from the bulldog, and I travelled with the tramp two days, when he obligingly walked off with my coat and all my money—forty-seven cents.
"How I got to Boston at last would fill a volume. I have been a farmhand, a glazier (put in two panes of glass for an old lady, who had the glass, but not the skill), a blacksmith (helped at a country smithy two days, when the regular helper came back), a florist (worked three days in a greenhouse, and got no pay, because I knocked a lot of pots down with a step-ladder), and a deckhand on a river steamboat. Now, at last, I am here in Boston, helping an old sailor, with one leg, that has a large news-stand (the sailor, not the leg). The sailor's name is Phil Newell, and he was all through the Civil War. You just ought to hear him tell about fighting and narrow escapes from the enemy! He knows all about the war between Spain and the Cuban insurgents, and he's certain the United States will get mixed up in the row sooner or later. If we do, he says I ought to go as a sailor on a man-o'-war, and I don't know but that I will; for, according to Newell, it's the most glorious life on the face of the earth. Who knows but that I might come out a captain or a commodore, eh?
"I know there is no use in speaking of Uncle Job, for Ben will write about that, and I can't think of the mean old fellow without getting mad clear to my finger-tips. Perhaps that isn't just Christian-like; but really, isn't he the worst that ever was? And to think he was going to have you arrested! He ought to be arrested himself—for breaking up our home, putting all the money in the bank, and making us live as though we were next door to beggars. But never mind; a day of reckoning will come.
"But I must close up now—the stand, I mean—and I'll close up the letter, too. Good-by, and take care of yourself, and write often, above all things, for it's mighty lonely being by one's self, isn't it?"
"Dear old Walter, that sounds like him," murmured Larry, as he stuck the epistle back into its envelope. There was something very much like a tear in his brown