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 balls? 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 EMBARRASSED 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 alwa