CHAPTER XII DESTRUCTION
Banana land is never fully cleared before planting. Great giants of theforest, mahogany, nargusta, black tamarind, Santa Maria, and many othergreat trees are girdled and left standing to rattle their dry andleafless limbs like bones on a gibbet to every wind that blows. In thetime of a great wind such as often sweeps across the Caribbean Sea, deadlimbs of girdled trees and the ponderous fronds of palms come crashingdown upon the less stalwart banana plants.
It was on such a half cleared plantation that Johnny Thompson, MadgeKennedy and the giant black Carib Indian found themselves when the stormcame tearing in from the sea.
That they were in a tight place Johnny knew right well. He had heard ofthese tropical storms. Many an old timer had told him of braving themupon sea and land. Travelers in this land are told in awed tones strangetales of terrific gales.
Johnny shuddered as he heard the crack and crash of giant trees torn andtortured by the wind.
"What shall we do?" he said to the girl. "Can we get out of this?"
"No." She spoke slowly, deliberately, as one may who knows her land andits storms. "The tossing banana plants will shut off the roads. Some willfall, blocking the way. The wind will increase in violence. The stormwill last for hours."
"Then we must find shelter."
"Yes."
"But where?"
The girl shook her head. "I don't know." As if determined to destroythem, the palm sent a second discarded frond sailing toward them. It fellwith a crash that brought down a dozen banana plants with it.
Madge shuddered.
The currents of winds above them seemed greater than those that agitatedthe banana plants just over their heads. Great dead trees writhed andtossed as if in terrible agony, while from here and there at a distancethere came the crash of one that had been broken off or uprooted.
Of a sudden the force of the winds appeared to double in volume. At thesame instant Johnny saw a great black mass come leaping toward him.Powerless to move or speak for a second, he saw the thing leap straightat him. Giving up hope, he shut his eyes.
There came a deafening crash. A sharp quick cut across the face broughthim to himself. He leaped to his feet. The wind caught him and threw himviolently. His senses reeled. The thing was too monstrous. What hadhappened? His face was bleeding. He did not feel it. His senses werebenumbed.
"I must act!" he told himself savagely. "Something must be done. There isthe girl."
He had succeeded in coming back into control of his senses when somethinghurtled past him.
"It's the Carib," he told himself. "No, the girl!" He had caught theflash of her blue dress.
"It is the Carib and the girl." He realized that the aged black giant hadseized the girl in his arms and was battling his way straight into theteeth of the storm.
"What can he hope to do?" he asked himself as, first on hands and knees,then crouching low, on his feet, he struggled forward in their wake.
Dimly, he became conscious of the thing that had happened. A greatsapodilla tree, uprooted by the storm, had pitched straight at them.
"Ten feet nearer and we would have been killed," he thought. "That's theblack bulk that leaped at us."
The thing the Carib was doing puzzled him. He was fighting his way overbroken branches and beneath threatening trees. At last, finding himselfat a branchless trunk, and seeing his way blocked by a tangled mass ofvegetation, he held the girl in one arm while, apelike, he climbed to theprostrate trunk, then against the terrific force of the gale battled hisway to the shelter of the roots of the giant tree.
"What strength!" thought Johnny. "What magnificent power!"
He was content to creep the length of the log, to come up panting besidethem. Not a word was said. The din about them was deafening. The howl ofthe wind, the crash of breaking, falling limbs, the groan of torturedtrees, all this was enough to inspire silent awe.
A moment they rested here. A moment only. Then, at the Carib's sign, theyslid off the log to battle their way around the up-ended roots.
Johnny saw the Carib suddenly disappear. He saw a chasm yawning beforehim; saw the girl leap. He followed her, landing with a shock that sethis teeth rattling, then became conscious of the fact that the storm wasnot cracking about his ears.
"Storm cellar provided by nature," he thought. It was true. The chasmleft by the tree roots was ten feet deep.
"Gabriel thought of it," said Madge. "It is his country. He is very old.He always knows the right thing to do. Isn't it grand?"
Johnny thought it a little more than grand.
"We British and you Americans," she said slowly, "think we are verysmart. We know many things. But the natives of other lands, they knowmany useful things that we never dreamed of.
"But you are hurt. Your face--it is bloody." Her eyes grew suddenlylarge.
"No, I guess not. Nothing much. It must have been the branch of thatfallen tree. Lucky it didn't kill us all."
The wound, little more than a deep scratch, was soon dressed. Then,against the sheltered side of the "storm cellar" left by the tree roots,they sat down to patiently await the passing of the storm.
"Getting worse. Listen!" Johnny whispered as the wind whipped the deadbranches with increasing fury.
The girl shuddered. "The bananas," she said. "They will all be down.Ruined. The whole plantation. There will be no more for nine months."
"Then it's the end of our plans."
"I am afraid so."
"Anyway, Diaz had us blocked."
"Perhaps."
"Did you ever think," the girl said after a while, "that even had yousucceeded in loading the bananas and grapefruit you might have been worseoff than before?"
"Why? The ship's all right. Isn't she?"
"Yes, but at the other end? Did you never think that an organization likethe Fruit Company, powerful enough to control the purchasing of all fruitof Central America, could control the selling market as well. Do youthink a big commission merchant would dare purchase your load of bananasand grapefruit? Could you deliver to him regularly? You couldn't. Whatcould he do if the powerful Fruit Company should refuse to sell to himbecause he bought from you? Not a thing."
Johnny was stunned. He had not thought of this.
"So you see," said the girl in a very quiet tone, "while it was brave andgenerous of you to try to help grandfather and--and me, after all it wasjust as well that nature and Spanish trickery took a hand."
"I'm not so sure," said Johnny grimly. "I'd like to have the chance atit, even now. I'd risk it. I--why, I'd hunt up my old friend Tony, thepush-cart man, if necessary, and I'd say, 'Tony, I have a ship load offruit at half price down at the dock. Go tell your pals.'
"In a half hour's time there would be a mile of push-carts coming my way.
"But now," he said slowly, almost despondently, "this is the end."
In this he was mistaken. It was scarcely the beginning of what was toprove a thrilling adventure. "The _North Star_!" he exclaimed suddenly."She was tied to the dock. What will happen to her?"
Since the girl did not know the answer, she did not reply.
A moment later, the Carib crept up the bank of the pit to disappear intothe storm. Ten minutes later, when he reappeared, his jacket was filledwith cocoanuts.
"Food and drink," smiled Madge. "We shall not fare so badly in our cave,after all."
Still the wind raged on. Rain came and with it night.
A great flat boulder, turned half over by the uprooted tree, left a sortof narrow grotto with a stone floor. By crowding well back into thisgrotto, Johnny and the girl were able to escape the terrific downpour ofrain. The Carib, who minded a wetting about as much as a duck, satchuckling to himself beneath the tree's great roots.
For a time the girl and the boy talked of many things, of their homes, oftheir native lands, of strange customs and stranger laws, of the sea andof the land.
The conversation turned to chicle g
athering. Then it was that Johnny toldof his friend Pant, how he had found his long lost grandfather and howthey were, beyond doubt, at that very moment gathering chicle in theforest around Rio de Grande.
"The Rio de Grande!" exclaimed the girl. "Diaz gathers chicle there. Hewill stop them if he can."
"Diaz!" came from Johnny. "He has a hand in everything down here!"
"By the way," he said a moment later, "I have a queer sort of messagefrom my pal here in my pocket. It's all done in figures and signs. How hecould expect me to read it is more than I know. And yet, somehow I feelthat it must be important."
"Perhaps I can help you. Let me see it."
Johnny drew the crumpled bit of paper from his pocket, smoothed it out onhis knee, then gave it to the girl.
By the light of a tiny flashlight, which Johnny always carried, shestudied it for a full three minutes.
"That is queer," she said at last, twisting her brow into a puzzledfrown. "But somehow it seems easy enough if only one knew how to begin."
For three minutes longer, as the wind sang across the top of their grottoand the rain came dashing down, she studied that bit of paper. Then of asudden she asked:
"Johnny, how does your friend end his notes to you?"
"Why," said Johnny thoughtfully, "he hasn't written me many. Near as Ican recall, when he comes to the end he just stops."
The girl's laugh rang out high and clear.
"I mean does he say, 'Yours truly,' 'Your pal,' or something like that?"
"No." Johnny's answer was prompt. "He always says 'Good luck--Pant.'"
"That's it!" The girl gave a sudden excited jump that brought a shower ofsmall rocks down from above. "That's it! See! Now we are making progress.See! This hyphen stands for g. Those two nines for double o, percentagesign for d, and so on. I know now. This was written on a typewriter, oneof the little portable kind."
"Oh!" said Johnny, beginning to see the light. "What a chump I am. Canyou make it out?"
"I think I can," she cried excitedly.
"Read it," said Johnny.
"I can't just yet. Let me think. Your typewriter is one of those smallportable affairs that fold over and fit into a black case, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Let me think. I learned the touch system on one of those. Let me feel itout. Got a pencil?"
Johnny produced a stub of what had once been a pencil.
Turning the note over, the girl began drumming on it with all herfingers.
"As if she were playing a piano," thought Johnny.
"There!" She put down a figure. "And there!" she set down a sign.
So at last she filled the back of the sheet with figures and signs.
"Now we can do it," she said at last. "It's all quite simple."
"It would seem so," said Johnny skeptically.
"It really is, only you must know the position of numbers, letters andsigns on your typewriter keyboard. If you had studied it out before yourtypewriter it would have been simple in the extreme.
"Your typewriter has three shifts; one for letters, one for capitals andone for figures and signs. The thing Pant did was to lock his machine forfigures and signs, then write his note as if the machine were set forletters. Now I have worked out the location of letters, figures and signsby memory and the touch system, it will be very simple. The figure 5stands for t, the percent sign for d, and so on."
For a little time longer she studied. Then on a second scrap of paper shewrote the following, which was Pant's note to Johnny, written many daysprevious:
Johnny:
The map is gone. The Spaniards have it. I am going into the jungle after it. I will get it, never fear. Look out for a Spaniard named Diaz. He is a Devil. Never trust nor believe him for a moment.
Good Luck,
Pant.
"So that was it," Johnny said thoughtfully. "They stole his chart. I onlyhope he got it back."
Then after a time, "Well, I wish you had seen that note sooner. I didtrust Diaz. I did believe him. That was a great mistake."
Still the wind howled and the rain came beating down upon a plantationwhere thousands of banana stalks lay on the ground.