CHAPTER XIV HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL
The end of the storm that had trapped Johnny and Madge Kennedy in theheart of a great banana plantation came suddenly. Clouds went racing. Thewind fell. The moon shone again in all its golden glory. It looked downupon a scene of unmatched destruction.
Creeping from their place of refuge which had all but become a pool, theyallowed their eyes to sweep the devastated fields.
"It's the end; no doubt of it," said Johnny.
"Looks like the end of the world." There was quiet humor in the girl'stone.
Strange and weird indeed was the scene that confronted them. A palm, itstough stem wrung and twisted by the storm, stood with its fronds hangingdown like a nun in prayer. The broken trunks of massive dead trees rearedthemselves toward the sky. Everywhere the banana plants, which but a fewhours before had stood so proudly aloft, now lay flat.
"A hundred thousand bunches," the boy murmured. "And now all gone. What aloss!"
"All gone. I wonder," he murmured as he lifted the topmost plant from offa heap of its fellows. The bunch he cut away with his machete was readyfor shipment, and perfect.
"Not a bruise," he said aloud. "Not a banana missing. The plants beneathit formed a pad to ease it down. There must be others, hundreds,thousands, perhaps twenty thousand."
"Here we have bananas!" he exclaimed, turning to Madge Kennedy.
"But they are not ours."
"May as well be. We should be able to buy them. The Fruit Company's boatwill not dock for ten days or two weeks. By that time they will beworthless. Come on, let's hurry back to the port."
"Diaz won't let you take them."
"That's right," he admitted in sudden despondency. "Of course he won't."
"And yet, I wonder if he'd dare refuse?" he said to himself. "He wouldnot be serving the best interests of his master if he did not sell themto us at a salvage price."
He thought of the wary Spaniard's visit to Kennedy's home, and of hisoffer to buy the grapefruit orchard; thought too of theprosperous-looking American he had seen at the foot of the Porte Zelayadock.
"Wonder if I will ever see that short, stout American again?" he thought."They say he left yesterday morning."
The answer to this last question, though he could not know it yet, was adecided yes. He was to meet that mysterious American again under veryunusual circumstances. A strange break of fate had predestined them to bethrown together for many days.
As he followed the unerring guidance of the Carib Indian through the mazeof fallen trees and destroyed banana plants back toward the port, histhoughts were gloomy indeed. The glory of the tropical moonlight seemedto mock him. Every black mass of twisted banana plants seemed a funeralpile on which his dead hopes were to be burned.
"Fate treats one strangely at times," he told himself.
So it seemed. He had been endeavoring to assist a very worthy, aged andneedy man, one who had given all his life to others. This man had foughtfor his country, fearlessly at the front of his command, yet he refusedthe honor of being called "Captain."
The World War was not the only one in which he had fought. Time and againthe need of his humble fellow countrymen, the black Caribs whose fathersand mothers had been Indians and negro slaves, had called him to hisduty, and he had gone.
On one occasion, during the terrible yellow-fever plague, he had toileddays without end, burying the Carib dead and caring for the stricken onesuntil the hand of the dread enemy was stayed.
"Not a native in all Stann Creek district but knows and loves him,"Johnny told himself. "And now, in his old age, when he truly needs a liftand we try to help him, see how things come out! We are blocked by ascheming Spaniard who never fought for any country, nor for the good ofany person beside himself. He probably never had an unselfish thought inthe whole of his life."
His thoughts were gloomy enough. But, after climbing over manyobstructions and wading numerous small, swollen streams, he began toreason with himself. What was this "Fate" he was always thinking of? Wasit the great Creator, or was it some other being?
As he looked away at the golden moon, a line of poetry came to him.
"God's in His Heaven, All's right with the world."
"I wonder?" he thought. Then, "How absurd! Of course it's true. Somehowthere must still be a way."
His first visible justification of this faith came to him the moment hestepped inside the dock office. There, snugly sleeping on a couch in thecorner, was a slender, dark-skinned child whose black eyelashes were longand lovely. And there, pacing the floor before her, was her father, thegreat plantation owner.
"Don del Valle!" the boy exclaimed. He could scarcely believe his eyes.
"Yes, Senor Johnny Thompson." The man's tone seemed austere.
"I--I am truly sorry that your crop has been ruined," said the boy.
"And I, sir, am disappointed in you, disappointed that you should havetaken advantage of my endeavor to deal generously with you."
"How--how--I--" the boy stammered.
"Excuses are unnecessary. You told me you had a ship. Where is that ship?You said you would take twenty thousand bunches. Where are they? Are theyon the ship? They are there." He waved his hand toward the devastatedplantation.
Johnny's head whirled. What was this--more treachery?
"Our boat," he said in as quiet a tone as he could command, "was at yourdock three days. In such a storm you could not expect her to hold to hermoorings. Where is she now? Who knows? Perhaps at the bottom of the sea.The reason she left without a cargo was that your manager, Senor Diaz,would not supply it."
"Is this true?" The dark eyes of the Honduran capitalist bored himthrough and through.
"Ask any workman on the dock or in the village. If he has not beencorrupted by a scoundrel, he will tell you it is true."
Whirling about, the man shot a few sharp questioning words in Spanish toa boy who sat half asleep in the corner.
Starting up, the boy answered rapidly.
"He says," Don del Valle turned slowly about, "that all you have told meis the truth. It is my honor to beg your most humble pardon. You havebeen badly treated. Ask me some favor and I will grant it."
Johnny's heart beat fast. His mind worked like some speeding mechanism.
"Shall I?" he asked himself. "I will."
"In the name of one who deserves much, our friend Donald Kennedy, I shallask one favor."
"Ask it."
"That you sell me the crop of bananas on this plantation."
"They are worthless. The storm has ruined them."
"Not all. There is still a ship load of good ones."
"How can I grant such a request? I am under contract to deliver thesebananas to the Fruit Company."
"No contract," Johnny's voice vibrated with earnestness, "stands beforean act of God. The storm was an act of God. No Fruit Company's ship willbe here within ten days. By that time it will be too late."
"You are right. Your request is granted. To-morrow I will send my meninto the field."
"By your leave," said Johnny quickly, "I will buy them as they are in thefield. I will gather and load them myself."
The owner gave him a piercing look, then having recalled Johnny's pastexperience, he said slowly:
"Very well. This also is granted. You may use my equipment. Ten cents abunch in the field, a salvage price."
There was a slight move at the door. Together they turned to look. Therestood Diaz. His white face showed that he had heard much, understood all.
Don del Valle pointed a finger of accusation and scorn at him.
He vanished into the dark. His plotting was not at an end, however. Hewent directly to a long shed where many men, beachcombers, longshoremen,chicleros and banana gatherers, were sleeping. There he began to sow theseeds of a hasty revolution and a wild demonstration against the hatedwhite men, which was destined once more to threaten disaster to JohnnyThompson's plans.
Early that m
orning one might have found Johnny alone at the edge of thebanana plantation. To one unaccustomed to Johnny's ways, his actionsmight have seemed strange. Was he taking his daily dozen? Perhaps, butsurely they were a queer dozen.
If you know Johnny at all you are aware of the fact that he is a skillfulboxer. But down there in the tropics bare hands avail little. Johnny wasnot shadow boxing. The thing he was doing was quite different. He waskeeping fit all the same.
A stout young mahogany tree had sprung up in the midst of the bananafield. From a tough limb of this tree Johnny had suspended a large bunchof bananas. The top of the bunch was a little higher than Johnny'sshoulders, the tip a foot from the ground.
Seizing one of two machetes, great long bladed knives like swords, thatlay on the ground, the boy began circling the swinging bunch of bananasas one might a mortal enemy. Brandishing his machete, he circled thisimaginary enemy three times. Then, as if an opening had appeared, he madea sudden onslaught that sent green bananas thudding to earth and set thebunch spinning wildly.
Then he parried and thrust as an imaginary blade sang close to his head.Once more, with a lightning-like swing, he sprang in. This time he splita single banana from end to end and sent the severed halves soaring high.
He sprang back. No true blade could have inspired greater skill than theboy displayed before an empty world and without a real adversary.
The battle ended when with one swift stroke he severed the stem in themiddle and with a sweeping twirl sent it thudding down.
"Cut his head off!" he chuckled, throwing himself upon the ground to mopthe perspiration from his brow.
"It's like boxing," he thought, "this great Central American sport ofmachete fighting, only--it's different. You feel as if only half of youwere in it."
As a boxer Johnny was neither right nor left handed. He was ambidextrous.Therein lay much of his power. How few of us ever learn to use both handswell. Yet what an advantage comes to those who do.
"That's the trouble with this machete business," he now thought tohimself. "Only one hand, that's all you use. And yet, why not?"
He sprang to his feet, selected a second bunch of bananas, hung it onhigh, then prepared as before to attack it. This time, however, hewielded a machete in each hand.
At first he found it awkward. Once he barely missed cutting his ownwrist. By the time he had demolished three other bunches he felt that hewas making progress and that an ambidextrous fighter with two kniveswould have a decided advantage over one who fought with a single blade.
Johnny, as you may have guessed, was preparing for that moment which hefelt must come sooner or later, when he and Diaz would stand face to faceready to fight their battle out with the great Central American blade.
"And when that time comes," he told himself, "it must not find meunprepared."