OFF COURSE
For the next few days, the Scouts saw no more of Mrs. Rhodes. Upon their
arrival at the banana port of Santa Marta, they were disturbed to learn
that Mr. Corning had failed to send any message for them.
“There’s been a mix-up somehow,” Mr. Livingston said, deeply worried.
“Appleby couldn’t have received word from me, or he’d have met us.”
“What’ll we do now?” Jack asked. “Go on to the mine?”
“If we don’t hear from Appleby within a day or two, it’s all we can do,
Jack. Our money won’t stretch too far.”
That night the Scouts ran into Mrs. Rhodes in the hotel dining room.
They saw her again the next day at breakfast, and later at a large
banana plantation which they visited.
“Say, is she trailing us, do you think?” Jack speculated, noting the
woman’s presence among a throng of tourists at one of the banana sheds.
“What gave you that idea?” Ken scoffed.
“Well, she showed up at our hotel, didn’t she? And she’s more or less
been around ever since.”
“Santa Marta’s small, Jack.”
“Sure, I know. I wouldn’t think anything of it if I didn’t know she’s
the wife of that deposed engineer. But War told me she was quizzing him
this morning after breakfast.”
“What sort of questions did she ask, Jack?”
“Well, it seems she was trying to find out if we were dead set on going
on to the mine.”
“What’s so suspicious about that?” Ken asked, turning his head away as
the woman under discussion glanced in his direction. “It might be
natural curiosity.”
“Maybe,” Jack conceded, “only Mrs. Rhodes doesn’t hit me as the curious
type. When she asks a question, she’s after information.”
“What did War tell her?”
“Nothing. He figured she was pumping him, so he gave her double talk.”
The two Explorers forgot Mrs. Rhodes as a guide appeared to conduct them
through the banana groves. Somewhat to their relief, the woman did not
join the sightseeing party.
Grassy lanes intersected the plantations, stretching as far as the
Scouts could see. The giant plants were spaced fifteen feet apart, and
rose to a height of nearly forty. Except for the droning, monotonous
voice of the guide, a great stillness prevailed.
“Gosh, what a forest of ’em!” War murmured in awe. “A fellow could get
lost here!”
“Don’t go wandering around,” Jack warned him. “Stick close to the
guide.”
The Scouts kept together on the main cart road and in the lanes which
seemed to stretch endlessly. With keen interest, they watched the
cutting of green bananas.
Workers went in twos, a cutter and a backer, equipped with a long
pointed stick and a sharp machete.
The cutter would stick the banana plant below the bunch, so that it
toppled slowly down within reach of the backer, who promptly shouldered
it.
With swift strokes of the sharp machete, the cutter then severed the
bunch from the plant. Off trotted the backer with his heavy burden, to
deposit it along the card road. Bunches were protected from the sun with
green banana leaves.
Wearying of the guide’s lengthy description of how bananas were
harvested, Jack and War returned to the cart road to await the
sightseeing party there.
Seating themselves on a mat of cut banana leaves, they watched as a
worker with a cart gathered the deposited bunches and rattled off out of
sight.
War became absorbed in watching tiny lizards which darted everywhere.
“Say, isn’t it about time our gang got back here?” he demanded
impatiently.
He arose and Jack trailed after him. But when they peered down the long
row of banana plants where their party had been, no one was to be seen.
“Where’d everyone go?” Jack asked in alarm.
“They must have gone into another row. A good joke on us! We’d better
find ’em.”
Walking quickly along the cart road, the two Scouts looked down one long
green lane after another. Their friends were nowhere to be seen.
“How’d they get away so fast?” Jack murmured, annoyed at himself for
having missed the group.
“We sat by the roadside a lot longer than we realized, I guess.”
“Well, we’re not really lost,” Jack asserted. “We can follow this cart
road back to the shed.”
“Sure,” War agreed, “but we may not hit the right shed without a lot of
hunting. Hey, listen! I think I hear someone talking!”
Pausing, the two became attentive to the sounds about them. A humming
bird whirred by and there came the throaty croak of a frog from a nearby
irrigation ditch.
“I don’t hear anyone—” Jack began, only to check himself. “Yes, I do,”
he corrected.
The inaudible words reached his ears only as an indistinct, blurred flow
of speech.
“That must be our guide!” he exclaimed. “Catch the direction, War?”
“This way,” his companion directed, starting down one of the grassy
lanes.
“Hold on,” Jack called, but War, impulsive as always, paid no heed.
Reluctantly, the older Scout hastened to catch up with his friend.
War, finding he had made a mistake in entering a deserted row, cut
through to an adjoining lane.
“Hey, wait!” Jack called, thoroughly annoyed.
Even then, War did not pay attention to the command, if indeed he heard
it. Now far ahead of his friend, he kept moving from row to row, trying
to follow the elusive murmur of voices.
Finally, perspiring heavily, he halted to catch his breath and listen
again. Jack then caught up with him.
“Listen, you!” he exclaimed. “What’s the big idea? Where do you think
you’re going?”
“To find our gang. I thought they’d be in this row.”
“You’ve chased through a half dozen of ’em. I can’t even hear voices
now.”
War listened a moment. “Neither can I,” he acknowledged uneasily. “I
guess we’ve missed our party.”
“We’ll have to get back to the cart road and make for the shed.”
“I guess so,” War agreed, crestfallen.
They started back through the lane, trying to retrace the way they had
come. Rows of arching banana plants marched endlessly.
“I’m all mixed,” War presently confessed. “Shouldn’t we be coming to the
cart road?”
“It seems to me we’ve walked far enough.”
“Maybe this row we’re following doesn’t intersect the road where we came
in,” War said, struck by a sudden, unpleasant recollection. “Before we
started out this morning, I was looking at a map that hung in the main
shed.”
“Yeah?”
“Some of the rows bisect at right angles. But at one point, the road
curves around. The rows at that place, just go straight on.”
“How far, War?”
“Why, it looked as if some of them extended the length of the
plantation—miles.”
“Gosh! You think we’ve hit one of those rows, War?”
“I’m afraid of it. We’ve walked a long distance now.”
Jack paused, his eyebrows pulling together in a worried frown.
“Are we lost?” War asked, nervously wiping perspiration from his
forehead.
Jack grinned reassuringly. “Not lost,” he corrected. “I don’t like that
word.”
“Temporarily off course?”
“That’s better, War. Now let’s sit down a minute and think this thing
through. There must be an easy way out of this fruit garden, and we’ll
find it.”