BATTLING AGAINST ODDS
In the meantime Johnny Thompson was allowing no grass to grow under his
feet. Having arranged with Kennedy to put his fruit on the wharf within
five days, he secured the services of a wheezy but dependable motor boat
and started at once to Porte Zalaya, the headquarters of Don del Valle’s
banana growing company.
He arrived at three o’clock that afternoon, and went at once to the long
low office building at the end of the wharf. There he asked for Armacito
Diaz, the manager.
Johnny did not know that Armacito Diaz was the same Spaniard who had been
doing his utmost to defeat Pant in his work of rebuilding his
grandfather’s fortune. For reasons best known to himself, though
possessed of concessions of his own, Diaz played the part of a humble
servant under the employ of Don del Valle’s direction. He was the same
man who had given Johnny the black look at Kennedy’s. Since the valley of
the Rio de Grande was only a short distance off, he had ridden to his
chicle camp, there to meet temporary defeat in his attempt at looting the
old colonel’s concessions. Fox-like, he was now in his den behind clouded
glass walls, administering the affairs of the banana planter.
A dapper Spanish clerk took Johnny’s message, then disappeared through a
door at the back.
“He will see you in a minute,” said the polite clerk.
Johnny sat down on a bench to wait. The day was warm. There was no
breeze. The bench was hard. The minute grew into a half hour, an hour.
Johnny rose to inquire patiently regarding the impending interview.
“One minute.” The clerk was gone.
“One minute. Just one more minute and he will see you.”
Another hour passed, a precious hour to Johnny. He rose once more; but
this time, ignoring the clerk, he threw back the swinging gate, strode
across the narrow enclosure, threw open the door at the rear and entered
the room beyond.
Imagine the surprise and shock that awaited him when he found himself
face to face with the frowning Spaniard of the previous night, the man
Madge Kennedy had said was like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.
The man sprang from his chair.
“Senor Diaz?” said Johnny in as easy a tone as he could command.
“You intrude,” said the other without answering his question.
“If you are Armacito Diaz,” said Johnny, looking him square in the eye,
“I have a right to intrude. I have a message from your master. You have
delayed its delivery unnecessarily.”
To himself Johnny was saying, “This man Diaz? Here is a nice mess. He
already dislikes me for some reason or another. Perhaps I am in his way
somehow. Perhaps, like many Spaniards, he hates all Americans. However
that may be, he will do his master’s bidding.”
“What’s this?” The frown on the Spaniard’s brow deepened as he read the
message Johnny laid before him. “Gather twenty thousand defective bunches
for shipment? What nonsense!”
“So you are Diaz?”
“I am Diaz. And you?”
“Johnny Thompson.”
“American.” There was contempt in the man’s tone. “Adventurer!”
“American,” said Johnny quietly. “As for the other, it matters little to
you whether I am or not. You will deliver the bananas at the dock, this
dock, to-morrow morning; at Dock No. 2 the next day; and at No. 3 that
same night.”
“The order is forged,” said the manager, throwing the letter on the
table. “My master would have no part in such nonsense. Twenty thousand
defective bunches!”
“Six hand bunches,” corrected Johnny quietly. “The order is not forged.
You know it is not. Ignore it at your own risk. Your position as manager
is at stake. You will send your men into the field at once.”
“_Manana_. To-morrow,” said the manager after several moments spent in
thought.
“To-day,” said Johnny.
“It is impossible. The men are scattered. We have on hand no more loading
for ten days.”
“All right, then to-morrow. To-morrow evening we will be at this dock
ready to load. We can load at night.”
To this the Spaniard made no answer. After waiting a respectable time for
a reply, Johnny left the office.
As he walked out into the warm tropical sunshine his head was in a whirl.
The feeling of dark shadows creeping up from behind him was so strong
that he involuntarily turned to look back. There was no one. The dusty
street was empty.
“Strange,” he thought, “that he should seem to hate me and want to thwart
my plans. He seems to be a friend of Kennedy. He must know I am working
only for Kennedy’s good. Why then should he behave as he does?”
He was destined to ask that question many times before he discovered the
real answer.
Just then as he thrust his hand deep in his pocket, a habit he had when
engrossed in thought, he felt a crumpled bit of paper.
“Pant’s message,” he said to himself as he drew it forth.
“Wonder what it’s all about?” His brow wrinkled in puzzled thought. “Wish
I knew. Wish I had the key to it. It might mean a lot. Wish I knew where
he is, and what’s happening to him.”
Finding a grassy spot in the shadow of the dock, he sat puzzling over
that jumble of figures and signs which he felt sure was meant to convey
an important message to him, but which in reality meant nothing to him.
“The key!” he exclaimed at last in disgust. “If only I had the key to
it!”
The key to this riddle, if only he could have known it, lay back there in
the little bamboo office where Pant had left the note. He had expected
Johnny to sit right down beside the portable typewriter and study out the
meaning of his strange cipher message.
As it happened, there had not been time for this; a great pity, too, for
the message was an important one. Its solving at that moment might have
saved Johnny many a heartache. Without the typewriter, however, it was
going to be difficult, very difficult indeed. In the end he pocketed the
message still unread.
* * * * * * * *
There is only one silence more complete than the silence of the jungle at
mid-day. That is the silence to be experienced at the heart of a great
banana plantation in the heat of the day. There not a twig drops but its
fall is heard. The march of a thousand ants going and coming over their
tiny paths gives forth as definite and distinct a sound as the tramp of
an army.
Johnny was hearing and watching these toiling ants. He got scant comfort
from these observations. Their actions reminded him of three days of
painful failure. The _North Star_ was at loading dock No. 1, had been for
three days, yet her hold was as empty as the day she had tied up there.
There were no bananas at the dock.
“Here there are plenty,” Johnny told himself, glancing up at the three
great bunches that hung directly over his head, and away at hundreds on
every hand.
Again his attention was drawn by the rustle of rushing ants.
“How strange,” he thought. “It would take a million of these ants to
weigh as much as I do, yet they are getting on with the thing they wish
done. I have failed.”
He started. The thing the ants were doing was quite like the work he
wished to do. They were tearing bits of leaves from a vine and were
carrying them away beneath the ground.
“Just as a hundred men should be carrying bunches of bananas to our
ship,” he thought.
“Yes, we have no bananas,” he grinned in spite of himself. All about him
were bananas, a vast unending sea of them, a hundred thousand bunches. He
had been promised twenty thousand. That treacherous Spanish manager,
Diaz, had blocked his every move. Not a bunch had he delivered.
“_Manana! Manana!_” He had whispered over and over. “My workmen are
scattered. They have gone turtle hunting. They are not here. To-morrow
they will be back. To-morrow. To-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” the boy exclaimed. “When I get back to the States I shall
have that word removed from the dictionary.”
Suddenly his lips parted, but no sound came forth. Rising upon one knee,
he crouched there poised like some wild creature ready for a spring.
“Was that a voice?”
He felt reasonably sure of it, yet in this land of monkeys, parrots and
mocking birds one could never be quite sure.
“If it is,” he told himself, “if they are that crafty Spaniard’s men sent
to hunt me down, there may be a fight.
“And yet,” he thought, “why should he wish to hunt me down, to have me
killed? He’s having his own sweet way. What more could he wish?”
He thought of the man sitting there on the veranda with Kennedy, thought
too of Madge Kennedy. Madge Kennedy of the golden hair and frank freckled
face, the bright, alert, clean Scotch girl of the jungle, and for some
reason or another his brow clouded.
“If it’s a fight they want,” he said, clenching his fists tight, “they’re
quite welcome to it, though I’d be the last to start it.”
Having caught no further sound, he settled back to his task of watching
the ants stowing away bits of leaves, and of thinking over his own
problems.
“It’s as if they were hurrying through with an important task,” he told
himself, watching the tiny workers with renewed interest, “as if they
were preparing for some great change, perhaps some gigantic natural
catastrophe, an earthquake, a storm, a—
“I wonder—” his brow wrinkled as he gazed away toward the western sky.
But no, there were no clouds, only a faint haze that spread over all the
sky, faintly obscuring the sun.
“Nothing much I guess. Getting superstitious,” he told himself. “Must be
going back. But not just yet.”
He had come to the heart of this banana plantation for two reasons. He
had wanted to carry on a little investigation of his own, and to think
his problems through.
The investigation had confirmed his suspicions. There were no workmen in
this field. Diaz had said there were fifty men here gathering bananas. He
had promised that the fruit would be at the dock, a train load of it next
morning.
“A plain out-and-out lie!” Johnny told himself bitterly. “He knows he has
me defeated. Any untruth will do. To-morrow my option on the _North Star_
expires. Then she will steam away. After that Kennedy’s grapefruit may
rot on the dock. He will be worse off than before. His Caribs have
gathered and packed the fruit and there will be no money to pay them.
What a blunderer I am!”
It was all quite true. The sleek, soft spoken Spanish manager of the
plantation had, after that first stormy meeting, seemed to suddenly
become quite friendly. He had invited Johnny to lunch and had feasted him
quite royally. He had promised that his men who were out setting nets for
turtles would be called in. Johnny should dock his ship. The bananas
would be ready next evening.
That had been the first day. At the end of the second day no bananas had
appeared. Johnny had sought out the Spaniard. He had treated the boy to a
sumptuous dinner and had assured him that to-morrow the men would go for
bananas. “_Manana, manana_,” he had repeated, wringing the boy’s hand.
If only Johnny had been able to read Pant’s note! But he had not.
Captain Jorgensen had waited patiently for three days; then, having been
offered a cargo of chicle and cocoanuts in Belize, he had given Johnny
notice that if bananas were not coming aboard by the evening of the next
day, his option would expire and he would be obliged to steam away.
He had said all this in the kindest tone possible. He liked Johnny. He
liked Kennedy and his granddaughter, and would do anything within his
power, but the company that owned his ship would stand for no further
delay.
“It’s all right, quite all right. Very fine, Senor, very fine,” Diaz had
said when, in despair, Johnny had sought him out once more. “To-day my
men are among the bananas. To-morrow morning you shall have a train
load.”
Johnny had doubted his word. He had trudged away up the narrow gauge
railway track to see. He had tramped for miles in the shade of great
spreading banana plants and had not seen a workman.
“They are not here, will not be here. We will have no bananas. To-morrow
the _North Star_ sails away. My plan fails. I have been worse than
useless to my friends.
“And yet,” he said doggedly, “there must be some way out. There must!”
Again his eyes followed the long procession of ants. Once more he glanced
toward the sky. The veil over the sun had grown a shade deeper.
“They are hurrying faster than ever,” he said as he again watched the
interesting procession. “It is as if—”
Once more his thoughts broke short off. This time from just behind the
second row of banana plants he felt sure he had caught the low murmur of
voices.
Strangely enough, at this moment when he crouched there, nerves tense,
eyes and ears alert, watching for the mysterious unknown ones, there
flashed before his mind the picture of a short stout white man standing
at the foot of a dock. He had seen that man only the day before.
There was a mystery about that man. Who was he? Whence had he come and
how? No steamers had arrived from the States. Yet he was unmistakably
American. His clothes were well tailored. He had the air of one who is
prosperous and who finds himself often in a position of authority. What
could be his business in Central America?
The first time Johnny had seen him he had been standing at the foot of
the dock.
“For all the world as if some strange magic had sent him, bone dry and
all spick and span right up out of the sea,” the boy told himself.
This mysterious American had gone directly to the office of Diaz. When he
left that office a half hour later Diaz had accompanied him as far as the
door. There had been a smile on the crafty Spaniard’s face; not the sort
of smile one loves to see.
“That smile,” Johnny now told himself, “should have been enough to warn
me.”
There was a rumor afloat that the prosperous looking American was some
high official of the Fruit Company.
“If that is true, he may be behind my defeat,” he told himself. “But one
never can tell. I—”
He paused. His heart skipped a beat. From close at hand there sounded a
heavy footstep.
“Diaz’s men,” he thought, slipping his machete half out of its scabbard.
“They’ll find I can fight if that must be.”
The next instant a figure loomed before him, a great black giant with the
face of a south sea cannibal, and a smile—well, such a smile as one sees
only in tropical lands.
As the man saw Johnny, he turned half about to speak to some one behind
him. The language he used was strange to the boy.
“Two of them,” he thought.
But somehow his fear was gone. That smile was disarming. The next instant
Johnny smiled. He laughed out loud, then leaped to his feet to stretch
forth both hands in greeting. For the person who moved up to a position
beside the towering black Indian was none other than Madge Kennedy.
“How, how did you find me?” Johnny exclaimed when greetings had been
exchanged.
Madge turned to the Carib. “These people who have lived here always know
everything. He brought me here. But why did you hide?”
“I didn’t, exactly. I came here to get the truth. Having gotten it, I
remained to digest it?”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Not exactly.” His tone was dubious. “I suppose you know I’ve played my
last card, and lost?”
“I—I guessed it. I’m sorry.”
The girl’s tone was deep and mellow, like the low note of a cello.
“So am I,” said Johnny, “but only sorry for you, you and your wonderful
old grandfather.”
“For us?” She let forth a merry little laugh. “We shall get on, one way
or another. One always does down here you know.”
“It is rather bad, though,” she admitted, sitting down upon the ground.
“You see—”
She paused to glance away at the sun. Where the sun should have been,
there was no sun, only a dull, veiled sky. Her brow wrinkled, but she did
not comment upon it.
“It is bad,” she went on. “We may have to sell the orchard.”
“Sell the orchard!” Johnny was surprised. “To whom?”
“Diaz.” She leaned far forward as she answered. “He wishes to buy it.
That was what he and grandfather were talking about when you came the
other night.”
“Diaz!” Johnny took in a long breath. The picture of the stout,
prosperous American and the crafty Spaniard passed before him. “So that’s
his game,” he thought. “He’s got Kennedy in a hole. The sale of his
grapefruit would let him out. Diaz is determined to block the shipment,
and is in the position to do it. The scoundrel!”
“The Spaniards down here don’t love us, the English and Scotch, too
much,” Madge Kennedy went on. “The trouble goes clear back to the days of
buccaneers and the Spanish Main. The English and Scotch logwood gatherers
drove the Spaniards from the mouth of the Belize River. They have never
forgiven us.
“Oh yes,” she laughed, “they trade with us when there is a profit to be
made, but after all their knife is always near our throats. Diaz thinks
he has us and he means to do his worst.
“I suppose,” she said, “we’ll have to sell to the Spaniards. It will
break grandfather’s heart. He wouldn’t mind if it went to a fellow
countryman.
“You know,” she reminisced, “that’s been our land longer than I can
remember, much longer. It’s our home. Don’t you see, Johnny? It’s the
only home I’ve ever known. You don’t like to see your home sold to some
one you don’t like, do you? Your home is part of you. When you sell it,
you sell part of yourself.
“It would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the Panama disease.
Our land was all in bananas then, and grandfather was getting rich. We
had bananas like these.” She spread her arms wide. “Better than these.
Then the disease came. Plants wilted like flowers before a hot wind. It
wasn’t long before there were no bananas. Along the Stann Creek railroad
they used to gather twenty-five thousand bunches a week. Now they don’t
get twenty-five hundred.” She sighed.
“Grandfather was cheerful even then. He always will be. He’s a sport, a
great big good sport with a soul.” The tones of her voice grew mellow and
deep.
“He planted grapefruit. You know the rest. And now, now I guess we—” Her
voice broke. “I guess we’re done.”
Suddenly Johnny sprang to his feet. There came a roar as of rushing
water.
“Look! Only look!” There was awe in Johnny’s voice.
Madge turned pale. The top of a palm tree, left for some unknown reason
to grow among the bananas, was writhing and twisting as if in mortal
agony.
At the same instant the entire broad sweep of banana plants moved forward
to bow low as if in obeisance to some god and, caught by a terrific
onrush of air, the three of them, Johnny, Madge Kennedy and the Indian,
were thrown in a heap against a stump.
Madge scrambled to her knees, rubbed her eyes, stared away at the sky,
then said in a tense, scarcely audible whisper:
“May God protect us! It is to be a tornado!”