IN BATTLE ARRAY
At dawn of the day after the hurricane, Don del Valle and his beautiful
black-eyed daughter hastened away in his high powered motor boat. That he
might determine the amount of damage done by the storm, it was necessary
for him to leave for his other plantation at once. Johnny Thompson went
to the wireless station to begin a search in air for the _North Star_ and
her courageous captain.
“If she has been wrecked, or if she has been carried far by storm, and
the skipper refuses to return, we are lost,” he said to Madge Kennedy.
For an hour he sent out messages. Each moment he became more depressed.
What if the ship had been lost?
“One more evil happening to be charged against my too impetuous desire to
be of service,” he groaned.
“Let us hope it has not happened,” said the girl. “Captain Jorgensen has
sailed these seas for many years. He is hardly the man to lose his
vessel.”
“Good news!” Johnny exclaimed a moment later when he was brought a
message. “The _North Star_ is anchored behind Mutineer’s Island, all safe
and sound. I will get off a message instructing them to pull away for our
own dock at once. There we will pick up your crates of grapefruit and a
hundred or so of your Caribs. We will bring them here to gather and load
the bananas. They can be trusted. I put no faith in the half-castes that
swarm about this dock. We have been defeated by them once. Once is enough
for me.
“Oh, I tell you!” he exclaimed, seizing the girl by the hand and doing a
wild Indian dance across the floor, “we’ll win yet!”
“You forget,” said the girl soberly, “that the great, all-powerful
organization, the Fruit Company, may block your sales after you arrive in
New York.”
But Johnny could not be disheartened. The ship was his. The bananas were
his also. He had men to gather and load them. New York and the day of
their arrival were far away.
“‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’” he quoted, then hurried
to get off a message to Kennedy. With Kennedy on the job, the grapefruit
would be ready to load, and the Caribs prepared to steam away with them
to the dock here at Porte Zelaya.
Johnny was soon enough to know that this day’s evil was indeed sufficient
unto itself. He had not left the wireless room before bad news arrived.
The giant Carib, who had come in a motor boat to Porte Zelaya, and who
had been with Johnny and Madge in the storm, had been loafing about the
dock with his ears open. Those ears had caught snatches of terrible
things. He told Madge of all this in his native tongue.
“What is it?” Johnny asked as he saw the look of terror creep into her
eyes.
“A plot!” She said the words through white, set lips. “That rascal Diaz,
who was discharged from his position as foreman, is plotting to destroy
your plans, and you with them.”
“How? How could he?”
“He is stirring up a revolution. He is telling the ignorant half-castes
that the white men rule their country, that they have been paid very
little for much hard work, and that now they are to be deprived of that
work altogether, that you are to bring a ship load of Caribs from Stann
Creek to do the work which is rightfully their own.”
“That in part is true,” said Johnny. “I wonder if, after all, I am wrong?
Would they do the work if I were to offer it?”
Madge consulted the Carib. He shook his head and waved his hands in wild
gestures.
“He says they would not work,” interpreted the girl, “that their blood is
hot, that they lust for battle and that they will meet us at the dock
with clubs and machetes—a hundred, two hundred, perhaps three hundred
strong. They want a fight.”
“Very well.” Johnny’s tone was deep and strong. “They shall have a fight,
if fight there must be. We are within our rights.”
He stepped back to the wireless to send one more message. The message
which went to Kennedy, ran;
“Have every able-bodied Carib at Stann Creek at the dock, every man
armed.”
Ten minutes later their motor boat was popping, and the dock and low
sheds of Porte Zelaya were fading in the distance.
When Johnny and Madge, riding on the prow of the motor boat with the
giant Carib at the wheel, rounded a point of land and came in sight of
the dock at Stann Creek, they were given the thrill of their young lives.
The dock was one moving mass of men.
“The Caribs!” A lump came to the girl’s throat.
“They came,” said Johnny.
“I knew they would. They would do anything for grandfather.”
It was true. The instant Johnny’s word from the air had arrived,
messengers had been sent helter-skelter, here, there, everywhere. The
train on the narrow gauge railroad had gone into the bush to return
groaning and creaking with such a load of black and brown humanity as had
never before been seen on the backwaters of Central America.
Every grown Carib within twenty miles of the dock was there. The instant
the _North Star_ came alongside they swarmed upon the deck.
The loading of the grapefruit with the aid of so many strong and willing
hands was but the work of a few hours. Then, with a load of humanity
greater than her load of fruit, the ship cast off her moorings and headed
straight for the dock at Porte Zelaya where, Johnny felt sure, there
awaited them a great and terrible battle.
As the boy walked the deck his eyes shone with joy. Whoever commanded a
stronger, braver, more loyal army than the black throng that, swarming up
the hatches, perched themselves on mast and rigging, forecastle, after
deck and anchor, until there was scarcely space left to move?
As his eyes swept the deck they lighted with a sudden new joy. They had
fallen upon a figure garbed in a dress of gorgeous golden yellow. The one
white girl of the company, the queen of all the Stann Creek region, had
not deserted them. There, on a coil of rope beside her patriarchal
grandfather, sat Madge Kennedy, smiling her very best.
“It’s great! Great!” Johnny murmured. “And yet—”
His brow clouded. There was to be a fight. The thing seemed inevitable.
It would be a bloody battle. He knew well enough what these battles
between Caribs and half-castes meant. Once, on the far reaches of the Rio
Hondo, he had witnessed such a battle. It had been a rather terrible
affair. As he closed his eyes now he heard the thwack of mahogany clubs
on unprotected heads, caught the swish of great swinging knives, saw the
agony of hatred and fear on dark faces where blood ran free.
“I said then I hoped I’d never see another such battle,” he told himself,
“and yet here we are driving straight on toward one that promises to be
quite as terrible.”
Before him, sitting astride the rail, was a Carib youth. “Can’t be over
eighteen,” Johnny mused.
He had never in his life seen a more cheerful, smiling face. To look at
him, to catch the glint of his eye, the gleam of his white teeth, to see
the rollicking movement of his face, was like viewing a wonderful
waterfall against a glorious sunset.
Could it be that before this day was done that glorious face might be
still in death?
For a moment Johnny felt like turning back. What was success, even
success in a righteous cause, when it must be purchased at such a cost?
“And yet,” he reasoned, “we cannot turn back. The right must be defended.
It must always be so. Perhaps there is a way to avert it, but come what
may, we must go on.”
Having arrived at this conclusion, he walked quietly down the deck to
take his place beside Donald Kennedy and his granddaughter.
For some time they talked in low tones, the man and the boy, and the girl
listened. Little wonder that they talked earnestly. Much was at stake.
“It might work,” said Johnny at last. “Anyway, we’ll try it. You can talk
to them in Spanish.”
That was the end of conversation. After that they sat there looking and
listening. From somewhere forward there came the rattle of a banjo, the
tom-tom-tom of a snake-head drum. Aft, the chant of a weird song rose and
fell with the boat.
“They don’t realize they are going to war,” said Johnny.
“That’s the pity. They never do,” said the girl, shading her eyes to gaze
away at the perfect blue of the lovely Caribbean Sea.
All too soon the thrum of the banjo ceased, the tom-tom of the drum
became muffled and low. Land, the point of Porte Zelaya, had been
sighted.
Rising, the girl and the old man made their way along the deck. As they
moved along they spoke in low tones to the men and the men, as if moved
by some magic spell, rose slowly to go shuffling forward or aft, and to
disappear down the hatchways, leaving the decks almost deserted.
When the _North Star_ came within hailing distance of the dock, which was
swarming with half-castes drawn up in battle array, a little group of
some fifty black Caribs were gathered on the forward deck of the _North
Star_. That was all. Not a pike pole nor machete was in sight. They
seemed only a small group of laborers prepared for a day’s work of
gathering and loading bananas.
A breathless expectancy hung over all the ship as it came in close,
reversed her engines, dropped anchor and stood off the wharf for further
orders.
The great man of the jungle, Donald Kennedy, tall, stately of bearing,
yet humble, stepped forward to the rail and began to speak in quiet tones
to the throng on the deck.
At once there arose a terrific shout.
“Down with the white man! Death to the intruder!”
These words were shouted in Spanish, but Johnny knew their meaning well
enough. He thrilled and shuddered. Pike poles were tossed in air above
the dock, great knives flashed in the sun, a pistol exploded. What was to
be the end of it all?
Again came comparative silence. Again the aged man spoke. Patiently, as
if speaking to children, he began.
Again he was interrupted by cries of;
“Death! Destruction! Down with the white man!”
Four times, with steady patience, the great man attempted to make himself
heard.
At last, realizing the futility of it all, he turned and shouted three
words in the Carib tongue.
Instantly there came from the black men forward a shout to answer that of
the half-castes on the dock. At the same time, pike-poles and machetes
flashed and four streams of humanity, black and menacing, began pouring
up the hatchways.
Johnny Thompson thrilled and grew deathly cold at sight of them. They
swarmed up the masts, they filled the deck, they straddled the rail and
crowded the roofs of the cabins. Everywhere weapons gleamed. From every
corner rang the defiant shout of Caribs ready to defend with their lives
the rights of Kennedy, whom they had come to think of as a loyal friend.
No pirate ship that sailed these waters in days that are gone ever
witnessed a more tremendous and startling demonstration.
Before it, awed into silence, the mob on the dock fell back, then began
slipping away. One by one they slunk off into the bush. In ten minutes
time not a man was left. A bloodless victory had been won. The field was
theirs.