  The end of the storm that had trapped Johnny and Madge Kennedy in the heart of a great banana plantation came suddenly. Clouds went racing. The wind fell. The moon shone again in all its golden glory. It looked down upon a scene of unmatched destruction. Creeping from their place of refuge which had all but become a pool, they allowed 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’s tone. Strange and weird indeed was the scene that confronted them. A palm, its tough stem wrung and twisted by the storm, stood with its fronds hanging down like a nun in prayer. The broken trunks of massive dead trees reared themselves toward the sky. Everywhere the banana plants, which but a few hours before had stood so proudly aloft, now lay flat. “A hundred thousand bunches,” the boy murmured. “And now all gone. What a loss!” “All gone. I wonder,” he murmured as he lifted the topmost plant from off a heap of its fellows. The bunch he cut away with his machete was ready for shipment, and perfect. “Not a bruise,” he said aloud. “Not a banana missing. The plants beneath it 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 boat will not dock for ten days or two weeks. By that time they will be worthless. 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 would not be serving the best interests of his master if he did not sell them to us at a salvage price.” He thought of the wary Spaniard’s visit to Kennedy’s home, and of his offer to buy the grapefruit orchard; thought too of the prosperous-looking American he had seen at the foot of the Porte Zelaya dock. “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 a decided yes. He was to meet that mysterious American again under very unusual circumstances. A strange break of fate had predestined them to be thrown together for many days. As he followed the unerring guidance of the Carib Indian through the maze of fallen trees and destroyed banana plants back toward the port, his thoughts were gloomy indeed. The glory of the tropical moonlight seemed to mock him. Every black mass of twisted banana plants seemed a funeral pile 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 and needy man, one who had given all his life to others. This man had fought for his country, fearlessly at the front of his command, yet he refused the honor of being called “Captain.” The World War was not the only one in which he had fought. Time and again the need of his humble fellow countrymen, the black Caribs whose fathers and mothers had been Indians and negro slaves, had called him to his duty, and he had gone. On one occasion, during the terrible yellow-fever plague, he had toiled days without end, burying the Carib dead and caring for the stricken ones until 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 lift and we try to help him, see how things come out! We are blocked by a scheming Spaniard who never fought for any country, nor for the good of any person beside himself. He probably never had an unselfish thought in the whole of his life.” His thoughts were gloomy enough. But, after climbing over many obstructions and wading numerous small, swollen streams, he began to reason with himself. What was this “Fate” he was always thinking of? Was it 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. Somehow there must still be a way.” His first visible justification of this faith came to him the moment he stepped inside the dock office. There, snugly sleeping on a couch in the corner, was a slender, dark-skinned child whose black eyelashes were long and lovely. And there, pacing the floor before her, was her father, the great 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 have taken 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 they on the ship? They are there.” He waved his hand toward the devastated plantation. Johnny’s head whirled. What was this—more treachery? “Our boat,” he said in as quiet a tone as he could command, “was at your dock three days. In such a storm you could not expect her to hold to her moorings. 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 him through and through. “Ask any workman on the dock or in the village. If he has not been corrupted by a scoundrel, he will tell you it is true.” Whirling about, the man shot a few sharp questioning words in Spanish to a 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 me is the truth. It is my honor to beg your most humble pardon. You have been 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 shall ask 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 these bananas to the Fruit Company.” “No contract,” Johnny’s voice vibrated with earnestness, “stands before an act of God. The storm was an act of God. No Fruit Company’s ship will be 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 men into the field.” “By your leave,” said Johnny quickly, “I will buy them as they are in the field. I will gather and load them myself.” The owner gave him a piercing look, then having recalled Johnny’s past experience, he said slowly: “Very well. This also is granted. You may use my equipment. Ten cents a bunch in the field, a salvage price.” There was a slight move at the door. Together they turned to look. There stood 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. He went directly to a long shed where many men, beachcombers, longshoremen, chicleros and banana gatherers, were sleeping. There he began to sow the seeds of a hasty revolution and a wild demonstration against the hated white men, which was destined once more to threaten disaster to Johnny Thompson’s plans. Early that morning one might have found Johnny alone at the edge of the banana plantation. To one unaccustomed to Johnny’s ways, his actions might have seemed strange. Was he taking his daily dozen? Perhaps, but surely they were a queer dozen. If you know Johnny at all you are aware of the fact that he is a skillful boxer. But down there in the tropics bare hands avail little. Johnny was not shadow boxing. The thing he was doing was quite different. He was keeping fit all the same. A stout young mahogany tree had sprung up in the midst of the banana field. From a tough limb of this tree Johnny had suspended a large bunch of bananas. The top of the bunch was a little higher than Johnny’s shoulders, the tip a foot from the ground. Seizing one of two machetes, great long bladed knives like swords, that lay on the ground, the boy began circling the swinging bunch of bananas as one might a mortal enemy. Brandishing his machete, he circled this imaginary enemy three times. Then, as if an opening had appeared, he made a sudden onslaught that sent green bananas thudding to earth and set the bunch 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 split a 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 the boy displayed before an empty world and without a real adversary. The battle ended when with one swift stroke he severed the stem in the middle and with a sweeping twirl sent it thudding down. “Cut his head off!” he chuckled, throwing himself upon the ground to mop the perspiration from his brow. “It’s like boxing,” he thought, “this great Central American sport of machete fighting, only—it’s different. You feel as if only half of you were 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 hands well. Yet what an advantage comes to those who do. “That’s the trouble with this machete business,” he now thought to himself. “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 on high, then prepared as before to attack it. This time, however, he wielded a machete in each hand. At first he found it awkward. Once he barely missed cutting his own wrist. By the time he had demolished three other bunches he felt that he was making progress and that an ambidextrous fighter with two knives would have a decided advantage over one who fought with a single blade. Johnny, as you may have guessed, was preparing for that moment which he felt must come sooner or later, when he and Diaz would stand face to face ready to fight their battle out with the great Central American blade. “And when that time comes,” he told himself, “it must not find me unprepared.” |
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