“And now,” said his host, as the others moved away and the servant disappeared with the dishes, “we may talk. We must make it brief. I am a busy man. In this city I operate two stores, a cotton mill and a warehouse. I must find out at once the extent of damage done by the shock. You want bananas?”
“Six hand bunches.”
“Ah yes, you wish only the six hand bunches. And how can you use six hand bunches? The Fruit Company will never purchase them. How can you hope to dispose of them? They are not used. Either they are not gathered at all, or they are given to the stevedores or are cut up and cast into the sea.”
“That’s just it,” said Johnny, leaning eagerly forward. “It was just because you do not care for them, because you have no contract with the Fruit Company to deliver them, that I thought you would be willing to sell them to me.”
“Sell them!” The man’s eyes lighted. “I could almost give them to you. Five cents a bunch. That would pay for gathering and bringing them to the wharf. But you?” He turned his eyes upon the boy. “What will you do with them? If the Fruit Company cannot handle them, how can you?
“You see,” he smiled, “because you were kind to my child, I like you. I do not wish to see you cheat yourself.”
“Look!” said Johnny, rising to pace the stone floor. “You grade your bananas according to the number of groups on a stem. You call those groups hands. For a bunch having seven hands the Fruit Company pays twenty-five cents; eight hands thirty-seven and a half; nine hands or more fifty cents. If a bunch has only six hands they will not buy it. Is it not so?”
“Si, Si, Senor.It is true.”
“But are the bananas on the six hand bunch smaller? Are they less sweet? Will they spoil more quickly than those on the other bunches?”
“No,Senor.”
“Then why are they not as good?”
The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders for reply.
“They are as good, exactly as good!” Johnny struck the table with his open palm. “Small bunches are a little more trouble to handle. That is the only difference. There are plenty larger. The Fruit Company takes only what it wishes and reaps a rich reward from this. But we will handle the six hand bunches.
“In America,” his tone became quiet, “there are thousands of poor people who would gladly eat more bananas. Their children love them. Do they eat them? No. Why? Because, while you sell a bunch, one hundred bananas, for a quarter, in the United States one must pay a quarter for five.
“There may be legitimate reasons for the great difference in price. I am not going to look into that. It is not my task. But for once, in a little corner of our great country, there will be cheap bananas. Six hand bunches. You sell them to me for five cents a bunch and I will do the rest. How many may I have? Twenty thousand bunches?”
“Twenty-five thousand,Senor. On my three plantations there are this many small bunches. You may have them all. I will give you a note to my manager at Porte Zalaya. He will have them brought to the docks at once.”
“In regard to the pay, I—”
“You will pay when your people pay you for the bananas,” said the generous Spaniard. “Send me a draft. If the money does not come to you, then it will never come to me.
“And now,” he said, “I must go. Come inside, and I will instruct my secretary about the note you are to carry to my manager at Porte Zalaya.”
Ten minutes later, stepping on air, Johnny made his way toward the railway station.
“Now,” he said to himself, “if only I can reach theNorth Starbefore Captain Jorgensen contracts for another cargo, all is well. I’ll make it snappy.”
He had not lived in Central America long enough to know that in this little world of sudden revolution and many strange surprises, things are almost never done snappy. It is the land ofmanana(tomorrow), a land where nearly everyone believes thatmananawill do very well for all “snappy” business.
The moon was still casting a golden glow over the wonders of a tropical world when Pant and Kirk, closely followed by the giant Carib, emerging from the jungle caught their first look at the last Don’s plantation. With eager eyes they sought out the spot where the ancient castle had stood.
At a first startled glance Kirk cried out in dismay. Little wonder this, for where a noble edifice had stood a mournful sight now met their eyes. The magnificent, century old castle was now only a crumbled pile of broken timber, tumbled stone and crumbling mortar.
“Gone!” Kirk cried. “They are all gone!”
“It can’t be as bad as that,” said Pant. “At the first shock they would run from the house. Come on. Let’s get down there.”
No sooner said than done. Heedless of sharp stones that cut their shoes and sharper cacti that tore their flesh, they sprang away over the intervening space that lay between them and the tumbled pile of debris that had once been a very happy home.
It was with a cry of great joy that Kirk found his good friends, the family of the last Don, gathered upon a little circle of green that lay before the ruins.
After a quiet greeting befitting such a moment of great sadness, the boys took their places beside them.
It was a strange and moving sight that met their eyes as they looked about them. Even Pant, who had seen and experienced much, felt a choking sensation about his throat. Sprawled about upon the ground in various attitudes of sleep were the servants. Not so the family. The aged grandmother sat rocking gently back and forth. The last of the Dons, who had returned from a trip down the river just in time to see his home crumble to ruins, walked slowly before them. With hands clasped behind his back, he paced ceaselessly backward and forward in the moonlight.
Sitting beside the two boys, the dark-eyed Spanish girl, granddaughter of the last of the Dons, stared dreamily at the moon. To her no tragedy could be quite complete, for was she not young and beautiful? Was not all the world fresh and new? Strong she was, too, and brave. Many the jaguar that had known the steel of her unfaltering aim, many the wild turkey brought in by her to be roasted before the fire.
“Now,” she said, and there was a note akin to joy in her tone, “we shall live like the savages in a house of thatched bamboo. Through the many cracks the morning sun shall peep at us as we awake. The rain shall fall gently upon our roof, the breeze shall play with my hair as I sit in our little castle of bamboo. The jaguar may look in upon us at night and the little wild pigs go grunting about our cabin. My good friend Kirk, and my new friend Pant, we will live like savages and life will be sweet for, after all, what is so romantic as a little home in the midst of a vast wilderness?”
Kirk smiled at her. He admired the courage of this child of an old, long lost race.
As for Pant, he scarcely heard her. He was thinking of the fragments of a tale that had come to his ears, the tale of the first Don and his box of beaten silver filled with priceless pearls.
“It may have been hidden in the walls of that very building which the rude shock of nature has wrecked,” he told himself. “I must have a look over those ruins.
“And then perhaps,” he thought more soberly still, “that may have been the box I saw on the rocky ledge just as the earthquake shook the world down upon my head. I wonder if that passage was closed? If it is not, was the box buried in the wreckage? Who can tell? I must know.”
His thoughts returned to the American boy who had accompanied him, who now sat close beside him. During the previous day he had been taken to the boy’s room. There he had seen costly toilet articles, silver backed brushes, real tortoise shell combs, and genuine alligator skin traveling bags.
“He must belong to a rich family,” he thought. “How then does he chance to be here so far from the home of other Americans, with only a black man as his companion?”
As if reading his thoughts, the other boy began to speak. “My uncle,” he said, “has travelled much. He wishes me to know the world as he knows it. He is especially anxious for me to know much of Central America and her products. You see I am to be—” He paused, did not finish the sentence, stared away at the moon for a moment, then said quietly, as if the sentence he had not finished had really never been begun, “Uncle has had but one rule in all his travels: wherever a native, one who has always lived in the land he is visiting, will go, he will follow. That is the only rule he has laid down for me. My Carib is a native of this land. You saw how wonderfully he performed to-day.”
Pant nodded.
“Wherever the Carib will go, I may follow.”
A question leaped into Pant’s mind, “Would the Carib venture again into the fear inspiring Maya cave?” He doubted it, yet he wished very much to return. He did not wish to go alone, had hoped that his new found friend might return with him. The story he heard that night as he sat before the ruins of that ancient home greatly strengthened his determination to revisit the cave.
No place could be better fitted for the telling of a tale of buccaneers and Spanish gold than that scene of ruins beneath the golden moon.
It was the last Don himself who told it. He told it all in Spanish, with many a dramatic gesture, but Kirk, who appeared to understand Spanish as well as he did his mother tongue, interpreted so skillfully that it seemed to Pant that the aged Don, with his venerable beard and coal black eyes, was telling the story directly to him.
And this was the tale he told:
Soon after gold had been brought to Europe from the New World and the rush for riches had begun, Ramon Salazar, who had amassed a comfortable fortune as a trader in old Madrid, but in whose veins coursed the spirit of the Crusaders, sold all his possessions and, having invested them in trade goods, sailed for America.
He landed on the east coast of Central America, but soon made his way over the difficult trail that led to the Pacific.
Ramon Salazar was a man of honor. He did not go in search of Aztec gold, nor did he lend aid to those shameful robberies of natives that still lie black on the pages of Spanish-American history.
Having made his way to the west coast, where he hoped to be forever safe from British and Scotch buccaneers, he set up a trading post and prospered.
Having learned of the rich pearl fisheries, he made a study of the matter and at last fitted out a schooner for the purpose of pearl fishing. Hiring divers and securing the protection of a Spanish man-of-war, he lingered long over those shallow waters whose submerged sandbars were rich with pearl bearing mussels.
He prospered again. Some pearls were sold, but the richest and choicest were kept in a box of beaten silver beneath the berth in his own stateroom. The room was not left unguarded night or day.
“Some bright morning,” Ramon Salazar was fond of saying, “I shall take that box and sail away for sunny Spain. Then who cares what further riches the New World may still hold? But first,” he always added, “I must have more pearls, larger pearls, a great pearl of pearls.”
So he lingered, until one day a startling thing happened. The east coast had long been infested by buccaneers. The west had been free. But now, out of a clear sky, one day as Ramon Salazar dined with the commander of the man-of-war, a boat load of marauders boarded the pearl fishing schooner, overpowered those on board, hoisted sail, and firing a shot across the bow of the man-of-war, they took to sea. And on board that schooner was Ramon Salazar’s treasure of pearls.
“What sort of box was it that held the pearls?” Pant asked a bit breathlessly.
“Oh, my boy,” was the old Don’s reply, “that was long ago. Who can say? It was of beaten silver, perhaps as long as a man’s forearm, and as thick as such a box should be.”
“It might be the box,” the boy thought to himself. “Surely I must return to the cave to-morrow.”
“But to-morrow,” he thought a moment later, “I cannot. There are other matters which must be attended to. I must not forget my grandfather, my photograph, and the chicle concession.” He felt for the packet he had preserved so carefully. It was still safe.
“The bloody marauders did not succeed.” The old Don’s voice rose high pitched and shrill. “God confounded them. The man-of-war fired a shot that snapped their mainmast. They were captured. The treasure was restored.
“But my sire of many generations back fished for pearls no more. He took his box of pearls ashore. He did not return to Spain at once. Those were perilous times upon the sea. He would wait.
“He waited too long. Morgan came.” The Don was fairly shouting now. “Morgan, the most bloodthirsty and cruel monster that ever sailed the Spanish Main. He came with many ships and two thousand men.”
For a time after this he was silent. A first faint flush of light along the fringe of palms announced a new day.
“No,” said the aged man, speaking more to himself than to them, “Morgan did not get the beaten silver box of pearls. Had he gotten it, one must have known. He was a great braggart.
“When my sire heard of Morgan’s approach, he put the box under his arm and walked away into the jungle. He knew the jungle well. He could not have gotten lost in it. Yet he never returned. Somewhere—” He arose to fling his arms wide in a dramatic gesture, “somewhere in this jungle the box of beaten silver with the wealth of every Salazar within, lies hidden.”
He resumed his seat. Light came more and more. Exhausted, the ancient Don fell asleep. But Pant stared at the dawn. He was thinking of the time when he might return to the Maya cave, and what he might find there when that day came.
And then, of a sudden, his thoughts took a fresh turn. He smiled as he thought of the strange code he had improvised at the spur of the moment before leaving his grandfather’s office to plunge in the jungle, and the curious note he had left for Johnny Thompson. Had Johnny returned? Had he found the note? Had he been able to read it? What had kept Johnny so long? What was to happen? Were their paths that had run side by side so long to diverge at last?
Had he but known it, Johnny was at this moment planning a task which was to bring them close together, yet to keep them apart for many days to come. Such are the strange, wild chances of fate.
Pant’s wonderings about Johnny were not misplaced. To dismiss one’s good pal from his mind is impossible. Johnny did not wish to forget Pant. He had discovered his note and found himself deeply concerned about it.
After leaving Don del Valle in Guatemala City, he took a train to the coast. There he caught a fruit boat to Stann Creek, and armed with a note from Don del Valle to his plantation manager ordering him to deliver twenty thousand bunches of bananas to the bearer, he reached Stann Creek just one hour before the train was to start up the narrow gauge railway to the Kennedy grapefruit plantation.
His first task was that of getting off a wireless message to Captain Jorgensen offering him a combined cargo of bananas and grapefruit for his return trip to the United States. With what feelings of hopes and fears he then awaited the good skipper’s reply. Now he was elated by the hope that theNorth Starwas still at his service, and now cast down by the fear that she was already loading mahogany, dyewood or cocoanuts.
He was not idle, however. Having gotten off his message, he hurried over to the office which Pant had left some hours before. It was with a deep feeling of unrest and disappointment that he found the place deserted. Colonel Longstreet had put the scattered papers to rights and repaired the damaged safe as best he could and he, too, had left. But on the table, weighted down by a polished square of ebony, was the curious note Pant had left. Scrawled across the top by the trembling hand of the old Colonel was Johnny’s name.
“That was evidently intended for me,” said Johnny, “but what in the name of all that’s sane does it mean?”
“Some of Pant’s doings,” he grumbled as with wrinkled brow he studied the miscellaneous jumble of figures, question marks and trade signs. “Oh well, there’s no time for working puzzles now. I must get up the railway to Kennedy’s fruit farm. Won’t they be joyous!” With that he thrust the paper in his pocket, but it was not entirely forgotten.
He was in the curious day coach with its seats along the sides and its broad open spaces in lieu of windows, waiting for the train to start, when he opened Captain Jorgensen’s wireless message.
His fingers trembled, his face grew sober as he unfolded the bit of yellow paper.
“What if—
“But no!” With a quick exclamation of joy, he read:
“Congratulations. The North Star awaits your order.”
“Couldn’t be better,” was the way the boy expressed it as he walked among the gold laden fruit trees two hours later. He was talking to Madge Kennedy. No wall flower, this girl. Sun-browned arms, honest freckles, strong and healthy muscles, that was Madge Kennedy. Though only nineteen years of age, she had taken over the largest share of the task of keeping the orchard in order.
Underbrush and creepers grow fast in this warm, moist land. A constant war must be waged against them. Johnny had found her doing her bit by swinging a short stout brush scythe. Two husky Carib Indians were working with her, but Johnny noted with no little pleasure that she was the best worker of the three.
After taking the scythe and finishing the swath, he dropped beside her in the evening shade, and told her of his success.
“It’s your grandfather’s chance, and yours,” he said with enthusiasm. “Think of it! Five thousand boxes of grapefruit. That many at least. And we’ll get the top price. America has never tasted such fruit. Your grandfather has the boxes ready to set up?”
She nodded.
“Then there’s nothing to stop us. Your grandfather can find men to pick and pack the fruit?”
“Carib Indians,” she said in quiet confidence, “hundreds of them, thousands if necessary. They love grandfather, every last one of them.
“Do you know, my friend,” her voice was husky, “my grandfather is a sort of second Livingston. Livingston went to Africa. Grandfather came to Central America. He has been all over it. There is no dark little spot in any tiny republic where he has not been. He has visited Maya Indians who were supposed to kill a white man at sight. They did not touch him. Love, sympathy and a simple modesty are the charms that protect him. There’s not a family within the district he has not helped in time of trouble. There is always plenty of trouble. Oh yes, he can find the men; without pay if necessary.”
“It won’t be necessary. Do you know how much five thousand acres of the finest grapefruit in the world will bring in New York?”
She shook her head.
“Neither do I. Thousands of dollars, there’s no question. Then your grandfather and you can leave this wilderness.”
“Leave—leave it?”
The girl’s eyes swept the scene before her. In the immediate foreground all green and gold was the orchard; beyond that a broad stretch of green where an occasional cohune nut palm with leaves thirty feet long broke the even green. Back of all that, nestling against the vast, impenetrable jungle, was the long, low house.
“Leave it?” she repeated. “Grandfather would not leave it. He loves the land and his black Caribs too well.
“He left it once.” Her voice grew husky again. “War. He left then. He was gone three years. They made him a captain. They say it was uncanny the way he led his men, his black Caribs from Central America, and how in every bloody battle he escaped unharmed.” She was silent for a moment. The shadows deepened.
“Do you know,” she went on softly, “he never speaks of it now. And he never allows anyone to call him Captain Kennedy. That’s what he was, you know. But somehow I love him a lot more for it.”
“He’s got company!” she exclaimed, springing up and shaking herself as if to break a spell that had come over her. “One of those dark Spaniards. I don’t like him. Br-r-r-r! He makes me think of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. But we must go in. It isn’t respectable not to. He’s been talking some sort of business, but must be through by now.”
“Business?” Johnny had the question on his lips, but did not ask it. He was destined in good time to know what sort of business that was, and to get little enough comfort from the knowledge.
They found Kennedy sitting alone on the veranda.
“How do you do, Mr. Kennedy,” said Johnny, putting out his hand. “Congratulate me. I have my cargo completed. Bananas. You may begin packing your fruit to-morrow. It will be in New York within ten days if we have luck. We—”
He broke short off. A tall Spaniard had emerged from the shadows. He had heard all, and the black cloud on his face was not all due to his dark Spanish skin.
He did not speak to the boy, but turning to Kennedy bade him good-night, then strode rapidly away to the spot where his saddle horse was tethered.
It was astonishing, the effect of this man upon Johnny’s spirits. It was as if threatening shadows had begun to crawl upon him.
“Bah!” he whispered to himself. “Probably never see him again.”
In this he was wrong. He was destined to see him many times, in fact to see him the very next day, and to get a decided shock from the encounter.
“Business,” he whispered to himself.
“What sort of business?” He thought of Madge Kennedy and the Spaniard, then dismissed them from his mind.
“Sit here with grandfather,” he heard the girl saying. “I’ll have some food ready in a jiffy.”
Mechanically he sat down, and as he did so, discovered that the sudden night of the jungle had blotted out every track of the orchard, the wide spreading green and the dark forest that lay beyond.
While searching among the ruins of the old Don’s castle early that morning, Pant found an ancient field glass that had by some chance escaped destruction. A clumsy model it was, and of such ancient design that it might well have been a present from Queen Isabella to Columbus. It was a powerful one, for all that, and would serve his purpose well. The old Don readily consented to loaning it.
With this new treasure in his pack, Pant struck off toward the hills. He had gone a short distance when disturbing thoughts came to him.
“Something may happen to my film,” he told himself. “I must not forget.”
Not willing to depend entirely upon memory, he took sheets of paper from his pack and stuck four of them together with the sticky juice of a wild vine. Painstakingly he traced as well as he could the outlines of his grandfather’s concessions and of the rival companies, as shown by the film. Having done this, he rebound his pack and continued on his upward journey.
“Soon,” he thought as he traveled on, “perhaps to-morrow, we may begin operations.” He had a glorious mental picture of the light on his grandfather’s face as he saw a hundred Caribs at work on their concession and saw in it a promise of a rebuilt fortune.
“Chicle gathering,” he thought. “What a strange way to amass a fortune! Yet how sure.”
As he closed his eyes he saw the work begun. The Carib Indians—great bronze men, one time cannibals, now partially Christianized and caught in the spell of white man’s influence, had always been friends of his grandfather, as they had been of Kennedy and of every true man.
“The old Colonel will appeal to them,” he thought to himself. “They will respond. They will flock to his banner. A hundred, two hundred strong, shouldering axes and machetes, they’ll march into the jungle.”
He had a mental vision of what would follow. In the heart of the jungle a camp site would be chosen. Palms would be felled, rude shelters would be formed. After this the real work would begin. Scattering out through the jungle, the Caribs would search out the largest, most promising sapodilla trees. These, by the aid of their bare toes and a single strap, they would scale to a distance of thirty or forty feet. Beginning at the top, working their way round and round the trunk, they would cut in the bark a spiral groove reaching to the ground. Down the groove sap from the bark would ooze. When a sufficient quantity had reached the canvas sack placed at the bottom of the groove, it would be collected and carried to camp where, in a huge copper kettle over a great fire that blazed merrily, the sap would be boiled down.
When the chicle had cooled, it would be kneaded like bread dough until it was thick enough to form in cakes. Then it would be poured into moulds and allowed to harden.
After that, packed two cakes in a gunny-sack, it would be carried on Caribs’ backs to the nearest stream. By pit-pan to the sea, then by sailing schooner to the nearest shipping point, Belize.
“And then,” he sighed, “our work is done. The Central Chicle Company will take it off our hands. They are the real exporters.”
His heart warmed as he saw the long rows of black and brown men and seemed to catch their weird chant as they marched on the first lap of the long journey with the freshly gathered chicle on their backs.
“We will succeed,” he told himself. “We must!”
One other thought came to him at that moment, a rather vexing thought. He would return to the Maya cave. Sooner or later he would go back and enter in search of the mysterious metal box he had seen there.
“And if I should find the beaten silver box,” he said to himself, “if the pearls should still be within, after all these years, to whom would they belong?”
“Finders keepers,” an old adage, kept running through his mind. Yet this did not quite satisfy him. This problem was soon dismissed from his mind. He had business before him.
He had reached the rocky crest of the hill that lay at the back of the old Don’s pasture. From this promontory one might command a view of the valley below and might trace the course of its main stream, the Rio de Grande, for a distance of thirty miles.
Hardly had he reached this observation post and spread his crude map out before him, than the smoke of a score of campfires rose lazily up from the jungle valley some ten miles away.
“That’s well within our territory,” he said with a start and an exclamation of anger. “That’s Diaz. He has already begun operations on our trees. He is very bold. He takes too much for granted. But we—we’ll show him!” He clenched his fists hard.
But what was this? Off to the right, scarcely three miles distant, a second smoke rose above the tree tops.
“Who can that be?” he asked himself. At once his mind was in a whirl. That it was not a second group of Diaz’s men he knew well enough. Men in the jungle always huddle in one group. Perhaps it is fear of that unknown peril that lurks in the jungle that causes them to do this. Who can say? Enough that this is a custom of the land.
“Can it be that the Central Chicle Company is also poaching on our ground?” he asked himself. “It does not seem possible. And yet, who else can it be?
“I must know,” he resolved. “I will see.” At that, following the bed of a stream, he struck boldly down through the jungle toward the spot where the first camp site smoke still rose.
For two hours he fought the jungle. Scrambling down a water drenched ledge, battling the clinging bramble, creeping low beneath a growth of palms, and racing down the trunk of a massive fallen mahogany tree, he forced his way forward until he found himself on a steep ledge looking upon the winding sweep of the river.
Here he paused to stare in astonishment. Less than a year before a mahogany company had logged a wide strip next to the river. The jungle had not yet retaken the clearing. In the midst of this cleared space, some hundreds of yards apart, stood two bands of men. Axes flashed from their shoulders. Here and there the two foot blade of a machete gleamed.
“It—why it’s as if they were lined up for battle! Who can they be?” The boy’s breath came short and quick. He took the old field glass from his pack and focused it upon the two groups of men.
The band over to the right were of mixed lineage, some Spaniards, some half-castes, some blacks. He could guess this from their postures and the garments they wore.
“Diaz,” was his mental comment. “But the others?”
A tall, thin man, wearing a khaki suit and a helmet, stood out before the others. Unquestionably he was a white man.
“But the others are Caribs.” A thrill shot up the boy’s spine. The distance was great. At that distance it was difficult to tell, and yet—
His field glass was now riveted upon the white man in the khaki suit. He was evidently speaking to a leader of the other group.
“It can’t be!” The boy’s throat tightened. “And yet—and yet—” The white man threw up his arms in a gesture of impatience. There was no mistaking that gesture.
“Grandfather, the old Colonel!” The cry stuck in the boy’s throat. What was he saying? The distance was too great to hear.
As the boy stood there silent, watching, his knees trembled and his head whirled. The thing that had happened was evident. Having grown impatient waiting for Pant’s return, the old Colonel had gotten together a band of Carib chicleros and had gone into the jungle to gather from the narrow stretch of land which he knew to be his. He had happened to stop near the crafty Spaniard’s illegal camp. The two bands had met.
“And now,” the boy told himself with a shudder, “there will be a fight.”
A fight? What did that mean? Certainly terrible bloodshed. Between this half-caste band and the Caribs there had always been waged a sort of gorilla warfare. Now here they were face to face, a hundred men on either side. Armed with axes, machetes and revolvers, they would do terrible execution. It would be a battle to the death.
“I must get down there. I have the picture of the map,” the boy told himself. “That may help. I must be beside the old colonel.”
He paused for a moment’s thought as to how the affair was likely to end. A mile of tangled brush lay between him and them. Could he reach the spot in time?
As if to answer his question, the white and brown line, Diaz’s men, suddenly began marching straight on toward the lone white man who stood out before the Caribs.
“Too late!” The boy all but sank upon the ground. Yet, getting a better hold upon himself, he stood there wide-eyed and terrified.
Never had he witnessed a thing so strikingly dramatic as the deadly regular march of those men. And never had he seen anything so heroic as the image of the aged colonel standing there erect, silent, motionless, facing them all.
Sixty seconds passed, the men had covered half the distance. Ninety seconds; they were very near. A hundred; they were all but upon the silent figure. Still with arms hanging motionless, he stood there. It was a tense moment. The boy ceased breathing. Standing there, leaning far forward, he thought a prayer, that was all.
But what was this? At some call from the side, all faces turned right. The marching column broke step, then came to a dead halt. As they did so, erect, with head held high, a stately figure rode in before them.
“The old Don, the last of the Dons!” Pant breathed. “How strange!”
To all appearance the aged Spaniard began to speak. The others paused to listen.
“Now—now is my chance!” The boy’s mind worked like a spring lock. “I may make it yet.” At once he dropped over the ledge and made his way down the perilous cliff until at last he reached the tangled mass of vegetation that lay at the foot of the rocky ledge.
Battling now with all his might, heedless of brambles that tore at his clothing, of stinging palm leaves that cut his face, and the ooze of the lowlands that threatened to engulf him, expecting every moment to hear the war cry of the Caribs, he fought his way through.
He will never know what the aged Don said to the Spaniard, Diaz, and his mixed band of chicleros, yet he will never think of the Don and his speech without experiencing anew a deep feeling of gratitude. For it was that speech which, beyond a shadow of a doubt, saved his grandfather’s life. Had the fight ever begun he would have been the first to fall, for he was well in advance of his men, and was not the man to turn his back to the enemy.
As it was, when puffing, perspiring, bleeding from wounds inflicted by the jungle, the boy burst into the clearing, he found the aged nobleman, the last of the Dons, speaking calmly to the men and the men of both camps as calmly listening.
What was there about this aged Spaniard to inspire such calm? Was it his venerable appearance? Was it that he was of noble birth? Who can say? So intent were the men upon his words that Pant was able to slip unobserved to the old colonel’s side and to explain in a few well chosen words just what the film he held in his hand meant to them.
His grandfather’s face lighted with a smile not soon to be forgotten. He spoke quietly to his foreman:
“Tell the men to withdraw after the speech. There will be no fighting, no fight, do you understand? We have found a better way.”
Word was quickly passed down the line. The loyal Caribs stood ready to obey.
As the old Don ended his speech with a bow of his venerable head, Pant pressed forward to grip his hand.
“We will never forget.” He repeated the words in Spanish. “Never forget.”
The aged Spaniard bowed and smiled.
A moment later Colonel Longstreet was speaking to the crafty Diaz. His words were few and well chosen. He would withdraw his men if need be. There would be no fight. He, Diaz, might gather all the chicle he chose to in that valley. One thing he must remember, however; the real owner of the concession was in possession of an exact reproduction of the stolen map. Not alone that, but he had positive proof that he, Diaz, stole the map.
“Positive proof!” he repeated. “And remember, the profit on every pound of chicle you gather on our territory must be paid to us. The law of the land is just.” With these words he walked away.
No smoke arose next morning over the spot where Diaz’s camp had stood. Diaz and his men had returned to their own narrow boundaries. Yet Diaz was not through contesting the rights of an American to gather chicle on the upper reaches of the Rio de Grande. He had lost one battle, but others were to follow.
There had been rain during a previous night. Now, as if to prove that nature and the fates were on the side of Pant and his recently discovered grandfather, there came a perfect deluge of rain. Rain is indispensable to chicle gathering. Now the work could go forward at once.
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.”