CHAPTER XIX THE UNWILLING GUEST
"Do you mean to say," said the magnate who had been taken on board the_North Star_, "that this ship is loaded with bananas from CentralAmerica, and that it is not chartered by our Company?"
"Bananas and grapefruit." Johnny was gaining control of himself. What ifthis were a millionaire? What if it was in his power to make or breakthem? He couldn't very well do that before they arrived in New York, andthat metropolis was a long way off.
"Then, sir," said the capitalist, "you have been trespassing. This isforbidden cargo."
"Who forbids it?"
Without answering the man stared at him for a moment. His next remark wasguarded.
"You couldn't get a cargo anywhere along the coast without bribing someone or taking the cargo by force."
Hot words leaped to Johnny's lips. He was no thief. He had bribed no one.He left them unsaid.
Instead, he watched the sailing boat, from which the man had been taken,fade in the distance.
"We'll let it stand at that," he said quietly. "In the meantime, wherewere you going?"
"Going from Bacaray to Belize in that worthless sailboat manned byspotted Caribs. My motor boat was wrecked in the storm. The sail boat wasbecalmed, and there we were. Lay there for ten hours."
"Belize?" Johnny wrinkled his brow. He did not wish to touch at thiscapitol of British Honduras. The Fruit Company was strong there. Whocould tell but that fruit inspectors or health inspectors, in sympathywith the Fruit Company, perhaps bribed by them, would hold his ship offthose shores until his bananas were overripe and ruined.
"Having him on board makes it worse," he told himself. Again his browwrinkled.
A happy thought struck him.
"You are planning to stay in Belize for some time?"
"Going back to New York on our boat the _Arion_. She was to touch atBelize. Took on her load at Puerte Baras."
Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. "The _Arion_ sailed six hours ago. Itgives me great pleasure to offer you my stateroom and a passage to NewYork."
Johnny's smile irritated the man. His face turned red. He seemed about tochoke.
"You--you'll touch at Belize!" he stormed.
"Belize," said Johnny calmly, "is four hours off our course. We areheaded for the open sea, and eventually for New York. I don't like toseem pig-headed, nor over important, but we are not going to alter ourcourse."
In this he was wrong. He was destined to alter his course in a mannerthat was pleasing to no one.
"You will take me to Belize or I will have you up in the Marine Court."
"You'll not have much of a case," said Johnny. "You were adrift. Wepicked you up at your own request. The law allows us to charge you foryour passage to our own port. We'll pass that up. You may as well makeyourself comfortable. We will dock at New York in good time."
"A very cold day when you dock in New York with this--"
The man checked his speech with difficulty, then turning on his heel,went stamping down the deck.
He had said enough. Johnny guessed that he had a scorpion on board.
"When the time comes he'll bite," he told himself.
For a moment he considered turning about and heading for Belize. Thisthought was dismissed in a moment.
"Won't do it," he told himself shortly. "That would double his chances ofdefeating us. If he didn't tie us up in Belize, he'd wire New York andhis entire pack would be upon us. As it is he can't get off a word beforehe reaches New York. That gives us a fighting chance."
"Looks as if Providence was kind in sending him to us," he added.
He turned and hurried forward to prepare his stateroom for the UnwillingGuest, and there was a smile on his face.
* * * * * * * *
"It really isn't necessary to tell all you know." Kennedy said this in afriendly drawl, as he sat beside Johnny on the forward deck. MadgeKennedy was there too. Johnny had persuaded the old man to come alongwith him on the _North Star_. "The passage," he had argued, "will costyou nothing. Captain Jorgensen is coming back for that cargo of cocoanutsand chicle. He'll be glad to bring you down. You may be able to help me alot in disposing of the fruit. Anyway, the trip will do you good."
So here they were, three good pals, an old man, a young man and a girl.
Johnny did not reply to Kennedy's remark about not telling all you know.
"I told a man once the location of a mahogany tract I meant to buy,"Kennedy went on. "It was good mahogany, some of it six feet through, fivethousand feet to the tree. I told that man and he went before me andbought it. I talked too much then. I've learned better."
"That Unwilling Guest of yours," he drawled after a time, "that Presidentof the Fruit Company, has been on board twenty-four hours and has nevershowed his head out of his stateroom. Even pays the steward to bring hismeals to him. That right?"
Johnny nodded.
"Nice, friendly sort of a millionaire. That right? Perhaps he thinkswe're not worth talking to."
"Johnny," the old man laid a hand gently on the boy's knee, "any man isworth talking to--the poorest and most degraded has something to say. Ifhe can't tell you how to live, he can tell you how _not_ to live, andthat's sometimes most important."
Leaning forward, he shaded his eyes to scan the horizon.
Johnny did not so much as wonder what he saw there. The sea was perfectlycalm. Bits of seaweed floated here and there. A seagull skimmed low todrop like a single feather upon the water, then to rise and float away inthe air.
Johnny's eyes lingered first upon the sea, then upon the girl, MadgeKennedy, who sat close beside him. He thought he had never known a finergirl. Brave and strong, good color, clear eyes, a clearer skin, strong asa man, yet tender hearted and kind, giving her spare hours to hergrandfather, yet alert and alive to every sport and joy of life, sheseemed worthy of a place in a great drama or a book.
"That friend of ours," said Kennedy, resuming his seat, "he will come outof his hole sooner or later. Then he's going to talk. Who will he talkto? To an old man. That's me. Everyone talks to an old man if he has achance. Did you ever notice that, Johnny?"
"No, I--"
"Fact, nevertheless. You watch. Natural enough, I guess. When a man getsold, he loses the burning desire he might have had to become rich orfamous. He gets to feeling that he's about done his bit, and that itwould be nice and pleasant to sit beside the road and give the youngerones a little advice. Don't you ever forget that, Johnny. When an old mantalks, you listen. It's just as I said, if he can't tell you how to live,he can tell you how not to live."
Again he paused to stare at the sky. Wetting a finger, he held it up tothe air.
"Wind's changed," he muttered to himself.
"When he comes out," he went on as if he had been talking all the time,"when this exclusive sort of millionaire President of the Fruit Companytalks, I'm not going to tell him I'm part owner of this cargo. And youneedn't either. That way he'll think me a harmless old man with a fairyoung granddaughter, and he may tell me things we need to know.
"Johnny!" he exclaimed, springing suddenly to his feet. "I think webetter run for it."
"Ru--run for it," Johnny stammered in astonishment. "Run from what?"
"The storm."
"What storm? The sea's calm, smooth as a floor."
"Can't you see? Can't you smell it?" The old man sniffed the air. "Butthen, of course, you wouldn't. Me, I've lived here on this sea always. Iknow things in advance. We're going to have a storm, a regular humdinger,a mahogany splitter, and if we don't run, if we can't convince thecaptain we ought to run, I don't know what's to come of us."
"Look!" said Madge, springing up. "There's a steamer. See the smoke. Youcan make her out too."
Kennedy unslung his binoculars.
"That," he said after a moment of close scrutiny, "is the _Arion_. She'sthe Company's steamer that our Unwilling Guest was to sail on."
"He'll be al
l excited if he sees her," said Johnny.
"Little good it will do him," grumbled Kennedy. "We'll be far enough fromthe _Arion_ by night."
He hurried away to impart his all but miraculous knowledge of the comingstorm to the captain.
The sea was still calm, though here and there, racing away with the speedof the wind, like hurried messengers, dark ripples sped across itssurface. It was then that the Unwilling Guest left his stateroom for thefirst time.
Perhaps he was so well accustomed to sea travel that he could guess thattheir course had been altered. However that may be, he went at once tothe bridge. There, after studying the instruments for a moment, he turnedan angry face toward the stocky skipper.
"What sort of course is this for New York," he stormed. "You are notheaded for New York."
"Maybe not," said the skipper, unperturbed. "Storm's coming. We were duefor the center of it. We're running."
"Running! And not a ripple!" The magnate's voice was full of scorn.
As for the sturdy captain, he knew the sea. The scorn of the millionairemeant nothing to him. Quite unperturbed, he paced the deck and watchedthe roll of the storm clouds that mounted higher and higher along thehorizon.
At the bottom of the companionway the capitalist found Kennedy sittingplacidly looking away at the sea. Like Captain Jorgensen, he had livedlong. One storm more or less did not matter.
True to Kennedy's prophesy, the rich man sat down beside him and began totalk. Who can face a storm without a companion?
"Going to storm, the captain tells me."
"Yes," rumbled Kennedy. "Be a mighty tough one over there." He poked athumb toward the west. "Over there where the _Arion_ is travelling."
The other man started. "That's our ship."
"She didn't change her course. Kept straight on. Good ship, though. Mayweather it all right."
"Do you mean to say," the rich man squirmed uneasily in his chair, "thatit will be as bad as that?"
"Might be--over there." Again Kennedy's thumb jerked.
The topic of a man's conversation is very frequently determined by hissurroundings and by the events that are transpiring about him. Was itthought of the storm and what it might mean to him that directed thisrich man's conversation, or was it a casual remark thrown out by thestrange old man who sat beside him?
"See those two bits of seaweed out yonder, tossing on the waves?" Kennedydrawled. "Well, supposing one was you and the other me, and there wasn'tany ship. Supposing I had houses and banks and bonds and you were a plainordinary seaman with nothing but a chest full of old clothes. Do yousuppose I'd have any better chance with the sea than you? Sort ofstrange, isn't it, when you think about it? Makes you feel unimportantand, and futile, you might say."
For a long time the man who owned buildings and banks, bonds and manyships upon the sea did not answer. When he did speak the thoughts he gaveutterance to might not seem to have been an answer, and then again theymight have.
"Our times," he said in a tone he had not used before, low, wellmodulated, modest and slow, "are very strange. Men, many men, most menperhaps, have come to think of capital as a great monster that alwayscrushes the weak.
"But is that true? Take this Central America. It is true that we, theFruit Company, have a monopoly of the banana importing business. But whatwas Central America before we came? Where miles on miles of bananas growthere was wilderness. Where naked half-savage people hunted deer and wildpigs, or sucked the milk from cocoanuts, there now lives a happy,reasonably prosperous and contented people. Who changed it all? Did notthe Fruit Company do it?
"I suppose," he said after a moment, "that our young friend, this JohnnyThompson who has somehow stolen a march on us and gotten hold of a cargoof fruit, thinks he's a young hero, a benefactor to mankind. I wonder ifhe is right."
"I wonder," rumbled Kennedy.
Time had been when Kennedy would have engaged this rich man of the worldin sharp debate. He was old now. He had learned the futility of debate.Besides, he was greatly interested in the approaching storm.
At midnight Johnny Thompson found himself wrapped in a blanket and lyingupon a plank, endeavoring in vain to snatch a few winks of sleep.
He found himself now standing almost upright on his feet and now tiltedin the other direction until his very pockets seemed about to turnwrongside out.
"Some storm!" he muttered.
Canvas boomed above him. The seamen had stretched a canvas over the hatchto keep out the spray. He was lying on that part of the hatch that hadnot been uncovered. Having given up his stateroom to the Unwilling Guest,he had been obliged to take a bunk below. During such a storm as theywere now weathering, the air below was not to be endured.
Unable to sleep, he allowed his mind to wander. Had they indeed missedthe heart of the storm, or were they in it now? How was the storm to end?He thought of the black rolling waves, and shuddered.
"If we weather the storm safely, what then? Will we come to dock safelyin New York? Will we be able to sell our cargo? Or will we once more facedefeat? And what of the _Arion_?"
Scrambling to his feet, he plunged off the hatch, rolled to the deck, gotcaught in a dash of foam, struggled to his feet, caught the spray in hisface, outrode a wave that threatened to carry him overboard, then made adash for the wireless room.
"Had--had any message from the _Arion_?" He struggled to gain his breath.
"About ten minutes ago," said the young wireless operator. "Here it is."
"_Arion laboring hard_," Johnny read.
"That all?"
"All but--Wait. Listen!"
He thrust a head set over the boy's ears. Then his face went white.
"_Arion_ leaking amidship. Settling by the bow."
For ten minutes, with the ship leaping up and down beneath them, with thethud of waves shaking her from stem to stern, they waited.
"She's gone; the _Arion's_ gone down!" said the young wireless man atlast, mopping his brow.
"Say!" He started as if struck by a ball. "That pick up we made, thatrich man was going on that boat, wasn't he?"
"He didn't," said Johnny.
"He's in luck."
For a moment there was silence.
"I suppose you know," said Johnny, "that the Captain must be notified. Wecouldn't have helped them; too far away. Have to tell him. But ourUnwilling Guest, no use telling him, not just yet. No use to disturbfolks needlessly."
"No," said the young wireless man, "no use."
Then for a time they sat catching the crash of the storm and wonderingwhat ship would be next.