Not knowing whether to break and run, or stand his ground, he hesitated until the man was upon him.
“Hah!” the man exclaimed. “At last!”
Johnny was on his feet in an instant, prepared for flight. “He’s been looking for me,” his thoughts raced on. “Now he’s found me, he’ll find me another jail. He’ll put me in. If he can catch me. He can’t.” Yet for the moment he stood still. Why? Probably he did not know why, but it was well that he did not run.
“Where did you find the child?” This was the question the dark-skinned del Valle shot at Johnny. At the same instant the child Johnny had protected during the terrifying earthquake sprang into the Honduran’s arms. The man’s tone was not harsh as it had been the night before.
“Why I—” Johnny tried to think. “I really didn’t find her. She found—that is, we fell over each other, so we decided to camp here until the earth began standing still.”
“But you, my young friend? You are in jail. Is it not so?”
“I was in jail.” Johnny felt a creepy sensation running up his back. That had been a terribly uncomfortable jail. “The—the jail wasn’t safe,”—his face twisted into a quizzical smile—“so I came over here to the plaza.”
As he spoke the child was pouring words, soft melodious Spanish words into Don del Valle’s ears.
“I am sorry,” said the Honduran. “I was hasty. You should not have gone to jail. My child here, who was lost from us in the catastrophe, tells me you were her protector. You have returned me good for evil. Pardon. You wished to ask me something? Bananas, was it not? You should know that I have no bananas to sell, that they are all contracted for by your American fruit company.”
Johnny’s heart leaped. Luck was coming his way. Providence had sent him an earthquake to cast down his prison bars and a child to plead his cause. Before his mind’s eye came the faces of good old Kennedy, of Madge Kennedy and of Captain Jorgensen. He might be able to help them yet. At any rate he was not to go back to jail.