“Ah yes!” said the Don. “It is quite true. Our land is very much backbone, almost nothing else.”
Johnny was interested in everything that these people had to say, but was very anxious to get down to business. He had come to purchase bananas, twenty thousand bunches at least. There was need of haste. Skipper Jorgensen’s ship, the North Star, was lying before Belize in British Honduras without a cargo—at least it had been lying there three days before. There was no telling at what moment some one might offer him a cargo of cocoanuts, chicle, mahogany or a combination cargo of all. Then Johnny’s chance of helping Kennedy and his granddaughter by getting off their year’s crop of grapefruit would be gone.
“And that,” he told himself, “would be a great tragedy.”
“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?”