“Anyway, Diaz had us blocked.”
“Perhaps.”
“Did you ever think,” the girl said after a while, “that even had you succeeded in loading the bananas and grapefruit you might have been worse off than before?”
“Why? The ship’s all right. Isn’t she?”
“Yes, but at the other end? Did you never think that an organization like the Fruit Company, powerful enough to control the purchasing of all fruit of Central America, could control the selling market as well. Do you think a big commission merchant would dare purchase your load of bananas and grapefruit? Could you deliver to him regularly? You couldn’t. What could he do if the powerful Fruit Company should refuse to sell to him because he bought from you? Not a thing.”
Johnny was stunned. He had not thought of this.
“So you see,” said the girl in a very quiet tone, “while it was brave and generous of you to try to help grandfather and—and me, after all it was just as well that nature and Spanish trickery took a hand.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Johnny grimly. “I’d like to have the chance at it, even now. I’d risk it. I—why, I’d hunt up my old friend Tony, the push-cart man, if necessary, and I’d say, ‘Tony, I have a ship load of fruit at half price down at the dock. Go tell your pals.’
“In a half hour’s time there would be a mile of push-carts coming my way.
“But now,” he said slowly, almost despondently, “this is the end.”