Strange and weird indeed was the scene that confronted them. A palm, its tough stem wrung and twisted by the storm, stood with its fronds hanging down like a nun in prayer. The broken trunks of massive dead trees reared themselves toward the sky. Everywhere the banana plants, which but a few hours before had stood so proudly aloft, now lay flat.
“A hundred thousand bunches,” the boy murmured. “And now all gone. What a loss!”
“All gone. I wonder,” he murmured as he lifted the topmost plant from off a heap of its fellows. The bunch he cut away with his machete was ready for shipment, and perfect.
“Not a bruise,” he said aloud. “Not a banana missing. The plants beneath it formed a pad to ease it down. There must be others, hundreds, thousands, perhaps twenty thousand.”
“Here we have bananas!” he exclaimed, turning to Madge Kennedy.
“But they are not ours.”
“May as well be. We should be able to buy them. The Fruit Company’s boat will not dock for ten days or two weeks. By that time they will be worthless. Come on, let’s hurry back to the port.”
“Diaz won’t let you take them.”
“That’s right,” he admitted in sudden despondency. “Of course he won’t.”
“And yet, I wonder if he’d dare refuse?” he said to himself. “He would not be serving the best interests of his master if he did not sell them to us at a salvage price.”