At dawn of the day after the hurricane, Don del Valle and his beautiful black-eyed daughter hastened away in his high powered motor boat. That he might determine the amount of damage done by the storm, it was necessary for him to leave for his other plantation at once. Johnny Thompson went to the wireless station to begin a search in air for the North Star and her courageous captain.
“If she has been wrecked, or if she has been carried far by storm, and the skipper refuses to return, we are lost,” he said to Madge Kennedy.
For an hour he sent out messages. Each moment he became more depressed. What if the ship had been lost?
“One more evil happening to be charged against my too impetuous desire to be of service,” he groaned.
“Let us hope it has not happened,” said the girl. “Captain Jorgensen has sailed these seas for many years. He is hardly the man to lose his vessel.”
“Good news!” Johnny exclaimed a moment later when he was brought a message. “The North Star is anchored behind Mutineer’s Island, all safe and sound. I will get off a message instructing them to pull away for our own dock at once. There we will pick up your crates of grapefruit and a hundred or so of your Caribs. We will bring them here to gather and load the bananas. They can be trusted. I put no faith in the half-castes that swarm about this dock. We have been defeated by them once. Once is enough for me.
“Oh, I tell you!” he exclaimed, seizing the girl by the hand and doing a wild Indian dance across the floor, “we’ll win yet!”
“You forget,” said the girl soberly, “that the great, all-powerful organization, the Fruit Company, may block your sales after you arrive in New York.”
But Johnny could not be disheartened. The ship was his. The bananas were his also. He had men to gather and load them. New York and the day of their arrival were far away.
“‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’” he quoted, then hurried to get off a message to Kennedy. With Kennedy on the job, the grapefruit would be ready to load, and the Caribs prepared to steam away with them to the dock here at Porte Zelaya.