"Our job on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses.Then a native dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA sheeting pajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles 'em up on the beach.
"You ever been in a banana grove? It's as solemn as a rathskeller at seven A.M.It's like being lost behind the scenes at one of these mushroom musical shows.You can't see the sky for the foliage above you;and the ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it's so still that you can hear the stalks growing again after you chop 'em down.
"At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge of a lagoon with the red, yellow, and black employes of Don Jaime.There we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon until daylight with only snatches of sleep between times.
"We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was.It's just about eighty degrees there in December and June and on Fridays and at midnight and election day and any other old time.Sometimes it rains more than at others, and that's all the difference you notice.A man is liable to live along there without noticing any fugiting of tempus until some day the undertaker calls in for him just when he's beginning to think about cutting out the gang and saving up a little to invest in real estate.
"I don't know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through two or thee rainy spells, eight or ten hair cuts, and the life of thee pairs of sail-cloth trousers.All the money we earned went for rum and tobacco;but we ate, and that was something.