Limekiller!

THERE BENEATH THE SILKY-TREE AND WHELMED IN DEEPER GULPHS THAN ME

But to go back a bit.

Here is Limekiller with his sun-stained hair and beard, shaggy as a sheep-dog though of course much taller. Limekiller and his boat and beard are now all registered and denizened in a small port on a tropic sea, capital of some place more than a colony but not yet a country, and often left off maps because its name seems larger than itself. If you cannot get there, that is not our fault. Others have.

Peter Pygore owned what Miss Abercrombie, the attorney and estate agent, referred to (before she gave it up) as “a very desirable residence and property,” on the West Shore of the Belinda River; though he usually preferred to indulge his desires by residing elsewhere. His house, though, with its towering turrets of 19th century Tropical Gothic, its cupolas and balconies, its yards full of flowering trees, was among the first things to catch the eyes of newly-arrived and house-seeking foreigners.

“Hey!” the foreigners would exclaim. Or, “Oh, look!” And, “Who does that belong to?”

“Belahng to Colonel Pygore,” a National of the country would reply. “But he not reside dere noew. Residing noew at Ho-tel Pel-i-cahn.“

The foreigners’ eyes, dazzled by the sun on the waters of the First (or Belinda) River as it disembogued into the Bay of Hidalgo, and totally captivated by the cool look of the spacious house in its surrounding greenery, would immediately be less weary and more alert. “Do you think it’s for rent?”

And the National would ponder and consider, then allow a smile to lighten his face. “We go timely to see heem. I ox heem fah you.” In King Town, the capital, Nationals are aware that foreigners have their own odd ways with pronouns, and might not understand such perfectly ordinary usage as, “Us go,” or “Me ox.”

“We old friend, Colonel Pygore ahn me. We good friend. Good teeng you ox me. Yes sah ahn yes mahm.”

The sun was now less strong, the streets less dusty, the possibility of shelter less remote. The foreigners felt now that, after all, their decision to come to British Hidalgo — so remote, so all but unknown, so (accordingly) confused with the Spanish-speaking Republic of Hidalgo — had after all been a right and good one. With tourists so few, surely here, here, they would after all find what they were looking for: decent housing at a decent price in a decent climate among decent people. And the National who was guiding them out of friendship alone and to keep them from falling into the hands of the rare but unscrupulous type of people who would not appreciate their friendship, — the National, catching the foreigners’ increased cheerfulness, would instantly growr more cheerful himself, and point out landmarks such as the Anglican and Roman Catholic and Turkish Orthodox cathedrals; and places where very good beer and very bad ladies were available. sometimes he would omit this last information if there were foreign females present; but not often, as he would have noticed how often this seemed to interest them as much as it did foreign men: though he wondered why. “But not noew. Becahs too orly.”

And so they would pass through the streets without sidewalks, go by the main market, cross the Swing Bridge, observe the Post Office and the Fire House with its three vintage engines and its twro fairly modern ones (the ones which actually answered the alarms) and such indispensable places as the shop and warehouse of Georgoglu who sold rum and Gonsales who sold coconuts and Flemington the plantains prince. And in between each building a flash of the sparkle of the water of the First (or Belinda) River, the sails of the cayes boats as the sails moved up or down the masts but seldom staying in place and full of the wind, as Belinda Harbor (or King Town Port) was right on the Bay. And old men offered for sale parched peanuts and old women haw'ked fried fish or “conks flitters” and small pickneys begged for one dime: the National would politely decline the offers (“Going just noew to Pelican Bar, Grahndy —”) and speak sternly to the beggingboys — “Why you no shame?” — the last word, sounding like “sheahhm,” producing, oddly, echoes of the Carolinas, or Ireland. And at least every other person would greet the National and be greeted by him and more people would smile at the foreigners than wouldn’t and no one at all would scowl, thus showing the desired absence of any hatred towards foreigners or other pale people.

“You seem to have many friends.”

“Oh yes mahm ahn sah. I no vex me heart weet hate no wahn.”

“Very good philosophy.”

And so theyr would come at last to the Hotel Pelican, an unusual four stories high with verandahs on all four sides of it, a large yard with children playing on the defeated grass and often an odd animal penned in a corner (an anteater or a tapir calf or a peccary, it might be), and, to one side, a two-story building joined to the hotel by an arcade: the words PELICAN BAR on a signboard. And here they would turn, through the dust of the dry season or the mud of the wet (“In this country,” Peter Py'gore sometimes said, though often he didn’t say anything, “the science of drainage has not only not been perfected, it hasn’t even been suspected.”), and enter the one room dim and cool, with its eternal aroma of beer and rum and limes and country yerba. Always, always, always: here the newly- arrived foreigners would turn in with whatever National they had found to help them. Sometimes it was one National and sometimes it was another.

But it really did not matter which one. Although Colonel Peter Pygore never would even rent his house, the National got at least a drink and a dollar or two for his pains and troubles, and the foreigners anyway had as good an introduction to Old British Hidalgo as they were ever likely to get: unless they had applied directly to one of the official offices, and this, somehow, few of them managed to do.

Limekiller’s introduction to the countrv had been similar, if not the same (in fact, it was not the same). For one thing, although he had noticed, and how could he have helped noticing? the Pygore Place, standing out as it did somewhat like Queen Victoria in a muumuu, or Oueen Liliuokilani in hoopskirts — a contradiction there, of course, for although Queen Liliuokilani had worn, at least sometime, a hoopskirt, it is as sure as anything can be sure that Oueen Victoria had never worn a muumuu: would she have been amused? not at all likely — Limekiller had been fairly content with noticing and observing it from the outside. He not only did not think of buying, he did not even think of renting, it. He thought of buying a boat, and while the story of how he came, finally, to buy one, may be told, it will not be told here.

Or, at any rate, not here and now.

And, for another thing, he had been younger than the other foreigners whose fairly typical introductions we have had described. And, also, he had been then alone.

So, then, there was Limekiller. Alone. With a boat. And, wondering, as wonder we must all, at least sometimes, what next?

Legally, a license was needed for any vessel to carry any number of passengers anywhere at all for any purpose at all within the waters of the colony; but this law had not always been enforced. In fact, Jack Limekiller had a very good idea that, like so many laws, it had never been meant to be enforced, it had been meant to be enforceable. To be sure, old Royal Governor Sir Samuel Stoniecroft had been very intent on enforcing it and had done his best to do so. But his reasons, whatever they may have been, had gone with him, first into retirement, and then into the grave; and, if they had not, they had gone into some musty muniments room in the basement of Somerset house or the Old Bailey or somewhere of the sort: and might be there yet, misfiled behind a mouldering file of indictments for, say, high treason by having had carnal knowledge of the favorite of the Prince of Wales during the War of the Roses. Only one licensee from the days of Governor Stoniecroft still survived, and that was old Captain Peter Kent: and he had lost his document during Hurrican Hephsibah, or perhaps it was Celina, he was not sure, and it did not bother him. No one would ever ask for it.

Thus it was: Nationals were never vexed to show evidence of a license. Very, very offensive foreigners might even find themselves suddenly deported for not having had one. Other kinds of foreigners, well, it all depended. And Jack Limekiller felt he could have slept more soundly if he could ever figure out a pattern as to what it all depended on. But he well knew that aliens in Hidalgo might well go mad trying to find patterns in a country which did not really feel the need of them.

Fairly early in his stay there, fairly fresh from Canada and wanting to do things “right,” as right was understood in Canada, he had spent several days going from office to office in search of enlightenment which he did not find. At first he was purely puzzled: how could government officials not know the law’s of their own government? Then, later, he suspected that he was being, given the old runaround. Later than that, much later, he decided that it was nothing of the sort. No one could give him an opinion on the matter because at the time no one had any opinion on the matter. Almost every employee of Government was a National, and hence a boatman by birth: and they all knew about not rocking boats. “A license, Mr. Limekiller? To carry passengers, Mr. Limekiller? Well, Mr. Limekiller. you see, sir.

Here came a pause. “The issuance of such licenses, you see, sir, is not the function of this office.” And this may very w’ell have been the truth of God: it may have been that whichever office whose function it was or had been, had been abolished or expired. Does not many and many a North American city have ordinances forbidding peddling without a license and carefully refrain from providing a means of issuing such licenses? Who is that man or woman who has never — in North America — felt himself on the verge of madness after the tenth or twentieth repetition of, “That is not my department”? - how lucky they are.

And then one day, after Jack had given up and was wondering what to do next — sell his boat, maybe, and give up — not sell his boat but sail her away, avoiding or hoping to avoid the graveyard shoals of the waters in the next republic south — or try sailing her north to sell, maybe sailing in between the hurricanes and wondering if they could really be more trouble than he had been cautioned (warned) the United States Coast Guard might be — over a friendly drink at a friendly bar, he had fallen into conversation with a friendly National. (Not the one first described.) The conversation had lasted a while and covered many subjects, including. suddenly. the sale of lands forfeited for unpaid taxes.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s land,” muttered Jack.

“Ah, but Mr. Limekiller. Government is not really very covetous in this colony — this country,” the man corrected himself. Old ways, including old ways of speech, might die hard: but dying they certainly were. The man was in his late 30s, ruddy-brown in color, Caucasian in features. “Taxes may remain for three years unpaid before Government even sends a notice. After at least three notices are sent by post, Government waits a year before publishing a notice in the official Gazette. After three such notices have been g&getted, the property is placed upon the list of properties to be sold. In fact, you see, Mr. Limekiller, it usuallv takes ten years before land is offered for sale because of unpaid taxes.

“And after ten years, Mr. Limekiller, one may safely assume that the owner is dead, or unfindable, or indifferent; and that the same is true of his heirs… if any. Now, you see,” he unfolded a copy of the Gazette, about the length and width of a news magazine, though not as thick; “here is the current list of tax forfeitures to be offered for sale next month.’’Jack could scarcely have cared less, but politeness obliged him to look at the list. It took up an entire page.

“‘Five thousand acres located at Gumbo Tree, Benbow District'" Jack read aloud. “‘Owner, The Floridana Tropical Agriculture Company. Arrears, $5,550. ’ Say, that comes hardly more than Sl.OO an acre. Odd.”

The man smiled. “Not very odd, considering that, for one thing, most of the land is under water, the rest is pure mangrove bluff, there is no access by dry land, scarcely any even by shallow- draught boat, and that the Floridana Tropical Agriculture Company is no longer in existence. It had a short career. A very short career.”

“Land-scam, eh?”

“It may be so.”

How familiarjack was to become, eventually, with those words.

And the list continued down to the bottom of the page, where nestled numbers of small properties of odd sizes involving measurements in roods and perches, and on which odd sums of money were owed. “I don’t know what I’d want with land that nobody else wants,” Limekiller said. What did Limekiller look like? He w'as not taller than most men in a country where most men w-ere tall. His hair, w'hich had once been light-blond, had grown light-brown, had begun to turn dark-brown, was now', under the inexhaustible suns of the Spanish Main, beginning to turn dark-blond in streaks and — but enough of Limekiller’s hair (and beard), w'hich was rather long. His face was broad and so was his nose. His eyebrows thick, his eyes sometimes seemed blue or green or something darker than either, sometimes (seemingly) depending on the color of the Carib Sea: w'hich is, however, never wane-dark; sometimes they w^ere also bloodshot and often this was the result of saltwater or of lack of sleep and sometimes, of too much National rum, and even — though not verv often — the result of a native herb locallv called “weed” when it was not called “ganja”. and this was rather interesting because some of the older Nationals sometimes called a certain kind of banana “ganja,” and both plants, after all, are members of the hemp family. His family name indicated descent from at least one man who once burned limestone in a kiln or kill, presumably in England; sometimes he said that his mother’s family were Ukrainian, sometimes he said Scotch, and sometimes he said they were Kalmuk Tartars who entered Canada by way of Bering Straits on dogsled during a particularly frozen winter: perhaps he was not serious in saying this.

“What would I want with land nobody else wants?” he asks. “I have enough troubles without it.”

His nameless companion says, “Ah, but some of these small parcels of land are so cheap, Mr. Limekiller! You could plant them in mango or coconut. Eventually, you might re-sell them, perhaps.” A tray materializes on the table, trough Jack recalls ordering nothing more since the initial round.

“Re-sell? Ed have to show it, wouldn’t I? And I can’t even get a license to carry passengers —” He looks rather moodily into his glass, raises it in thanks, drains it.

“Ah, but Mr. Limekiller. Government would not require you to have a license to carry people to whom you were showing your own land for possible sale, you know.”

There seems something more in this statement than in the glass. He considers it. “Government wouldn’t?"

“No, no. Cmainlv not.”

Jack considers this for a long time and then ha says, “Oh.”

“It has been a pleasure speaking to you, Mr. Limekiller. I hope,” the man adds in the charming phrase of his nation after a first meeting, “I hope we’ll be no more strangers.”

“Hoew you like Mr. Lofting?” the barkeeper asked Jack, some small while later.

“Who?”

“Honorable Mr. Lorenzo Lofting, Permanent Under-secretary to Government.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Lerdinand,” Jack said; “I was advised, when I first came here, to sign the Visitors’ Book at Government House. But. somehow. either I didn’t have a clean shirt, or my trousers were tom, or, or something. So I never did. And so I never get invited to occasions where I’d be meeting people like that.”

Ferdinand stared at him. “What you mean, Jock? You just spend close to wahn hahf hour tahkeeng to heem. You no cahl dees ‘meet- teeng?”’

It was Jack’s turn to stare, then. “You mean. that nice fellow who — you mean he

“Yes mon.”

Again Limekiller considered for a long time. And, again, said, “. Oh.”

It might have come as a surprise to Dostoievsky, who wrote in the near-slums of St. Petersburg, or even to Tolstoy, writing on the noble estate where he had been born, that a writer is supposed to have to move and write somewhere else… in order to do good writing. On the other hand, Vergil might have dug it. He wrote about Mantua, Carthage, and the Tiber: but he wrote about them in Naples. However, Vergil was an exile, not an expatriate. Other images haunt our thoughts, floating like phosgenes before our eyes. The Stevensons in Samoa. Hemingway in Paris. Oscar and Bosie, sipping sticky liqueurs in a villa near Florence. (It wasn't near Florence? Okay, it wasn’t near Florence.) Paul Bowles in Tangiers, Ian Fleming in Jamaica, Maugham on the Riviera, Wouk in the Virgin Islands: some of these images of course haunt us less than others.

Perhaps all of this anyway merely echoes what men of boats have been doing since before there were men of books. “Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made a good voyage." The man spent a generation trying to get from one part of Greece to another, and we call this a good voyage? Clearly, rapid transit was not what was had in mind, nor was he the first war veteran in no hurry to see the folks back home. Nowadays Penelope would have acted differently, unshipped her loom and had it stowed aboard the pentacoster, or whatever, before Ulysses could have made the morning tide. What? Not in the Mediterranean — that “tideless, dolorous midland sea” — Well. Whatever.

Fifty years ago if a married man had the urge to go down to the seas once more (or, likelier, for the first time) he had to tell his wife that he was going down to the corner for a bag of rolls; then he would run like Hell. Today, he has only to dream aloud in order for his wife to say, “Yes! Let’s!” Amelia Bloomer, Lucy Stone, Carrie Chapman Catt, did you envision all that lies in this apostrophe-5? “What we would like,” she says… or maybe he. “We heard that we can get a boat built cheaply down here,” he says… or perhaps she. “We thought, maybe, a little bit of land on the coast or on a river or on one of the cayes,” they say. They ask: “What do you think, Mr. Limekiller?”

“ We’ve heard that you have some land for sale, Mr. Limekiller.”

“ They say you know all about the boat situation here, John.”

“ Could we see it, do you suppose, Jack?”

Now, Limekiller does not really want to sell his two acres up at Spanish Point, in the country’s farthest north; nor his three acres on the Warree River in the country’s farthest south; nor his halfacre out at Rum Bogue Caye, nor his equally-small properties along the coast at, respectively, Jack of Nails (north-central) and Flower Bight (south-central) — not unless he should get some irresistible sort of prices for them. for any one of them… all of which he bought for less than a good second-hand van would have cost him. After all, these lands represent his legal raison d’etre for taking people up and down and around about and in-between. At, of course, a reasonable charge. It was Government’s way of giving him permission to make a living without actually having giving it to him.

Given its choice, Government would probably have preferred for foreigners to have sent money in a plain sealed envelope, and stayed back home and not bothered it. Failing that, it would have been satisfied if visiting foreigners had been satisfied with the services which Nationals had to offer, however minimal: foreigners, somehow7, tended not to be satisfied with that. Nationals, unless it wras during certain fishing seasons, w'anted to come back home every night: foreigners usually wanted to keep on going. In short, the emerging nation of British Hidalgo was slowly, very slowly, beginning to emerge into grappling with tourism. There was a gap. a very, very large gap. Limekiller, to an extent, was capable of filling part of it. He was not a better man because he was foreign. It was perhaps unfair that, being foreign, he could take care of other foreigners in ways that Nationals could not… as yet. Very w ell. For as long as “as yet” might last, Limekiller was given a semi-free hand. Maybe one could learn by looking, listening, observing. Maybe some of it would rub off.

Anyway, although it might be a shame that he was making money which a National ought by rights be making, at least he was spending all of it, well, nationally. Better that he be on hand to take visitors where and how they wished be taken than that the visitors should depart a day after they arrived. To be sure there were other foreigners engaged in tourist-taking-care-of, some of them not even (as was Limekiller) citizens of a Commonwealth country; mostly they were from the States, mostly they operated newish and slick and fast, fast motorized boats; they took middle- aged to elderly, and always obviously prosperous, fishermen of the sport sort on gilded tours. This was all easy for local understanding.

“Beatniks” were also easy for Government to understand (in the Republics, this class was still termed existensialisto), or, anyway, Government thought so. When they had first appeared, long-haired and oddly-dressed, they were assumed to be a sort of White Rastafarians; it was now accepted that this definition was in general too broad, as it was now accepted that not every White man with long hair or beard was a “Beatnik.” But what was it then, about “Beatniks,” which made Government unhappy? Well, for one, they spent no money, or anyway very little. They were given to bathing nude: disgusting! They did not obey the unwritten but perfectly well known local codes about where one smoked weed and where not. And they lived lazy. Bad examples. So Government did not want “Beatniks.” This was also easy for National understanding.

Less easy by far wras the intermittent appearance of foreigners who were not rich-looking, yet not “Beatniks” either. Lack of communication, we are often told, is the curse of our time. But Limekiller did no longer feel his time accursed.

Limekiller: an afternoon at the Hotel Pelican. Bathsheba and he were sleeping together, that is, they had already made love and Bathsheba and he had fallen asleep, only she was still sleeping, her smooth tan body as calm as a child’s next to him; he had awakened. Every room still had the ceiling fixtures for the old, slow- fans; in most of them however there was no longer any fan: there was here, though, and he had paid extra for the room on account of it. Jack watched the fan go humming around and around and listened in complete idleness and utterly complete satisfaction to the slow hum of voices outside. somew hat away.

He did not have to go to the third floor verandah to look down; he knew what he would see, as he knew what he was hearing. On the second floor verandah several young women looked out and watched the slow passage of people up and down the street, watched the children (some of them theirs) either in the yard or right there on the verandah playing and tumbling or sleeping or also sitting and watching; while they, the young women, talked easily as they finished up between them a huge platter (someone was, or had very recently been, both prosperous and generous) of food: rice and beans with chunks of vigorous native beef, chopped hard-cooked eggs, salad and fried plantains. and, to Limekiller and others from the frozen north, incredibly hot (but only pleasurably so to the young women) country peppers with onions and sugar and salt and lime. They ate neatly, delicately licking off their fingers after each mouthful.

“. jumble. ” someone had said. the first words Limekiller clearly heard on awakening. And someone else had said, rather more quickly than the regular tempo of their speech and conversation, “No tahk aboet eet!” So they didn’t talk about it; whatever “it” was.

There was a long, quiet, dreamy moment, during which Jack almost dropped off to sleep again, but didn’t, and almost moved to place himself, spoon-fashion, against Bathsheba’s back. but didn’t. And after that long, quiet, dreamy moment, broken only by the sounds of the mule-carts down below, passing from the Post Office to Corn Meal Wharf where the green-tagged mail sacks would be laden aboard the Egret packet-boat, clup clup, creakcreak, rattle, clup, one of the young women renewed the conversation.

Limekiller, knowing her voice, knew that she would be already dressed for the day by now, in a tight frock which showed bosom and belly and buttocks. She said, “I nevah tehk no mahn fah money, no not me. Eef I like heem I go weet heem, eef he want geeve me money, sometime I let heem geeve. But I nevah tehk no fuhking mahn fah money, no not me. I hyear gyel say, Why you no tehk ah mahn fah fifteen dollah ah night? Suppose I tehk ah mahn fah fifteen dollah ah night ahn right away he mehk me ah beh-bee? What good fifteen dollah? What good fifteen dollah fah wahn night? No, gyel. Eef I no like ah mahn. I no tehk heem. ”

A long moment passed. In the bar beside the yard, men’s voices grew loud, and women hooted with laughter. They were beginning earlv in the bar beside the vard.

But on the second floor verandah: not yet.

“Henrietta, she gweyn to surgeon, surgeon he give she lee peels, so no hahve pickney, no hahve behby. You hear?"

They heard. They had plenty to say, having heard. Limekiller wondered why Bathsheba would neither go nor let him go to surgeon nor pharmacist for little pills or any other contraceptives; he had suggested; she had refused; the subject closed. But the subject of Henrietta was, on the second floor verandah, not yet closed.

Henrietta, she hahve wahn abortion when she strain she-self. - “Abortion,” here, in the old sense of miscarriage. Henrietta, she hahve wahn pickney die young ahn bory in Baby Heaven (the Infants’ Burying-ground), wahn she do away with (“abortion” in the modem, or North American, sense), ahn t’ree living child she hahve, bock home, by Bullet Creek. “Henrietta, she says E-nough." (Jack was inclined to feel that Henrietta had a point. But —)

But Minerva, she of the tight frock, was not so inclined. “I ahm ah Cot-o-leek, ahn dat ees ah seen," she said, emphatically.

Another woman (Ernestine? Ernestine.) declared that she was not a Catholic although had been baptize one; nevertheless neither did she hold with taking little pills not to have baby. “It is ahgainst Nature,” she said. “If you make mellow, you suppose make child,” she said. “God want it so. Nah true?”

“Fah true, fah true, Ernestine!”

“I say, leff it to Nature. God want it so.”

“Fah true. - Here come Jeremy.”

Jeremy, the limber, light young man (“clear,” in the local language) who acted as assistant manager and courier to, in, and around about the Hotel Pelican, came up the stairs with the five bottles of Fanta, dancing to the music of the jukebox in the bar. “No fahget leff me de pints, now: mind," he cautioned them. The deposits on the bottles (and in British Hidalgo, all bottles were “pints” regardless of measure) were his commission. Jeremy, not that it mattered, had a long chin.

And, somehow, from hearing (and, thus, seeing) this every-day peaceful vista (can one hear a vista?), Jack’s mind and eyes oh so softly and without transition slipped along the Northern highway and its few but striking signs: Bless God Farm. Grine Meat for Sale. Trespasser Will Be Prosecuted. Banns Read In This Church. Cashew Wine for Sale. Trespassers Will be Persecuted. Colonial Immigration Ordinance, 1955 and Subsequently Amended (Section 4) This entitles JOHN LUTWIDGE LIMEKILLER holder of Canadian Passport No. 684,660 issued at Toronto on 7th Feb. 196 — to enter British Hidalgo and to remain therein subject to his/her

they could have asked JLL to have dropped his drawers at the border and so decided if it was his or her, but no

compliance with the provisions of subsection (6) of section 4 of the Colonial Immigration Ordinance, 1955 as Provided that Thou shalt not practice cozenage or guile nor deal with the Devil

Limekiller knew that he had fallen off back asleep; and, on hearing the words:

“. jungle…" knew that he had awakened again, and that, to prove that the whole imagery had come full circle and that time wras timeless, he would at once and once again hear the words, “No tahk aboet eel!” — and he did.

And next he heard, “Some of dese womans, dey using dev bodies, you does know what I means?” and, well, if one didn’t know what she meant, here, here at the Hotel Pelican, second biggest house of assignation (in effect: whorehouse: but not exclusively, though) in King Town, where in the hell would one know? — But one of the familiar voices swept this aside with another question: “Why Minerva no want we tahk aboet jungle?” — only, only, he being more awake this time than asleep, it sounded more as though the word were jumble… if one washed to be more precisely phonetic (and what in the hell was all this bullshit about phonetics when he was lying well-spent, half asleep, in a whorehouse?): “… jumble…“

. and one voice: “Becahse she fright. — What? You no fright from jungle?" Ans.: “ Whatt?. In King Toewn? No, gyel, me no fright here.”

His total reply to all this was the simple, Eh?

He must have said it out loud. “Eh?”

Because at this, Bathsheba awakened, rolled over, applied her hand to That One Talent Which Is Death To Hide, and, as it wasn’t really hidden at the moment, anyw ay. John Lutwidge Limekiller instantly forgot all about any goddam conversation elsewhere, no matter how near, whatsoever.

On whatsoever subject.

Usually such intervals were, anyway, after the second time, followed by Togetherness in the form of a shower, follow'ed by a long interval of patient impatience or impatient patience on his own part, the whilst she applied various unguents and lotions and sprays and as he was disallowed. perhaps by some colonial Ordinance to him unknowe. from all the secrets of usually. ointment of rosewater, for all he knew to the contrary; after which they slowly- made their way, via the Pelican Bar — the one beside the yard — to any of two or three restaurants: not this time, kid, however.

Not being invariably at his keenest and sharpest at such moments, he did but repeat the all-purpose, „Eh?“

To which the lovely Bathsheba replied, “Because I say, is ‘Eh.’ I have some things to do, I have to see my auntie, and my other auntie, and my sister, the one who lives with,” he had given up either trying to figure out why, when she wished to, she could and would slip from Baytalk into Standard (if slightly, and beautifully, accented) English, or the numerifications of her enormous family: “So please, Jack, let me have $20, and I will meet you dowmstairs at the stroke of ten.”

He let her have $20.

He wished she would not have to go.

He realized and acknowdedged that she w-ould, anybody, everybody, w ould, sometimes, often, seldom, now and then, late or early, have to go.

And, anyway.

So.

That left six or seven hours.

First stop: the Pelican Bar. (Beside the yard.)

He was areeted bv a loudlv voice which he could have done without; “Pussy is like beer, you don’t buy it, you just rent it: right, Jack?”

“Pour Mr. Duncan his pleasure,” was Jack’s answer, perhaps a trifle evasive, perhaps not; in British Hidalgo there had evolved a more perfect union of fornication, freedom, and the old time religion than is usually encountered in English-speaking nations. “And let me have a double glass of the inwariable, me dear.”

“Ah, Limekiller,” said a voice out of the shadow7 corner. Professor Brolly, Jack knew the voice; no one knew what the real name was: a younger, chunky Neville Chamberlain in khaki shorts and an Albert Schweitzer set of moustaches. “Professor,” said Limekiller, politely, towards the shadow-. “Pray ask,” to the barkeep, “the Professor to allow7 me. ” By the sounds of things, things w7ere sounding up pretty soundly in the bar; and he would not be or have been the only one to be spending in a rush, or whatever — Dory Duncan: no one needed Dory Duncan, Jack didn’t, loudmouth and so forth: but no need to make him an enemy; was he worth it? — no.

“We were just discussing, Limekiller,” said the voice from the shadow corner, without even seeing him one would know the professor was leaning on his umbrella; “thought you might be interested, seeing you come in, just discussing —” A burst of noise from another part of the wood, or anyway, of the bar, interrupted — … jumble… ” Professor Brolly: hadn’t Professor Brollv just said that? Limekiller thought: What? was this some sort of Moebius strip? was this like one of those weed-trips when everything occurred again and again, time ceasing to have significance, when what one had just said one recognized as having been said before. before. again. again. Surely Professor Brolly had said, “jumble”., perhaps “jungle”?

But before he could turn and deal with this mystical business, the bartender had placed a glass on the bar; Jack hoisted it, tipped it to the wind’s, well, not twelve quarters, say three. say three? Fine. Three. The bartender had repeated, a double glass of the inwariable, with amusement, though not hilarity; he thought that John L. Limekiller was merely pretending to imitate a White Creole, whose inversions of the letters V and W were perennial, invariable, and infinite sources of amusement. To others. There. Down there. In the all-but-lost-little Colony of British Hidalgo, down here on the boggy barm of what someone — would anyone here ever forgive him for it? no: had once, and in print; called The Spanish Minor… it wasn’t even that funny — ah well.

And then, even as he turned, with intent to enter the shadow comer where Professor Brolly was, to pursue the matter of this odd sequence of syllables which had, seemingly, begun to pursue him (John Limekiller, not Professor Brolly), throughout this semi-immediate area and scene — just then a burst of noise louder even than usual even here, where the monastic virtue of silence was appreciated no more than that of celibacy, struck his eardrums, and swiveled him around to the other side of the bar; no, there was no face on the bar-room floor, there was —

There was and there followed one of the most extra-ordinary occasions and scenes which Limekiller had ever witnessed. Even to begin with (dead, like Marley? by no means) the action at the semifar table had, God knows, elements of the grotesque perhaps enough to last a lifetime longer than Marley’s — the little man with the enormous head and hands, Congo-black of skin and Mayan- large of nose, standing treat for a small mob of men and women (these last, those good-time ladies of the place who were not still peacefully discussing this-and-that, Henrietta or whatever, back up on the second story verandah): “sporting girls,” in the local idiom. Roaring, the “lee man” was, now, with laughter, now slapping his huge hands on the table and now pointing to one and another at his table and screaming words incomprehensible to Jack; quickly, quickly, like some well-rehearsed and oft-performed set piece, men would reach across the shout of words and the spread of table to shake his huge hand and women would bend down and kiss his huge and balding head (screaming, themselves with laughter; shrieking high-pitched jest) or — the women — tickle him under the arms or grab towards his nipples or his crotch: gestures he would at once or as soon as he could, try to reciprocate; all the while rounds of drink were being set down slop-slop and dirty glasses removed — this play alone Jack would surely long remember — but this was not it..

Even while (via the bar-mirror) half he looked away out of politeness (“. a gentleman does not stare, John. ”) and half he looked on out of fascination, out of the comer of his eye he saw (thinking: what next? what is this?) out of the corner of his eye someone crawling out of the background to hide behind, a low partition; a man it was, mouth on one side wryly drawn down, eye a-wink, and then pull from one pocket what Limekiller first thought were chicken-feet: it was plain, from the nudges and the winks and suddenly-smugly blank faces that others, too, saw this — and then someone with a look of assumed astonishment which would not (so Jack thought) have deceived a child, held up a hand for silence.

This was a while in coming; the lee mahn noticed nothing, and continued to shout; only now was Jack able to hear him somewhat clearly. “. up, drink up, you ahl me guest. bock from bush now. glod be bock. anyway… no fright in bush, some people fright in bush, fright fi bobboon, fright fi tiger, fright fi wild hog, fright fi jungle, I doesn’t fright but anyway glod be bock from bush. see ahl me friend. ” Gradually his voice wound down as he became aware of the silence; he looked around, half-puzzled, half-quizzical. People, meanwhile at and crowded about his table, were looking questioningly at each other; shrugged or frowned as though in concentration; one of the women asked, “What I hear? What —?” The very little man with the very large head now quite paused in his frenzy of jollification and his large mouth opened and showed his large teeth —

— then the man on the floor, hidden behind the partition (Limekiller, his long height lengthened by his seat on the high bar stool could see in the bar’s mirror what the little man, the lee mahn, could not) the man lying down slowly scraped and clicked the claws of the bird-feet on the floor: and again. And gave a sort of bird- squawk, which -

The effect was instant, almost unimaginable, and, to Limekiller, absolutely terrifying: but not to Limekiller alone -

The very little man screamed as though in the most intense pain. He pushed at the table so as to draw his chair back and he struggled to get up. But his chair was wedged in and did not move, and (Jack could see) others surreptitiously pushed back down and against the table so that it could not move. For a second more, as the lee mahn pushed and wrestled (and screamed: and screamed) the table stayed in place, as though some part of some insane seance. Then it shot up on one side as the very little man flung it up, it shot up on one side and bottles, glasses, everything on it, shot off it, crashing to the floor — the very lee mahn climbed up on his chair, women now screaming too, climbed to the windowsill, from the windowsill he leaped to an empty chair and from there to an empty- table and from that table clambered in a frenzv onto the bar —

— place in an uproar, many people almost hysterical with laughter, shouting and holding their sides, heads thrown back and chests and bosoms heaving -

— bartender shouting and pointing the very little man, the lee mahn, off, off off!. and he trying desperately either to run down the length of the bar or try jump down on the other side of it: but someone holding on to his coat-tails and preventing this, and the terrified lunging forward all unaware of what was holding him back and the tiny feet slipping on the slick-wet bar -

Jack had been looking at all this in the mirror behind the bar and of half a mind to intervene and yet more than half paralyzed with astonishment, ignorant of what could it all mean, and. even. by reason, perhaps, of his being a foreigner, perhaps by reason of. — Jack, looking in the mirror behind the bar saw something green and yellow and blue and red come peering and peeping up behind the low partition halfway back the bar-room: saw, at this moment, the very little man seem to go absolutely insane, great drops of sweat literally flying from frenzied face as he whipped it from side to side seeking escape, only escape: and then the mass of feather-colors came soaring through the air and the very little man crouched and piddled like a crouching dog and screamed and flung his arms over his head and hooted: there was no other word for it: hooted his terror. The bartender produced from nowhere a cricket- bat and brought it down with force. Once. Twice. A third time.

And all the while the pandaemonium of mad laughter went on.

And then it stopped.

As though waiting.

And in a very tiny voice the very tiny man with the very large hands and head asked, words a-tremble, “You keel eet, mon?”

And then it began again.

Slowly, slowly, the very little man uncovered his huge head and peered, oh so slowly and oh slow frightenedlv, from under one upflung arm. Shuddered. And shuddered. And shuddered. There on the bar was the shattered body of a parrot. It had been killed, all right. That is. well. anyway, it was dead. It had been, evidently, dead a while, and the sawdust with which it had been stuffed was scattered all around.

The feet, of course, were not there.

The very little man’s very large eyes blinked. His very large mouth opened. Closed. Opened. He swiveled round on the bar. Faced the silent crowd (now silent). Pointed a trembling finger at large. Said: “Ha. You try fi fool me. Ha. You w’only try fi fool me. Ha. But me no fool. Me w’only play And at this he started to stand up, slipped in his own urine, and came down with an immense soggy-slapping pratfall. The place at once erupted again with laughter loud as battle. And the very little man put his very large hands up across his very large face and began to weep, noisily, as a child might weep: a cry of purest sorrow, devoid alike of petulance or rage.

At once the mood of the mob changed. Where, a moment ago, he had fallen (slap) and sat alone, the lee mahn was now surrounded. Men clapped him on the back. Women kissed him. People shook both his hands, still wet with his own tears. And now loud murmurs arose, and angry looks and glances were cast. “ Who do dis t’ing? Which place he be?MehkIsee him. 1 w’only rip his reins out! Who go fi play dis trick on poor lee Willy Weekins? Bobboon’s bostard! Get-of- a-whore! Mehk I see which side he be!" — But the scoundrel had fled.

Now arose the only White woman in the place, she was a large White woman, not fat: large: a well-known and well-respected prostitute, with a face as richly colored (and as lineless) as that of an immense wax doll; she took from her vast purse now a vast lace handkerchief. In a voice indicating a touch of, only, well-bred concern, she said, “My. You’ve spilled your beer.” And began, in a most genteel manner, gently to dab and to mop. - And then, when Limekiller (now, and only now he noticed: on his feet) expected the place to burst out yet again in laughter: there was not a sound.

Until, after a second, only, “lee Willy Weekins” himself broke the silence. “Yes! Yes! (T’ank you, mah’m. T’ank you kindly.) I di spill me beer. Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Well, plenty more beer! Bartender! Hi, I say you: barkeep! Leff us hahve some beer! Who want beer? Rum? Whiskey-soda? Drinks!. I ahm Willy Wiggins, holding Government Lease Number 523 fi cut rosewood at Wild Hog Eddy — ho!” He clapped his huge hands as though summoning a host of servitors. „— ond I di sell ahl me cut stick ot highest price to Tropical Hardwood, L.T.D., ond so noew I want fi buy drink fi ahl me friend — nobody else money good today! Drinks ahl-roend! Drinks —”

Limekiller was outside. He had wanted another drink, but he didn’t want one now. Not of this round, not the next nor next.

At the door the poor were waiting; well, one of the poor was waiting: one of the Town’s official, i.e. tolerated, beggars; very ancient of days. You had to be very ancient of days to qualify for the free bed-and-breakfast at the Christian Armv Hostel for Elderly Men; but the funds for the Christian Army Hostel’s dole did not extend beyond bed-and-breakfast; automatically, Limekiller gave him a coin; was politely thanked. And the old, old man, who had evidently been looking in, said to Limekiller, in a tone of wonder, “Dat lee mahn, you know7, sah, he fright w’only fi parrot.”

Yes (thought Limekiller), he certainly was “fright for parrots” Why? Who could say why. Some men were afraid of heights. Or depths. Some were terrified of spiders. Or the dark. Some feared capital, and some feared labor. Some were afraid there was a God and some were afraid there wasn’t. The fright of one w as of life and the fright of the other one was of death. Some people fright in bush, fright fi bobboon,fi tiger, fi wild hog, fi jungle.

Wee Willy Wiggins was onlv fright for parrots.

It was less than a figure of speech to say that, until the stroke of ten, Limekiller was at loose ends, for Limekiller’s ends were never as loose as some people’s. Perhaps he might want solitude and quiet, if so, he did not loaf listlessly, he went where he knew he could find it. Some went to find it in one of the local cathedrals (small as King Town was, it had no less than three of these; of course, they were small, too), but, although Limekiller was not a scoffer, thinking there more to the lines Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau / Mock on, mock on, tis all in vain: / You throw the sand into the wind / And the wind but blows it back again… or however it went. than mere rhyme: still Limekiller did not usually go to a cathedral if he wanted solitude or quiet… or, as was usual, both: he went to the National Library. This was, he sometimes amused himself (rather easily, perhaps) by thinking that this was a Constitutional Library, just as the Monarchy was a Constitutional Monarchy. Nationals in general liked the idea of having both, but liked neither much to bother with, nor much be bothered by, either. So there was never any chance of crowd or noise at the National Library. He spent some while there, now browsing, now reading: mostly in old books about the country (there were few new ones).

He spent some time, after that, resuming the Great Bronze Nails Quest; the Quest for the Numinous Nails, one might call it; again, one might not. He thought it would be a good thing to have some bronze nails handy for his boat: Bronze does not rust. And the more the local hardware shop keepers shook their heads and announced, in a variety of accents, that There Was Nothing Like That, the more he persisted in seeking That.

But, today, as every day: no bronze nails.

Oh well.

He caught the late afternoon opening of the Swing Bridge, which opened twice a day without toll charged of boats too high to pass under; for those willing to pay toll, the Captains — they were all officially Captains; the titles had been granted in lieu of a rise in pay — were willing to bend to their capstan as times a day as might be. But it did not open often for such spend thrift passage. Idly he looked about the small crowd which always gathered whenever the Swing Bridge swung, he noticed how the Black Baywomen tied their kerchiefs back at the nape of the neck, while the Black Arawack women folded theirs over the ears and fastened them (kerchiefs, not ears) beneath the chin — older women, that is: Young of either, no. No kerchiefs need apply; plastic curlers in public: yes; kerchiefs: no. He could not imagine Bathsheba in one, for instance, although at least the older of the two aunties she’d found it essential to be calling on right now almost surely would be wearing one. Bathsheba -

Someone very near at hand just then said to someone else, “Look me crosses! Look me troubles!”. this last brought tojack’s mind how, his first day in the country, tarrying a while in some shade in Lime Walk Town, seeing one after another the freight-and- passenger trucks booming down the Northern Highway with proud and lofty titles painted on their sides (for they had names, like stagecoaches and railroad trains): The Nation Builder, The Great Central American, Royal Oak, Pride of Hidalgo, and so on: there, lurching slowly and oh so painfully in their dust: a four-wheeled handcart with unmatched sides and wobbly wheels, laboriously pushed by hand (and arms, back, and legs): on its side in straggling letters its name, God Sees Me Sorrow. Bathsheba -

Finally, the Tropical Hardwood (Ltd.) tug and its line of logs- mahogany, these, chained with chains — had passed up river; the bridge captains had bent to their capstans, an act greeted with cries of caution and protest from the few, the one or two, high-masted vessels yet to pass. but this was mere ritual play; all boats were suffered to pass before the bridgemen set actually to work and the bridge swung slowly around once again, connected both shores, and made King Town one again. and the crowds from both sides began to pass across; their conversations uninterrupted:

“Gi’e me a borrow of free shillin, nah so, mon?”

“ Whattt? Me gi’e you nutting like dot, mon!”

“Well, juss you wait, mon. Every fot foewel have she w’own Sundav.”

“Dot woman? Tahk, tahk, tahk; me fink she eat pahrot head!”

“She w’own head w’only emp-ty, gyel. Like jumble bahlroom.”

Some of the talk was clear enough to Jack. Sooner or later the proudest poultry wound up “biled,” baked, fried or roasted. By every principle of sympathetic magic, eating a parrot’s head should make one talkative (Parrot: Wee Willy Wiggins: Jack shuddered). But what was a jumble ballroom and why a simile for emptiness? — At once: a hint:

“No tahk aboet jumble [jungle?]', eet mehk me blood crahl!”

“ Whatt, gyel? You t’ink you een bush?

Reaching the other side of the Swing Bridge, halting for a moment to consider which way he himself should now swing, it came to his mind that there had seemed today to have been a number of times when someone had wanted to talk, when someone else had demurred, with a No tahk aboet it! And, in each case, the implication that despite. whatever it was. one was safe enough here in King Town. - Town, from the days when it was the Colony’s only settlement, nowadays it was the Colony’s only city: and had its own Lord Mayor, same as London, although elected not by Liveried Companies but by the Municipal Council: did the local Lord Mayor, Limekiller wondered, give banquets of turtle soup, calipash and calipee, like his brother of London? Turtles enough there were, around here, for sure; he’d passed the Central Main Market earlier and seen a full half-dozen lying on their backs and languidly now and then waving their flippers: though, that Buy me was the signal’s intended meaning might be doubted. Up ahead: Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson; at once Limekiller turned aside.

There was to be sure nothing really malevolent about Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson: why then had he instamatically turned aside (and, as a result, found himself in Spyglass Alley, a thoroughfare — if that were not too broad a wrord — wherein he had seldom been and had no good present purpose for being)? Here’s why: Dr. Duckerson was a semi-retired chiropractor from some roaring North American metorpolis such as it might be Lincoln, Nebraska, or Medicine Hat, Manitoba. was Medicine Hat and its putative plumed war- bonnet in Manitoba? and, for that matter, was Lincoln in Nebraska? wouldn’t Illinois be a likelier -

“Too many torpical suns have beat upon your brain, Limekiller,” he told himself. “What is now requisite is something of a cooling nature;” at that moment… do you understand?. at that exact moment!.. a swinging door swung open, and a voice said, calmly, “Ah, Limekiller.” And the swinging door swung shut again.

Not, however, before J.L.L. had marked its location. Over the door hung a sign; w*as it a rebus? consisting of the single painted word THE, followed by a telescope (or, yes yes, a spyglass) aimed directly at an Object, despite the Object’s being so near at hand that, really, no optical instrument was needful to identify it as a “pint,” that is, a bottle: one which was not, presumably, intended to contain ketchup. Or Fanta. Limekiller applied the slightest of pressure and the doors flung open, disclosing, as First Disclosure, a most comely young woman; a „Panyar’ that is to say, a Spaniard; that is to say, w-ith a greater degree of genotypical accuracy, a Mestiza: “pure” Spaniards in British Hidalgo there were none: and for that matter, probably, none in Spain, either; “Ah, my dear,” he said, companionablv.

Her reply was somewhat less companionable: “Don’t you, 'Ah, my dear’ me," she said.

“But why not.”

“Bathsheba tear my eyes out, ‘why not.'

Her companion said, “You see, my dear Mr. John, you have already been as it were branded with your lovely lady’s brand;” and he laughed. And then he said, ‘Join us, do, sir.” He, evidently, was taking no occasion for either offense or defense from John’s simple — and it had been meant as no more than that — greeting. Neither was he, immediately, identifiable in what, after the glare of even the middle-late-afternoon sun, seemed to be what others have described as an Impenetrable Gloom. And as to why this should be so, when the comely young woman should at once have been obvious as a comely young woman, well, let us suppose that she had been sitting in a better light.

So Limekiller, having already resisted the temptation to pull his shirt high enough, and his trousers low enough, to disclose an absolutely unbranded hip. had had sense enough to resist a gesture which would have provoked only male laughter and female Oh Go Awav Closer screams in the Pelican Bar, where such disclosures were, if not common, at least not terribly uncommon: particularly on the part of members of the Right Royal Regiment: Limekiller said, “Thank you; I will, if I may.”

The bar was small, clean, and quiet; he had been there once before; why had he not come again? Before trying to think why, he turned to the barkeep, who had himself turned into a waiter and was even now waiting for the order, and declared for “A chaparita of —” he hesitated naming his poison and it was now named for him. (“Of Governor Morgan,” said the new-found host, specifying the by-far-the-best local rum.) “Thank you, sir,” saidjack. “- and an entire lime,” saidjack, “plus the tallest glass in the house, and all the ice not needed to keep the snapper fresh.” This harmless play, with its implication that The Spyglass was a fishing-boat without a “wet-well,” was received with good humor on the part of the waiter, the young woman whose Christian name certainly ended in — ita, her companion, coming more and more clearly into focus by the moment: and even from the shadow corner was now heard a chuckle with which Limekiller felt familiar: one thing at a time, however.

Just then, thank God, and not before time, either, the penny dropped. He pretended it had already done so. “Well, Superintendent,” he said, (he hoped) smoothly. “Nice to be in your company in some capacity other than that of a malefactor — not that that wasn’t as nice as it could possibly have been, I hasten to add.”

Clement Edward Alfred Cumberbatch, one of H.M.’s Superintendents of Police, waved his long brown hand. “A mere detail, Mr. Limekiller. Only a formality. Dismiss it from your mind forever. - Besides: I am off duty now.”

Limekiller was swiftly recruiting his health from the tallest, iciest, lime-iest, rum-iest glass in the house when a voice from the shadow corner said, “I am off duty now, too. But then, as you all know, I am always off duty.”

Miss — ita greeted this with a sound something like, “Tchuh!”, a sound much used by the women of British Hidalgo; but the Superintendent swept it and its implications away. “On the contrary. Professor, in my opinion you are always on duty, because you are always adding to our stock of knowledge.”

“Professor!” Limekiller exclaimed. “How did you get here so soon? I swear I never saw you by the Swing Bridge —” Instantly he said this, something insistently desired to remind him that he had seen someone else by the Swing Bridge, even less expectedly; but no time was allowed for reflection, introspection, or, possibly even —

“Never use the Bridge,” the Professor said; this was not an advice to others, it was a statement of personal preference. “I left right after you did, but I went down Shipwright Lane and hailed the ferry.”

“The, uh, ferry?”

Limekiller had not known there was a ferry, either by way of Shipwright Lane or anywhere else in King Town; in the Out- Districts: yes: a few several of them, some larger than others but all of them winched across the rivers by very hard labor; and all highly visible. “What ferry?”

The dark bar-parlor was becoming clearer now; there on the walls were the Inevitable Powers, side by side. sider by sider on the local walls than they usually ever were in real life: The Queen’s Own Majesty, in a long gown decorated with some sort of Order, and what Limekiller (having seen it, even, a million times in Canada, let alone British Hidalgo) thought of as The Royal Simper. this, on the Queen, not her gown. and, wearing a shortsleeved shirt open at the neck, and a cheerful grin, the Honorable Llewellyn Gonzaga MacBride, the Queen’s Chief Minister: hereabouts. The Spyglass’s walls were even more loyal than most: there was also a fairly new photograph of Sir Joshua Cummings, the Royal Governor, looking tickled pink in his official bicorn hat with dodo feathers or whatever the hell thev were — and if that were not enough, there was even an old, old, very old photograph of De W'old King, several kings or so ago, wearing an admiral’s uniform, a beard, and a look of such glassy-eyed rectitude and flexible stupidity as made Limekiller’s heart swell with loyalty to the House of Windsor and all its works. but perhaps this was only the rum.

“Grandy Smith ferry,” said Miss — ita, barely able to conceal her scorn at the ignorance of Bathsheba’s bondsman.

Limekiller still looking blank, it was explained to him that there was a Mrs. Widow Smith, who held, by grandfather (or perhaps great-grandfather) clause and/or other immemorial usage dating from such time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary (in King Town, say, around 1936), the right to row of pole passengers across the First (or, Belinda) River in a small boat, from Shipwright Lane on one side to Humble’s Wharf on the other; and to exact for this service the immense fare of five cents: “One simply stands as near the shore as possible without sinking into the ooze, and shouts and wigwags; after a while she trots out of her cottage and waves her apron, and at this point a young girl, aged about twelve, appears in the boat and takes one across. Mrs. Smith has innumerable descendants, all of whom seem to be young girls aged about twelve. Strong ones. — Sad scene back there at the Pelican, eh Limekiller?”

“Sad?“ Limekiller.

“Tchuh!” — Miss — ita.

“What was that?” — Superintendent Cumberbatch. Informed that that was “tormenting little Will Wiggins again,” the Superintendent gave a sigh, and shook his head. “Bad scene, eh, Mr. Limekiller?”

„Bad?“ I think it was absolutely- the worst scene I have ever witnessed. Worse, in fact, than the one which brought me before vou. that time.”

That time. Early on in his stay in the country, Jack, merely relaxing on a bench in what was officially named Queen Adelaide Triangle, but seldom called anything but Jack-ass Junction since donkey-carts had once gathered there to ply for hire (allegedly they had been banned because Lady Stoniecroft, the long-ago Governor’s wife, had suffered extreme shock at the sight of seeing one or more of the animals in that state of extreme good health for which the jack-ass is famous… or was, when the jack-ass was more numerous, and, hence, more often seen, flaccid, retracted, or Otherwise) — merely relaxing on a bench, shared by someone of whom he had noticed nothing more than a tendency towards narcolepsy; Jack had been frightened almost to the point of falling off the bench when the bench’s fellow-passenger had suddenly jerked awake and simultaneously began (a) to utter hideous screams, and (b) to fall upon Limekiller with blows and kicks too uncoordinated not to be easily resisted; they had both been almost immediately trotted off to “gaol” by a pair of police constables: hence Jack’s first interview with the Superintendent.

“Of course Mr. Limekiller was released at once. ‘Almost at once well, it might be so, my dear Mr. John; it took a bit of time to draw up the Report; you don’t mind, I’m sure… As for the other chap, poor chap, we simply tidied him up and put him on the Great Westerner truck with instructions to the driver not to let him off before Gangalong Grove, where his proper home was, he had people there to take care of him. odd affliction, is it not so, Professor, suffering from nightmares in the day-time?”

Professor Brolly (Jack, sipping rum and lime and melted ice- water, had a sudden vision of the Professor seated in the tiny wherry and being ferried across with his umbrella carefully opened and covering his head; imperturbably his own master in whatever craft) said, “The ephialtes may attack at noon as well as midnight.” He brushed his bushy moustachioes up with a single finger, right- side, left-side.

Miss — ita looked as though she were wanting very much to say, “Tchuh!” once more, but she did not say; Cumberbatch said, “ The.?” and paused, polite, expectant.

“The ephialtes. Perhaps you may know them as the epialtes.”

Clinkle-clinkle. - the ice in Jack’s glass. He refreshed it from the chaparita; squeezed in some more lime: keep away the dreaded scurvy; whose discovery? Captain Cook’s, maybe. Was said to have sailed these waters as a younger man. If so, in either case, had either experience helped him at the end? Ha.

“No,” said the Superintendent, without pretense that the word was on the tip of his tongue. “I believe not. Tell me.”

“I shall,” Professor Brolly said. “Greek word. Words. Literally? ‘On-leapers.' Cognate with our English word, elves. Nothing playful about the ephialtes, though. The incubus, the demon who sits on one’s chest. Causes nightmares, fevers, chills and-”

“No tahk aboet eet!" — Miss — ita suddenly found more words to say than, “Tchuh!” And electric sparks went on and off inside Limekiller’s head.

“Time for my tiffin,” said Professor Brolly, very calmly. His comment not desired? Very well, then: it had never been made. He gathered his solid body and arose. “Nice to have met you all agavn. Day. Superintendent. Miss Munoz. Limekiller.” He bowed slightly, tucked the bumbershoot under his arm, and departed. Miss Munoz was meeting nobody’s eyes; her expression was something more than merely sulky, now. Superintendent Cumberbatch’s eyes, however, met Limekiller's. Their lack of expression was extremely expressive. Whatever had now to be worked out between C.E.A. Cumberbatch and Miss — ita Munoz, the presence of a third party would not assist. Cumberbatch was off duty? Limekiller had best get on duty.

Rosita! That was it! Not that it much mattered; if he,J. Lutwidge Limekiller, owner and master of the boat Saccharissa, now standing in King Town harbor with all her apparel etc etc, — if he bore the visible brand of Bathsheba (was he quite sure he liked that? Bathsheba was very nice, to be sure, and this and that and the other thing, and particularly one certain Other Thing; and, she being both very desirable and very desired, it was as though her favored man wore, himself, something like an Order. still.), then, certainly, Rosita Munoz, he now had been for some while realizing, bore that of Clement Edward Alfred Cumberbatch, one of H.M.’s Superintendents of Police… on duty or off. a good thing to know. And to remember.

Jack’s thanks, his polite farewells, his hopes of meeting them both in the near future, were received with impeccable amicable politeness by the gentleman. The lady made some small soft movement and some small soft sound. Not particularly joyous ones.

But at any rate she did not say, “Tchuh!"

The Fort Benbow Hotel was very much like the Empress Hotel in Victoria, in that it served afternoon tea; otherwise it w: as not much like the Empress Hotel in Victoria. Jack had not really been much of an afternoon tea addict, and the current CO of the Tea Ceremony in the Fort Benbow knew even less about it than he: horrid brew. Still. One must show the flag; in he went, mingled, sat, had tea: listened. Sooner or later, someone would say it. All the its which, seemingly, somehow had to be said, in the posh Fort Benbow.

And sooner or later, someone did say it: that This country was The End of the Line. And someone else said, again, Be that as it may This country was small enough to put your arms around and Love. And, so, inevitably, someone said, But that it was odd, though, what had happened to the Old Kingdom Chipchaks (again).

And, since hardly anyone who had lived here any length of time wanted very much to go through all of this all over again. and over and over and over. someone who had to be new here had asked, What had happened to the old Kingdom Chipchaks? Limekiller at this point eyed the door. “Ah," came the swift answer to the question, “That is what’s so odd!"

The Chipchak Indians had developed a very high level of culture in what was now British Flidalgo. Quite large buildings. Temples, and. ah. temples. Very large temples. Ruins scarcely touched by archeologists, you know. And then, for some reason still a mystery, the whole Chipchak nation had simply picked up and moved. En masse. Hundreds of miles. Into what was now the Republic of Saragosa. And had there rebuilt their entire civilization. (“And their temples?”) And their temples.; quite. And, as the “New Kingdom” Chipchaks, had re-flourished, until conquered by the Hutecs, who had in turn been conquered by the Spaniards. And no one had any idea why!

Why the Chipchaks had moved, that is.

“My word.”

“Well, for gosh sakes.”

Pause. Limekiller, and nor he alone, eyed the door again. But the door was too far, the crowd was too thick, and, besides, a possible charter to go sailing off to see some nice Old Kingdom Chipchak ruins (The most damnably dull-looking ruins ever ruined, and quite over canopied with undergrowth and overgrowth a lot more troublesome than if with luscious woodbine, sweet musk- roses, or with eglantine). was, well, a possible charter. And, so, not to be spat upon.

Even a charter de facto, if not de jure; possible conversation, “Now, Mr. Limekiller, we here in Government do not wish to make things difficult for you, but we have our laws as any nation has and so we must investigate possible violations thereof; is it true that from Wednesday last to Monday this, you were carrying a party of tourists on excursion, and without having a proper license for same, sir?” _ “Well, Chief Supervisor, no, not really, I was merely showing some visiting businessmen some land I own down at Wherever, with a view to their possibly buying it; for which as I am sure you know, Chief Supervisor, no license is required.” “Oh. Ah. I see. Yes. Quite so. The Ordinance. The Statute. We are so very understaffed here at Government, Mr. Limekiller that sometimes oversights. Oh no, thank you, Mr. Limekiller!”

Two reasons for not waiting till meeting Bathsheba at the stroke of ten in order to eat. First. It was absolutely certain she would say, “I ate at my auntie.” Second. It was absolutely certain that Jack was hungry now. A paradox: that, whilst Bayfolk home-cooking is as good a style of home-cooking to be found anywhere and better than manywhere, Bayfolk home-cooking almost never reaches the cook- rooms of Bayfolk restaurants. Crab soup with crab spawn? Venison with crabboo-fruit? Turtle stew? Cowtail braised and made with broth? Coconut bread? Mango jelly? And more and more and — Yum Yum. But.

But, somehow, Limekiller did not know why, it was almost never that one found any such thing in any King Town restaurant, the home of the Fry Chicken, the Horn Somwich, and the Tin Soup. Why? Odd.

There was also, yes indeed, “Spanish” food, very little like Mexican food (equally very little like Spanish food sans quotes), but certainly a change from Tin Soup (it came in tins, is why), Horn Somwich, and Fry Chicken: but Spanish Town was perhaps just a bit further than he cared just now to walk; the Grand Shanghai was what destiny seemed to have in store for Limekiller tonight; and, as he entered its doors, he at once perceived what else destiny (karma, he felt now he had to call it) had in store for him tonight, viz. Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson: “Why, you jist sut right down and have your dunner wuth us, Mr. Limekuller,” said Mrs. Duckerson: she was short. But she was sturdy.

Down he sat.

“Doctor and me we saw the most puttiful case taday,” said she. “Man was I mean to tell you jist all cruppled up; soon’s he heard who Doctor was, well of course he wanned a git a nadjustmunt; but Doctor he hadda uxplain a him that he is not lie-sinced to practice down here; oh how he dud plead and carry on. Have the chucken chow mein, Muster Limekuller.”

Doctor Duckerson paused with a forkful of what was, presumably the chicken chow mein, although very often even The Third Eye could not disclose the mysteries of what one ate at the Grand Shanghai regardless of what one had ordered. “Subluxation of your third vertebrar,” said Doctor Duckerson. “I say that subluxations of your third vertebrar cause more of your so-called civilized ills and ailments than any single subluxation of any of your other vertebrar; now

“Eatcher dunner, Daddy,” said Mrs. Duckerson, who had perhaps heard more about your third vertebra and its subluxations back in Cowpat, Kansas, or Buffalo Bleep, B.C., than had been required by marriage ceremony.

Doctor’s question, slightly filtered through his forkful or Good Enough For Round Eyes, seemed to say something like Now what about our little trip Mr. Limeskinner; but he was for the moment over-ruled. “Lettum eat hus dunner, Daddy,” said Mrs. Duckerson.

One of the reasons why Limekiller had been avoiding close and frequent contact with Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson was the matter of what she (echoed through Doctor’s/Daddy’s shredded yard-fowl and whatever Mesoamerican substitutes for Chinese vegetables was most recently found most economical by the management of the Grand Shanghai) had been referring to on and off as “Our luttle trup” — the destination of our luttle trap was Limekiller’s little piece of land at Flower Bight. And he hadn’t been wanting to make it.

Not since he had made the close acquaintance of Bathsheba. Anyway.

On the one hand, Jack would have wished to prolong his meal in hopes that perhaps the Duckersons might tire of waiting and so depart without his having to make any statement positive or negative. And on the one hand, the nature of his meal was not such as to encourage him to prolong it at all. Although not precisely a feinshmecker, or gourmet — a tour of duty out of the Royal Canadian Naval base at Esquimault had cured him of any tendency towards finickly eating, as what tour of duty out of what naval base wouldn’t? — he was not invariably averse to complaining about some dish particularly deficient in edibility: wherever. But tonight’s waiter on-duty at the Grand Shanghai bore upon his very scrutable countenance such a look of deepest melancholy, reflective perhaps of a time there was e’er China’s woes began (say, about the 3rd century before the Christian Era) that Limekiller’s heart, not the very hardest article at all times, smote and prevented him.

So, by and by, and after the final cup of tea (the nature of which might well have caused riots and/or wall posters in either China), he shoved away his dinnerware and faced The Question.

“Now what about our luttle trup, Mr. Limekuller?”

“Momma nye been lookin forward to it oh ever since we heard aboutcher piece a propitty fer sale down there, Mr. Limeskinner.” ‘

“Flower Bight,’ now I think that’s ever such a nice lul name, whut kine da flowers would they be, Mr. Limekuller.”

Jack indicated vaguely they’d be all kinds of flowers such as one finds in these parts (“In season, of course,” he added); he did not feel up to explaining that the Bight was supposedly named for one Flowers, perhaps originally Flores, perhaps not, who had either hanged someone for piracy there long long ago, or had been hanged by someone there for the same crime, or even perhaps both, though probably not simultaneously: then again, considering the Hidalgoan Method of Historical Construction, Flowers (or Flores: names had a way of changing here as they crossed the Spanish River in either direction) had merely perhaps complained of being charged sixpence more for a bag of nails than he considered right, Mahn be no better nor a pirate! the complaint may have gone; what time he or someone next to he in a dram shop or punch house at that moment may have echoed, Mahn should be honed, dom pirate! and someone else, hearing or likelier half-hearing may have lurched away home, via a longish sea-voyage and replied at its end to What News? with Flowers, he hong one pirate, or even, for by that time all details would have become mazy and muzzy, One pirate, he hong Flowers. there were enough men named Flowers to go around; and by the time the story had been told either way and not even very often, it would have become fact. If I tell you three times, it is true, was a basic principle of the Hidalgoan Method of Historical Construction. - And, very often, If I tell me three times… or maybe only one or two times would have done. It often did; and not only in Hidalgo.

“Momma nye we been looking fra nice place to build us a place to spend the real cold months —” Jack knew those months and winters.

“Oh them cold wunters, they wuill kull us if we don’t git away and put a locum in charge from anyway December through March —" And Doctor added, gloomily, Not that finding a good locums was a very easy thing nowadays. (Particularly, Jack thought, one who was fully aware of everything involved by your subluxations of your third vertebrar: suddenly he could stand no more of it.)

“Folks, I have some particular business to attend to in a half an hour or so, and after that it will be too late to get in touch with you. Can I talk to you again in the morning? The, ah,” he hastily took a quick peek into his private life, “later morning?

Doctor gave a sort of affirmative confirmatory grunt and Mrs. Doctor looked at him with birdy-bright eyes; Jack suddenly had a sort of satori that neither one of them was as ding-dong dumb as he had taken for granted: they might, in fact, know all about him and. there being very few secrets in British Hidalgo. Bathsheba. they might, satori succeeding satori, even be able to figure it out for themselves: even the Mrs. and Doctor Duckersons of this world have by now learned about That.; for all he knew, they might even be just as good at it; furthermore Jack, with a rush and a flush and a flash back to the days when he stealthily examined the palms of his hands, plus a flash and a rush to a future he did not much anticipate, but still, had a fairly clear scene of some wheat farmer and/or timber-topper confiding an Intimate Problem to Doctor and being informed, “Your subluxation of your third vertebrar is a particular source of common difficulties in your sectial activities; take yer shirt off and git up on that table…”

“Why of course, Mr. Limekuller,” said Mrs. Doctor: “We retire on the dot of mudnight and we do not retire untull the dot of mudnight. You kin call us tull then, or, like you say, later on in the morning. We are stopping at the Ruwer View Hotel, any time.”

Jack, hasting along with long strides towards the Pelican, observed that the clock on one of the cathedrals stood at ten to ten; he would just make it; there was luckily no chance of the Swing Bridge doing any Swinging at this hour: not even Governor Sir Joshua Cummings, were he suddenly to decide on a moonlight cruise, would be able to bring the bridge captains back to the capstan at this hour, and would either have to unstep his mast or forget about it: common sense suddenly told him that the Governor’s boat must be moored by Government House, downriver from the Bridge, anyway. Anyway, what was his hurry? Either Bathsheba would be late, and full of explanations involving her aunties, or, if on time, she would, if he were late, instantly involve herself in some conversation with, well, anyone: and wait for him.

His hurry was, he told himself, that he was very much in like with Bathsheba, and wanted simply very much to be with her again. And, You lying, horny, son of a bitch, he answered himself.

Coming from the side lanes to the main streets he entered a stream of human traffic perhaps even thicker than in the heat of the day; was that Bathsheba’s back he saw ahead there, two blocks awav? He would sive her a hail, and — She moved from the dimlight into the full glare of a streetlight: certainly it was Bathsheba he had seen ahead of him at least twice that afternoon, at the Swing Bridge and — walking next to her, and on the inside, as though having never heard that a gentleman walks on the outside, was certainly no gentleman: it was his back, too, whichjack had seen. vaguely he felt he knew whose, but he was after all not immensely familiar with every back in town:

He quickened (as they used to say) his steps:

But, they two evidently having turned into any one of several lanes, find them he could not.

Perhaps he had been mistaken.

He stepped into the yard and was halfway across when the bell of another cathedral began to ring. It had not yet told its full tale of ten when he had scanned every female face in the bars Bathsheba was not there.

Lots of other people there, though. Many more than usual. Ha. Of course. All the not every-night-regular faces were White tonight. Which meant that whichever battalions of the Right Royal Regiment had been off on manoeuvres in the Bush were now returned. Whooppee. He would grab Bathsheba and they would go somew'here else and have a drink or so, before — Well, he would if he could find her. He ordered a-then-and-there-drink and stood with his back to the bar and as near to the door as he could, upon an impulse so sudden he hardly realized what he wras doing, he left the bar and wras circumnavigating the block; he would find her and escort her back, thus preventing any of the Right Royal from intercepting and offering her some frightful insult, which she, unsophisticated daughter-child of this tropical Eden, might not instantly recognize as such: it was not only a damned odd-shaped block, it was a damned long block: coming back in the door of the Pelican Bar and not even giving a look to see was his drink still there, there, not there, but there, in the middle of the bar-room floor (the partition having been removed in his absence), amidst the other dancers (music by juke-box) was either Herb or Hughy or Alfy or Dicky — there were not a great number of given names in this particular mob of Licentious Soldiery (something missing from that quotation? let it wait) — dancing not precisely cheek-to-cheek, he was snugly pressed up against the fore-front of and was clutching both of Bathsheba’s buttocks in his very large hands.

She swum right around and, seeing Limekiller there, made some sound he could not hear, he only saw her mouth moving… for a moment. then she had disengaged herself from Dicky (Hughy — Alfy — Herb) and hot-tailed it (le mot juste, murmured a bitter little voice in Limekiller’s suddenly hot ears) either to the ladies’ room or the back door — they lay along the same passageway -

And her soldier (and anyone less-aunty-like could not have been imagined: but sure it was him she had been with ever since leaving Jack earlier that day. not, however, before collecting the twenty dollars National Currency), having first turned and gaped after her, now turned, gaping still; and, seeing Limekiller, stood facing him with his legs slightly apart and his hands at his sides: they were not yet formed into fists, but — And on his face a look mingled of sheepishness, truculence, and -

Brutal. Was the missing word. Whose? A Brutal and Licentious Soldiery: who gave a good dribbly-shit whose?

Moved by some sudden, secret, and unseemly thought, and knowing all the while that the thought was not at all a nice one; but moved; Limekiller turned on his heel and left the bar, walking very rapidly. Once inside the hotel he restrained himself from galloping up the stairs, there was the room, here was the key, the door opened, the light switched on, there was the still-rumpled bed and he was sure there had been no pillow lying in the middle of it when he had left the room and he buffetted it to one side -

Someone, and someone male, had left his signature upon the sheet.

And the ink was still wet.

The soldier did not seem to have moved in the meanwhile.

Limekiller thrust his hand deep into his right-hand pocket. Hughy (Alfy? Dickv? Herb?) flinched very slightly and prepared to assume a stance. Limekiller tossed something through the air; the soldier flinched again, ducked only slightly, but did catch it — give him that — and, forgetful for the moment of a possible sudden onslaught, glanced at it.

It was a huge oval of ornately embossed and engraved leather, one of the few surviving from the Pelican’s better days, and attached to it was the comparatively small key.

Lance-corporal Throstlethwaite or Thimblepate or whatever his name was, simply went on standing there, holding it. Not no fooking knife. Not no fooking grenade. He was, for the moment, more puzzled than fight-prone.

“You can use the same towel, too,” Limekiller said.

Turned and left.

In the street, darkness alternating with lamp-glare, he told himself, Well, what about it? She was your whore, you were her john. Business is business, no banns were read, she’s got a perfect right to. No, not in the bed he paid for; she hasn’t got-

Then he stopped and clapped one hand to his head. But what was the woman’s reason, not for what she did, but for how she did it? Why had she told him to, meet him there “at the stroke of ten,” when she intended to appear there with another man at the same stroke? It beat the be-jesus out of him to figure that out; but, as is usual in such times, after considering his heart and his pride, next he considered his purse: Fifteen dollah fah one night, fiddlesticks: Twice the same amount per diem would not have covered it all (and fifteen dollars a week was a tolerable local wage for harder work than that), beginning with. beginning with. well, never mind what it had begun with, the affair had contained no sordid matter of wages-and-hours disputes: consider the gold earrings he had bought, innocently without considering whether they were for pierced ears or not; they were, hers weren’t, she snatched them out of his palm with cries of, “Oh, for them, for them, I will have my ears pierced!” — whatever had been pierced in this petite affaire had not been Bathsheba’s ears.

What had she done with them? Sold them? Traded then for some other jewelry? Or, like what’s her name in the Bible, traded them like the mandrakes for another man? He would never know now, and, had he asked her earlier, likely not even then. “Dese women here,” someone had said, moodily, and in no joyful mood either, “even when got nutting to gain by tell lie, tell lie anyway, juss fah keep in proctice, mon.” — and his friend nodded a nod of sad experience, adding, “Ahn why dey wear dem tight frock even when so hot, mon? To mehk ah mahn w’onlv luss, mon; why.”

Well, lust, love, or lunacy, it was all new and hot and hurtful, and hateful, whore or no whore: it all hurt; only that one puzzle remained: why had she made such a precise date? in order to present him with his successor? to make the case quite plain? to prevent boring discussion? to increase her self-esteem by having two men (at least two. and who knew how big the brawl might have grown?) publicly fighting over her?

It might have been any of these, it might have been all of these, it suddenly occurred to Limekiller that neither Bathsheba nor any of her lady friends had ever really shown the slightest actual interest in keeping appointments by clocks, or in other quanta of time, and also it suddenly occurred to him that the switch-over could not have been for purely professional reasons, for lance-corporals in the British Army earned barely enough for buy beef, let alone for pickles, too: therefore her reason might well have been none of these: her lovely little head had very little in it, lovely or otherwise; her arrival with her soldier in the Pelican Bar at nearly the stroke of ten (and ten would be about the lance- corporal’s quota, Limekiller thought, bitter, jealous) was, then, purely a coincidence and she had simply forgotten not only all about her appointment with Limekiller but all about Limekiller himself —

— and this, the likeliest of reasons, hurt more, far more than all the others, Love me little, not for long, ’ is the burden of my song.

Where the hell was he. now?

The display of well-worn Japanese lanterns told him soon: alongside of the River View Hotel; in he went, it was not yet eleven, let alone mudnight: there sat Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson, looking comfy and content and sipping at straws in tall glasses jammed with ice and fruit and something (maybe) not approved by the Palmer College of Chiropractic. They greeted him with placid chirps.

“Ready to start tomorrow morning, early?” he fired his starboard gun.

Doctor considered, Mrs. Doctor had perhaps already considered. “ Well, Muster Limekuller, I am so glad that chore other business is all taken care of and that we kin finely git started on our luttle trap, but now wiiat I think, I think that tomorrow morning, early, is jist a luttle too soon, what do you think, Daddy?”

“Think so, too,” thought Daddy. Added that he would Tell Him What: “Split the difference. Commence the charter as of when the sun is at high meridian tamorra (nuther words: noon) and leave day after tamorra, early. Give us time to get ready, give you time to get ready. Kay?“

“And meanwhile sut down and join us in one of these putcheresque native drinks,” invited Mrs.

But Jack was in no mood for such liquid even if slightly alcoholic fruit salads, which no native would willingly have drunk, anyway. He had become more rational very rapidly, made polite rational thanks and polite rational excuses, accepted the revised rational time-table. And left.

The Bucket of Blood held at least equal dishonors as Worst Dive in Town, the Poor Man Port had its own vigorous advocates, the Bucket of Blood was nearer. It was reached via a boggy yard; “If me customer gweyn fahl, time he leave,” said Bitty Billy Blood, the licensee, “I want he fahl sahft, live come bock ah nudder day.” “Stone dead hath no fellow,” was Our Mr. Limekiller’s comment. “Fah true, Johnny,” was the reply.

Usually The Bucket was lit by a gruesomely ghastly bluery- greenery-flickerv fluorescenty tube, much admired by locals. Tonight, however, this damnable engine, to Jack’s expressible relief, had already flickered its last deathlight flicker, had joined Stone Dead, and, the tube having no fellow, The Bucket was lit by and only by three small thin candles. It looked, smelled, and sounded just like the middle of the 18th century — exactly, felt J.L.L., the right century for his present mood:

“A curse upon the Spanish Dons,” he announced, just to firm the matter. “God save the King Across the Water,” he added. ‘“The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on’t,”’ he quoted. “A chaparita of your incomparable cattle piss, Billy Blood,” he ordered; “and spare the ice as not being natural and the water as conducive to fluxes and phlegms; goddamn bitch whore tramp trull trolloppe drab slut,” he shut his mouth and opened it again only to allow the passage of the trash rum; it resisted slightly.

“Mon,” said Bitty Bill, raking the shillings, “soun’ to me, you hahve mahcoby tonight.”

“Any mahn hahve woman, hahve mahcoby,” said a bystander. by-drinker, rather; and evidently an experienced lay-analyst. Mahcoby: rich, evocative, poignant Bayfolk word: untranslatable to Standard English save by many, many words: hell with that.

“Any cure for it?” asked Limekiller, with a slight gasp: The Bucket’s rum was rough, and Bitty Billy Blood did not even dilute it to the full measure by law allowed.

“Yes,” said Bitty Bill, firmly. “Drink shitty canal wahtah.”

Limekiller pondered this alleged remedy and all its implications for a moment or so.

Then he went back to the rum.

Jumble beans.

Now, had either the United Church of Canada or the Continuing Presbyterian Church thereof been in charge of Jack’s constitution (repatriated or otherwise), he would and should have awakened with all the full horrors of hangover, but — and although the words drunkenness and fornication did mumble faintly in his ears — he merely felt faintly faint and queasy as the rosy-fingered dawn poked him in both eyes. So much for his ears and eyes; his mouth? God’s Wownds. His nose? His nose reminded him that he was moored off Corn Meal Wharf and that on Corn Meal Wharf Grandy Janedy always had a pot (a cauldron, rather) of cow-foot soup for sale to early-bird boatmen. He was somewhat draggy, getting to her stall, but once there no words were necessary. He didn’t even need to point, just gave over a shilling, helped himself to a battered bowl and spoon, she dipped him a dipper of the gluey but oh-so-savory and nourishing pottage, he sat down on the curb, clattered a moment with the spoon, then simply lifted the bowl, and drank. and drank. with occasional pauses to chew the solids. which bv now were fairlv soft and merelv semi-solids anyway. and drank.

Immediately he felt better. After a second bowl he felt fairly fine. Grandy Janedy, understanding All, had allowed him his silence. For a while. He no longer needing it, “I see you does have you jumble beans,” said the oldest practicing alchemist in King Town.

“Beg pardon, Grandy Janedy?”

“You jumble beans. Dot is good.” She had made a gesture before turning to another customer. Limekiller looked where she had pointed. On his left wrist was a, well, a sort of bracelet of strong thread on which were threaded a number of black-and-red colored berries. He would not have thought of them as beans, but, what the hell. Funny thing to wake up with: much to be preferred, however, to a tattoo and a case of clap. In between each “bean” was a knot, and, seaman though he thought himself to be, these knots he did not recognize. Well… Oh-

Yes. He had “shouted” a drink of rum for an old Bavwoman, in The Bucket, last night, and he retained some morsel of memory of her placing the bracelet round his wrist. What it meant, God only knew, maybe they had plighted their troth; at this hour of the day and after those hours of the night, if Brandy Janedy’s only comment was, good, well, so be it and be it so: instantly he forgot all about it, and, handing back bowl and spoon and adding his thanks, he considered the tasks the day held for him.

The voyage, or Luttle Trup, as he by now half-thought of it himself, could not last less than one long day, and could last as long as two. Or three. Fresh or even cooked meat could last as long as the ice, and the ice, in the styrofoam cooler, would last. well. not very long. Fish he might catch, he might not, the Duckersons might like the way he cooked it, they might not, Mrs. Duckerson might wish to cook it herself, she might not. So: canned goods (tinned, here), and in sufficient quantity, was a must. Rice and beans and the coconut oil to cook them with would they eat them/it? He had found that adding annatto, the native. was it pimiento?. added not only an exotic taste but also a reddish- orange color; otherwise, “rice-ahn-bean” did tend to look lustreless; Jack himself was not an annatto fan especially, but business was business. Fruit: yes! fresh fruit. Bananas for snacks, plantains to cook, breadfruit chiefly so that they could say they’d eaten breadfruit, maybe find some good oranges and if lucky something both unusual and tasty enough to bother taking. Star-apple, mawmee-apple, if in season -

Had he thought, when contemplating with joy the prospect of restoring his newlv-acquired (but oh by no means new) boat from its draggle-tailed and half-tipsv state, that in becoming a boatman he would become a caterer, too? No, he had not —

— What might be in season, though, might not necessarily be on sale in the Central, or Main, Market (or any other King Town market, for that matter). It had, earlv-on, seemed to him that the local economy had holes in it, large and gaping holes in the matter not so much of production (it had those, too) but of distribution; and he had the flashing thought that somehow he might help fill those holes; he was awhile in finding out that this amounted to hoping to fill the holes in a piece of lace: the holes were part of the pattern.

Time for a drink.

By the rarest coincidence, there was the Democracy Club, aptly-named, and wide open for trade: tlot-tlot in he went; “Hello, John,” said a familiar voice in familiar tones. In what war in which regiment Pygore had served as Colonel, Limekiller did not know, anymore than he knew why Pygore was as Pygore was: unless.

“Hello, Peter, Have a drink.”

“Thank you. I have a drink.” And almost always did have. His tired eyes surveyed Limekiller. Blinked once. Said, “Not afraid to stand beneath the ceiba tree, I see.” Limekiller followed this not.

“Why? Something crap on my head?” Raised one hand to test, gingerly. Caught sight of the black-and-red berries on his left wrist: he hadn’t noticed that some fibre smooth but oddly-spun was wrapped around the more common cotton thread. Ceiba. So that was it: the so-called silkv-tree or silk-cotton tree or wild-cotton tree or kapock — or was it pollack-tree? Damned tree had too damned many names; “devil-tree,” that was another one. It was a damned big tree, too. And there was nothing nasty on his head. He had misunderstood. Oblique Peter Pygore.

Limekiller signalled a drink. Asked, “Why should you call these, ‘jumble beans’?”

“I shouldn’t, I should call them ‘jungle-beads,’” Pygore said. Or had he said something else? People had heard.

People looked; well, some people looked; someone said, “You go jungle side, make sense wear jungle bead.”

Someone else said, “Me not gweyn jungle side,” with an air of emphasis and determination.

Someone else, yet, said, “Suppose jungle come you side? Maybe you sorry you not wear jungle bead, nah true?”

But the first someone else did not respond with “fah true,” or anything like it. What he responded with — and a look of scorn and distaste at Jack’s funny wristlet — was the odd comment (and it had, somehow, the sound of a quote): “‘Who do good fi jungle, is dem jungle does fright.’”

Now there were sounds of disagreement around the tables. “Mon, wear jungle beans not ‘do good fi jungle.” “No, mon, "do good fi jungle,’ mean

But Jack was not to hear what it meant, for at that moment, a voice — and, again, a woman said, in a low tone of deep intensity — said: again: those words which he had heard. and heard and heard. recently, namely, “No tahk aboet eet!'

He had been totally puzzled by almost all the conversation following the original comment on the wristlet; now was moved beyond puzzlement into both irritation and a rather unusual display of temper; he brought his glass down, slam, on the bar. He said, “Damn it, damn it! What the hell are all these jungle things which people keep saying, ‘Don’t talk about it’?”

Deep silence.

And a very' tall, very imposing, very black Black man, who had not turned before, although right next to Jack, turned now, and said, “Well, Mr. Limekiller, sir, if many people or even any people ask not to talk about a certain subject, whatever subject, is it not perhaps the better part tact, sir, not to — “

“Not to talk about it; very well, sir: rebuke taken, silence is golden, pray pardon, ladies and gentlemen,” and, while polite murmurs indicative that he had perhaps apologized more than the offense required were still being murmured, Jack, carried on by momentum, said, but I don’t even understand why all of a sudden people seemed to have started calling it jungle when ever since I’ve been here everybody I would swear calls it bush?”

Some of those who had become so suddenly so deeply silent now continued so; some sounds of scoffing, some of snorting, were heard. A tentative laugh, soon ceased. Odd looks at Limekiller. And Col. Peter Pygore, who had first spoken, said, “Oh, John L., you are sometimes too much,” and gave his head a weary shake. And added, “Verger, you tell him. Whisper it in his shell-like little ear.”

“I could hit you, you know, Pygore.”

Peter Pygore, gaunt and grey, stopped being a cynic, became a stoic. “Limekiller, it does not lie within my power to prevent you.”

The very tall, very imposing, very black Black man, now said, “I suggest, Mr. Limekiller, that we move our glahsses. with Col. Pygore’s leave?… to Col. Pygore’s table;” this was done, and so, of course brawling had become impossible; the rest of the room, like the rest of the world, carried on with its own affairs as busy as before: politics, horse-races, infant baptism, new linoleum, prices, prices, costs, costs, mv turn to buv, vour turn to drink: The Man of Mien now did indeed say, if not in an exact whisper, then in a voice low but clear, into Jack’s ear, “The word in question, Mr. Limekiller, is not jungle. It is jumby.” And added, Jack not having moved, his mind not having yet assimilated the correction, “Of course, as a Christian, sir, and after all, I am verger at St. Alfred;” St. Alfred was the Anglican Church, after of course the Cathedral; “so I can give no credence to such superstition. I merely define the terms…”

Jack now remembered him, and recollected his name. “Mr. Ethelred, you will have to define the terms more clearly,” he said. Jumby beads? Jumby side? — “side” in, the local sense of place or direction? — Do good for jumby? “Because I still don’t

Peter Pygore now said, and Limekiller could sense the effort he made to sound neither weary, scornful, nor patronizing, “ Jumby,’ John, is what in some other Caribbean places is called ‘Duppy.’”

Limekiller said, “Oh.” He had heard of that; that is, he had read about it. Back in Canada. One did not hear the word there, it was not a household word, exactly, like bath or chesterfield. “It’s a spook. sort of. you might say…”

“You might,” said Peter Pygore.

“You might,” said Verger Edward Ethelred. Added, “But I am an Anglican, and I do not believe in such things.”

“But what the funk does it mean, really?” Limekiller had, as it were en route, slipped the n into the word as a sop to Mr. Ethelred’s possible Anglican susceptibilities. “I mean

Pygore looked at him with tired, grey sunken eyes; eyes not made for such seas as these hereabouts. “It is said,” he gave the verb passive a gentle emphasis, “that duppy derives from ‘doppelganger,’ I believe…”

Another well-remembered voice; “Believe that, you’ll believe anything.” A finger swept up a bushy light-brown moustachio. A figure sat down.

“The matter immediately ceases to be mythological,” said Peter Pygore, immediately becoming slightly less weary-and-fain-would- lie-doon; “and becomes grammatical.”

“Hello, Professor,” said Limekiller. A professorial nod to him, to the verger, the umbrella was set in the corner; perhaps — it was trotted along, wet or dry — perhap, was Jack’s sudden enlivening thought, perhaps it contained a sword!

‘“The thing contained within the thing,’ or whatever the accepted gibberish is,” Peter said. “I had better rephrase it. Thus'. ‘I believe that it is said that the word “duppy” derives from the word “doppel- ganger Now what do you say?”

“I say I will accept it, put that way. But only,” Professor Brolly cautioned, “put that way.”

“How do you derive it, then?” — Peter Pygore

“Oh,” the professor leaned back his chair against the wall, “I really do not derive it. I believe. I believe. that it is almost certainly either an African or Amerindian word. And I would merely wish to point out the almost inevitable sequence and progression of the words duppy. jumby. zomby. ”

Pygore at once leaned forward, his face at once alive. “I. Had. Never. Thought. Of that.”

It was Professor Brolly’s turn to crow, and he took it. “I daresay not,” he said, equitably. “But I had.” It was a fairly mild crow.

Someone, the words and music of the immensely popular (God knows why) song Move Up Now, Jamaica (after all, this was not Jamaica and local enthusiasm for Jamaicans moving up, or, at any rate, across, into the Colony of British Hidalgo, was nil) blaring from a comer, now complained that the sound from the jukebox was “W’only sahft” — it was loud enough for Limekiller, who, pressed, would have declared his belief that it was loud enough for Moses. Peter, Paul, Silas. take your pick. and, certainly, loud enough for him. “Me pay me shilling,” the protest went on, “so why me no hear me music bet-tah?”

The proprietor demanded to be told what he could do. “I ask Electric Williams,” he said, “but he say he hahve to go fix light-switches, Government Hoess. So wThat I can do?”

The lover of loud music expressed his indifference if everyone in Government House went stone-blind before or after nightfall; but he had gone too far. “ Whattt? Governor not refuse de R’yal Consent, new tox on rum? Close you moet, mon!” Sir Joshua Cummings had not indeed precisely refused the Royal Assent to the proposed new tax on rum; he had merely said (in writing) that “past experience had shown that when such excise tax was increased beyond a certain level, the major effect was a proliferation of illicitly distilled spirits, with a loss rather than an increase of revenue to Government;” and had added his hope that the Legislature w'ould see fit to take this aspect of the matter into consideration; it had. For the time being.

The faded blue walls would not jump tonight.

Or would jump less.

Jump. the verb struck faint signals in Limekiller’s mind. But

— but, Haiti being a Roman country,” Mr. Ethelred Edwards continued something Limekiller had missed; “there is inevitable more superstition, I hope I May use the word without offense to anyone present he paused. briefly. but either there were no highly active members of Catholic Action at the table, or else Mr. Ethelred w;as simply too, well, big, he went on: “But as for such belief that a sorcerer, or, as I believe the Haitian word is, houngan,” for an Anglican, Mr. Ethelred’s accent was anyway remarkably good; “can raise a corpse from a grave-site consecrated to Christian burial and make himself master of such corpse and use him or her for a slave, and a very economical one because requiring no food: No sir! There is no such belief or tradition or superstition in this colony at-tahl!"

Pygore was weary again. “Good,” was his only, very faint, and perhaps only very faintly un-totally-convinced word on the subject.

Limekiller was just a while thoughtful. Then he asked, “Well, since there is no such superstition here, why are there, well, similar ones?”

Mr. Edwards said, “Well, you know, Mr. Limekiller, that this colony is not and it never was a sugar plantation colony — oh, we’ve had some such, and we have some such now, as a matter of fact: but not much. Not many. Ours has been a country with an economy based on forestry. And this has made. makes… an immense difference. I don’t wish to go into the economic difference it makes, I will leave that to the learned gentlemen from the United Kingdom and the United States. But you see, Mr. Limekiller. One cuts the sugar cane regularly. And when it has been cut, the land is bare. Well, to be sure, the ratoons are still there, the roots, as it were. But, and this is my point, in a cut-over sugar field, there is no place for anything to hide. And, or rather should I say, but? — in a forest there is every place to hide. Because we never cut our forests bare the way you have done in North America. We cut the mahogany, but for each mahogany tree cut there are a hundred other trees left standing. Rosew'ood: same thing. Logwood: same thing. Cedar: same thing. Even more commonplace wood such as pine, ‘emery, Santa Maria, sericoty: we cut selectively.”

“Wise of you — “

“Oh, it is not wisdom, it is — but again: beside the point. And what is the point?” Outside an automobile went by, very very noisily. Verger Edwards inclined his head. “That is the point. Have you not noticed how the people here walk all over the roads and streets despite the automobiles? As if there were no automobiles? So different from either the United States or the United Kingdom? It is not because the people here are stupid, Mr. Limekiller

“I never said they were."

“I know you never. But the reason is, you see, Mr. Limekiller, that, until very recently, there were no automobiles here! A fact, a fact, Mr. Limekiller! Do you know, sir, that when I was a boy — when / was a boy, there were only two motor vehicles in the entire colony? No: three. One was a truck, down in the Southern District, it had been shipped in from one of the Republics, and we never saw it here, because there were no roads, then, Mr. Limekiller! But here, here in King Town, there were only two automobiles. Only two! And one belonged to the Royal Governor! When I was a boy. and I am not yet forty years old, sir, not yet forty years old! In one generation we have moved. moved? we have jumped, leaped, been dragged, as it were, into the automobile age. There are now one thousand motor vehicles in this country, sir. One thousand!."

He paused to let this sink in. Jack felt it sinking. Then Verger Edwards went on, “We moved by boat, when, indeed, we did not move by foot or by horse or by mule. I can remember making a trip to visit my maternal uncle up in St. Michael’s of the Mountains, it was during the War, and it took two weeks to get there… by boat, by boat!. coming back, it took but one week, we had the current behind us.

“Go down the coast from north to south or come up the coast from south to north, do you see any coastal highway with endless lines of cars? No. We have no coastal highway; we still have three incorporated townships, sir, with which there is no communication by road whatsoever. and only one of them even has an airstrip. People move by water here, still, still, in this oh whatever is the year of the reign of our sovereign lady the Queen? Doesn’t matter.

“If I had to sum up in one word the thing which distinguished our small settlements here from settlements of the same size in North America or England or Scotland, the word I should choose, should have to choose, is isolation. And this means that not alone the bodies of the People there, or their houses, were isolated — sir. their minds were often isolated: And, God knows how very often how isolated their lives were. We now have a radio system. That helps. We have books, magazines, newspapers… we have visitors, tourists, capitalists. But I feel almost less than a patriot if I have to explain to you, no, I cannot explain to you, so I simply declare to vou: in some places we are still living in the nineteenth century.” '

“Yes, I

“No, Mr. Limekiller, you don ’t: In some places we are still living in the eighteenth centurv:”

“Well

“There is no „Well“ about it! Mr. Limekiller, in some places, we are still living in the seventeenth century.! Sounds which no one in your world has heard in living memory except perhaps in the farthest wilderness, almost everyone here has heard. The panther’s scream: (The ‘lion,’ we call it here.) The wild hogs in their hundreds, like a flight of aeroplanes, they sound! Everything that moves, walks, or crawls or… or whatever… in your forests have been recognized and classified a thousand over. Even the creatures which are extinct, in your country, you know what they were, and you have their skins and bones in your museums: But not here. There are still things alive and quick in the remoter parts of our own nation, and if they do not seem remote upon the map, try to reach them, try7 to reach them by way of a path too narrow' for a mule or along a stream wYhch has to be portaged every quarter of a miles you will realize very soon how remote; there are things living there which have not only never been classified, they have scarcely ever been seen!

“. sometimes their tracks have been seen. sometimes their dead and decomposed bodies have been seen. sometimes: not.

“— and so far I am speaking to you only of simple animals and reptiles and so on so forth: but there are other aspects of life than that. down here! Not five years ago — not five years ago, Mr. Limekiller, we had a report of a dying man in one of the back places in one of the Out-Districts, there was no Anglican priest there just then, so Father Swift went to bring the Sacrament and I went with him: it took us almost a week to get there and the man was already dead, he had been bitten, Mr. Limekiller, and he had been mauled, Mr. Limekiller, and things worse than that had been done to him, Mr. Limekiller: we could give him Christian burial, but we could not identify the nature of the teeth wrhich bit him nor the claws w'hich mauled him, and when w7e were shown the tracks of whatever it was which had done these things to him, we photographed them: and the photographs are still in one of the public offices: and they have never been identified: and even this, Mr. Limekiller, is merely, oh, do I dare say merely? — physical. And as for that which is perhaps not physical in any way we recognize in this our twentieth century of Christian knowledge.

“I tell you, Mr. Limekiller: where one lives, still, in the seventeenth century, seventeenth century things still happen. "

In how many different centuries did this small country live? — and in, nevertheless, one and the same time? Bigger than Rhode Island, the USA’s smallest State? Bigger than Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest Province? Yes. but, then, what wasn't? “No bigger than New Jersey,” it was said: and, “No bigger than Wales. Even Wales had its witches and New Jersey, its Jersey Devil, though.

But. something else had been said. And Bathsheba had said it. They had been on their way to a small stall kept by some old grandy-woman or other, who sold otherwise-almost-obsolete sweets: Roppadura, a form of the ancient brown-sugar-loaf, but moister, smaller, and more, well, lopsided, as it were: and, anyway, via the hands of Grandy Whatso- or Whosoever, flavored with ginger; she also sold catabru, a kind of archaic coconut candy — for Bathsheba had not only of a swift sudden developed a sweet tooth, she had developed one for the sweets of her childhood: Fry and Nestle and Hershey, go away: some other day, but not today.

He and Bathsheba, then, had been threading their way through a maze of lanes where, seemingly, she knew' everyone — and there happened also to be passing by, on the other side (like the Levite in the parable?) a man as thin as a stick; small and spare and of a reddish complexion, yet not ruddy: a White Creole? Maybe — she hid her face in her hand as they passed him, this man; he did not look at them; God knows that she did not look at him; what his name was Limekiller could not recollect, only that, as he wondered why she behaved thus, it came to his mind that -

— the man had passed on past the likelihood of hearing —

“He’s an obeah-man, isn’t he?” asked Jack, just then.

She made no answer. She trembled. Only so very, very slowly did she lower her protecting hand. My God, she is afraid of him — no: she is terrified of him! the thought came. What? Bathsheba? How calm and how sure she seemed in re all other things; how — suddenly — yet he had now to admit — there had been other and earlier hints — how utterly terrified of the uncanny and the supposedly diabolical. her very color had turned from its birth-right tan to something leaden and liverish.

His heart wrenched for her; he tried a religious approach; surely that would work: “Surely you don’t believe that a loving God would give such dreadful powers to any human being?” he asked, he thought, persuasively. Expecting that at once she would become restored; but -

“I do! I do!. - in a passion of conviction she had cried the words in a low and wavering voice; and again she hid her face in her hand; and she trembled. “Don’t talk about it,” she said.

Limekiller — did he love her? He often made love to her; therefore, say what you will, in a way he did love her — Limekiller sought swift and deep for some verse, scriptural or even merely literary, for instant quotation and comfort: woe that he had been raised in the mere afterglow of the once-fierce fires of the Churches of England and of Scotland; and could think of nothing, not one word more, than this:

The rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity.

— and what was that from? from Silas Marner, poor dear horsefaced “George Eliot,” Mary Anne something-or-other-who-gave-a- spit: utterly useless, now, as, seemingly, utterly true. Insofar as any comfort to Bathsheba w'as concerned. My greatgrandFather was Black and my grandMother was an Indian woman and my grandFather was an Englishman and if God had wanted me be born White I would have been born White: lam Bay folk. Well: every man hath his own madness; every woman as well; and one need not be Bayfolk to be afraid of and not comforted by the evidence of things not seen.

Though some — some? — many — claimed to have seen them.

Some Yankee had said to him, quite without hostility', laxly and idly even, “Canada is kind of nice but it, somehow, oh, it lacks sparkle;” and he had said, instantly, “It’s not flashy, if that’s what you mean…” And yet he knew it was in search of either flash or sparkle that he had left Canada (whose own 20th century, despite Sir Wilfred Laurier, had never yet come, was yet to come: never). And whenever, doom here, say on some day of boiling heat or torrents of rain, he felt in any w'ay homesick, he obliged himself to remember Canada at its own dimmest coldest starchiest dullest; the Monday smell of Sunday’s heavy greasy dinner in or on Prince Edward’s island; the old red brick farmhouse in the outlands of Kingston, Ontario, with the hundred year-old scrapbook of church news for light reading, and the unlovely chemical toilet (“Yes,” said Cousin Alix with great satisfaction, “it is so nice having it, and indoors, too.”); Sunday in Sudbury; the sullen even surly faces of every all who would answer no question not couched in French, or anyway Joual, simply turning away without even a denial of having any English. Canada too had heat and rain; Canada had snow as well. and snow. and snow. and snow. and.

It was safe enough sailing there, inside (and well inside) the Great Reef; like sailing in a giant bath; if coral was high enough to spring the boat, the boat would not much sink.

The Duckersons had brought along a pair of binoculars, they had not brought along two, but Jack by now realized well that, however other the couple might seem to him, they were nevertheless fairly solid and trustworthy and although he might not have cared, had he awakened with a case of clap, to trust its cure to Doctor’s adjustments of your subluxation of your third or any other vertebrar: still, they did not drop things. So he had taken out his much-be-loved and leather-bound spyglass. And lent it to them. While he tended the tiller, they allowed their vision, much magnified, to pick and play along the white and distant strand and the green walls of woods behind them. and, perhaps, for he did not attempt to calculate the angles of their viewing, perhaps also and now and then the Mountains of the Morning. these last obviously named by people who had lived on the other side of the said mountains: the Japanese after all had not themselves in Japan named their nation The Land of the Rising Sun: if you live in japan, the sun rises from the Pacific.

“What’s that, Daddv, over there bv those two trees?” Mrs. now enquired.

Somewhat marvelously, her husband knew exactly which two trees she meant, and at once; “It’s a man,” he said, “no it’s not no man.”

“I thought ut was a man, well, ut’s gone, now.”

Jack suggested it might have been a babboon; adding that, locally, this meant a howler-monkey. “But I thought they were noctoreal, John,” she said. John was so impressed by this combination of nocturnal and arboreal, so well worthy of Lewis Carroll, that he did not at once reply. Then he did (noting, also, that she had evidently, for all her to-him-funny speechwavs, done some homework on the local scene; and why not? showed good sense: She was not one of the tourists who asked, innocently, “How about we take a gander at the French and Dutch colonies whiles we’re down here?” and who had to be reminded that this was British Hidalgo, not British Guiana, and that, hence, there were no “French and Dutch colonies,” not for leagues and leagues. Sometimes the penny dropped at once; sometimes the maps had to be shown; sometimes people were very disappointed, God knows why.).

“There aren’t any regular settlements along this part of the coast, Mrs. - Ella. But even when there aren't, here or elsewhere, that doesn’t mean that nobody is ever around — hey, see that sting-ray?”

It lazed along right under the surface, it would not come and rub its back against the boat, neither did it display any alarm; maybe when you’re a sting-ray, you don’t have to; Question, Where does a 3,000-lb. gorilla sit, Answer, Anywhere it wants to (Second Joe Miller, XI, 6–7). The Duckersons conjointly exclaimed Well they Never! and of course they never, not in Cow Pat, Kansas, or Moose Mammaries, Manitoba; that was what they were paying for, wasn’t it? — to see things they had never seen before?

“Well usn’t that unteresting!” she took her last long look at the sting-rav, now lazily tarrying behind; turned back, binoculars in hands. “And what do they do, then, these people who might be over on the shore there, if there’s no regular settlements?”

Sometimes (he explained) they might be hunting game — he had to add game: the word “hunting,” alone, meant scouting out for mahogany trees — sometimes they actually might be scouting out for mahogany trees. although in a different way. “Sometimes the mahoganv logs break loose from the rafts or tugs. And they drift. they drift pretty far, sometimes. And the logging companies, well, anyway the main one, Tropical Hardwoods, they have their own boats, hm, probably only one boat I guess, which goes nosing up and down the coast looking for lost logs. And if someone else finds a log before the Company finds it, it’s usually not too hard to cut the Company’s mark off it. Then, well, maybe they sell the whole stick on the black market, you might call it, or maybe they cut it up and sell the planks or the parts, and maybe even, sometimes, thev make stuff out of it. And sell that."

The Duckersons nodded, neither slvlv amused nor shocked. “I guess then if that was one of them, why, no, he wouldn't be very interested to stick around in plain sight where we could see him. I wouldn’t even know how to make no report, but I guess Take No Chances might be the propriate motto.”

Rum Bogue Cave, a Limekiller property, had not delayed them for long en route, though Ella had said it was lovely. Its golden sands were really tan, what there w.ere of them, to wit: not much. It had a few coconut palms and a few hog-plums trees. Rum Bogue Cave was lovely; Ella was right. And when Ella said, simply, “Too bad one of those storms wrould sweep right across ut,” why, Ella was right about that, too.

Flower Bight had hills behind it, and from the hills, low hills though they were, gushed a number of springs, and formed Flower Creek; it was short and not navigable for far, but, small as Jack’s land was, it included both a piece of coast and a piece of creek: and he navigated it just far enough. A bird he had not learned the name of sang a soft, sweet, mournful song: briefly: was still. Here was the broad-leafed “wild banana,” and the wild papaya, with ant-riddled leaves: a grey-silver monkey with a black pate, dignified and rabbinical, made an appearance long enough for the visitors to observe and enjoy it: there, among the leaves.

“This piece of propittv has no buildings on it, I believe you said, John —” by and by, trees, monkeys, birds, or not -

For he, having tired anyway of both Limeskinner and Limekuller, had begged them to call him John; even at the price of having in turn to call them Ella and Ed. In his own mind they of course remained Mrs. and Doctor. “No,” he said, now; “not even a john. have to go a ways into the bush for that, better to use the boat’s head, though.” He always said this little spiel, some people being shy about the things that all people had to do not merely every day but, if healthv, several times a day. He did not add. Safer. He merely handed out the gum boots, and broke off a stick for each of them.

“Well, now, remember, Mommy, few you have to pick any flowers: snakes.” Mommy said she wasn’t likely to forget, but she put on her boots and took her stick, like a good one. Limekiller did not tell them that the chances of being fatally bitten by a snake here were very much less than being fatally struck by a car in their or any other home town: better they be over- than under-cautious.

Sometimes he really had to over-do this, particularly with some of the people called hippies, whose religious principles evidently forbade their wearing shoes, let alone boots, save under such duress.

No, no buildings here. There was a ramada —”

“A lean-to, is that?”

“Not quite: just a roof held up by four poles, keeps off the sun and, sometimes, the rain. - but it fell down. I’ll have to put it up again. sometime…”

Sometime, yes. Were he near any settlement, however small, he could have put it up in a couple of hours, on the old, the good old, barn-bee principle. Supply the materials, the tools, the rum, and up it would go! But. this far away. away from even a hamlet or a habited hut. he’d have to bring people here. And, so pay them. Of course he could do it himself, nothing to it, ahahahah. - Sometime.

“Wellll. ” Doctor, a.k.a. Ed, stretched his limbs, surveyed the scene, surveyed the soil. Finding this last covered with a blanket of bushery, he said, “Say, isn’t thatcher coleus plant growing all around?”

“Yes. Local name: Bleeding-heart.” Waited for them to say, How picturesque. To say, Those plants would cost plenty, back home. They said both. Next, Doctor poked and delved with his stick. “Hm. Seems like your nice, rich soil here would grow lots of real good corn and,” here he paused, adding, “and stuff.”

Mrs. Doctor’s agricultural vocabulary was not perhaps as rich as your soil, but it was richer than his; stuff, she quickly expanded into yams, sweet potatoes, cabbages, coffee, rice, sugar cane, sutrus- fruits, beans, vetchtable pears; yes: she had done some home-work. He nodded, she pounced. “Well, why don’t they, then?” she asked. He tried to explain the colony’s (very well, the Emerging Nation’s, then) lack of a really strong farming background. “For one thing, this was always a timber economy —”

„— and the Spaniards they were always coming and raiding the coast; yes. But, John, that was a long time ago. Why don’t they farm more, now? How come thee poor Government always has to import food. when they could grow it here, right here?”

A scented breeze blew down upon them, a breeze from scented Lebanon? well, not really. But scented all the same. Limekiller, seeing their noses wrinkle, said, “Bay. I mean, the kind that bay rum is made from.”

Another pounce. “Yes, and they import that, too. Why don’t they make it here.”

Time to be firm. “Well, Mrs. - Ella — because they don’t know how."

They could learn, couldn’t they? Yes… in theory. they could learn. what they would live on while they were learning, was of course something else. They could fish, yes. Hunt, yes. There was wild fruit and “other edible plants,” yes. “Those who aren’t used to the bush, though, Ella, well, somehow, they just don’t take even to living in it. Down here…”

Doctor Ed now spoke, and what he said was somewhat surprising. From Doctor Ed, that is. Perhaps he had heard something. “Some of them are afraid of living in the country — the bush, as they call it — is that it, John?” Limekiller must have nodded, or perhaps only his face showed it. “Well, what are they afraid of! Snakes? Animals?”

John Limekiller suddenly felt no reason to beat around the bush. “The White Creoles are afraid of spirits,” he said. “In other words, not the bottled kind. Spooks. They call them ‘spirits.’”

Ella said, promptly, “Dumpies and jubbies, the Colored Folks call them, isn’t that right, John? What? ‘Duppies and jumbies?’ My mistake!” She gave a sudden, honest laugh, not at the fears of the White Creoles or the Colored Folks: at her own mistake. Jack suddenly liked her a lot more.

“Well, the idear of your National Development being held up by what I hafta call ‘superstition’. well. Further words evidently failed Ed. He shook his head.

How it was Mrs., Ella’s, turn to surprise Jack. “Call it by any name you like,” she said; “my great-grandmother McRae, she came right off the boat from Scotland, and, do you know what, John? She had the second sight!” Dr. Ed grunted. It was not one of your large, loud, belligerent grunts; but it was audible; it did not disturb her. “‘Oh, I can see the spuruts of the living,’ is what she used to say; what she really meant of course was the dead; not that they were always dead, of course, just that she put it that way so’s not to scare people; and, as Daddy knows very perfectly well, Granny McRae, she was never approved wrong! — So don’t you talk to me about ‘super- stution,’ young man,” Ella wound up; and closed her mouth in a firm, straight line.

Limekiller was saved from having to defend himself from the charge; “Never knew the good lady myself,” said Daddy; “now, what is your asking price for this lovely piece of land, now, John? It is lovely, I don’t deny that, not trying to beatchew down, told m’wife I wouldn’t, ‘No, that’s not your way, and isn’t my way either,’ she said. Eh?”

Limekiller: “Well.

“Might as well ask, before we go into some in-depth explorations, they call it; course, can’t be expected to sign-seal-deliver right here and now: still."

One thousand dollars an acre was Limekiller’s price, not his “asking price,” his price. Nor would he care to sell less than the whole piece, although of course the buyer could do that himself, if he wished. (And, of course, if he wished to do that too much, he- the-buyer might soon find himself being asked if he had an estate broker’s license, or was registered as a land agent under the Act of 20th Victoria, cap. VI, or the other way round: or stuff)

Doctor Ed Duckerson nodded slowly, gravely, thoughtfully. It was not a totally outrageous price, he did not say that he would Think It Over, though of course he would not only think, he would talk it over. out loud. with, eventually, someone besides his wife. As why not? Inevitable as well as reasonable. Inevitably, if one hell of a lot less reasonably, someone to whom he would mention it would guffaw, express incredulity, question Limekiller’s being more than a mere rogue or scaped tom o’bedlam, wind up saying, “Doctor, I can get you five thousand acres. now mark and mind what I say, Doctor. five thousand acres. at fifty cents an acre. local currency.!”

And, unless this one were a mere rogue: he could!

Sooner or later, Dr. Ed, being no simon-pure fool, would find out that the five thousand acres were either all under water, or mostly mud-and-mangrove, unreachable by road, not on anything like a real river or creek navigable by any reasonable vessel. But the sound of LAND AT 50c PER ACRE would remain in his mind like a taste in his mouth. And poison the taste of Land At $1,000 an Acre.

Daddy was really not going to buy.

Johnny was not really wanting to sell.

Daddy would have had a real nice trip at a real cheap price.

Limekiller would have delayed pellagra, the patron, and the gaol, for another month or tw?o.

But the talk between them went on. And on. And on. Climate. Politics. Prices. Costs. The whole Caribbean Scene. And on. And

Doctor Ed said, “Well, now, a country the size ofjamaica, now' Ella and I w'ere, hev, Ella? Say, Ella? Mommy? Now', shucks. Where’s she got to?”

“Oh Christ I could kick myself. I hope she isn’t lost!”

The bird sang sorrowfully in the vine-clasped trees.

Something made a sudden tiny sound; something flashed. another flash. another tiny sound. something landed, exquisitely. perfectly… in a cupped leaf he barely had to stoop to reach… it must have fallen and struck a few other leaves on its wav down: down from where? For a second more he stayed his hand, looked up. The bird was darting down, saw his face, darted aw ay again, did neither wait nor pause. Something flashed in its beak: had it somehow eluded him, and — no.

In the hollow' of the leaf w'as still. whatever it had been a moment ago.

It was so tiny, so fragile-looking, his fingers seemed enormous as he shook it into his palm rather than try picking it up and loosing it: once on the forest floor he might never find it: what was it? A golden ring. A ring so tiny that it must have been made for the finger of, not alone a child, a small child. Either that: or it was faerie gold: and perhaps it was!

Perhaps, also, and this was likelier and perhaps at least as marvelous, it w'as of Amerindian workmanship. Not modern Amerindian; those descendants of the Chipchaks who had returned, after an absence of a thousand years to this land abandoned by their ancestors, they did not work in gold, they bought their gold already-wrought from jew'elers — non-national Spanish, moved also here from elsew'here — or from Turks — no matter. Ancient American Indian. Old Kingdom… or maybe even earlier than that. He gave one tiny moment more of thought to the tiny child whose tiny brown finger had w'orn the ring, oh, God, heartbreakingly long centuries before. He looked up.

The bird was gone, what kind of bird he could not even say: amid the stuff which legends are made on he forced himself to the stuff of known facts: jackdaws were noted for stealing glittery things; crows often did, and no doubt not they alone: somewhere, somewhere, somewhere nearly by, it seemed, the bird had found the ring: no: had found two, at least tw'o rings: one had dropped; one it still had. Begrudge not.

He grudged not. but what did it mean?

It meant that not a thousand miles away, probably not even a mile away, there was perhaps an Indian ruin, and, likelier than a mere perhaps, a cache of Indian treasure: his heart gave a leap, that was and his mind knew it was, a cliche but his heart did leap: And all the while the words repeated themselves in his mind from legal documents he himself had signed and seen been stamped, All Indian ruins and mines of gold or silver and/or precious stones remain the Property of Her Majesty the Queen, Her Heirs and Assignees… and words which he had not seen himself on any documents but knew to be part of the law of the land, and not of this one small land alone but of how' many larger lands across how many distant waters, Oceans divide us, and the wild waste of seas-, never mind: the old ancient British common law and Crown unite us: in this case particularly the Law of Treasure Trove, from French trouve, Found.

He had not yet found Ella: that was what he should be thinking of: and only that.

The ring however small and tiny and ancient of days, years, centuries, cycles if not of Cathay than of The Indies and The Lands Beyond, the ring in all legal probability belonged to The Crown, as though The Crown had not jewels enough already, would Her Majesty et God bless her cetera, begrudge him, who had not even grudged the bird the other ring, grudge him, John L Limekiller, this? — precious little she had to do with the ring, anymore than had her grandfather in the comically notorious Canadian case of the exMilitia member wrho having neglected to turn in his entire uniform found himself facing the charge of stealing one pair of woolen trousers the property of his Majesty King George V.

Limekiller at the moment could not stop to figure out the legal wrongs or rights of the matter, that could wait, what could not wrait, no not for anything, wras the probability that Buried Treasure likely lay so near to hand.

. and foot.

The thick ground covering lay behind him, he was for the most part beneath the shelter of the high bush “sticks,” trees, “the sticks” wrhich had given their odd old name even in North America to areas less wild than this: something else flashed: not gold: the small red deer the Bayfolk called “antelope;” and if bison were “buffalo,” why not? There was a trail, narrow perhaps too wide a wmrd for it, but wide enough for the antelope, and the other deer called simply deer, for the wild hogs in their (sometimes) sounders of hundreds, for the panthers called lions and the jaguars called tigers; many names had at first seemed turned around and strange to him -

A vast tree stood in his wav: a ceiba or silkv-tree: immense: the trail became two trails and branched around it, Limekiller, pausing- only to consider if it mattered which branch he took, nevertheless paused. Something moved. There was no beautiful birdsong now. Now and then something gave an ugly croak. Maybe a frog. Maybe not. Something moved. Another flash.

There was a break in the bush, a thinning of the foliage as well as the trees, and he could see it now, plainly; it was a yellowhead parrot, and, as local lore said that the yellowhead parrot was the aptest to learn speech, Limekiller might not have been surprised when the bird began to speak. If speak was indeed the word. It had been just doing bird things, preening and grooming and contemplating. Humboldt, a hundred and fifty years earlier, had told the terrible story of encountering up the Amazon a parrot kept by an Indian tribe; bootv from a raid on another Indian tribe. All those latter Indians had been wiped out (no, the Old World did not invent genocide; it merely invented Writing, and wrote its crimes down); the parrot Humboldt told of could and did speak. But no one could understand what it spoke. the language of the defeated Indians had been confined to that one small tribe, there in its own green heart of darkness, and that tribe and its culture and its traditions were extinct. and only some few phrases of its lost language survived. and survived on the grey tongue of a single bird.

But surely this was no human speech which turned Limekiller’s heated skin so cold, so suddenly. The voice, if “voice” it was, was like that of no living thing which Limekiller had ever heard… or ever heard of… it was a mutter, and a nightmare mutter at that.

And, as he knew that parrots have no nightmares, and that this bird was wide awake, he could only realize that the bird was and had to be imitating some living, speaking thing. thing?

Which might not even be very far off, either.

It was not far off at all.

It was here, in another moment only, it was there: on the trail; there: the trail’s other, farther branch.

Farther.

Thank God.

For this time there had been no flash: he simply saw it. It had not been there, it could not have been there, it could not be there now, as he melted against the side of the vast tree, no such thing could be, there was no such thing; he lay still asleep somewhere and if he only could force himself to, in a second he would be awake; he could not force himself to: it was the jumby. The jumby paused. It moved on a moment more; again it paused. He now heard it sniff. And mutter. His legs melted too, now, fortunately quite slowly, and so now, besides the silkv-tree, there was a shrub between him and it. It, with its head reminiscent of the Things in one of Goya’s madtime paintings: had Goya gone mad? Had Goya seen… it…?

Limekiller saw the head move, even as he shuddered at the sound of that sniff. and of the frightful mutter which the parrot had mimicked. “indescribable?” by no means — one would not wish it described too well. The jumby muttered and the jumby sniffed. What had it smelled? — what was it trying to smell? And the sudden sullen thought that it might be trying to smell him… his own body. arm-pits, rump-crack, crotch, and all his eternally odorous human body howevermuch washed. did him (John Limekiller was his body’s name) no good at all.

The head, so human if bestial, so bestial if human, so. something else as well. the head moved. The nostrils, if that was what they were, sank into the sunken snout… if that is what it was. or nose. had it been like that, so, or anything like so, in life… or was it the sunken snout of decay, of death, of.

If it were not smelling for him, for what was it smelling? it had been smelling for him. Could it smell him, then, he, himself, himself alone? or his sw eat, his glands, microdrops of his urine and traces remnant of his stool? could it even, now, and was it even now trying to, smell Bathsheba on him as well? the tobacco he sometimes smoked and that other herb he sometimes smoked? the Indians said the beasts of venery could smell not only tobacco but that other venery; hence perhaps why they burned copal-gum before beginning to spoor… no copal here, too late for that, too late for any and for all — could it smell Bathsheba on him as well? Iniquity, transgression, and sin. Bathsheba’s boughten perfume, God knows how cheap, but use it she would. smell her body. on his? and was he here and now to pay by the wrath of some god or some facet or the one One God, for any act of unhallowed copulation which had left its traces though at the latest two days old, or three, One God in Three, traces left upon and onto him like as letters of and in fire: could it smell his sperm? his rum? his -

Limekiller smelled it now, and, ah God that was something, how it smelled! But even as he crouched and tried to contain every single one of his body’s contents, he relished (of a sudden) the faint it was faint, but it was. oh! — notice of the jumby’s stench. more now, he relished it than the, if only in memory, so-called perfume, perfume unbought in bottles, of a woman’s flesh. not invariably such a sweet perfume (was his? his own fierce flesh, though since, yes, washed) and not always a purchased perfume; oh he relished this horrid, however-faint, odor more than the sweetest scent he had ever smelled: for he knew that if he could smell the jumbv, then the faint breeze came from the other side of the jumby: hence the jumby could not smell him.

Was he then or had he ever been a Roman Catholic he might have risk or not then crossed himself. Crouching in the alien bush he regretted every single regret he had ever had about Canada, would have buried himself forever in the freezv winter mantle of Our Lady of the Snows. and ah God how he would have given anything. anything?. almost anything. his testicles?. one testicle: at least… to be back there now, at its worst. what was its worst compared to here and now and this? He would face up to, and with penitence or joy, every life lost that day upon the Plains of Abraham: to be back there, there. and not here. here.

The jumby’s bestial head moved slightly toward Limekiller’s direction, he felt his left hand jerk slightly, saw some faint rictus (as he crouched behind the immense silkv-tree) move that horrid bias- phemy of a face, saw that face turn away with a jerk of its own.

The jumby moved slowly along the trail with that gait or walk not like that of anyone or anything which Limekiller had ever seen. It did not lurch, though almost; and neither did it shamble, and vet — Flow? no, of course not that smoothlv — Odd the wav its hands held halfway up the body and slowly moving up and down and away — It moved slowly along the trail and now and then he could see its legs and the mud-caked hairs on the immense muscles of them; were its eyes deep-sunken and dim, were they glazed or was that a trick of the light or had they a translucent membrane, or -

It had been moving.

It was not moving now.

Something was moving.

Something else.

Limekiller heard it before he saw it, an odd and, dragging sound, but. somehow. not one all that unnatural. and he smelled it, too, before he saw it, and it had a stench of rot on and above its mere animal rankness: yet, stinking though this was, it was (this) no such utterly alien stench as the jumbv’s: What?

It was a hog, a wild hog, he thought a young boar-hog, he could not say just then which of the two kinds, warry or peccary, it was; it had been badly torn about the hindquarters, perhaps by one of the great cats, perhaps by one of its own kind, and its wounds had festered: a marvel it was still alive, it stumbled and gave a squeal of pain; and whilst Limekiller had observed all this, in a second or two, not more, that same while the other creature had sunk down and crouched and now it leaped and the wounded swine gave a long and prolonged shriek like that of a very large rat when the right rough kind of cat or dog has it by the neck or throat: this ended so suddenly that he realized it had ended even while it still echoed. The ephialtes. " on-leap ers'. incubus. demon. nightmares, fevers, chills.

Still Limekiller crouched; flies settled in his sweat, ants made trek-tracks up his legs; he would stay and not move, never move, whilst the jumby growled and rottled and tore at its prey: the jumby did not do this.

Once, once only, it wrung its head half to one side — thus he saw the dead hog, torn, dangling from the dreadful jaws — some faint notion in his mind that some faint notice was in the jumby’s mind… of something behind and aside from it: some dim adumbration of which had caused the hideous head to turn: but which was either not important enough or perhaps somehow unpleasant enough. the jumby’s head turned again, with a sudden drip-spray of blood; the inhuman-human head slightly bowed beneath the weight of its kill. and even a young wild boar-hog being no lightweight: only slightly bowed. turned back and away and after a while it-the-jumby had failed from sight.

Still Limekiller stayed there, there, behind and beside the great silky-tree, like the shadow of a great rock in a dry land. Presently he bethought him that the jumby, as it had not eaten its kill then and there, was certainly taking it elsewhere: sundry scenes suggested them in his mind: the jumby hanging the hog-lych in a tree to (as it were) ripen: the jumby lodging or burying it in a cave for the same purpose: the jumby. ah, most horrible scene of all! the jumby carrying its kill away to feed its young!.. if it had young. and, if so, and however so, and whatever so or not so: the jumby had gone

and was not about to come again quite soon.

* * *

He had given thought to his choices: rise and flee as quickly as might be, and risk the sound of his flight reaching the small and malformed and more than merely animal-like ears of the abomination: take one’s time and make haste as slowly as possible, and as silently, and risk that, against all logic (logic! what had logic to do with what he had just seen?), the thing might yet return and leap upon him from behind.

Later, when, despite all efforts (I won’t think about it. I won’t think about it. I won’t think about it), he thought about it, he was not able to recall which had been his supposed chosen thought: perhaps neither; perhaps, in turn, both. He did remember thinking about something else — perhaps it was not after all, else —

Had poor Wee Willie Wiggins also, firstly, heard a parrot imitating those same nightmare sounds, allowing for bird-distortion; and, secondly, had he, cursed-by-birth and cursed-from-birth, Wee Willy Wiggins, heard/seen the jumby?… or perhaps the other way round? The order mattered not a bit: in either case, if so, was it any wonder that the lee mahn was fright for parrot?

No. No wonder. Not one bit.

Also he, John Limekiller, later remembered remembering something else as well.

. odd affliction, is it not so, Professor, suffering from nightmares in the day-time?. and, The ephialtes may attack at noon as well as midnight. Greek word. Literally? “On-leaperf… the demon. causes nightmares.

And he, Jack Limekiller, had asked himself, incredulous at this ancient confusion between cause and effect, “ Causes?”

And Rosita had said, and now he knew why Rosita had said. why Bathsheba, and oh Lord how many others had said, whenever some hint of it came up: No tahk aboet eet!

No. He would never talk about it. He would… if only he would. if only he could… he could.

Suddenly he was out of there. Out of the bush. In the clearing. There was his boat, safely moored. There his guests, safe aboard. Both of them.

They did not at first see him. They simply sat there calmly, and calmly talking to each other; now and then pointing with calm unhurried gestures, to something afar off: the mountain range’s nearest reach, perhaps. The faint white line of the Great Reef, perhaps. The lay of the land up or down the coast. perhaps.

So, if there was any real meaning to the advice Pull yourself together, he was able to take advantage of it. He seemed to feel that he was, literally, pulling himself together. First he pulled his shirt down… it had ridden up his belly and buck. Second, he pulled his underpants and trousers up; they had slid down, down. Then he pulled his bones and tendons and ligaments and, most of all, his thoughts and mind, those he pulled together, too. Then he went on.

“Well, John! We were almost worried about you, but I said, Nooo. John’s a nalmost native woodsman, so, no need ta worry bout him!”

And, ‘John, oh, I feel so a-shamed: I got jist so unturrested in some of those flowers? And, well. ”

The best and the worst of it was, they had not worried!

He could bring himself, at first, to say nothing. And, though they both babbled on cheerfully until he was aboard, once he was aboard: then they noticed. “Why, now, John, you don’t look a-tall well!” “Umm. No. You don’t look one bit well, John. Why, what -

Nothing like a good, simple truth in due season. “Touch of the fever,” he mumbled, coming to a slow halt, sinking down to rest. “Chills. ”

Doctor Ed, was, after all (licensed to practice down here or not), after all, Doctor Ed. “Well, we’ll take care of that,” he said, suddenly brisk, professional, and having the situation well in hand. For a moment, Limekiller, (echoing his ears the words of Professor Brolly:. The incubus. causes nightmares, fevers, chills, and.), thought that Doctor Ed was about to give him an adjustment of the subluxation of your third vertebrar; he did not know if he could either stand it, lie down for it, or resist it: nothing, of the sort: from somewhere, perhaps his small carry-all, perhaps his left ear, Dr. Duckerson produced tablets and capsules (chiropractic science has made marvelous strides, and can now polish you off, pharmaceutically, almost as well as establishmentarian medical science; only of course, neither one does that, always) — water — a cup or glass -

And the magic words, “Just take these, and you’ll be all right.”

Magic words.

By and by, Limekiller was all right.

For the most part. From time to time, though, on the way back — and they had not tarried long, no longer than it took him to raise anchor and sails — he did feel himself shaken by a spasm. Spasms. And, compared to what he had already felt and seen, what were mere spasms? Trifles. Trifles light as air. Ella urged him to put on a jacket. Ella had a small, a very small, but large enough, flask of Very Good Brandy. Ed (Doctor Ed) regretted aloud that it was impractical for John to leave the helm and lie down for a very thorough adjustment; Ed did, however, do various things to Jack’s back as he stayed crouching, over at the helm. Did they, could they, help? Could they hurt?

Life is mostly froth and bubble;

Two things stand like stone:

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.

“I’m fine, now,” he said. And said it over till they began to believe him. The ring.

What do with, about, the ring? Ring made at least a thousand years ago by the Old Kingdom Indians, perhaps, before they’d fled. And now he knew why they had fled!. maybe.

. only maybe not.

He could turn it over to Government, Honest John; Government, unaccustomed to such alien honesty, might be appreciative; faced with a hillock of paper-work, Government might not. He could give it to his girl. no. He no longer had a girl. Woman. Wife. Free-mate. Boiling the near-past down like the stinking tripes of a whale in a try-pot, he hadn’t any longer even a whore. He could give it to Mrs. Ella. Who deserved it, if only for the brandy. That, alas and however (here he took in two reefs of the mainsail, observed the nimbus of the setting sun behind the Mountains of the Morning), would involve him in probably infinite conversation, as the last woman able to accept a gift without many words. well, when did she die?

He could keep it, concealed, so very tiny it was, as long as he remained down here. But that might be forever. And each time he came across it, he would Remember. No.

He would slip it into the poor-box of whichever church he first encountered; tempted though he was by the thought of laying it upon the high altar. He would simply drop it in. No one would know. The church would, likely, probably, what else? sell it. And some old man or woman might be enabled to fulfill the ancient, willful (but how natural words) wmrds, Nay, but we would eat flesh. He gave one last and terrified shudder at the echo of these last two words, and the memories evoked.

But no one else noticed.

He brought the Duckersons to the very front of their hotel; no boats might long linger there, there being no lawful mooring: but no one would care if he tarried a few minutes… an hour. They were pleased. They were very pleased. Nothing like that had ever happened to them before, and likely never would (in Cow Pat, Kansas? in Buffalo Bong, Alberta?) likely, again. John had to come in with them. They didn’t remember when they’d had a nicer trip, John. Wouldn’t John like a drink? Wouldn’t John like to take a nice hot, well, warm, or even cold shower, in their hotel soot? Wouldn’t John like to have dunner with them?

Maybe the River View Hotel would never have made Duncan Hines or the Michelin three-star list: but it very certainly beat The New Shanghai, and/or any palace of Fry Chicken/Tin Soup/Hom Somwich delights.

They, then, he had not asked for anything in advance, paid him. In nice, crisp, countersigned Travellers Cheques. How pleased Mr. Ogilvy, of the Grand Dominion Bank, would be when Limekiller deposited them next day: wiping out his, Limekiller’s, overdraft. And almost at once, being of or rather as one flesh, their heads began to nod. Made excuses. Assured him again what a lovely trip they’d had (they). Said they would surely give a lot of thought to his offer. Which they would. But they wouldn’t buy. He would keep on taking visitors down there, but. No. He would not. Not there. And neither could he sell. Not now, that he knew.

Government might have it back again. Unless, in the meanwhile he would sell it, cheap, to his worst enemy. Whoever that might be. Not even to him. Her. Forget it.

The Duckersons had made their last farewells. What, then, next? By all sense, Limekiller should have been more than merely tired. He should have been wiped out. He should either go back to his boat, or — he had money now! — taken a hotel room; if not here, then, well, somewhere. But he was not tired. He did not desire to sleep. Was he afraid he might dream? He was by this time out on the street. The usual late night throngs passed up and down, haling each other, and, by now, him, too. His mind was trying to think of nothing.

He was in the Spyglass again. So was Professor Brolly. So was Colonel Pygore. Little seemed changed. Pygore was speaking. Brolly was listening. Limekiller was drinking.

“And I came upon something when I was in West Africa once,” Pygore said. murmured, rather. “Well…” a ghost of a smile care over his ghost of a face; “came upon many things there. very damned glad some of them never came upon me,” with his ghost of a chuckle.

“Oh, drop the other shoe, Pygore!”

“Yes. Well. An old Government order.” Suddenly becoming crisp in his delivery, as though quoting something: Pilgrimages into the District of So-and-So for the purpose of worshipping the fetish Zumbi, whether in the form of a tree, a juju-image, or an animal, is hereby forbidden under Schedule Such-and-such-a number, ofj well, whatever date,1 is hereby and until further notice-forbidden, because of the loss of lives resultant therefrom. “‘

A silence. Something stirred in Limekiller’s rum-numbed mind, and he pressed it still and quiet.

‘“The fetish Zumbi,’” repeated the Professor. “Never heard of it as a fetish… or an animal. and as for a tree, well, they say it hates the silky-tree. Hates and fears it. No one knows why. Anymore than one knows why it hates those berry beads. Perhaps they each — tree, beads — have a scent or odor it can’t stand… — But I never dreamed of it as a fetish or an animal —”

Pygore rubbed his tired grey eyes, formed, seemingly, to see (or seer?) on cooler, greyer seas than these. And 1 beneath a rougher Sea, / And whelmed in deeper Gulphs than he.. Said, “There are more things in West Africa, Brolly — and, for that matter, closer or farther than there — than are dreamed of. ”

Now it was the professor who murmured. “Zumbi,” he said. “Zomby. Duppy. and. There is a connection. Has to be.”

“All Hobson-Jobson, Brolly,” Pygore said. “One hears a word, or words, which one doesn’t know, one assimilates it to a word or words one does. So: can the natives in India be chanting Hassan! Hussein!.? No. What they’re chanting is, obviously, Hobson! Jobson! And, as wre’re talking Hobson-Jobson, let us talk about ‘duppy’

Now it was Limekiller who spoke. Somewhat to his own surprise. Though not much. Wanted, somehow, much, to say: Don’t talk about it. Prevented himself. Said, instead: “Barkeep: my round.” if you won’t accept ‘doppelganger’

“I won’t.”

„— what about dumby — with the b not silent?”

“Why should the b not be silent?”

Limekiller, silent, drank. And drank.

“Suppose one were attempting to pronounce the word and one’s native language was not English?”

Brolly said, “Suppose… is what you mean. the b was not silent, but the dumfy was?”

Not so damned silent, echoed. echoed? shrieked… in Limekiller’s inner ears.

“Zumbi, zomby. Mumbo-jumbo? Hobson-Jobson? Zumbi, jumby. Don’t talk about it! “Well. Let us make up another etymology. What about jumby, from jamby, from French jambe, from French jambe, leg. That is, the adjective would mean legged. Seem to recall. Morte Darthur? One with strong legs?”

A pause, but a brief one. “Not jumby: Jumpy! Because it jumps! It does jump! Oh God how it jumps!” On-leaper, midnight or midday; Limekiller’s leg twitched, his hand convulsed — his face -

“If, John Limekiller,” said “Pygore, in his tired, tired voice, “you must also jump, perhaps you could manage to spill your rum into my glass and not onto my sleeve. ” He at that moment looked up from his sleeve, their eyes met, and Pygore’s expression of mildest and almost bored concern turned (and very suddenly and very completely) into one of. something else.

Very lightly, very briefly, Pygore placed his hand on Limekiller’s shoulder.

Limekiller said nothing.

Pygore said nothing.

Pygore knew.