Limekiller!

BLOODY MAN

”Yes, Mr. Limekiller,” said old Archbishop Le Beau. Having acknowledged Jack’s self-introduction with politeness, he now returned to his task of scaling fish. Some were still on the block and some were in the basket and some were in the pot. A time there was (and a place) when archbishops moved before a train of state. But not this archbishop, in this time, in this place — to wit, Point Pleasaunce, in the sub-tropical colony of British Hidalgo.

“They tell me… Limekiller hesitated, briefly. Was it My Lord? Your Lordship? Or was it… it was, wasn’t it… Your Grace?

Some saints levitate. Some are telepathic. It was widely said and widely believed that William Constance Christian Le Beau was a saint. ‘Just Archbishop’ will do, Mr. Limekiller,” the old man said, without looking up. Scrip. scrap. scrip. Jack found himself looking covertly around. Perhaps for loaves.

“Ah. thank you, sir. Archbishop. they tell me that I might be able to pick up a charter for my boat. Moving building supplies, I understand. Down to Curasow Cove? For a bungalow you want built?”

Flop went the fish into the basket.

“Something of the sort, Mr. Limekiller. The bungalow is not for me, you know. I already have a bungalow. It is for my brother Poona.”

Jack blinked a bit at this, to him, Bomba-the-Jungle-Boy note. But it was soon cleared up. The retired Anglican Bishop of Poona, in India, had reached an age when he found English winters increasingly difficult. The Mediterranean, where retired British bishops had once been as thick as alewives, had for some long time been in the process of becoming too expensive for anyone who did not happen to own a fleet of oil-tankers. which, somehow, very few retired bishops did. And so this one had — perhaps after fasting, meditation, and prayer, perhaps on the spur of the moment — written to his ecclesiastical associate, the Most Reverend W.C.C. Le Beau, Archbishop emeritus (or whatever) of the Province of Central America and Darien — smallest Province in the Anglican Church — asking for advice.

“And I advised him to consider Curasow Cove. The climate is salubrious, the breeze seldom fails, the water is deep enough to — well, well, I don’t wish to sound like a land agent. Furthermore, English in one form or another is the language of the land. To be sure, Poona speaks Hindi and Gujerathi and a few others of the sort: precious lot of good that would do him in Sicily or Spain.” Scrip. scrop. flop!

It was desired to enable the retired Bishop to move into his new home before very long. (“Just let him get a roof over his head and a floor beneath his feet, and that will give him the chance to see if it serves him well enough for his taste. If it does, he can have his furniture, his Indian things and all the rest of it sent over. If not, well ‘The world is wondrous large, leagues and leagues from marge to marge.’”) Ordinarily, there were enough boats, Lord knows, and enough boatmen, at Point Pleasaunce, that lovely and aptly named little peninsula, to have moved material enough for several bungalows at a time.

But the present season was not an ordinary one.

Every serviceable vessel from the Point, as well as most of those available from other parts of the colony — those not already committed to the seasonal fisheries or to the movement of sand or fruit: and, in fact, so many, even, of those, that both commodities were soon likely to be in short supply — were busy plying between King Town and Plum Tree Creek. There was no road to speak of into the Plum Tree Creek country, one was in the building, but the Canadian-American corporation setting up the turpentine and resin plant at the headwaters of the creek, which thrust so deep into the piney woods that it might better perhaps have been called Pine Tree Creek — the corporation was of no mind to wait. Hence, a constant line of boats, some pure sail, some pure motor, some sail and auxiliary engine, moved along the coast carrying machinery, gasoline, fuel oil, timber, cement, metal-ware, food: and, empty, moved back up the coast for more.

As a non-National, Limekiller stood no chance of a crack at this lucrative commerce as long as any National-owned vessel was available. However, as a citizen of a Commonwealth country — to wit, Canada — he did stand some chance of a permit to take a charter for this other and infinitely smaller project. The greater the interest the archbishop might take in his doing so, the greater his chances of getting it. And well the archbishop knew it.

The kitchen, like every other country kitchen in the Out- Districts (which was any and every district save that of King Town, Urban), consisted of a wall in the yard behind the house in good weather, and underneath the house, in bad. Every house not a trash house stood on high legs to catch the breeze and baffle. or, anyway. slow down. the entry of the less desirable fauna. The archbishop scarcely had to stoop to peer into the cook-pot as he added to the fish some tinned milk, sliced vegetables, country herbs and peppers; though certainly he had once been tall. Whilst it was cooking, the old man without further word retired to the tiny chapel, its doors wide open, where he knelt before the altar. Limekiller did not join him, but others did: old (the very old), lame (the very lame), some partly, some altogether blind, and a few quite small children who, Limekiller thought, may have been orphans. There were an even dozen of them, besides the old priest himself. They were still there when Limekiller returned from a long walk.

With no more word than at the beginning, the old man got up, and, followed by his congregation, made ready to eat the supper: a gesture sufficed to invite the newcomer.

Afterward he wrote out and handed over a paper.

The Permanent Under-secretary

Honorable:

Pray help Mr. John Limekiller help me to help the Lord Bishop.

Yrs in Christ,

William C.A. Darien

„I trust that may do it,” said Archbishop Le Beau.

Jack thought it certainly would may. British Hidalgo was, and its people believed it was, and announced on every occasion that it was “a Christian country.” Limekiller rather thought the brief document would easily serve as neck-verse, should he commit manslaughter upon ten Turkish merchants.

But though the letter moved the Permanent Under-secretary to initial and stamp it with no more delay than it took him to do those two things and to murmur, “Certainly. Certainly. ” — lining up the supplies was another thing entirely.

Joe Jefferson, at the woodyard, said, “Well, Jock, as you come in the name of the Chorch, I won’t lahf in your face. Ahl I can do is to tell you, Impossible. We have twenty men in the bush now, cutting stick for us as fahst as can be cut. Even if you’d take it green, Jock, even if you’d take it green — no, mon, Jock. Me waiting list —”

“Pine Tree Creek?”

“Pine Tree Creek.”

And Velasquez, in his dusty warehouse at the wharf’s edge, did no more than shrug, shake his head, point. Where, usually, sacks of cement were piled almost to the ceiling, now only a scant score or so sat on the floor. “And the)' going out in the marning,” he said.

“Pine Tree Creek, I suppose.”

A deep nod. No more.

And Witherington, the White Jamaican at the hardware house, “I couldn’t give you a nail, b'y. fah me own cahfin! No corrugated iron! No pipe! No screw! Pine Tree Creek project wipe me clean, me b’y! I am waiting now for goods to come in from Kingston. And as soon as the ship comes in, you know where the goods going to go?”

“Let me guess, Mr. Witherington. Pine Tree Creek?”

Witherington’s answer was to throw up both arms and to cry, “Hallelujah!”

There hadn’t been such shortages in King Town since the War; on the other hand, there hadn’t been such prosperity since Prohibition had been repealed in the United States, bringing rum-running to an end.

However, puissant and powerful though Hector Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Sudbury, Ontario, was, there was evidently a thing or two which it didn’t know. Its compradors, flying back and forth between three countries, had assumed that the leading suppliers in a capital city, even a colonial capital city, even of a small colony, would be well-stocked with supply. Perhaps at one time this had been true. Perhaps even fifty years ago, when some of the ancient English and Scottish families had still been in business, it might have been true. But, one by one, the Depression had closed their doors. One by one they had closed up their old houses on the Foreshore, and vanished away. The declining trade in precious tropical woods — mahogany, rosewood, cedar — had shrunken the colonial purse. Levantine merchants (commonly called “Turks") had come in, and Chinese, too; Baymen had set up in business; and so had more than one or two with (to employ the American expression) “Spanish surnames.” The old order changeth — right? And, so, suddenly, did the old order of the weather.

In the whole of the nineteenth century, only two hurricanes had struck British Hidalgo. In the past thirty years, it had been struck by five. And after one’s stock had been washed away once. twice. three times. one feels a certain hesitancy in building it up again.

It might, indeed, it certainly would have been possible to have set up warehouses in the Out-District capital of St. Frances of the Mountains, thirty miles from the coast: and to have filled orders from there in less than a day. But no one did that. No one at all did that. Perhaps the idea of the cost of shipping goods sixty miles did not appeal. Perhaps. Ah, well. What was done, instead, was to keep on hand as small a stock as possible. And if an order for more than one had in stock was received, one of course took the order. took an advance against the full payment for the order. and then one ordered the balance of the order. From Jamaica, perhaps. From New Orleans. From Puerto Cortes, “in republican waters.” Even from London.

And when the “next few days” or “the next week or so” arrived, and no supply, what then? Well, for one thing, the customer could wait, he could bloody well wait, returning day after day to hear whatever imaginative account the local supplier chose to supply him with -

“Beeg strike in Leevah pool, sah.”

“Ahl de American ship transfer to Veet Nom, sah.”

“We cable Jahmaicah, sah. We waiting reply, sah.”

“Sah-mill break down, sah. Sending to Nicaragua fah new sah, sah.”

— not seldom the customer simply returned to wherever he had come from, never to come back — never, to his sorrow, having heard or assimilated the saying which even Cervantes had known: He who would carry the wealth of the Indies back with him, must carry the wealth of the Indies out with him.

And, in such cases, the goods ordered eventually arriving, there they were, making such a brave display as to assure the next customer that all was well.

The next customer, in this case, being the Hector Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Sudbury, Ont..

Hector had made agreements with every supplier in King Town, and had ignored every supplier in the rest of the country. Hector was being supplied, it was still being supplied, one large cargo ship could have carried off everything in every warehouse in King Town down to Pine Tree Creek. However, no large cargo ship could get closer to King Town than two miles off-shore, whence cargo was lightered in — transferred, that is, to motor-barge. And it was thus impossible for any large or even moderate-sized cargo ship to engage in the coastal trade. So Hector’s cargo came down little by little, but it came in such a steady procession that Hector had not realized what was coming next.

To whit, and for quite a while: nothing.

In the meanwhile, that was exactly what Jack Limekiller was able to aquire in King Town.

Nothing.

He came up with the notion that he might at any rate try and see if things might be any better in Port Caroline. He even had the very get-up-and-go notion that he would actually telephone Port Caroline. That is to say, Port Caroline not being a person, it could not itself be telephoned: but he would phone some of the leading merchants in that other Out-District capital.

Very little research sufficed to advise him that none of them had a telephone. Not one. Not a single one. Supposedly, if any of the leading businessmen in Port Caroline required to phone someone of an equal status in, say, King Town, he simply walked down the street to the Telephone Office, in an out-building adjacent to the Post Office, and phoned from there. Cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow, eh, Jack?

Well, there was the Royal Telegraphy. Her Majesty’s Government did not exactly go to much effort to advertise the fact that there was, but Limekiller had somehow found the fact out. The service was located in two bare rooms upstairs off an alley near the old Rice Mill Wharf, where an elderly gentleman wrote down in-coming messages in a truly beautiful Spencerian hand… or maybe it was Copperplate… or Chancery… or Volapuk. What the Hell. It was beautiful. It was, in fact, so beautiful that it seemed cavalier to complain that the elderly gentleman was exceedingly deaf, and that, perhaps in consequence, his messages did not always make the most perfect sense.

Gambling that the same conditions did not obtain at the Royal Telegraphy Office in Port Caroline, Limekiller sent off several wires, advising the Carolinian entrepreneurs what he wanted to buy, and that he was coming in person to buy it.

“How soon will these go off?” he asked the aged telegrapher.

“Yes, that is what I heard myself, sir. They say the estate is settle, sir. After ahl these years.” And he shook his head and he smiled a gentle smile of wonder.

Limekiller smiled back. What the Hell. What the Hell. What the Hell. He waved a goodbye and went downstairs. “The estate,” that was, of course, the Estate of Gerald Phillip Washburne, reputedly a millionaire in dollars, pounds, pesos, lempira, quetzales, and who knows what: the estate had been in litigation for decades, and, as regularly as the changes of the moon, it was reported settled. The case was like something out of Dickens. and so, for that matter, was the Royal Telegraphy Office.

Downstairs, suddenly, it all seemed futile. He leaned against the side of the building. Why not just say, The Hell With It: and go meekly back home and try for a nice, safe, low-paid, pensionable job with the Hudson’s Bay Company? He would only have to counterfeit a Scotch accent, and that suddenly seemed so much simpler than all this. This early evening breeze sprang up and blew a piece of the local newspaper against his legs. He reached down to detach it, picked it up, automatically glanced at it. WANTED [an advertisement read] One watch dog that gets vexed easily and barks and bites.

“I might apply for that job,” he said, to himself. Then he burst out laughing.

What the Hell?

The waters around Port Caroline were on the shallow side — in Baytalk, the dialect of the Bayfolk — “shoally.” A pier jutted out into deeper water about two miles from town, and here the packet-boats made their stops: the Hidalgo twice a week, the Miskitian once a week, and the Bayan according to Captain Cumberbatch's mind, pocket, or bowels. (“De sahlt wahtah bind me up, b’y,” he had observed to Jack.) Most of the Port’s own vessels preferred to put in at the mouth of Caroline Creek itself, which ran right through the middle of town. As there had been a bar building at the mouth of the creek for almost half a century, these vessels tended to be very shallow-draft vessels, indeed: even so, getting them across the bar was often a matter of tide, wind, and many willing bodies to heave and haul. It may not have been efficient. But it was companionable.

Limekiller had made the personal acquaintance of a rock just far enough from the pier to be free from mooring fees, and, with some degree of diligence, dropped his anchor at the proper angle to it. He didn’t bother with the skiff, and was wading ashore, his shirt up under his armpits and his trousers draped around his shoulders, when a voice cried, “Have you no shame, sir: wearing nothing but that. that tobacco pouch! — in the presence of Her Majesty’s proconsul?”

Jack knew that voice, called in its direction: “Unless an indictment for lese majeste is involved, Her Majesty’s proconsul can either wait till I’m ashore, or look somewhere else. Sir,” he added.

“Haw Haw!” was the answer of H.M. proconsul, videlicet the Royal Governor, Sir Joshua Cummings. The day had passed, perhaps fortunately, when colonial governors were appointed from the ranks of old generals who with lance and sabre had struck terror (or perhaps joy) into the hearts of contumacious Hill Tribesmen on distant Asian frontiers: Sir Joshua had been a sailor. No man-of- war larger than a gunboat, probably, could nowadays enter the shallow and coral-studded waters of the Inner Bay — but the Bayfolk, and, for that matter, the other Nationals of the Colony — had no interest in how well or how ill their governor might have manoeuvered a destroyer: they observed with great interest, however, how their governor managed sloop or schooner (or even skiff, dingy, or launch): their conclusion was, “Not bod, mon, you know. Not bod ah-tahl.” Stout, white-bearded, jovial, in his ceremonial white uniform, his white helmet with white plumes, Sir Joshua made a fine appearance at such occasions as the opening of the Legislative Council or the Court Sessions or the observance of the Sovereign’s birthday. The Bayfolk enjoyed seeing him at that. Nevertheless it was likely that they appreciated seeing him even more in his sea-faded khakies, at the tiller of his sailing-launch for the opening of the annual regatta — in which, of course, he did not compete.

Still, the Bayfolk, who numbered eighty percent of the people of the Colony, and who were for the most part Black, had mixed feelings about it all. On the one hand, they would have really preferred a governor who was Black; on the other hand, they had a feeling that a governor who was Black was not really a governor at all. And sooner or later these feelings would have to be resolved. But not just yet. Time, as we are incessantly reminded, does not stand still. But in the Colony of British Hidalgo it was still standing as near to still as anywhere.

“There. Now that you are decent once more, allow me to offer you a drop. lift, I believe they call it in North America. Thought I recognized your boat. Thought I’d just wait a bit for the pleasure of your company.” H.E. the Governor was in what the Bayfolk called “De Rival Jeep;" actually, it was a small Land Rover which flew a small Union Jack in place of a license plate. “And what brings you down to this friendly little port named after Old Snuffy? Eh? Oh. Didn’t know Queen Caroline took snuff? Course she did. Up to her ears in the stuff, silly old scow. Or was that Queen Charlotte? I can’t keep them straight. Eh?”

Jack knew that last eh? was not a reference to the queens of the House of Hanover, but a friendly reminder that a question had been asked and not answered. “I’m trying to locate building- supplies for a bungalow for the Bishop of Simla… I think.”

Sir Joshua, who had been driving on the left, now shifted to the right. On the back roads, one drove where the fewest pot-holes were. “Oh yes. Simla? No, no. Poona. Bishops, bishops, bishops, eh, Mr. Limekiller? There’s the regular bishop, the regular Anglican Bishop of Hidalgo; then there’s the RC Bishop of King Town; then of course there is dear old Archbishop Le Beau, quite a compliment for him to have picked us to settle amongst. And now this one. Thought I’d try it on our regular bishop, ‘What do you think of all these incoming episcopies?’ I asked. Thought I’d goad him into some expression of jealousy, then I’d taunt him with a lack of, oh, well, something, you know. All he said was, ‘The more the merrier.’ There you are, never can trust these parsons… Damnable stretch of road, remind me to make a note of it, drop a hint to the Ministry.”

Coconut walks lined the land side of the road. Sluggish and frothy waves slopped lazily along the beach. Overhead, though not very much overhead, brown pelicans languidly flopped through the heavy air. “And you, Sir Joshua? Are you out here investigating reports that someone has been poaching the Queen’s Deer?”

An animal far too large for a pig and far too small for a cow ambled out of the bush, narrowly avoided making a deodand of the Royal Jeep, ambled back. The chief function of the tapir, that odd, odd, animal, seemed to be to cause just exactly such hazards on the back roads. Jack was sure that he had heard Sir Joshua utter the words, “Bloody man,” at just the second the “mountain-cow” made its unsought epiphany. But he thought it best not to repeat the question. Perhaps the phrase was directed towards himself. Perhaps he had Presumed. Sir Joshua was a kindly older gentleman, Sir Joshua was being amiable in giving him a ride: Sir Joshua was, after all, he was the Royal Governor, and so -

“The damndest things, Jack, bring me out to the damndest places. It isn’t all cutting ribbons for new bridges and signing pardons, you know. Here I am, supposed to be trying my best to phase myself out, you know. and then, again and again, Government tries to phase me in. However. Mum’s the word — Wish it were the Queen’s Deer!”

If he had any small thoughts that perhaps arriving in the Royal Jeep might give a certain cachet, a position of advantage to his business here in town, the sight of every place of business closed for lunch-cum-siesta put an end to them. He thanked Sir Joshua, and left him to his reception at the local District Commissioner’s or Police Superintendent’s office — they were side by side in the one building. The next building was the Post Office: of course it, too, was closed. Much to his surprise, however, the door of the Telegraphy Office adjacent opened, and in the doorway appeared Mr. Horatio Estaban, the (local) Royal Telegrapher. “Mr. Limekiller, sir!”

“Hello, Mr. Estaban.”

“Mr. Limekiller, sir, as I am just now going home to take my luncheon. As I suppose you are heading for down-town. If you would oblige us by distributing these, if you wouldn’t mind, sir,” and he held out a number of envelopes.

“No, I wouldn’t mind,” Limekiller said, scanning the addresses, all of which were familiar to him. “But aren’t they all closed now?”

Mr. Estaban, already headed in the direction of his luncheon, said, over his shoulder, “They must open by and by, sir. - At your own leisure and convenience, Mr. Limekiller. Thank you so.”

The reason why the names and addresses on the telegram envelopes were all familiar to him was that they were all of the local suppliers to whom he had the day before sent telegrams.

And, in fact, as he very justly suspected, the envelopes contained the very telegrams which he had sent.

Shop after shop presented closed doors to him as he walked along the shore road beneath the jacaranda trees which had covered the sand with their purple blossoms. True: the establishment of Abdullah Ah Ko was open, that is, its door was open, but Abdullah Ah Ko himself was fast asleep in a chair set just far enough back out of the sun so that no one could enter without climbing right over him: and, anyway, industrious and estimable person that Abdullah Ah Ko was, his stock, ranging from black tobacco-leaf to plastic raincoats, contained nothing of any use in the way of building supplies.

One place of trade and commerce was open, wide open, anyway as wide open as its swinging doors allowed of: and that was The Fisherman Wharf, LICENSED TO SELL, etc., etc. Proprietor, and even now behind the bar of The Fisherman Wharf, was the justly-famous Lemuel Piggott, sole perpetuator of the grand tradition of the shandygaff. He acknowledged Jack’s entrance with a nod — the current volume of sound inside The Warf made this the most sensible method of communication — and reached down a tall, clean glass. From one cooler he got out a glistening black bottle of Tennant’s Milk Stout, from another he extracted a glistening green bottle of Excelsior Ginger Stout; he opened first one, then the other: then, with infinite dexterity, he poured them both simultaneously, one from each hand, into the one glass.

By this time Jack had bellied up to the bar. Piggott waited until the new customer had become the better by several gills of the lovely mixture before asking the traditional, “Hoew de day, mon?”

Limekiller had scarcely time to make the traditional reply of, “Bless God,” when the man at his right, addressing either nobody or everybody, continued — evidently — a discourse interupted by the last arrival’s arrival.

“An’ one day, me see some-teeng, mon, me see some-teeng hawreed. Me di see eet, mon. Me di see di bloody mon

“Hush up you mout’,” said Piggott.

But the other, a much older fellow, did not hear, perhaps, or did not care, perhaps. “Me di see di blood-dee mon. Me di see he, ah White-MON, ahl cot een pieces ahn ahl blood-dee. Wahn, two, t’ree, de pieces ahv heem dey ahl come togeddah. De mon stahn op befah me, mon. He stahn ahp befah me. Ahl bot wahn piece, mon. He no hahv wahn piece een he side, mon. He side gape, mon, gape w’open. Eet bleed, mon. Eet BLEED!”

And now other faces than the proprietor’s were turned to the narrator. “Hush up you mout, mon!” other voices said, gruff.

Brown man, glass of brown rum in his brown hand. Sweat on his face. Voice rising. “Ahn so me di know, mon. Me di know who eet ees, mon. Eet ees de blood-dee Cop-tain. Eet ees Cop-tain Blood!

Brown man spun around by another Brown man. Brown fist shaken in brown face. “Me say, ‘Hush you mouf, mon!’ Ah else, me gweyn mahsh eet shut fah you — you hyeah?” And a shove which spins the other almost off his balance, careening against the bar. But not spilling the drink. First man saying nothing. Shaking. Sweating.

Limekiller had seen the D.T.s before. Thank God, he had never had them yet. And did not plan to.

He suddenly became aware of a scientific fact: that no one who confined himself to shandygaff could possibly get the D.T.s. Calcium in the milk stout and essential oils in the ginger stout would prevent it. Probably prevent scurvy, too, as well as whidows, felons, proud flesh, catarrh, apoplexy, cachexy, and many another ailment of the eighteenth century.

Which seemed to be the century, at the latest, which he was now living in. Captain Blood, hey? Whoopee.

It was not yet time for the Port Caroline commercial establishment to resume its not-quite-incessant labors. It was time, therefore, for another shandygaff.

The place at his side was now taken up by someone else. Well, the bar was long, the bar was said to be made of rosewood and mahogany: and, if so, it must date from days when Port Caroline enjoyed more activity than Port Caroline did today and had done these forty (at least) years: before the Panama Disease destroyed the bananas and the banana trade. Before cutting without replanting had destroyed the timber trade. Before the building up of the sand bar at the mouth of the Caroline Creek put an end to the carrying- trade with the whole of the Great Central Valley. Before -

Ah well. Port Caroline Town was after all only one of the many places, all over the world, of which it could be said that it had a great future behind it.

Somebody was next to him at the bar. He felt, Limekiller felt, that the someone next to him at the bar was wanting to talk to him. He would have checked his new bar-neighbor out in the mirror, except that he was a facing a well-laid design several feet long by several feet tall of bottles, climbing the wedding-cake-like carven shelves. So, he could either snob it out by not turning to look, or he could risk the chance that the man next to him either did not really want to talk to him, or was maybe wanting to talk unpleasant talk to him: though this, to be sure, seldom happened: But the fact was: some people simply did not want to be looked at.

The matter was almost at once resolved. “Scuse me, sah, you doesn’t mind I ox you ah question?”

It was now permissible to turn and look. The same fisherman who had spin-dizzied the other fisherman. Not, however, seeming inclined to repeat it with Jack. “Fire away, friend,” saidj.

“What you t’ink, sah, ahv de Ahrahwock?”

A few years earlier, this question asked him in North America, Jack would have at once said, “The Arawack are extinct.” And, as far as North America is concerned, the Arawack are extinct. In Central America, however, not necessarily. Limekiller said, perhaps cautiously, but, certainly, truthfully, “Well, they have never bothered me. ”

This was perhaps not what the man meant. The Fisherman Wharf, Jack recollected, was not, after all, an Arawack bar, it was a Bayman bar. The Arawack for the most part lived farther south, in a string of tiny coastal hamlets, many of which, oddly enough, had Scotch names: Aberdeen, Inverclyde, Mull, and others.

The fisherman said, “Mon, what I mean to ox, dev Block like we, nah true, sah? Nah true, dey Block like we? Some of dem, dey blocker than some of we. Whv dev no like ahd eet dev Block like we? Suppose, sah, you say to dem, ‘What, you no Block? You not Nee-gro?’ You not know, sah, what dey ahnswer? ‘No sotch teeng,’ dey say. ‘Notteeng like dot. We Eendian,’ dey gwevn tell you. Dey not want fi speak Baytahk. Dey w’onlv want fi speak dey w’own lahnguage, sah, which dey not want teach noo-bod-dy. Ahnd wot de troot, sah? De troot ees, dey mustee.”

Jack didn’t know the word, his face showed it.

The fisherman, seeing that, explained. “‘Mustee,’ sah, what we cahl mustee, eet means, meex. Wheech ees to say, dey ahv meex race. Yes sah. Block men from Africa, lahng, lahng time w’ago, dey meexing wit’ de w’old Ahrawock Eendian een de West Eedies, sah. Dev loosing de African lahnguage, sah. Becahs, sah, dese w’old- time Africa men, sah, coming from many deeferent tribe, sah, no common tongue, sah: and meengling weet de Ahrawock Eendian, dey adop de Ahrawock tongue. De Eendian become Block, de Block becoming Eendian. Ahftah while, sah, mi-grat-mg from de West Eendies. Settling here, sah.”

Still cautious, Limekiller said, “Yes, I believe you are correct.” A curious people, the Black Arawack. A mystery people, sure enough, with their black skins and their Indian faces and their archaic and (save of course to themselves) their unknown language. Mysterious, but certainly harmless. Harmless, certainly — but different. Harmlessly different, but — still — different.

“Yes, sah,” the fisherman said. “Dey settle here, Enn Breeteesh Heedalgo. But sah. We settle here forst. ”

It had been a fairly faint and fairly forlorn hope which had broughtjack down to Port Caroline. As far as imported goods were concerned, merchants and suppliers there did not order from abroad: they ordered from King Town. There did not seem to be any more stock in their warehouses than in the capital (and only) citv: however. None of them had ever studied Business Administration at Harvard. Their ways of administering business would have flunked not only any test administered in North America, they would probably have failed any Mexican examination as well. But their wavs wrere their own wavs and thev knew their own country. knew, certainly, their own local District and their district’s wavs.

Wilbur Velasquez, Hardware and Ironmonger, does not depose, but says: Yes, Jock, I does hahv dot amoent ahv roofing metal [corrugated iron]. Yes, Jock, I weel sell eet to de bee-shup, sortainlv. Noew, Jock, de w’only problem: Hoew' we go-een get eet doewn from Mt. Maria?

Ascander Haddad, Dealer in Ground Victuals, Citrus Fruits, Cement: Well, Mr. Limekiller, as it is for the church, very well, Mr. Limekiller. I have three sack of cement, store at my farm at Mile 23. I have another sack in the shed at my other house at Bendy- Creek. Suppose you can find some way of bringing them down, you can have them at same price.

Gladstone Lionel Piggott, Lumber Contractor and Dealer in Wood, Timber, and Planks: Me b’v, I be delighted to help you. Motta ahv foct, ahlthough I do not hahv your requirement directly at hond, not here in Port, I hahv a pile ahv season timber exoctly cot fah your need. Some five year ago I dismontle sahmill doewn aht Bamboo P’int, but timber still pile ahp, ahnd nicely season by noew, you see.

It all made sense, it made, all of it, excellent sense. Wilbur Velasquez had moved the corrugated iron to Mt. Maria because, at the time he had moved it, people were roofing houses at Mt. Maria. The cultivators there were cultivators in a small way, they were of a thrifty disposition, they straightened nails as long as there were bent nails to straighten; and they bought sheets of corrugated iron as they had money to spare to buy them. One by one. Sheet by sheet. It would not have paid Wilbur to have moved the material sheet by sheet from Port Caroline, so he had moved it en masse, and erected a ramada to cover it. Since that time, however, there had been a decline in the price of bananas, and, as a result, no one now at Mt. Maria was buying corrugated iron. And, as Wilbur did not know who would want it next, or where, or how much — being (as he more than once point out) neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son — he had simply. and sensibly. left it where it was.

Ascander Haddad had cement in sack at his two properties because he sometimes required cement at his two properties. Moreover, his neighbors, did they require cement, and from time to time they did, would certainly find it more convenient to buy it by the bucket right there at Mile 23 or at Bendy Creek, rather than come down to Port for it. It was not news to Ascander that no fresh supply was coming soon from King Town, but that was no reason why he should have moved such supply as he had from right where it was.

And Gladdy Piggott, cousin to Lemuel, like every small lumberman in the colony, followed the age-old practice of moving the saw-mill — or, exactly, its machinery — from cut-over site to uncut-over site, every few years or so. His present machinery was standing idle back at St. Austin’s Range, because, for one, he had not felt like bidding for the most recently offered Government contract; and, for another, because most of his sawyers had moved on to Pine Tree Creek, formerly Plum Tree Creek. And, as for the cut timber left over at the old mill at Bamboo Point, why, that was safe enough there, it was even getting seasoned there. It was like money in the bank, there.

Paint, now. There was some paint of the sort wanted, in Port Caroline. Not enough. There was enough to make enough, though, at the Forestry Station in Warree Bush — where, no one knew why, more had arrived than had been ordered, last year: and had of course stayed there ever since. Why not? It was perfectly safe there. If someone were to require it. someday. well.

And so on. And so on.

Stepping out into the pre-dawn was like stepping into a clean, cool pool. Already, at that hour, people were about. grave, silent, polite. the baker setting the fires, the fisherman already- returning with their small catch. The sun climbed, very tentatively, to the edge of the horizon. For a moment, it hesitated. Then, all at once, two things happened. The national radio system, which had gone off the air at ten the night before, suddenly awoke into Sound. Radios were either dead silent or at full-shout. In one instant, every radio in Port Caroline, and in the greater Port Caroline Area, roared into life. And at the same moment, the sun, suddenly aware that there was nothing to oppose it, shot up from the sea and smote the land with a blast of heat.

Trucks began to roar and rattle along the rutted roads, past the bending coconut palms, past the golden-plum trees whose fruit was never suffered to become ripe, lest the worms get at it, crushing under their wheels the violet flowers of the jacarandas. But these were either Government trucks or else the trucks of the Citrus Company: it made no difference to them what supplies Jack Limekiller wanted. And as to the privately-owned trucks, well.

“Well, sah. Mile 23? Well, sah. Me nevah go pahss Mile Ten, sah. Pahss dot p’int, sah, not ee-nahf business warrant de treep, de time, de gahs, sah.”

Ascander Haddad, who had the two or three sacks of cement at his house there, made the trip daily. But he made it in the smallest motor vehicle in all of British Hidalgo: and he made it with his widowed sister, who acted as his secretary-treasurer, and who was the largest woman in all of British Hidalgo. There was not even room for a bag of corn-starch, let alone sacks of cement.

Mount Maria? People lived at Mt. Maria, they were not recluses, not hermits, they came to Port, didn’t they? They transported things back, didn’t they? Yes. Yes, they did. And they did it according to a twice-monthly schedule involving the Mt. Maria Bethlehem Church and the Mt. Maria Bethlehem Church Vehicle (it surely rated a capital letter, being always referred to as “De Vehicle”). However, attend: Firstly, the twice-monthly trip of The Vehicle had just occurred. Secondly, the or The Vehicle had gone back to St. Frances of the Mountain for its annual overhaul.

There were rumors of mules, of ox-carts, or of horse-drawn drays. People assured Limekiller that they had seen them. But, then, people assured Limekiller that they had seen Jesus, too.

And so, speaking of which

— Or, rather. Whom.

The Anglican Church in Port Caroline, a fortress — for the most part — of old-time Methodism, was very, very small, and very, very white. Father Nollekens, on the other hand, though also very, very small, was very, very black. He was not a native of the colony, he had been born in Barbados, and educated at Coddrington College, that ancient (and, incidentally, also Anglican) foundation there.

“Why, yes, Mr. Limekiller. I had word from His Grace that you might be around. You are having difficulties in gathering the building supplies for His Lordship’s bungalow.” These were not questions, they were statements. “Now suppose that you give me a list of the places which you will need to visit. And we will inform you.” Father Nollekens did not say of what they would inform him

“Well, thank you, Father. Let’s see, I will be. 1 will be. ”

Father Nollekens waves his small hand. “Oh, do not concern yourself, sir. We will find you.”

Jack waited until he was outside before he shrugged.

He was moodily loading up on the fish-tea and country peppers at the My Dream Restaurant, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Proprietors, when a heavy-set man whom he recognized as Peter Bennetson, the trucker, approached, and said, “You muss eat fahster, Mr. Limekiller, as we do has quite a journey to mehk.”

Jack blinked. “I thought you don’t go beyond Mile Ten.”

“Well, sah, tell de truf, seldom does I do so. But when Fahder Nollekens mehk requess, muss obey.” Bennetson smiled. Limekiller left a tiny tip, paid for his meal, followed Peter out the door. The truck was enormous, it was not the same one at all which the man had been driving the last time. Had Jack underestimated the powers of the Church of England? “You’re an Anglican, then —?”

Bennetson was polite, but he was firm. He was a Catholic, a Roman Catholic. But he was also a member of the local Lodge of the Wise Men of Wales: not only was Rev. Fr. Nollekens also one, but he was also one of the Grand Chaplains of the Grand Lodge of the Wise Men of Wales, an organization not previously known to Jack — and perhaps equally unknown to Wales. “Yes, sah. When ah bruddah ahsk, ahl we uddah bruddah muss obey.”

It took the whole day, but they got it all, ever)' last bit of it. even the seasoned timber from Bamboo Point, which was connected to the known world only by what was termed, on the official map, a “Truck Pass” — a term not having anything to do with motor vehicles at all, as many a foreigner had learned the hard way — a truck pass, in Hidalgo, was a trail passable by ox-drawn wagons, of which one or two were rumored to survive, still, in the remoter regions. In the five years since this trail had last been used by anything larger than an iguana, it had been considerably overgrown. and, in Hidalgo, overgrowth grew over very, very rapidly. But it all yielded. Sometimes, more easily than others. Fortunately there were three of them; somewhere along the way, on or about Mile 20, they had picked up what would in North America be called a hitchhiker: here, there was not a name: one simply “hailed” a passing vehicle with a wig-wag motion, the car (or truck) either stopped or didn’t; and it was customary for the hailer to ask, at the conclusion, “How much I have for you?” It was customary for the driver to tell him. Limekiller never learned the young man’s name — he thought of him as Mile 20 — but the young man was a not-so-easy-rider and evidently thought the labor he helped put in was worth the free trip… to say nothing of the time. but perhaps, without this lift (“or drop”) he might have stood back at the milepost all the long, hot day.

The sun was declining behind the green mountain, if not the green sea, when they made their last trip through Port Caroline on route to the pier. Limekiller suggested that they stop at The Fisherman Wharf for a cool drink. No protests were received. Inside the bar-room, its massive arches made in a style of masonry no longer practiced locally (and perhaps nowhere else), a polite degree of polite interest was shown in their day’s work and its purpose.

“Eendiahn fof-shup going lo-cate een Curasow Cove.”

“Very good teeng, mon. Very good teeng.”

“Me weesh he ahlready dere noew!”

This sentiment, innocuous to Limekiller, seemed freighted with more meaning than was universally welcome; and the man who announced it was several times invited to hush his mouth: and did so.

“Say, that reminds me,” Limekiller said, looking up. Many eyes looked at him, waiting politely to hear what he had been reminded of. “I’ll need a crew. Say, two men? To help me? There’s no pier down there. Help me unload, and so on.” There was a slow silence. “Anybody interested?”

Suddenly, no one was looking at him. Much interest was for some reason developed in looking at the large picture of the Oueen, whose Royal simper Jack had long found insufferable — until visits into republican waters and their ports, and exposure to the prominently display photographs of, instead, sundry scowling generals with fat chests covered by medals, had gradually made Her Majesty, simper and all, look very, very good and innocent in contrast. “Two good men? Usual wages, and all found?”

No takers. Many men closely examining the labels on the bottles behind the bar as though they had never seen them before. To be sure there was much of interest to label-fanciers, particularly rum bottle label fanciers: but. still.

Jack turned to the man at his right. “How about you?”

“Well sah. I like to oblige you. But I muss go to Walker Caye for fetch coconut.” The man to Jack’s left would equally have liked to oblige him, but had to honor a standing agreement to go dive for crayfish. A number of the bar’s patrons simply did not hear the question, and, in fact, a number of them simply left the bar. Peter Bennetson tugged at Jack’s sleeve. “Best we be getting on, noew, Jock.”

Jack, well aware of the smell of rotten apples, agreed, but he could not resist pausing to ask the tallest man present, as he passed him, “What about you?”

This time there was neither politeness nor excuse. The tall man glared at him, growled, “You teenk I om cra-zy?” And he turned his back, deliberately, with a toss of his head, and an ugly mutter.

Back in the truck, bumpetty-bump-bump along the shore road, Jack asked the trucker, “Now, what was all that about?”

‘“Deed, sah, I doesn’t know. I suspec’ ahl de men tired frahm lahng day work. Tomorrow you weel doubtless find some crew.”

Limekiller turned to the silent young man beside him in the cab of the truck. Mile 20 was still gamely earning his way. “Well, how about you, then?”

The lad’s voice was low, but it was in no way indistinct.

“No, sah!”

Skippy the Cat, the first mate of the Saccharissa, announced over the water between boat and dock that several Barbary corsairs had tried to take the sloop for a prize, but had been repelled with immense loss of life.

Limekiller, also tired from the long day’s work, slept later than usual. As always, before leaving from the day, he set out food and water for Skippy, a semi-domestic white short-hair, who had lost most of his tail in an encounter with forces unknown, before first meeting Jack. Who, on departing, cautioned him as always, “Keep the ship, now.” And the first mate answered, as always, that there was powder and shot a-plenty in the lockers.

This time there was no Royal Jeep waiting at the shore end of the pier, so Limekiller, re-assuming the most of his clothing which he had shucked for the splashing walk ashore, simply picked up his feet and walked. It was barely two miles to the center of Port Caroline Town, a point which he, somewhat arbitrarily, designated as the corner on which The Fisherman Wharf was located. The coconut walks (“walks,” here, meaning groves) ended rather abruptly where the shore road became a path across an immense field in which a long-ago cleric had pastured his horses: it was still called The Padre’s Paddock, but was now used for football, baseball, and cricket. Usually swarms of boys were engaged at play, but this morning: not one. The point where the shore road emerged again as a singularity was marked by a small obelisk topped by an even smaller bust of Queen Victoria.

“Mornin, Ma’am,” Jack said, tossing off a sketchy salute. “I am pleased every' time I see you, that no one has drawn a moustache on you.” And, indeed, no one had: but along the left flank of the obelisk someone had scrawled a pair of intwined hearts and the legend Dendry Love Betty. “We are very slightly amused,” said Oueen Victoria.

Would she have been amused to have seen the crowd in front of Government Buildings near the center of town? Probably only in the archiac meaning of the word, as “amazed.” Certainly, Jack was amazed. There may have been only a hundred, or a few more, men in the crowd, but for Port Caroline, and on a weekday which was not a holiday, it was an immense throng. Sure enough, the Land Rover of Governor Sir Joshua was there, and, as Jack, standing only slightly on his toes, peered over the heads of those in the street, he caught a glimpse of Sir Joshua. He was with Mr. Simeon Edwards, the soft-spoken Black man who was Superintendent of the Central Police District: both were talking to what was perhaps a delegation of the men outside.

“What’s up, friend,” Jack asked a man on the outskirts of the crowd.

“Mon, de Ahrawock di tekh ahp we feesh-eeng groend! Ahn we no gwevn stond fah eeet!”

This statement was confirmed and extended by others. Black Arawak fishing-vessels, moving up from the southern waters of the colony, had occupied the traditional in-shore fishing-grounds of the Port Caroline Bayfolk: and it was to protest this violation of ancient custom that the Caroline fishermen were gathered here before the habitation of authority, to wit, Government Buildings. Another peep inside showed the broad face and shoulders of the District Commissioner. D.C. Esequiel Bosco was a man of the utmost integrity'. He was also a member of the Black Arawak people.

Limekiller thought it discreet at this point to ask no more questions, but several of the Baymen around him thought it in no way- indiscreet to supply him with at least some answers to questions unasked. And these, collectively, were approximately thus:

“Suppose dev [the Black Arawak] stay doewn Sote. Suppose we Bayfolk stay ahp Nart. Dees only lee’ beet country, but beeg enough fah bote ahv we. Beeg enough fah bote ahv we, eef we each stays in we w’own place. Even de Bay hahv feesh enough fah feed bote ahv we. But w’onlv juss enough. Noew, what de arrangement? De arrangement, sah, de w’old custom fah hondred year aht leas’, we Bayfolk, us feesh Nart ahv Pelican P’int, sah, ahn de Ahrawock, dey feesh Sote ahv Pelican P’int. Ahn de bess place fah cotch feesh fah we, eet ees hahfwav between Pelican P’int narteast t’ards de Scotchmon Caves. Een fact, eet ees so good een yield feesh, we cahl eet De Garden, sah. We torms eet De Garden Groend.

“— Now, sah. Suppose we sees wahn Ahrahwock hahv he boat dere. We not say nut-teeng. Suppose we sees two Ahrahwock: hahv dey boat dere. May be we grumble lee’ beet. But sah. But sah. Consider. Consider. De whole Ahrahwock fleet, sah, ahs you might say, ees feesh-eeng dere. Feesh-eeng een oe-ah groend. Well sah. Dey dere forst, we fine dem dere dees marneeng when we arrive. Dey stay' dere. What we do, we no cotch nah-teeng becahs dey ahlready cotch eet ahl? Hoew we feed we pickney, sah? Hoew we fine meelk? Bread? Rice ahn bean? Sah, ahl-ways ah struggle, sah: but de Laard provide feesh fah we —”

And, indeed, the waters of the Inner Bay did not exactly teem. “Give us this day our daily fish” would have been a reasonable form of prayer: each day there was just so much fish at any given spot. And when that just so much was gone, there wasn’t anymore. Not that day.

“Ahn hoew we pay we rent, sah?”

As Limekiller had no answer, he ought to have done no more than shake his head, sympathetically. But he did not think of this. And, entirely without thinking, entirely automaticallv, he said, “Well. '

It just happened that one of those twenty-minutes-after-the-hour, angel-is-flying-overhead, sort of pauses, occurred just then. And so his “Well. ”, delivered in an ordinary tone of voice, sounded forth in a manner more declarative. It reached the ears, even, of those inside the front office, who looked up and out. At which, those outside, seized by what Mackay has somewhat prolixly called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, decided, for one, that though Limekiller was outside, he ought to be inside — and, two, that although he was not a Bayman (not, indeed, a professional fisherman, not even a National of the Colony), he was certainly a boatman: and perhaps also made aware that he was, certainly, White, and, perhaps, since White men were few in Port Caroline and there was no Poor White class there at all -

“Go een, Mr. Limekiller, go een, do, sah, do!”

“Tell, dem, Jock, go een ahn tell dem, mon!”

Exactly what he was to tell them was not specified, but they began to push him forward, they pushed him all the way to the very verge of the office, where he did catch hold of the wall-corner — to the Governor, whose face at the moment was not indicative of any great degree of welcome, he said, protestingly, “Sorry, Sir, I have really no idea what this —”

To which Sir Joshua, in voice between grunting and growling, replied, “Well, for God’s sake, boy, don’t keep on tottering there, like a virgin at a whorehouse door: Get in!“

Limekiller released his hold, and was propelled inside of the gates of authority. The crowd sent up a cheer. They had at any rate accomplished somehing.

Sir Joshua sighed. He had been sighing at intervals. “You ask why, if the Arawak are occupying the northern, or, anyway, the north-central fishing-grounds, why don’t the Baymen simply go and occupy the southern fishery? Well, they say it’s too far. they say it isn’t theirs. that it’s inconvenient. that they are not familiar with it.

“And all of this is true, you know. Mind you, they are not under oath. They are telling the truth, but they’re not telling the whole truth. ” Sir Joshua, however, showed no immediate disposition to tell the whole truth, either, and let that aspect of it drop.

Superintendent Edwards asked, softly, “This. this old agreement, which the people speak of, now —”

“Well,” said Sir Joshua, “yes, I do believe that there was some sort of agreement about a division of the coastal waters as far as fishing was concerned. Some sort of treaty, you might call it. I believe my father mentioned it to me, once. He was born here, you know. As to the documents, the records, well. Documents just don’t have a way of lasting long in this country’s climate. It is just the opposite of Egypt, you know — Copies of the records? Why, they would be in London, I suppose. If they survived the War. I have cabled an enquiry, but you must remember that this is part of what was once a vast Empire and the accumulation of records was also vast. Why, even if they’d begun with microfilm and electronic computers and all of that the day they’d been invented, it would still take a hundred years — at least — to get it all, er, ah, mm, arranged. that way. I say the documents must be in London, a figure of speech, they might as likely be in an otherwise empty old coal-mine in Wales or a semi-disused guildhall in the Midlands or an unoccupied castle in the Hebrides. confound it! in an occupied castle in the Hebrides! Superintendent, you have no idea what went on over there during the Evacuations. We may never get it all back together again. ”

The very clear thought came to Jack that a more immediate problem was getting it all back together right then and there. Unless it was like Humpty-Dumpty. There was an obvious question and he addressed it to the obvious person.

“But why, District Commissioner, are the Arawak moving their fishing north. and, well, perhaps a better way of putting it would be — Why have they stopped fishing in their old waters in the south?”

Mr. Bosco looked at him with those indescribable, yet unmistakable Arawak eyes. At first he only said, “Ahhh. ” And then he said, “It is because they are afraid of the Jack O’Lantern.”

Limekiller knew at once that he must not laugh, but the effort not to laugh showed. D.C. Bosco said, without resentment, but without embarrassment, “You North Americans, Mr. Limekiller, you think that because yrou give this name to a carven pumpkin with a candle inside of it, that this is all it means. I do assure you, quite solemnly, that it is not so. Down here in these waters and on these coasts, sir,Jack O’Lantem is taken as serious asjack Ketch.”

Limekiller’s mind ran away with sudden, odd, grisly notions. Jack Ketch was the hangman’s name… or nick-name. neck- name?Jack O’Lantern, Jack O’Lantern, I know you of old / You’ve robbed my poor pockets / Of silver and gold /. No, that was Jack O’Diamonds. He did now, though, he knew that he did know. And so he did. Up from the middle-depths of his mind, bending a bit, perhaps, on the wa\r up — “That’s the lantern of the ship that isn’t there, isn’t it? I mean, you see lights and you expect the ship, but no ship comes? I mean, oh, it’s St. Elmo’s fire, or something. isn’t it. the Will o’ the Whisp?

“You mean, D.C., that the Arawak are as afraid of an optical illusion as though —”

No sooner had he said it than he was aware that even St. Elmo’s Fire was no optical illusion; he remembered Byron’s. marshes' meteor-lamp, creeping onward, through the damp. ” He was prepared for reproof. He w: as not prepared for what he heard next.

“The Arawak do not — That is, you see, Mr. Limekiller: Jack O’Lantern, this is the Bavfolks' name for it. The Arawak do not in their own speech call it that.”

Limekiller gave his head a faint shake. “They don’t. The don't? Oh. Well, uh, what do they call it, then? If not Jack O’Lantern?”

“Call it, Jacques Hollander, Mr. Limekiller.”

Mr. Limekiller stared. Something seemed to hit him, hard, on the inside of his head Jack O’Lantern. Jacques Hollander. Jack Hollander. “Oh my God!” he said. “So that’s it. The Flying Dutchman.!”

But, after all, that was not it.

Not by any means.

Emerging from Government Buildings, Limekiller told the men outside — truthfully — that the Government had cabled London about the matter. They were not naive enough to believe that this would mean an immediate end to their immediate problem. But. still. the fact that London had been cabled. Lon-don. that showed that at any rate the matter was being regarded as important. “Something must be done,” an ex-King had once said. Well. something had been done. Not very much, maybe. But something.

Not enough, however, to make anyone any the more willing to consider shipping south with Jack Limekiller.

Still, when he got back to pier and boat, he found that the entire cargo had been laden aboard.

He had not expected that, and, on reflection, he considered that it was maybe more than he had any right to expect, at that.

Limekiller was certainly not afraid of any Flying Dutchman or Jack O’Lantern, no. But he had his own fears. He did not advertise them, but he knew what he had. Limekiller was an acrophobe. He was, in common speech, afraid of heights. He would not, he could not, have climbed to the top of his own mast to save himself from being hanged from it. So he could, now, well understand how men who were afraid of neither gunfire nor hurricane could all but (in old John Aubrey’s blunt phrase) beshit their breeches at the thought of facing this spectre of the sea.

“Me go near he?" the last one asked had said. - And no need, anymore, to say how „he’ was. “ Whattt? ME go near HE? No, mon, no. No bloody fear me go near he. What me fear, mon, me bloody fear he go near me!"

Limekiller understood.

And, also, he understood that, somehow, somehow, he was going to have to undertake the task of bringing his cargo down and, somehow, getting it ashore, all by his lone.

All that he knew about Curasow Cove, really, was that the curasow was a large bird which roosted in trees and was regarded as good hunting. The shore showed on the map as dry, and not “drowned,” land; and the water was free from coral-heads. The map did not show how deep the Cove was; of course, the deeper it was near shore, the easier his task would be. The map was fairly new, it was far from perfect, but it was the only completely new map of the colony and its waters that there was. Witness that it was new: no seemingly solid mass was shown off the north-east shore and labelled Anne of Denmark Island. What showed there instead was the mass of shoals and shallows and mangrove “bluffs” (i.e. bogs) and here and there an islet: which was what really was there: as Limekiller well knew, having been there himself. But every other map, without one single exception which he knew of, showed the same fictitious and seemingly-solid Anne of Denmark Island. Perhaps there had really at one time been such an island of that size and shape, it might have been broken up. half-drowned. eaten away… by hurricanes. This had happened to more than one cove.

As to when the original map, or chart, from which all the others (except this newest one) had copied… or been copied from copies of copies. as to when that one had been made, or made by whom: Limekiller had no idea. Captain Cook, maybe.

He had a good enough wind to take him out. Port Caroline was soon enough merely a white blur with red spots marking its roofs. He passed Bamboo Creek and The Nose and Warree Bight; past Warree Bight he had to put in closer to shore to avoid coral-heads. The beach was the highway down around here, with paths — not visible from his distance — leading back to the numerous “plantations” in the bush. Anyone expecting anything resembling anything from Gone with the Wind — white columns and all that — in the way of a plantation, well. Hereabouts the word retained its simple and original meaning: it was a place where things were planted.

In other words, a farm.

Almost without exception the farms were small, from an acre to three. None of them would have ever been plowed. It was the hut and hoe culture, as it had obtained among the American Indians, as it had obtained among the West Africans. Moving down the coast by wind and current, Limekiller could see the ever-present procession along the beach: mostly women in bright dresses, walking stately and proud: a stance which may have had something to do with social personality, but which certainly had much to do with their carrying almost everything balanced upon their heads. Babies, no: babies were carried on the hip. Everything else went by head: bundles of yams, sticks of firewood, a basket of fruit — even an axe.

All this was as expected, what was not as expected was the incoming mist. Mists were not unknown but mists were not common. The last one Jack had seen had been, exactly, on the Night before Christmas. It was not night now and it was nowhere near Christmas. Be all of which as it may, love laughs at locksmiths and the weather often laughs at the weatherman, and there was a mist on the waters and coming towards him from the south; that is, just then, against both the wind and the current — of course, there could be a different wind and current down there. however far awav “down there” was… in which case he wanted to know about it. Being a one-man crew, he had no log to toss astern for reckoning his speed, he did that by guess and by God.

So, now, he turned his face shorewards to get a better guess as to how fast he might be going: the shore was bare of a single human figure. Where, a moment ago — surely, only a moment ago? — there had been twenty to forty figures strolling on the strand, now his eyes saw not a single one. Not one, not even one. It was as though they had been been swallowed up by the sand. Which was of course impossible. It was of course possible that they had all been bound for one destination, some local equivalent, perhaps, of a barnraising or a husking-bee. maybe one of the jollifications locally called “funs”. and had all turned up one and the same path. Possible.

If so, however, he had been day-dreaming and had lost track of time. He returned his attentions to the mist.

And the mists parted, in part, and he saw the man in the longboat.

The man in the longboat was bent over, Limekiller could not see his face, only the arch of his back under his white shirt. He might have been searching for something at the bottom, or doing something else — somehow, his position suggested strain — could the man be sick? According to ancient and local maritime custom, Limekiller ought to have had a conch-shell next to his free hand, ought, also, to have had a distinctive conch-call all his own. ought to have known what call to sound upon this oldest of sea- horns to signify, Are you in trouble? — or, simply, Get the Hell out of my way! As, however, he had no conch and the whole custom was almost in complete abeyance, he merely shouted, “Longboat ahoy!”

It worked. The man looked up. The two vessels were getting closer now. He could see now that the man was not wearing a white shirt. The man was not wearing any shirt at all, the man’s face and throat were reddened, tanned, by sun and wind, but his body was the white of a White man who does not usually go shirtless. The man in the longboat started to raise one hand — the other seemed, although Limekiller could not be sure, seemed to be pressed to his side — they were not close enough for Jack to be sure of that, or sure of another notion he had, that the man had no clothes on at all — Hell, yes! — the fellow was sick! — Sick or injured. what a look of pain and agony upon that face!

“Hold on, hold on! I’ll throw you a line! I’ll

He was not sure what else he was about to offer. He saw the man raise his other hand, streaming with blood — The mists closed in as though a curtain had been pulled across. Jack swung the tiller sharply. Surely to God he would not want to run down a boat with a wounded man in her! The man might not be able to swim, and even though one wras always being assured that sharks w^ere seldom to be seen in close to shore around here, still. He did not run the boat down. He did not see anything of it. He called into the mist for the fellow-' to give him a hail so he could put about for him — There was no answer. The mists showed nothing, then the mist was all around him, and, oh, God! What piercing cold!

It could onlv have been a matter of seconds. He had sailed through the mists. He was shivering, shivering, trembling, under the hot sun. Never mind any of that, had to find that fellow, find his boat. He put his helm around.

There was no mist.

There was no boat.

Curasow Cove was deep. It was not the Mindanao Deep, to be sure. It was deep enough for the Saccharissa to come right up to shore. In fact, Limekiller was able to moor her to a palm tree. He w^as in several ways grateful for this; for one thing, he had not relished the notion that he might have to do Robinson Crusoe stunts and float elements of the cargo ashore. The timber, for example. To say nothing of many, many trips of the skiff for to fetch the nonfloatable items: nails, paint, corrugated iron, and such. Fortunately, Curasow Cove was deep enough so that he didn’t even get his feet wet, unloading. It was so deep, Limekiller mused, bethinking himself not to trip with the anchor-chain round either ankle, it was deep enough for Full Fathom Five’s father to be lying there, now, his bones turned to coral and his eyes to pearls.

The curve made in the shore by the water was paralleled, a bit back, by another curve made in the bush by absence of bush. Either a difference in the soil, or some recent “cleaning” of the land, or what. like the tonsure of a Celtic monk, the ground curved gently back against the trees. not far away. never far away, trees, in those latitudes… a sort of lawn, covered with heartshaped green leaves containing, measure for measure inside, a red- heart-shaped design. These were locally called Bleeding Heart, and they looked mighty dignified and worthy of a bishop to wait him with.

There was deep water, so. A bit back in the bush was a stream, so: it trickled into the Bav — not much of a stream, but betokening a spring. The King Town Municipal Water Service did not after all extend its pipelines dowm this far; neither did the distilled-water man and his garrafones interest the Nationals. So the bishop was in luck in a few several ways. Limekiller got his back into his work and imagined the place as it would look, with standard coconut palms along the shore, just for fancy (as well as for nuts). a bit back, perhaps behind the bungalow, would be dwarf cocounts: more convenient for a man of retired years, who could scarcely be expected to shinny up a tree whenever he wanted some fruit.

Jack had piled quite a bit of cargo well above high water-mark, and was sweating heartily. He thought of how' nicely a cold beer would go down about now, and happily it was that he remembered having let one down upon a string into the deep, deep waters of the Cove: the surface was warmed by the sun, but the depths.

He took hold of the string and, suddenly, he was on his knees, in a shaking spasm of chill which racked his whole body.

“Why, Mr. Limekiller,” the medical officer had said, some w'hile back, when he was asked, “yes, I can prescribe you an antimalarial drug, but I advise against it. You see, malaria has been almost stamped out here, and, even if you should get it, we can fix you up in a few days — whereas, should you get bad reactions or side-effects from the medicine itself, it might take months.

So here he was, miles and miles from any human being, and it had to be here and now that he suddenly came dowm with it.

He was on his knees, head bent, and he was looking down into the greeny depths of the cove, a few feet away. Something was down there, something manlike and wdiite. Something which slow', now, began to rise towards the surface, slowly turning as it did so. It was the body of the man in the mist, the man in the longboat: he had fallen overboard, he had drowned, and his body had drifted ashore. here.

The drowned face turned his way and looked at him — or appeared to — and the drowned face. But wait, but wait! Do the faces of men who have drowned change expression before one’s very eyes? Do drowned bodies clutch one side with one hand? Do the faces of drowned men suddenly change as though their mouths were open and screaming, down way below the water? And, most horrid of all: do drow’ned men bleed.?

By and by somebody hailed him. He had been half-sitting, halflying against the pile of planks. “Mr. Limekiller! I di recognize you boat, sah. Teenk me come ashore, ahsk hoew' de day — Eh, Mr. Jock. You sick, mon? Sick?”

“Think I just had an attack of malaria,’’Jack mumbled. The chill was gone, the fever hadn’t come. He just felt very, very bad. Who was this, now, with the familiar voice. He peered out of his halfclosed eyes.

“Eh, Jock, me gweyn fetch you some-teeng good!. Bide a bit!” As though there were anywhere for Limekiller to stray off to! In a minute the man was back. Harlow the Hunter, that was who he was. In his hand he had a bottle with a bunch of. “Ah! right, noew, Jock, dis naught but rum with country verba steep een eet. Suppose you tehk some. Ah lee’ swallow. Eh?”

Whatever kind of country herb the twigs were, they had given a bitter taste to the rum: but that was okay. Anything was okay. He w'asn’t alone now:. He took a sip. He took another sip. He put the bottle down, and thanked the man for it.

Harlow looked in his eyes. “Very odd, Jock. You wyes not yellow ah-tahl! Cahn’t be malaria. No sah. Muss be some-teeng else.” Limekiller felt he could let the diagnosis wait. “What are you doing down around here, Harlow? I thought all the Baymen south of King Town w'ere ferrying stuff to Pine Tree Creek… or else holed up in Port Caroline.”

Harlow looked puzzled. “Mon, I no care for keep no ferry schedule. Hahv w: ahn lee’ cave oet in de Welshmahn C’yes, I juss be oet dere husking coconut, mehbe wahn week, mon. Ahnd what you mean, ‘hole up in Port Caroline’? What you mean, mon?”

Jack took another dram of the infusion. “I mean, oh, you know. God. The Jack O’Lantern. The, the Flying Dutchman —” But Harlow at once shook his head, vigorously. Negatively. The Colony of British Hidalgo was small. And its population was small. It was, nevertheless, a place with diversity: the little room of infinite riches, in a way. Even its folklore was not of one piece of fabric.

“What you mean, Flying Dutchmon, mon? What you mean, Jock, Flying Dutch-mon? Ees no such teeng, Jock. No, mon, e’s no such teeng. Eet ees ah Eng-leesh-mon! Eet ees Coptain Blood, mon! Ahn he ahl wayrs hahv een he’s hahnd ah mahp, mon. Ah chart, mon. Becahs he seeking someteeng, mon, Jock. But what he seek, mon, he cahn nev-ah fine! He seeking salvation, mon. He glahry in hees chart, mon. But what say de Laard? De Laard say, ‘Lef heem who weel glahry, lef heem glahry een dees: Dot I am de Laard who mehk Heaven ahn Ort, mon.’”

There was, of course, no drowned body in the Cove.

Nor anywhere else to be seen.

As long as Harlow had no idea of Jack’s particular reason for talking about it, he talked about it a lot, all the while insisting that Limekiller sit still while he himself stacked and stashed. “Ah, Jock, me nevah hear of no Coptain Blood who steal de Kingjewels frahm London Tow-ah, like you say. Ahn ahs fah de cinema, mon, dot feelm, weet Errol Fleen! Why, dey hahv de fox ahl rahng, mon. Ahl rahng. Why, me di lahf aht de feelm!”

A faint scent of something sweet came on the breeze. Spice- seed, perhaps. Limekiller felt a good deal better already. “What were the facts, then, Harlow?”

“Why, de fox, Jock: Foct ees, de bloody cop-tain he di sail under a corse, true, fah true. He corsed, ahl right. You know dot? Ahl right. But you no di know why God corse heem, why de Laard God fi corse heem. Fi why? Becahs, mon, he lef dem heeden teenk he God mon. Dem heeden sovvage, dey di teenk he God, mon: ahn he lef dem teenk so. Dis wah de nature ahv hees seen, mon. De Laard say — nah true, Jock? Nah true? — 'Dow sholt hahv no oddah God befah ME,’ mon. So he DOM, mon. De Cop-tain Blood, de Bloody Mon, de DOM, mahn, teel ahl etornity. Een de lahs day, he weel fine forgeevness. He weel fine morcy. not teel den. Not teel den. Teel den, Jock, he muss sail de Seven Sea, mon, wid he side ahl tarn w’open, wid he side ahl bleed-deeng. Becahs he deny hees Laard, mon, ond so he muss bare de same wound mon, becahs —”

Limekiller said, remembering, “But the Captain’s wound was a larger one than that. It’s larger than the wound of a spear-thrust.”

Harlow had two planks on his shoulders. He stood absolutely still for a moment. Then he said, “Hoew you know dees, Jock, mon?”

Jack said, “Because I’ve seen him. Once, yesterday, at sea. And once, today. Right here. I mean. ” He pointed towards the shore, “right there.

Harlow set down his planks. Slowlv. Slowly. Bv accident or by design, the shadows took the form of a cross. And then he did something which seemed to Limekiller, then and thenafter, to be — considering — a very brave thing.

He sat down next to Limekiller, and he put his arm around him.

Very well. They had been mistaken, up there at Port Caroline. It was not the Jack O’Lantern, who sailed at night. It was instead Bloody Man, Captain Blood, who sailed by day. Who sailed by dav, appearing from time to time, often in his longboat, sometimes walking the sand, sometimes merely standing at the water’s edge: but always, alwavs, with his hand pressed to his side and his face a face of pain and agony. Always, that is, except when he took his hand away. And showed his bloody, gaping wound.

If these visitations, these apparitions, followed anything resembling a regular schedule, then Harlow the Hunter did not know of it. He did know, however… or, anyway, he had anyway heard it said, that at any given season of his re-appearance, he show'ed up, first, in the south. and then, slowly headed north.

First, in the south. This would explain both why the Black Arawak had so suddenly, and so unlike them, abandoned their traditional fishing-grounds in the south: and headed north. And why the Baymen would not, why they really, really, would not, consider shifting themselves to the southern fishery. “Slowly heading north. ” Well, one such show, and the north-central fishing-grounds were going to be emptied, too. For sure.

How long had this all been going on? Harlow had no dates, as such. But he had at least something like a date. The Bloody Captain, Bloody Man, Captain Blood, had been appearing since about the time, he said, “When we di fight de ’Painiard oet by St. Saviour C’ve.”

For hundreds of years the Great Barrier Reef had served to protect this obscure corner of Central America from the otherwise all-conquering Spaniards. In theory, at least, by logic, certainly, the Spaniards must have realized that something, Something must lie the other side of the great Reef. something other than “Chaos and the void.” But, with so much else to concern them, savage and perhaps not-so-savage empires teeming with gold, hills of almost solid silver, shires and shires of well-tended arable land: whv should they have concerned themselves over-much with the question of, Something lost beyond the reef.?

Besides. The English knew the only channels through the reef.

And the Spaniards didn’t.

But, of course, they had tried to find it.

They got as far as St. Saviour's Cave, once. In those days, St. Saviour’s Cave was co-capital with King Town. There had been a battle there. Or, there had not. National historians were divided on the point. Legend, however, legend said that there had been a battle there. And the date assigned to this battle, legendary or otherwise, was sometime in the 1790s.

There was nothing, or almost nothing, nowadays, on St. Saviour’s Cave. Time and the sea and the savage winds had torn at it. It had once been a green and lovely isle, with stately houses, with taverns, a church, a graveyard. Now it was perhaps a third of its former size. Sand dunes covered it. Heaps of ruined coral lav- decomposing, stinking. Here and there a piece of a long-dead tree lay, roots up. Sometimes the rare antiquarian might discover a slab of marble, carven long ago in London, with a funerary inscription on it. And that was it. That was all. That was St. Saviour’s Cave.

If, however, Bloody Man had headed there before.

“Well,” Limekiller said. “It is the Church which sent me here

“Yes, mon. Yes, Jock.”

“And so I am going to lay the whole matter right in the arms, or the lap, maybe, of the Church. Right, Harlow?”

“Well, sah. ”

“What do you think?”

Harlow was small and Black and thin and strong as wire-rope. He nodded his head, slowly, slowly. “No bet-tah place, me teenk, b’y. Een fock, me b’y: No oddah place. ”

The Archbishop said: “It has been one of my sorrows that I’ve not found the way of being of more service to the Arawak people, Mr. Limekiller. To be sure, they are not quick to give their confidence, as a rule, to outsiders. Perhaps one shouldn’t wonder, considering their history. Still. Still. Perhaps it is because I am not White enough. Or, again, perhaps it is because I am not Black enough. It is the pity of history that such things should matter.”

Archbishop Le Beau was, in fact, what the Bavfolk called “clear,” meaning in terms already beginning to sound archaic in North America, a light Coloured person. He was, in fact, almost exactly the color of an old papyrus.

And he said: “Well, Mr. Limekiller, you are not the first to tell me this story. But you are the first to tell it me in the present tense and in regard to so near a point in time and space. We do have a duty. In regard, of course, to the people of this coast who are so stricken with fear. And also. and not, I believe, not less, to this poor, wretched wanderer. I must go out there. Even a few years ago, even five years ago, I should have gone out alone. I cannot do so now, I must have help. Would you be afraid to go with me? To help this wraith, and to give him the rest which he has been so long seeking? I am not. But then, of course, sir, I am old. I am very, very old. ”

For a moment, during which no one else said one word, the aged priest seemed deep in meditation. Then he said, “There have always been those who clearly believed that any souls which have fallen from Grace — as this one’s clearly has — are irremediably damned, and that ‘their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. ’ But I am not one of those. Others say, that such a soul is, becomes, more or less automatically the captive of the Fallen Ones, about whom perhaps the least said, the better; for they are not likely to submit to having Grace restored to him. They may fight, you know, my sons. They might fight back, for they have had him in bondage a long, long time: they might fight back. And as to what weapons they may use. who dares consider?”

He made a gesture. Somewhat, he straightened his age-bent body. Then he looked up and around.

Jack was not happy at the notion. Not at all, not at all. And neither was Father Nollekens, whom they had found at Point Pleasaunce when they arrived. Feast of all was Harlow happy. But it was Harlow who spoke first.

“May-be, Your Grace, we tehk alaang wan rifle?”

‘“Not by might and not by valor, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ Besides, of what use? You would surely not suggest anything like a silver bullet? This is not an enemy, this is a soul in torment.” Harlow said no more.

The archbishop continued. “I am a Christian man, and so I do gird myself in the armor of Christ.” He held out his hand to a small, black case. “There are the sacraments. I never go very far without them. It is my viaticum, my victuals for the journey. One never can know when, or even how, it may be needed.”

Limekiller said suddenly, “You think it will protect you — us! Maybe it will —”

The old man looked at him with something which was not entirely approval and which was certainly less than reproach. “Another citation from Scripture, sir. ‘Let not him who putteth on his armor boast as him who taketh of it off.’”

There was in all this a certain Something which Limekiller did not understand. But Father Nollekens did, or thought he did.

“But, sir,” he said, leaning forward, “But Your Grace, there is no provision for this!”

“Well, then the Lord will provide.”

“But, yes, but Your Grace: it has no precedent.”

“Neither had the Resurrection.”

The small Black priest clearly felt he was not winning, but he tried once more. “Ah, but Your Grace — Have you no fear of the discipline of the Church?”

The archbishop looked at him, and stroked his white, white beard. “My dear boy — Forgive me. My dear Father. When one is eighty years old and a retired archbishop in a Church which never had an Inquisition and which has no pope, one may answer your question very easily: No.”

He gave the same answer to the next question, which was Jack Limekiller’s. “Do you think, Archbishop, that he. that it. that the person we’re talking about. may be heading for St. Saviour’s Caye?”

“Certainly his destination of desire is the Holy Saviour, but not, I think, that Caye. No.”

The night breeze blew through the windows of the small house, which, blessedly, were screened. The Bayfolk commonly had the habit of turning up their gasoline lamps to full power, thus producing a great amount of both light and heat, and then closing the solid wooden shutters of their un-screened windows in order to keep out the “flies” which the light attracted; as for the heat of the lamps, well, that made the nights no hotter than the days. Screens cost monev, true: and when they had the money to buy the screens, they didn’t. They had other things on their priority lists. The room was simply furnished, and, which pleased Jack also, nothing in it was made of plastic.

“Where, then, do you think he’s bound for?”

The saintly old man said, softly. “Where would a dead man be bound for, in these waters? Whv, sir, for Dead Man’s Cave.”

Jack broke the silence, and it seemed his own silence, it seemed the others were satisfied enough by that answer. “But. Archbishop. isn’t Dead Man’s Cave a myth?” They shook their heads at this, all three. “It’s not? I always thought. ” To be sure, he had given no systematic thought at all for it. He had heard the words, had thought them figurative. Did a drunken fisherman insist on setting off a state of drunkenness, be sure someone would say, perhaps with a sigh, perhaps with a scorn, “Mon, he gweyn no — place but Dead Mon C’ye!”

And, although he was aware enough that he had slipped out of the allegedly logical time-stream of the post-mid-twentieth century and into some odd and un-timebound area where other laws, at least, obtained, still… he clutched for some semblance of familiar things. He said, almost like a child who says, But you promised — He said: “But it’s not on the chart! And he spread his hand over the map as it lay spread out on the table.

The old archbishop nodded, faintly sighed. “No. You are correct. It is not on that chart. Not on that new chart. On old ones, yes. Dead Man’s Cave doesn’t break the surface any longer, even. It was smashed by the Great Storm — the hurricane, we would call it — of 1910. I well remember — but that is neither here nor there. No. The new chart, no. The old charts, now. ” He reached his parchmentv hand to the rack of scrolls, more and more reproducing the note of a time and place even more antique than the Caribbean. He might have been the last Librarian at Alexandria, taking up a map made by the hand of Claudius Ptolaemeius himself. Archbishop Le Beau spread it out so that it was roughly approximate to the new one. “Look here,” he said, pointing.

And yet his “here” was not where Limekiller’s eves at once settled. Without willing it or even witting it, his eyes at once went to the largest off-shore piece of land on the old map (and it was old): sure enough. Anne of Denmark Island. This, then, may well have been the map, the original map, the master printed map, that is, from which all other maps down to this most recent-printed one, had copied. And his eyes flitted from the outlines, familiar enough to him, of the once-solid island named for the once-solid queen of James I. flitted to the corners of the margins of the chart. He knew that he ought to be looking where the archbishop was pointing, and so he did look there — but not before he had looked elsewhere: several fingers of the old man’s other hand, holding the chart down to keep it from rolling back up, obscured some of the words Limekiller was looking for. But not all of them. Uncovered were the letters spelling, k, Lt., R.N. Very well, enough for now, some Lt. Black, or whatever, had made the old map, and had made it for the Royal Navy. Now -

Sure enough. A mere speckle of land. But it had its name. And its name was Dead Man’s Caye.

“It is there we shall be going, in the morning, my sons.”

Limekiller felt, anyway, some feeling of relief. “Might as well wait for daylight, I suppose,” he said.

The old man’s sunken eyes opened wider, looked at him. “It is not daylight that we are waiting for,” he said, “Night or day, it is all the same. We are waiting for His Excellency. For the Governor."

Not less than three times did waterspouts, those smaller cyclones of the sea, appear: and the third time there were three of them, evidently on a convergence course which would inevitably reach the vessel with a violence it could not hope to survive. “Steady at the helm,” the archbishop said. “If we flee, they will pursue.” The helm stayed more or less steady. Nearer and nearer came the waterspouts, like great gray-green twisting sea-serpents dancing on the surface of the sea.

“Elements of God, be not elementals of unrighteousness,” the old voice said (voice so feeble, and yet so strong); “unholv trinity deceived bv Satan, I bid vou three times in the Name of the God Who is One: Begone! Begone! Begone!” There was a sound like the simultaneous crashing of a thousand great waves. The sea heaved and swelled, the boat was drenched, the boat veered, shivered, tilted.

The boat righted itself. When Limekiller had wiped his eyes almost dry, dry enough to look around, the waterspouts were gone. But a small stand of tall mangrove trees, perhaps the only trees in all creation which can grow up out of the salt, salt sea — this stand of them was gone. Where it, they, had been, to starboard, the wrack and wreckage of them floated on the torpid waves.

Something moved and muttered in the small hold. Something scrabbled, gobbled in a voice clotted by something thicker than phlegm. Perhaps, Limekiller thought, feeling his bowels both twist and — almost — loosen — it was not in the hold at all, but -

There was a coral shoal clearly visible, a few feet down, to port. “Port the helm!” a voice screamed, all but in his ear. He had never moved so swiftly in his life, he fell forward and down upon the wheel, the cutlass slashed the air where his head had been. The man screamed again and raised the cutlass again, the man was filthy, vile, face distorted with no normal rage, face framed in tangled beard, and, in the tangles, things that smoked — The man was gone. It was not “Bloody Man.” The shoal slipped astern and behind.

“Teach,” said Sir Joshua, in a voice fainter than Jack had ever heard his voice. “It was Teach. Goddamn him. that is. ahh. Oh. Hm. Ah, well. His voice died away. The air stank of sulfur. And of worse.

But the clean breezes of the Bay soon swept all that away — a matter for which Limekiller wras giving thanks — when he heard Harlow give a cry without words, saw' his arm sweep outwards. Jack looked, saw an enormous shark, had not realized a shark could be so huge, had not believed such a shark would ever pass inside the reef: the shark was moving, and moving faster than he would have allowed for any shark to move: in a moment it would, must, surely strike them: and then -

“Ah, Satan, cease thy follies!” the archbishop said, almost impatiently. “Canst thou hope to enthrall leviathan, and draw' him on with a snare?”

Surely the shark sw erved. Certainly the shark missed them. A moment or so later, looking back, Limekiller though he saw a fin break the surface, heading out to sea again. But perhaps it was only a porpoise. Or a piece of flotsam.

Or nothing at all.

“It’s a good thing the Colony is already autonomous,” Sir Joshua said, wiping his red face with a red bandana — not part of his official accoutrements. “They don’t really need me very much at all. Not, mind you,” he added, stuffing the kerchief away and at once wiping his face on his forearm; “not, mind you, that I particularly want them to realize it in any particular hurry… ah, well.”

Dead Man’s Cave lay dead beneath them. The water was clear, the mass of sand and coral could be clearly seen. If Limekiller had stepped over the side and stood with both feet upon the surface of the sunken caye, his head would still be above the water.

They had been there quite some time. They had encountered nothing untoward since arriving — in fact, they had encountered nothing there at all, except a huge manta, locally called “sting-rav,” which, following the sun and avoiding the shadows of the clouds, flapped lazily away from them -

And it was hot.

And there was no cold beer along, this time, either.

In part to make conversation, in part only thinking aloud, Limekiller said, “I was looking at His Grace’s old chart last night, and —”

Sir Joshua at once fell in with the subject. “Yes, indeed: man was a natural mapmaker. Man was a natural explorer, too. Some say, you know, that he was naturally proud, that is, over-proud. I suppose one would call it hubris. Oh, I don’t mean that he was a bloody Captain Bligh, though, mind you, Bligh has had a bad press, you know, a damned bad press. However. Beside the point. Yes. Polk’s men adored him.” Jack thought to himself, ‘Polk,’ hey. Not ‘Black.' As for the rest, Jack hadn’t a thought at all. “But there was that one fatal incident. That one fatal show of weakness. We might not consider it such, but such it wras. You recollect Kipling’s story of the man who would be”

Sir Joshua’s voice simply had ceased. There was no diminuendo. No one wmuld have been still listening, anyway. No one would have been looking at him, either. Everyone had suddenly, in one and the same instant, become aware of two things. One was sudden mist and cold.

The other was the head of a man protruding from the water just abaft the stem. The man’s body could be seen, wavering in the water, white and pliant. The man’s face and throat were between sun-reddened and sun-tanned. Once again Limekiller felt that deadly chill, but this time he did not fall into trembling. He was able to look the man’s face straight on. Chill though the air was to him, beads of sw: eat appeared on the face, and flowed downward, and fresh droplets took their place.

Sir Joshua’s crimson countenance had gone a very faint pink.

And now the aged archbishop was there, and he had his vestments on, or, at any rate, he had some of them on. He knelt and spoke, as simplv as though he were speaking to a familiar congregant in a familiar setting. He had, in fact, been speaking for a few seconds. “. if you have received Christian Baptism and if you desire to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion according to the usage of the Church of England, indicate this desire by bowing your head.”

The head bowed slowly down until the chin touched the water.

‘Almighty, everlasting God,” the archbishop went on, “Maker of mankind, who dost correct those whom Thou dost love, and chastise everv one who Thou dost receive; we beseech vou to have mercy upon this Thy servant visited with Thine hand…”

Limekiller could no more have recollected every word or gesture than he could those in a dream. Thev went on. They went on.

“My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou are rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loveth, He chas- teneth; and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

“Do you declare yourself to be truly repentent.?”

Again, and again slowly, the head, face a mask of pain, of agony, the head bowed itself to the brim of the sea.

The archbishop began to recite the Lord's Prayer, and, one by one, all those aboard joined their voices to his. Then they fell again silent, only the old man’s voice continuing.

“While we have time, let us do good unto all men; and especially unto them that are of the household of faith. ”

Not a breath disturbed the surface of the sea.

“Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins.

“Draw near with faith, and take this Holv Sacrament to vour comfort. ”

“. our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against Thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly Thy wrath and indignation. We do most earnestly repent, And are most heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.”

Limekiller could no longer look upon the face, and indeed, it had seemed, before he looked away from it, that the face could no longer look at them: it had closed its eyes.

“Almighty God. Have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins. ”

The old priest had opened his black bag some time before, had arrayed its contents upon a cloth upon a board. He needed hardly pause at this point. “Take and eat this in remembrance. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for thee. forgive us our trespasses. deliver us from evil. grant that those things which we have faithfully asked accordingly to Thy will may effectually be obtained, to the relief of our necessity, and to the setting forth of Thy glory; through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

“Amen.

When Limekiller next looked, the water was empty. Almost a full fathom beneath the surface, the sandy bosom of Dead Man’s Cave lay open to his gaze. He saw… he thought that he saw. the prints of human feet. Even as he gazed, the water slowly moved, sand slowly trickled along and down and into; in another moment, all was as before.

As long, long before.

First, thev went to tell the Arawak that thev could leave the northern waters. Next thev went to tell the Bavmen that thev could once again go south. And to both they told that Captain Blood, the Bloody Captain, Bloody Man, would never sail his longboat ever along these coasts and shores. Were they believed? They were believed. As Harlow the Hunter put it, “‘By de mouds of two weet- nesses shahl ah teeng be establish.’” And such a two witnesses as an archbishop and a royal governor are not to be held lightly in their testifying to such a matter as that one.

The old high priest remained in the stern all the voyage back, praying, presumably, or meditating. Sir Joshua was at the helm, and Jack Limekiller was next to him. “What are you going to tell them in King Town?” he asked. “What report will you make to London?”

“Presumptuous boy,” Sir Joshua said, without malice. “Why — I shan’t tell them a thing, in King Town. They won’t even ask. In fact, they are no doubt simply delighted to have had me available in this crisis. Whom would thev have sent, instead? The Minister for Social Development? The Under-secretary for Public Health? — As for London, I can’t tell you a thing, my boy, ’twouldn’t be constitutional, you know. Suffice it to say: No trouble from London. In fact, no trouble in London. What would you think? A question asked in the House of Commons? Tchah. Put it out of your mind.”

Far, far ahead, the Mountains of the Morning lifted their hazy peaks against the early evening sky. Faint, faint, yet much, much nearer, the low-lying coast began to come into focus. “Gladly,’’Jack said. “So. well. Oh, yes. I want to ask you. What about Kipling’s story, The Man Who Would Be King.?”

“Ah, yes. Well. Well, I didn't mean that our poor man would have been king. I mean that Daniel whatever his name was, Daniel Dravit, was it? Kipling’s character. Where was I. Mmm. Yes. Back there in Kaffiristan. White Kaffirs of the Hindu Kush. Fact, you know, not fiction. Well, the story was fiction itself. What I mean is: fellow in the story, Daniel, allowed the heathen, the kaffirs, to think he was a god, you know. Didn’t in so many words say so. Let them think so. And when the wench bit him and drew his blood, why that was bloody well that. Well, similar thing with poor Cook. The Hawaiians thought that he was a god, one of their native gods. Name of Lono. Symbol of Lono was white cloth on a pole. They had no sails, you know, Hawaiian chaps, I mean. When they saw Cook’s ships coming in, poles crowded with white cloth sails, why — obvious conclusion — Lono. And Cook let them think so. He went along with it. Let himself be worshipped, accepted offerings, the whole thing — Then there was all that trouble at the shore, forget just why, and some native chap hit him with a spear, twasn’t a fatal thrust, no. The blow itself wasn’t fatal. But he groaned. Cook groaned!”

Sir Joshua took a hand from the wheel, put it to his side, made realistic noises. What? A god groan? A god feel pain? Native fellows were furious! They’d been done, you see, and suddenly they knew' it. Pranged the poor fellow, cut him down, and —”

Limekiller had been listening with a mixture of fascination and confusion. Now he had to stop the narrative and get a firmer grip and grasp on it. “Excuse me, Sir Joshua —”

„— ah — Mmm — Yes, my boy. What?”

“What is the connection?”

Sir Joshua considered this. Evidently it confused him. “Connection with what, Jack?”

“I mean. what is the connection between Captain Cook and. well, with anything? Anything at all? That was in Hawaii. And we —

At a sudden hail from Sir Joshua, Harlow came and took the helm. Sir Joshua, taking Limekiller by the arm, led him back and sat him down. “Now, my boy,” he began. He seemed to be struggling with a slight show of temper. Then control won. “Now, my boy, it is exactly Captain Cook who. well confound it, boy!” Control lost. “Who in blazes do you think this so-called Bloody Man, this alleged Captain Blood is?” In a lower voice, he said, “Was. ”

There was a rather long silence. Then Limekiller said, “Do you mean it is supposed to have been Captain Cook? The Captain —”

Sir Joshua shook his head, sadly. Then he asked Limekiller what he meant by “supposed to have been”? Had not Limekiller seen the whole thing? Hadn’t Limekiller described the gaping wound in the man’s side? Had he or had he not?

“Yes, yes! But. as I told Harlow, when he — well, in another connection: the wound which I saw was far too large for a spear- thrust. You yourself just said the spear-thrust wasn’t fatal. He was killed, Cook, you said, he was killed when they cut him down.”

“Ah, yes,” Sir Joshua said, somberly. “They cut him down all right. And then they cut him up!“

And then it all came back to Limekiller. “Polk,” there was no “Polk,” that was only his ear, catching at a name he was not expecting to hear, and catching instead a name which hadn’t even been uttered. Captain Cook. Oh yes. Of course. Yes, they had cut him up. They had cut him all the way up. They had cut him into pieces. And they had sent each piece to one of the district chiefs. Of course, they had brought them back, by and by. Very soon, in fact. For one thing, there were, after all, the heavy guns of His Majesty’s ships. And, for another — But the for another didn’t matter. They had brought back the pieces of Captain Cook.

That is, they had brought back all but one of the pieces of the body of Captain Cook.

The Hawaiians had been cannibal, then… at any rate, upon occasion.

“And that one piece?”

Sir Joshua sighed heavily. Again, he wiped his face. “It was a piece of his right side,” he said.

The offices of National Archivist and National Librarian coexisted in the person of Mr. Frances Bustamente. “Here is the very book, Mr. Limekiller,” he said. “And, as to the chart, I have sent down for it, it should be up here, presently. - Hm, well, that is very- curious. ”

Limekiller had the heavy old book in his hand. He wanted to sit down at table and chair and look into it. But Mr. Bustamente’s courtesy required an equal courtesy in return. “What is very curious, sir:

“Well, evidently, going by the Acquisition Numbers, we must have acquired both chart and book at the same time. And they are both prefixed with AD, that means, the Admiralty, you know. I am afraid that the Admiralty in London has never given us anything. anything that I know of. but it did sometimes happen that the commanding officers of different vessels of the Royal Navy would sometimes contribute things to the old Colonial Government… in the old days. things they had perhaps no further use for.

. And we always recorded this to the extent of putting AD for Admiralty before the Acquisition Numbers. - Well, I shall leave you to your book, now.”

The book was no lightweight, and would have taken more time than Limekiller could spend in the cool and dim chamber to read; it did not circulate. A History of the Hidalgo Plantation and Woodcutters’ Settlements / In the Bay of Hidalgo / In Central America / From the Earliest Times / With Many Anecdotes and Illustrations [etc., etc] by the Rt. Honourable Sir. L. Dawson Pritchard / Sometime Colonial Magistrate. For a marvel, the book was indexed.

Yes, Cook had been here. Cook had not been here long, but — Evidently he had loved this hidden coast (as it then was). Had loved it so much that as he sailed away the last time in life he had been heard to say, “I’ll be back. I’ll be back. I shall be back. Living or dead, I shall be back. By God, I shall.” And old Esquire Northrup, waiting to go ashore with the pilot, and who had dined so well at the farewell that he was probably half-seas over, said, “Well, Cook, and as I am one of His Majesty’s Commissioners for Oaths, shall I record this one of yours?” — “Yes sir, yes sir,’ exclaimed Lt. Cook, as he then was. And, according to local tradition, it was so done. This same Esquire Northrup, on a later occasion, died attempting to win a wager as to who in the Settlement could consume the greatest quantity of turtle-soup in the space of one hour’s time. ”

Mr. Bustamente was back. “And here is the chart, Mr. Limekiller.” Thoughtfully, he rolled it out. It was not, or course, the old archbishop’s chart, but it was its twin. Here was the whole coast of British Hidalgo, its reefs and isles and cayes, its bights and bays. And, there in the comer, where the archbishop’s hand had rested, concealinglv, there — sure enough — engraved: the words, Jas. Cook, Lt., R.N.

“It is certainly very old, Mr. Bustamente1 said. “I would not attempt to clean it, it is so old. Clean it? — why, these drops and splotches, sir, you see, here and there. Don’t know what they are. Why! Do you know, Mr. Limekiller! — I believe that they may be blood!”

After. how long? A hundred and eighty years?. who could say. However, Limekiller said, “Yes, sir, you may be right.” It was chilly, in here. He had found out all that he wanted. He got up to thank Mr. Bustamente, and to leave. The archivist accepted the thanks, walked his guest to the door. “I wonder whose blood it could be?’ he wondered, aloud, “Eh, Mr. Limekiller? Whose do you suppose?”

Limekiller backed off. “I have no idea,” he murmured. Limekiller lied.