Limekiller!

Suppose that you were a young man, of full age, and although in very good health, felt that you had admired the Canadian snowscape fully as much as Kipling had, and now desired to copy Kipling in another manner, and survey the warmer souths: you, too (provided that your passport was in good order and that you were not on one of those Wanted for Extradition information sheets which circulate, sunset or not, throughout what used to be the British Empire. You might also have found yourself considering coconuts in place of maple leaves; Dr. Benjamin Jowett (My name it is Benjamin Jowett/ Whatever is knowledge 1 know it/ I’m the Provost of Trinity College/ And what I do not know is not knowledge.), in a bit of a snit, had once observed that there were more sun-worshippers than Anglicans in Her Majesty’s dominions; and perhaps there still are.

All of which is beside the point at issue or where is it at, the point being (a) that Limekiller was hungry, and (b) that it was Inhibited “to trap, dredge, catch, dig, trench, or otherwise secure the eggs of the great sea-turtle, the lesser-sea-turtle, the green or the hawksbill turtle, or any other turtle, tortoise, hiccatee, or bocatura whatsoever from any point upon or within one league of the seacoast of Her Majesty’s Colony of British Hidalgo during such months which may be gazetted for purposes of said Inhibitions and all persons who may contravene such inhibitions shall be given into custody… to serve at hard labour at Her Majesty’s pleasure for not more than one year and one day, etc.” — it being damned well- understood in common-law and chancery that you might, if the Crown wanted it, serve every single day of such sentence for every single egg they caught you with.

Limekiller was very hungry?

He was.

Otherwise catch him at the wane of the moon with very little light save that supplied by the phosphorescent wash of the weaves and the great and glittering stars clad only in shirt and britches (it was his bad shirt, too, for his good one had been just washed and hung drying from some ratlines or something on his boat Saccharissa) and with a shovel. Limekiller did indeed appreciate the need for keeping the sea-turtle or whatever was its particular name (Sadie? Lou? Jane?) from being egg-hunted to extinction; he also appreciated that its newly-surfaced hatchlings en route to the Stream of Ocean (just open Homer at random. “Agamemnon shook his great purple cloak and with a great cry [or, loudly breaking wind], spake these winged words, ‘Out upon thee, thou caitiff dog, and get thee gone from the camps of the well-greaved Aechaeans [or, pos. the Greeks with swollen legs], ne’er taking breath till thou reach the Stream of Ocean, and take care thou offend not the Turtle-eaters dwelling thereby, whom Apollo and Poseidon delight twice a year to visit. ’ “ See?) the newly-hatched and tiny turtles on route from their nests to the water were swooped down upon and eaten by predators innumerable, and he hoped that the dozen or so eggs he might take never would be missed; though perhaps in all this he was Wrong. And if he were asked why, nevertheless, he was doing so, he might answer, as did a well- known vegetarian found eating a steak, “I was hungry.”

Aurelio Aung y compania might extend credit once, he/they might (though less likely) extend credit twice, but after that appeals for credit would only send him/them back to the abacus. Hence see Limekiller, his boat moored up a creek by the mangroves brown, pacing the beach under cover of night. And what would George II have thought about it all?

Neither history nor poetry had been very kind to George III. One poet has perhaps summed it up:

George Third

Ought never to have occurred.

Such a blunder

Makes one wonder.

Deft, no? Eh?