Limekiller!

He could not only see the sand it was excavating with its hind flippers, he could hear it falling back down; he could also hear. and had been hearing. faint sounds of music from Woodcutters Cove Town. principally the faint sounds of the juke-boxes in the various “liquor booths,” not indeed of Creole or Bayfolk music, for those traditions were alas dying: of the recorded popular music of the United States, of Jamaica. And also, or instead, as the soft wind shifted, as the rock and reggae paused long enough sometimes for the records to be changed, he heard something else, heard a music quite different: it was, must be, could only be, the sound of Mrs. Standish playing her spinnet. It was of course softer than the sounds of the clamorous juke-boxes, but it was also nearer. Almost an axiom: the tropics are not kind to stringed instruments. No, and perhaps the tropics were not particularly kind to Mrs. Standish, either; she was the wife of the Anglican minister, Limekiller had not officially met her, but he had more than once seen her, an aging woman with a loosening face and figure. Mister Standish had a Dedicated countenance and it grew more Dedicated with the passing of time; Mrs. Standish’s face merely grew older.

The sand flashed, the sand fell. Why should the sand flash? Was that only the sand he was hearing? Did sand clash and ring? He did not want to disturb the great sea-she-turtle, assuming it to be disturbable, but he was moved to arise and to get him, so softly as he could, adown the nighttime sands. The turtle showed no signs of alarm — of, even, awareness: slowly he drew near. Surely. surely not!

I walked along the evening sea

And dreamed a dream which could not be.

The evening waves, breaking on the shore,

Said only, Dreamer, dream no more.

Where was that from? Who cared. He stooped. His hands moved in the heap of cast-up sand. His fingers clutched a something, and he drew it out. He drew out a few more. Deliberating himself be calm, he took his shirt off and spread it on the beach a few feet away from the constantly-increasing heaps of sand, and, finding no stone, anchored it first with a chunk of coconut shell. Then he could contain himself no longer; into the wood which fringed the beach he went, crouched, carefully considered the matter of direction, struck a match. Looked. Was Charles II indeed King of France as well as of England, Scotland, Ireland? Probably not, probably it was not even an idle boast but merely a habit, a reflex, to describe him as such. No King of England if not King of France.? — but that was long before. The mosquitoes, no longer kept even somewhat at bay by the sea-breezes, fiercely sounded their shrill sounds and attacked: let them. He held in his hand, John Lutwidge Limekiller, a coin of twenty-one shillings and minted (presumably) from gold mined in the great Kingdom of Guinea; he had little idea — he had none! — what the current value of such a coin might be, but he knew that it had to be more than twenty-one shillings — twenty-one pounds would not value it enough!

Money! Money! Here he had had scarcely enough to eat, and now he would be rich! for, although he had as yet no way of knowing how many golden guineas there were… let alone where they had come from. some foundered ship whose timbers perhaps broken on the reef, yet had (perhaps) managed to get inside that same before sinking altogether and before the officers or crew were able to manage salvaging the gold, or all of it. perhaps it was indeed the universally-magic thing, a Buried Treasure!. perhaps the loot of some captured galleon or — what difference did it make! — a thousand perhapses! He, John Lutwidge Limekiller, was rich! — comparatively speaking — he was (maybe) rich!.

Only maybe not.

The she-turtle had had enough of digging, her nest-hole was now deep enough, and began to lay.

Rich? Only maybe not. His fingers told him, after he had crept back to the great chelonian, that there were many coins in the hoard: how might that coast have shifted over the centuries because of storm, erosion, hurricane, and flood. and his mind told him something else.