Limekiller!

In every grant of freehold stood the words, and he knew them well, for he had, after all had been granted more than one freehold himself, for all that they were for but small acreages; there stood the words, All Indian Ruins and Mines of Gold and Silver and Precious Stones are the Property of Her Majesty the Queen, Her Heirs or Assignees', these words were emphatic and clear and admitted of no dispute. Well. almost none. Suppose such gold were already mined? Coined? Abandoned? Kicked up on a beach by the hind-flippers of a gravid sea-turtle with no more on her membrane-thing template of a mind than digging a hole in which to plash her scores and scores of opalescent eggs; what? Why, for that matter, was there only one turtle here and now? A matter for enquiry; would anyone enquire?

And. wasn’t there something, somewhere, amidst all the antique and baroque legal terminology' about treasure-trove and bonavaconcia, wasn’t there something about high-water mark? low-water mark? What should Jack do? For certainly he had to do something. and right now: one could hardly expect the turtle would remain fixed for a landmark whilst he ran loping along the strand to report the matter.

And so he had taken the gold, he had shoveled and sifted, long after the turtle’s instinct, located in that reptilian little head protruding between carapace and carapace, had told her that her oviducts might now rest; and off she had waddled, struggled, crawled, dipped into the water, sank into the water, was gone into the water: and, about the sum of two-score and ten coins had he sifted from the sands. He had carefully set them down on his shirt, and, since it was the bad shirt, rent in at least one place and worn thin in others, he had tied the treasure by the sleeves and knotted them and then he had stripped off his trousers and slipped the swag inside of them and closed that outer covering up, then -

Then he hied him down to the mangroves brown where the sea-tide sucked and sawed… or something like that. very much like that. and had heaved it up onto his own boat, videlicet the Saccharissa, then lying at the mouth of Mangrove Creek, with all her apparel. And, after counting it a few times, say, about forty or fifty times, had stowed it in the cubby; well… he had taken the trousers back, first, because really he needed them now.

Also he had recollected to bring along a few of the eggs, and he set up the caboose, which, in British Hidalgo had no reference to railroad trains but referred to the little wood-stove set in a sandbox; and he had cooked them at leisure and eaten them with relish, and with salt and with pepper.

They had tasted better than rice and beans.

Eggs.

As for turtle-eggs, very well, never mention the matter to anyone Chinese, however defined. As for eggs as something other than victuals (wittles, as Rud Goforth called them), as something thick with legendary qualities, there were also the obeah eggs. Obeah eggs came color-coded: a clean white egg meant one thing, a clean brown egg meant another; a speckled egg, whether the birdy sings of them or not, meant worst of all; and then there were eggs still stained with chickenshit and clotted with tufts of down and, sometimes, blood. A chapter in a local grimoire (were there such a thing, and there wasn’t) might be written about eggs stained red with anatto and eggs stained red with red mangrove bark. and the immense difference (qualitative rather than quantitative) between them.

But. why does the egg left at night symbolize death?

Because the egg left at day symbolizes life.

Is why.

He had meant to report it.

But the hours, as hours will, had gone by. The gold still stood (or sat) in the cramped cubby of his boat. And he had not reported it.