Limekiller!

Limekiller walked down the street. Lirst building in the next block, shaded by a purple-drooping jacaranda tree, was. still. sun-worshippers or not. the Anglican Church, crusted with lichens and moss. Would he go in and give thanks? There was, really, a lot of work he should be doing on his boat before Lelix got back. Whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with thy might: Best he got back to his boat and think his pious thoughts there. But the way took him past the Parson’s Paddock, where no horse had pastured for many years. And then the way took him past the Parsonage and its late Tropical Gothic verandahs shielding the inner rooms from view. But not from sound. In the Parsonage was, evidently, the Parson’s wife, Mrs. Standish. The climate was, indeed, “not kind” to the spinnet. Perhaps also Mrs. Standish’s singing voice was past its prime. But gallantly she played and sang. He could hear her quite clearly. Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, sang Mrs. Standish, which I gaze on so fondly today, were to fleet by tomorrow and fade in my arms, Mrs. Standish sang. The waters of the Bay of Hidalgo slapped languidly along the shore. What had happened during the night? what had happened? — like fairy gifts fading away, sang Mrs. Standish.

Limekiller got into his skiff.

A FAR COUNTRIE

At that time Jack and Felix were living in Eden, Felix was really Felicia, Love had just been invented, and the Garden was on the sea.

Limekiller gave his sunstained hair a shake, and began to get the sail up. Felix had already finished tying the skiff — he no longer checked to see if she were doing it right — and, jaw set, was giving an extra push down on the pole to which the Saccharissa had been, and the skiff now was, tied. Probably the skiff would still be there when they returned. It would be an extra drag to tow it under sail, and besides, they would not need it where they were going. It had taken them from Commeal Wharf to the wide waters of the harbor, but there was a wharf or dock at their destination. Behind, ahead, and all around them, others there, in the mouth of the Belinda (or Old Main) River, which was King Town’s Harbor, were doing the same or similar things to their own vessels. Some were going out for conch, some for sand or pipeshank-coral. Some for lobster. And some for fish. Well. some mainly for fish, and some for fish as well.

From astern Limekiller heard a voice ask the familiar question, “You no forget de ‘drop,’ mahn?”

And the answer, in the pearly light of pre-dawn: “Me forget me head, may-be. But no forget me ‘drop.’”

The somewhat more than colony of British Hidalgo abuts on the Great Bay of Hidalgo; the main things about the Great Bay of

Hidalgo is that God has put in it fish for the Bayfolk and the Black Arawack to eat but that God has not put enough fish in it for the Bayfolk and the Arawack to eat all the fish they want to eat. That is not to say" that they" are always hungry, but it is to say that they are always hungry' for fish. A local proverb goes, If there is not a plantain, there is a banana; and there is usually, also, for the Arawack, cassava, and, for the Bayfolk (who are also called Creoles), rice and beans. Both people will eat meat, Yea but we will eat flesh, when they can get it; except that the Bayfolk will not eat any fowl which has served an obeah purpose (and if you ask them why not, they say because it will make a man lose his “nature” and a woman lose her milk); and the Arawack will never under any" circumstances eat goat meat whether they can get it or not: and you must never, ever, ask them why not.

But best of all and most of all, thev both love fish.

It is not only unheard of for any of them deliberately to take to the water without a “drop” (i.e., a drop-line) to tow behind, it is inconceivable. They will eat the quash, a sort of lean-tailed raccoon; they" will eat the gibnut, a kind of large and large-eyed rodent; they" will eat the dark mauve meat of the “mountain-cow,” or tapir; they will eat crocodile tail and the ‘bocrob” or blue crab and the hind legs and red eggs of the iguana: but most of all, given any opportunity at all, they will eat fish.

But Limekiller and Felix were not going out for fish.