Limekiller!

“Oh, no, mistress! Not a cup. Half a cup will do. Be some other boat, some next one, by and by. today, tomorrow. when God send. whenever. Sailingmen must help the old loightkeeper out: else, may-be: boi and boi: no light. Not your task to do it ahl yourself. - Where vou bound, mahn?”

South Gosling was as near the desert island of the cartoons as anything could be; Jack realizing and relishing the fact — and the sight — was a bit slow in answering. Back came Felix with the sugar, asked, with an air that showed the question had just occurred to her, “Do you say, ‘Gallards Cave,’ Captain Barber? Or ‘Galliards Caye’? Or — ”

Limekiller broke in, “Or ‘Gallants Caye.’ Eh? Which?”

Old Barber nodded slowly. “Galleons Caye, so. ” Then quite evidently a thought suddenly came to his own mind. He faintly frowned. “What day, today? Not St. Nicholas Day?”

Still rolling over in his mind the sound of “Galleons Caye” and mildly amused by yet another variation on a theme, Jack said, “Beats me. Why?” (“Galleons Caye?” murmured Felix, half-smiling, half-surprised, herself.)

Aloud (said she): “But I will have to ask for the cup back. Because we only have two, and he likes his sweeter than I do.”

The abstracted, faintly unhappy look vanished from the old man’s face; face a sort of worn and faded map onto which Europe, Africa, India, and Amerindia had blended. He gave once again that antique, courtly bow. “‘Sweeter than you. ’? Why, what could be sweeter than you, me choild? Captain Limekiller, sir, you have certainly plucked a beautiful blossom in the garden of love.” No bullshit about, perhaps they were just crewing together: in tropical British Hidalgo (and is not one of the Tropics that of old goatfooted Capricorn?), a he and a she of any age above the snottynosed and below the entirely senescent never did anything like just crewing together: any more than they ever lived together as brother and sister. unless of course they happened to be brother and sister… in which case one could be damned sure that the he was involved with someone else’s sister and the she with someone else’s brother.

And why not.

“Why, Captain Barber, how very nice and gallant of you. Not Gallants or Galliants Caye, then? You say, ‘Galleons Cave’?” Captain B. at the moment was saying nothing. From one pocket he was drawing a pair of specs of gothic mold, and from another a copy of the five-year almanac which, from frequent usage, looked as old if not older. Having searched out the current year, he slowly- traced down the days with one finger. Came to a line. Stopped. Read slowly. Slowly looked up. ‘Why, y7es, oh yes. You see He held the almanac up and out. “The 6th of December. St. Nicholas’s Day. Can’t go there today, Oi doubt.” And he waited for them to acknowledge the truth of what he said. And waited.

“What, ‘can’t get there from here’?” — Limekiller. Amused.

“Is there some local superstition against it?” — Felix (original name, Felicia; and the hell with it, she’d said). - Felix. Interested.

Also, tactless.

She had used a word which, like treason, like perversion, is never acknowledged to be such by those who practice it. Anything as impolite as a display of annoyance was not likely to be shown by Captain Barber to A Lady. Not even disapprobation. He did allow himself, however, to become exceedingly grave, and, in so doing, wiped the smiles off their own faces most effectively.

“Oi am not superstitious. Oi have been educated at the old Anglican Academy. And Oi recollect quite well what St. Pahl said to the Athenians. The sea does not roise boi superstition. The wind does not drop boi superstition. The rains do not commence in Yucatan the same w-eek they do in Darien. Is the day longer on St. John’s Day than on Christmas? Tis, ’tisn’t it?”

St. John's Day. Great-uncle Leicester Limekiller, a great Freemason, always let everyone know when St. John’s Day was, that day of Masonic festivity, or should one say solemnity? Either. Both. What the hell.

‘June 21st? Longest day in the

“Just so. Just so. And today is St. Nicholas’s Day. And no day to be going to Galleons Caye. Oi tell you. A bod day for it. Maybe you won’t even be able to fetch up there at all. Oh, not that Oi say that St. Nicholas has anything to do with it himself Maybe. Patron of sailors, though, hm. so. No.” Captain Barber got a firm Anglican hold of himself. “Oi cannot hold with the vain worship of the Saints. Simply, you do see, this 6th day of December, however it be marked: not a good day to go to Galleons Caye. It be the wind, you see.”

He reached for the worn old almanac, now so close to obsolescence and desuetude. ‘No,” said Limekiller. “Frankly, I don’t see.” He held the little booklet out, waited.

The old light-keeper took it back.

“You will,” he said.

It was because of Alex Brant.