Limekiller!

He nodded. “It used to be very grim indeed, when this happened in the open sea. Well. Often. However. Time to start tacking.”

They hauled the sails in, and, thus close-hauled on the starboard tack, the sloop proceeded to windward at a reasonable pace: they were heading, still, or, rather, again, out from land. But they were not steering toward Galleons Caye. Not yet. Neither were they heading dead away from it; they were away from it at an angle. but only at an angle. The jib had been loosed, and, with a “Ready — about,” Jack put the tiller over, the boat crossed the wind, the mainsail came over, the jib slithered across, and she pulled it in on the other side by the other sheet: sheet, here, not meaning sail, but the line that trimmed it. This being a close-hauled tack, the jib- sail did most of the work. The boat heeled over, then came back a bit, with the sea (seemingly, and perhaps, exactly) rising to meet it.

“Ugh,” said Felix, wincing at the shock.

“Pounding a bit.”

She said she was glad it was only a bit.

“Not exactly a downhill run, is it?”

“. not exactly… I guess. ”

After a bit he felt the wind shift; “Ready — about” he ordered. He was to say it again. And again.

The small bright building came nearer, after a while. It had never, after the first sighting, been out of sight at all. She asked, “Is it Gallard? Or is it Galliard? — Oh! I don’t mean the damned name! of the caye! — I mean: which is the dance? You don’t know, either? Well, I just had this picture. In my mind. Of those eighteenth century buccaneers dancing gaily out there, in the muck.” He smiled. She returned the smile, though somewhat more faintly. And, through the many tacks, the building became many times larger; Jack said to himself that he was glad to see it become so, become nearer. But something was odd. Sophia. Something was very odd. Sophia. What? Sophia. Well, who and what was Sophia? A woman’s name, of course. Of course! Well, actually a girl’s. He had been just a boy. How old? Seventeen, maybe, all legs and nose. I am in love with Sophia and any minute now I am going to see her and what a wonderful minute that will be, his thoughts had run, there in the station in Victoria, he having come over on the ferry from Vancouver for to see her and no other reason, she coming down on the train from whatever ossified moss-covered hamlet near the Island’s eastern shore where her family had been summering: and then he realized that he was not, after all, feeling wonderful: instantly she appeared and instantly he realized that he was not at all in love with her.

After all.

— Oh, of course; not the same thing. He had never fancied himself in love with Galleons, Gallards, Galliards Cave: still.

“But I can’t be pregnant,” Felix whispered, suddenly, almost fiercely.

He was less startled by the, to him, utterly unexpected prospect of fatherhood, than by the intensity of her voice.

“Would that be so terrible?” he asked.

“No.” She said this less reluctantly than thoughtfully.

“Well, then why

“Because I can’t be. Is why. I’ve already had my period: you ought to know; you haven’t forgotten so soon, have you?”

No, he hadn’t forgotten so soon. Yes, he ought to know; remembering his impatience. And all the rest of it. Slowly. almost, really, thinking out loud… he said, “Though I have heard

“- so have I,” she said, quickly, interrupting him. “But it — I feel pregnant, and not in the way it was before.”

Warm dav. Why should he feel cold? “Have you been —” He stopped. What a question to ask, when she’d never mentioned a child. Or anything about -

“Yes,” she said. She said, “Yes,” as simply as she might have said it to, “Have you been in Bridgeport?” He said nothing more. Was he waiting for her to say more? If so, he waited in vain. A few staple thoughts ran through his mind. Abortion. Adoption. Miscarriage. The child is at home with her mother, aunt, sister; she was married young; divorced: it was none of his goddamned business.

It was none of his goddamned business.

Unless, of course, she were to feel it was. And, of course, she wasn’t. Anyway, not right now. And so, right now, he had all the time in the world to think about this possible progeny. And the oddest thing he felt, as he thought about his feeling, was how odd it was that he didn’t feel much of anything about it at all. Was she, then? Okay. Or: she after all wasn’t! Also okay.

“Maybe it’s just that you’re sort of sea-sick… all the pounding the boat’s been doing… all these tacks, these winds — maybe.”

She said, “Maybe.”

Her voice was flat. She sounded not happy. She sounded not unhappy. She heard, she answered, but she wasn’t really there, she was really somewhere else, a million miles away, far away somewhere in her own bloodstream: So far, he could not call to her.