Limekiller!

So. Still. What. Ah. Of course. The wind. No wind of long fetch, this one. “Ready,” he said, “. about. ”

And meanwhile, what else was the boat doing? The boat was shipping water, was what else the boat was doing. And had to be pumped. And so he pumped it. The common pump he had learned from the local boatmen how to make, use and repair, and use again.

It was part rubber, part leather, part wood, and had a long straight wooden handle and worked exclusively with an up-and-down motion, like the “plumber’s friend,” or plunger; it would probably never make the pages of Yachting Magazine, but, applied with vigor, it brought the intrusive water in a cold boiling froth up inside its long narrow rectangle of a case and out the spout and over the side. It beat bailing for sure: but though you expel Ocean with a plunge- pump, still, she will always return. Always. Always. Always.

That past winter an unexpected charter out to the Welshman’s Caves had left Limekiller with, all costs paid and reserves set aside for the inevitably lean and rainy days, with fifty dollars more than he had thought to have had: so he thought to buy a pair of binoculars. used, of course. eyetracks don’t wear the lenses out, was his thought… at Sitwell’s Sports Shop, on “Artillery.” (Sitw'ell was Honorary Vice-Consul for Iceland; “Do you get many Icelanders here?” was Jack’s question. Said Sitwell, “I never gits any. but it saves me thirty-five dollars a year tax exemption.”). However, on his way there he chanced to glance into a tiny optician’s shop, and the small sign in the small window caught his eye. William Wilson Setsewayo Smith, it read, Licentiate of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle-makers, London. How could he resist a further look? And there, propped in a corner, was a, well, no, it really wasn’t a telescope, it was an early nineteenth-century or maybe even late eighteenth-century Spy Glass, bound in only slightly-flaking light brown leather; the pricetag: seventy-five dollars. In he went, “Will you take fifty dollars for that?” The worshipful spectacle-maker was just about the same color. “I’ll take forty-nine,” he said, “and leff us boath have a nog of Governor Morgan Rum with the difference.” After setting down his glass with an appreciative sigh, “May ye see rare sights with that,” he said. “Best I be gittin bock to work now.” There was a slight, a very slight prismatic effect, an effulgence, which was not met in modem optical glasses: but it served him well enough. Besides: sliding the thing in and out: such fun!

“See what you make of this,” Limekiller said now, handing it over.

All morning long, and into the afternoon, that little yellow- house danced in the distance before their eyes. advancing.

receding. yellow. what was yellow, what had been yellow, and what had yellow been and stood for? that fellow/ in Austrian yellow,” no, no, certainly not Joyce; “In the porch of my printing insti- tute/The poor and deserving prostitute/Every night plays catch-as-catch- can/With her tight-breeched British artilleryman —” How ridiculous; they, Jack and Felix, they weren’t exiles, they were travellers. Just travelling and ravelling. - Ah yes. Ah. Yes. Yellow was the color of the old quarantine flag. Flags. Odd thought. Infection. Taint. (And a lot of use that thought was, too.) And, ah, and equally inapplicable, the yellow passport of Imperial Russia for the exclusive use of prostitutes: not for foreign travel, no, a sort of ID: “internal passport.” Bad joke, if so intended. This imperial government has fallen (old Prince Lvov, first premier of the Provisional Government which took its place) because history has not known of a government more cruel and more corrupt. But history was to get to know. A? Plenty.) Yella Isabella. Wouldn’t change her undies till Ghent was relieved; Ghent held put for how long? Was it Ghent? Was it Gal- lards, Galliards, Galleons, or — Isabella not of Spain but of Austria, there we go again.

The little yellow house danced and blurred. Must be Major Deak’s house. Whoever Major Deak was. Had the house been quite finished? Wasn’t part of a framework of a second story visible there? Just a few timbers. Something odd and yet familiar about it. them. Also, somehow: not nice. Some shapes, some angles, somehow not sympatico… or whatever the hell. Heat haze. Heat fever? Wasn’t that hot. The spy glass was old.