Limekiller!

“Well, it’s well known that wood kept under water or anyway well wet,” said the Honourable, making gestures to his Lady Wife, who delved into her dittybag and came out with a pipe and a pouch of tobacco and proceeded to fill the pipe as her lord talked on; “will keep very much better than wood which is seasoned dry. So it was no surprise that the timbers gave every evidence of being very old. the axe-marks and adze-marks had not been made by any modern tools, they saw that at once. Thank you, my dear.” He put the filled pipe between his teeth while she struck a large wooden “Swede’s match,” as they were locally called (on the Prairies they were called — farmer matches”; merely proves that there were a lot of Swedes farming on the Prairies; nothing new about that) and a puff of smoke from a pipe tobacco which had never been cured or blended by the Indians (whose slash-and-burn farmings were industriously ruining the slopes of the Mayan Mountains) filled the room with its delicious scent.

And they had puzzled over the timbers, their shapes and purpose, and in a few moments realized what they were. Puff. Puff. Puff.

And the warm wind seemed to echo: puff. puff. puff.

“And what were they?” Felix could not wait, needs must ask.

“Don’t know if you’ve ever wondered, puff,” the Honourable Minister said, “what the right name of this caye is, puff, puff.”

“Never gave it a thought,” she said, mendaciously. “Gal something, isn’t it?”

How those lovely lips could lie! — Jack’s admiring thought.

The clouds of Three Grommets Cut Shag, or was it Lord Tweedweevil’s Prime Shaved Plug, filled the room. ‘“Gal something,’ just so. Galliards, Gallards, Gallants, Galleons, Gal-this and Gal-that. Eh? What, Mr. Brant? ‘Gal Cut and Run?’ Ah, but that is on the Old Belinda River. Well, not to make a very long matter of it, puff’ puff; the timbers fitted very neatly into an old engine of execution, that is to say, a gibbet, or in other words, a

And Jack and Felix in one gust of breath cried out, “Gallows!."

The matter of why the Gal had Cut and Run, fascinating though it probably was, and for that matter who the Gal was, must needs wait another occasion, as Sheherazade doubtless told the sultan as he sipped his cup of cawwa tinged with ambergrise through his musky-scented moustache. Uncle George realized at once that this was Gallows Caye and that the timbers were those of the gallows, and nought else. They thought of burning them, but they were too damp. So they just reburied them again until they could think of something else, because naturally they didn’t wish the story to get out (“Naturally!”) or the workmen would have downed tools at once. And no one would have stopped at the hotel. And in fact the work on the building scheme alas went no further because the Slump, the Depression, you know, simply destroyed the foreign mahogany market and eventually the caye was sold for half the purchase price to Merchant Henricus Deak who didn’t really want it and did nothing with it whatsoever, and after he died I believe it was the Grasshopper Bank in London paid the taxes for oh donkey’s years. Then came forth from over the seas Major John Deak, formerly Judge Deak: nephew, isn’t he?”

“Cousin,” said Stickney Forster. Briefly.

Briefly. And everyone had time to think thoughts. Puff. puff. puff… — How long did or had the gallows tree remained there? “Too long by far. Timber’s always been cheap here. too cheap, you know. and it was even cheaper back then. No reason to dismantle the damned engine,” he used the word in an archaic meaning without hesitation but not without emphasis; “and bring the baulks and beams back, bring them anywhere for that matter — there was after all another gallows in King Town — so here it stayed, tainting the very sky, as you might say, till down they fell. Did anyone topple them? I doubt it. Probably tumbled down in some strong wind, a wind of long fetch. not one of hurricane strength, else the pieces would’ve been flung afar. ”

The few pieces of exotic furniture, a painting showing a jungle scene, similar to but not the same as the local “bush,” brassware and other foreign finery, scarcely filled or disguised the bareness of the room; and through the open doors on each side the breeze blew fitfully but without interruption for very long. Sounds of gaiety accompanied at times by the tunes from Alex Brant’s gramophone, snatches of loud amused conversation, came to them in fits and snatches; from time to time the drone of Deak’s monologue into the ears of, by the murmur of an occasional comment, good-natured Neville. Felix asked, “But what do you mean, ‘another gallows in King Town’? If there was one there, why did they have another one here?”