Limekiller!

“What you mean, Flying Dutchmon, mon? What you mean, Jock, Flying Dutch-mon? Ees no such teeng, Jock. No, mon, e’s no such teeng. Eet ees ah Eng-leesh-mon! Eet ees Coptain Blood, mon! Ahn he ahl wayrs hahv een he’s hahnd ah mahp, mon. Ah chart, mon. Becahs he seeking someteeng, mon, Jock. But what he seek, mon, he cahn nev-ah fine! He seeking salvation, mon. He glahry in hees chart, mon. But what say de Laard? De Laard say, ‘Lef heem who weel glahry, lef heem glahry een dees: Dot I am de Laard who mehk Heaven ahn Ort, mon.’”

There was, of course, no drowned body in the Cove.

Nor anywhere else to be seen.

As long as Harlow had no idea of Jack’s particular reason for talking about it, he talked about it a lot, all the while insisting that Limekiller sit still while he himself stacked and stashed. “Ah, Jock, me nevah hear of no Coptain Blood who steal de Kingjewels frahm London Tow-ah, like you say. Ahn ahs fah de cinema, mon, dot feelm, weet Errol Fleen! Why, dey hahv de fox ahl rahng, mon. Ahl rahng. Why, me di lahf aht de feelm!”

A faint scent of something sweet came on the breeze. Spice- seed, perhaps. Limekiller felt a good deal better already. “What were the facts, then, Harlow?”

“Why, de fox, Jock: Foct ees, de bloody cop-tain he di sail under a corse, true, fah true. He corsed, ahl right. You know dot? Ahl right. But you no di know why God corse heem, why de Laard God fi corse heem. Fi why? Becahs, mon, he lef dem heeden teenk he God mon. Dem heeden sovvage, dey di teenk he God, mon: ahn he lef dem teenk so. Dis wah de nature ahv hees seen, mon. De Laard say — nah true, Jock? Nah true? — 'Dow sholt hahv no oddah God befah ME,’ mon. So he DOM, mon. De Cop-tain Blood, de Bloody Mon, de DOM, mahn, teel ahl etornity. Een de lahs day, he weel fine forgeevness. He weel fine morcy. not teel den. Not teel den. Teel den, Jock, he muss sail de Seven Sea, mon, wid he side ahl tarn w’open, wid he side ahl bleed-deeng. Becahs he deny hees Laard, mon, ond so he muss bare de same wound mon, becahs —”

Limekiller said, remembering, “But the Captain’s wound was a larger one than that. It’s larger than the wound of a spear-thrust.”

Harlow had two planks on his shoulders. He stood absolutely still for a moment. Then he said, “Hoew you know dees, Jock, mon?”

Jack said, “Because I’ve seen him. Once, yesterday, at sea. And once, today. Right here. I mean. ” He pointed towards the shore, “right there.

Harlow set down his planks. Slowlv. Slowly. Bv accident or by design, the shadows took the form of a cross. And then he did something which seemed to Limekiller, then and thenafter, to be — considering — a very brave thing.

He sat down next to Limekiller, and he put his arm around him.

Very well. They had been mistaken, up there at Port Caroline. It was not the Jack O’Lantern, who sailed at night. It was instead Bloody Man, Captain Blood, who sailed by day. Who sailed by dav, appearing from time to time, often in his longboat, sometimes walking the sand, sometimes merely standing at the water’s edge: but always, alwavs, with his hand pressed to his side and his face a face of pain and agony. Always, that is, except when he took his hand away. And showed his bloody, gaping wound.

If these visitations, these apparitions, followed anything resembling a regular schedule, then Harlow the Hunter did not know of it. He did know, however… or, anyway, he had anyway heard it said, that at any given season of his re-appearance, he show'ed up, first, in the south. and then, slowly headed north.

First, in the south. This would explain both why the Black Arawak had so suddenly, and so unlike them, abandoned their traditional fishing-grounds in the south: and headed north. And why the Baymen would not, why they really, really, would not, consider shifting themselves to the southern fishery. “Slowly heading north. ” Well, one such show, and the north-central fishing-grounds were going to be emptied, too. For sure.

How long had this all been going on? Harlow had no dates, as such. But he had at least something like a date. The Bloody Captain, Bloody Man, Captain Blood, had been appearing since about the time, he said, “When we di fight de ’Painiard oet by St. Saviour C’ve.”

For hundreds of years the Great Barrier Reef had served to protect this obscure corner of Central America from the otherwise all-conquering Spaniards. In theory, at least, by logic, certainly, the Spaniards must have realized that something, Something must lie the other side of the great Reef. something other than “Chaos and the void.” But, with so much else to concern them, savage and perhaps not-so-savage empires teeming with gold, hills of almost solid silver, shires and shires of well-tended arable land: whv should they have concerned themselves over-much with the question of, Something lost beyond the reef.?

Besides. The English knew the only channels through the reef.

And the Spaniards didn’t.