Limekiller!

Not less than three times did waterspouts, those smaller cyclones of the sea, appear: and the third time there were three of them, evidently on a convergence course which would inevitably reach the vessel with a violence it could not hope to survive. “Steady at the helm,” the archbishop said. “If we flee, they will pursue.” The helm stayed more or less steady. Nearer and nearer came the waterspouts, like great gray-green twisting sea-serpents dancing on the surface of the sea.

“Elements of God, be not elementals of unrighteousness,” the old voice said (voice so feeble, and yet so strong); “unholv trinity deceived bv Satan, I bid vou three times in the Name of the God Who is One: Begone! Begone! Begone!” There was a sound like the simultaneous crashing of a thousand great waves. The sea heaved and swelled, the boat was drenched, the boat veered, shivered, tilted.

The boat righted itself. When Limekiller had wiped his eyes almost dry, dry enough to look around, the waterspouts were gone. But a small stand of tall mangrove trees, perhaps the only trees in all creation which can grow up out of the salt, salt sea — this stand of them was gone. Where it, they, had been, to starboard, the wrack and wreckage of them floated on the torpid waves.

Something moved and muttered in the small hold. Something scrabbled, gobbled in a voice clotted by something thicker than phlegm. Perhaps, Limekiller thought, feeling his bowels both twist and — almost — loosen — it was not in the hold at all, but -

There was a coral shoal clearly visible, a few feet down, to port. “Port the helm!” a voice screamed, all but in his ear. He had never moved so swiftly in his life, he fell forward and down upon the wheel, the cutlass slashed the air where his head had been. The man screamed again and raised the cutlass again, the man was filthy, vile, face distorted with no normal rage, face framed in tangled beard, and, in the tangles, things that smoked — The man was gone. It was not “Bloody Man.” The shoal slipped astern and behind.

“Teach,” said Sir Joshua, in a voice fainter than Jack had ever heard his voice. “It was Teach. Goddamn him. that is. ahh. Oh. Hm. Ah, well. His voice died away. The air stank of sulfur. And of worse.

But the clean breezes of the Bay soon swept all that away — a matter for which Limekiller wras giving thanks — when he heard Harlow give a cry without words, saw' his arm sweep outwards. Jack looked, saw an enormous shark, had not realized a shark could be so huge, had not believed such a shark would ever pass inside the reef: the shark was moving, and moving faster than he would have allowed for any shark to move: in a moment it would, must, surely strike them: and then -

“Ah, Satan, cease thy follies!” the archbishop said, almost impatiently. “Canst thou hope to enthrall leviathan, and draw' him on with a snare?”

Surely the shark sw erved. Certainly the shark missed them. A moment or so later, looking back, Limekiller though he saw a fin break the surface, heading out to sea again. But perhaps it was only a porpoise. Or a piece of flotsam.

Or nothing at all.

“It’s a good thing the Colony is already autonomous,” Sir Joshua said, wiping his red face with a red bandana — not part of his official accoutrements. “They don’t really need me very much at all. Not, mind you,” he added, stuffing the kerchief away and at once wiping his face on his forearm; “not, mind you, that I particularly want them to realize it in any particular hurry… ah, well.”

Dead Man’s Cave lay dead beneath them. The water was clear, the mass of sand and coral could be clearly seen. If Limekiller had stepped over the side and stood with both feet upon the surface of the sunken caye, his head would still be above the water.

They had been there quite some time. They had encountered nothing untoward since arriving — in fact, they had encountered nothing there at all, except a huge manta, locally called “sting-rav,” which, following the sun and avoiding the shadows of the clouds, flapped lazily away from them -

And it was hot.

And there was no cold beer along, this time, either.

In part to make conversation, in part only thinking aloud, Limekiller said, “I was looking at His Grace’s old chart last night, and —”

Sir Joshua at once fell in with the subject. “Yes, indeed: man was a natural mapmaker. Man was a natural explorer, too. Some say, you know, that he was naturally proud, that is, over-proud. I suppose one would call it hubris. Oh, I don’t mean that he was a bloody Captain Bligh, though, mind you, Bligh has had a bad press, you know, a damned bad press. However. Beside the point. Yes. Polk’s men adored him.” Jack thought to himself, ‘Polk,’ hey. Not ‘Black.' As for the rest, Jack hadn’t a thought at all. “But there was that one fatal incident. That one fatal show of weakness. We might not consider it such, but such it wras. You recollect Kipling’s story of the man who would be”