Limekiller!

Here came a pause. “The issuance of such licenses, you see, sir, is not the function of this office.” And this may very w’ell have been the truth of God: it may have been that whichever office whose function it was or had been, had been abolished or expired. Does not many and many a North American city have ordinances forbidding peddling without a license and carefully refrain from providing a means of issuing such licenses? Who is that man or woman who has never — in North America — felt himself on the verge of madness after the tenth or twentieth repetition of, “That is not my department”? - how lucky they are.

And then one day, after Jack had given up and was wondering what to do next — sell his boat, maybe, and give up — not sell his boat but sail her away, avoiding or hoping to avoid the graveyard shoals of the waters in the next republic south — or try sailing her north to sell, maybe sailing in between the hurricanes and wondering if they could really be more trouble than he had been cautioned (warned) the United States Coast Guard might be — over a friendly drink at a friendly bar, he had fallen into conversation with a friendly National. (Not the one first described.) The conversation had lasted a while and covered many subjects, including. suddenly. the sale of lands forfeited for unpaid taxes.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s land,” muttered Jack.

“Ah, but Mr. Limekiller. Government is not really very covetous in this colony — this country,” the man corrected himself. Old ways, including old ways of speech, might die hard: but dying they certainly were. The man was in his late 30s, ruddy-brown in color, Caucasian in features. “Taxes may remain for three years unpaid before Government even sends a notice. After at least three notices are sent by post, Government waits a year before publishing a notice in the official Gazette. After three such notices have been g&getted, the property is placed upon the list of properties to be sold. In fact, you see, Mr. Limekiller, it usuallv takes ten years before land is offered for sale because of unpaid taxes.

“And after ten years, Mr. Limekiller, one may safely assume that the owner is dead, or unfindable, or indifferent; and that the same is true of his heirs… if any. Now, you see,” he unfolded a copy of the Gazette, about the length and width of a news magazine, though not as thick; “here is the current list of tax forfeitures to be offered for sale next month.’’Jack could scarcely have cared less, but politeness obliged him to look at the list. It took up an entire page.

“‘Five thousand acres located at Gumbo Tree, Benbow District'" Jack read aloud. “‘Owner, The Floridana Tropical Agriculture Company. Arrears, $5,550. ’ Say, that comes hardly more than Sl.OO an acre. Odd.”

The man smiled. “Not very odd, considering that, for one thing, most of the land is under water, the rest is pure mangrove bluff, there is no access by dry land, scarcely any even by shallow- draught boat, and that the Floridana Tropical Agriculture Company is no longer in existence. It had a short career. A very short career.”

“Land-scam, eh?”

“It may be so.”

How familiarjack was to become, eventually, with those words.