Limekiller!

Finally, the Tropical Hardwood (Ltd.) tug and its line of logs- mahogany, these, chained with chains — had passed up river; the bridge captains had bent to their capstans, an act greeted with cries of caution and protest from the few, the one or two, high-masted vessels yet to pass. but this was mere ritual play; all boats were suffered to pass before the bridgemen set actually to work and the bridge swung slowly around once again, connected both shores, and made King Town one again. and the crowds from both sides began to pass across; their conversations uninterrupted:

“Gi’e me a borrow of free shillin, nah so, mon?”

“ Whattt? Me gi’e you nutting like dot, mon!”

“Well, juss you wait, mon. Every fot foewel have she w’own Sundav.”

“Dot woman? Tahk, tahk, tahk; me fink she eat pahrot head!”

“She w’own head w’only emp-ty, gyel. Like jumble bahlroom.”

Some of the talk was clear enough to Jack. Sooner or later the proudest poultry wound up “biled,” baked, fried or roasted. By every principle of sympathetic magic, eating a parrot’s head should make one talkative (Parrot: Wee Willy Wiggins: Jack shuddered). But what was a jumble ballroom and why a simile for emptiness? — At once: a hint:

“No tahk aboet jumble [jungle?]', eet mehk me blood crahl!”

“ Whatt, gyel? You t’ink you een bush?

Reaching the other side of the Swing Bridge, halting for a moment to consider which way he himself should now swing, it came to his mind that there had seemed today to have been a number of times when someone had wanted to talk, when someone else had demurred, with a No tahk aboet it! And, in each case, the implication that despite. whatever it was. one was safe enough here in King Town. - Town, from the days when it was the Colony’s only settlement, nowadays it was the Colony’s only city: and had its own Lord Mayor, same as London, although elected not by Liveried Companies but by the Municipal Council: did the local Lord Mayor, Limekiller wondered, give banquets of turtle soup, calipash and calipee, like his brother of London? Turtles enough there were, around here, for sure; he’d passed the Central Main Market earlier and seen a full half-dozen lying on their backs and languidly now and then waving their flippers: though, that Buy me was the signal’s intended meaning might be doubted. Up ahead: Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson; at once Limekiller turned aside.

There was to be sure nothing really malevolent about Mrs. and Dr. Duckerson: why then had he instamatically turned aside (and, as a result, found himself in Spyglass Alley, a thoroughfare — if that were not too broad a wrord — wherein he had seldom been and had no good present purpose for being)? Here’s why: Dr. Duckerson was a semi-retired chiropractor from some roaring North American metorpolis such as it might be Lincoln, Nebraska, or Medicine Hat, Manitoba. was Medicine Hat and its putative plumed war- bonnet in Manitoba? and, for that matter, was Lincoln in Nebraska? wouldn’t Illinois be a likelier -

“Too many torpical suns have beat upon your brain, Limekiller,” he told himself. “What is now requisite is something of a cooling nature;” at that moment… do you understand?. at that exact moment!.. a swinging door swung open, and a voice said, calmly, “Ah, Limekiller.” And the swinging door swung shut again.

Not, however, before J.L.L. had marked its location. Over the door hung a sign; w*as it a rebus? consisting of the single painted word THE, followed by a telescope (or, yes yes, a spyglass) aimed directly at an Object, despite the Object’s being so near at hand that, really, no optical instrument was needful to identify it as a “pint,” that is, a bottle: one which was not, presumably, intended to contain ketchup. Or Fanta. Limekiller applied the slightest of pressure and the doors flung open, disclosing, as First Disclosure, a most comely young woman; a „Panyar’ that is to say, a Spaniard; that is to say, w-ith a greater degree of genotypical accuracy, a Mestiza: “pure” Spaniards in British Hidalgo there were none: and for that matter, probably, none in Spain, either; “Ah, my dear,” he said, companionablv.

Her reply was somewhat less companionable: “Don’t you, 'Ah, my dear’ me," she said.

“But why not.”

“Bathsheba tear my eyes out, ‘why not.'