Limekiller!

“All clear?” he asked the small tiger, as it rubbed against his leg. The small tiger growled something which might have been “Portuguese man o’war off the starboard bow at three bells,” or “Musketmen to the futtock-shrouds,” or perhaps only, “Where in the Hell have you been, all day, you creep?”

“Tell you what, Skip,” as he tied the skiff, untied the Saccharissa, and, taking up the boat’s pole, leaned against her in a yo-heave-ho manner; “let’s us bugger off from this teeming tropical metropolis and go timely down the coast. say, to off Crocodile Creek, lovely name, proof there really is no Chamber of Commerce in these parts. then take the dawn tide and drop a line or two for some grunts or jacks or who knows what. sawfish, maybe. maybe. something to go with the rice-and-beans tomorrow. Corn what we catch but can’t eat,” he grunted, leaned, hastily released his weight and grabbed the pole up from the sucking bottom, dropped it on deck, and made swift shift to raise sail; slap/slap/. and then he took the tiller. “And thennn. Oh, shite and onions, I don’t know. Out to the Welshman’s Caves, maybe.”

“Harebrained idea if ever I heard one,” the first mate growled, trying to take Jack by the left great-toe. “Why don’t you cut your hair and shave that beard and get a job and get drunk, like any decent, civilized son of a bitch would do?”

The white buildings and red roofs and tall palms wavering along the front street, the small boats riding and reflecting, the green mass of the bush behind: all contributed to give Port Cockatoo and environs the look and feel of a South Sea Island. Or, looked at from the viewpoint of another culture, the District Medical Officer (who was due for a retirement which he would not spend in his natal country), said that Port Cockatoo was “gemiitlich.” It was certainly a quiet and a gentle and undemanding sort of place.

But, somehow, it did not seem the totally ideal place for a man not yet thirty, with debts, with energy, with uncertainties, and with a thirty-foot boat.

A bright star slowly detached itself from the darkening land and swam up and up and then stopped and swayed a bit. This was the immense kerosene lamp which was nightly swung to the top of the great flagpole in the Police yard: it could be seen, the local Baymen assured Limekiller, as far out as Serpent Cave. Serpent Caye, the impression was, lay hard upon the very verge of the known and habitable earth, beyond which the River Ocean probably poured its stream into The Abvss.

Taking the hint, Limekiller took his own kerosene lamp, by no means immense, lit it, and set it firmly between two chocks of wood. Technically, there should have been two lamps and of different colors. But the local vessels seldom showed any lights at all. “He see me forst, he blow he conch-shell, me see he forst, me blow my conch-shell.” And if neither saw the other. “Well, we suppose to meet each othah…" And if they didn’t? Well, there was Divine Providence — hardly any lives were lost from such misadventures: unless, of course, someone was drunk. Very drunk.

The dimlight lingered and lingered to the west, and then the stars started to come out. It was time, Limekiller thought, to stop for the night.

He was eating his rice and beans and looking at the chart when he heard a voice nearby saying, “Sheep a-high!”

Startled, but by no means alarmed, he called out, “Come aboard!”

What came aboard first was a basket, then a man. A man of no great singularity of appearance, save that he was lacking one eye. “Me name,” said the man, “is John Samuel, barn in dis very Colony, me friend, and hence ah subject of de Qveen, God bless hah.” Not alone by his color, but by his speech — which, with its odd reversals of Wand V sounded like Sam Weller’s — Mr. Samuel was evidently a White Creole, a member of a class never very large, and steadily dwindling away: sometimes by way of absorption into the non-White majority, sometimes by way of emigration, and sometimes just by way of Death the Leveler. “I tehks de libahty of bringing you some of de forst fruits of de sile,” said John S.

“Say, mighty thoughtful of you, Mr. Samuel, care for some rice and beans? — My name’s Jack Limekiller.”

„— to veet, soursop, breadfruit, oh-rouge, coconut — vhat I care for, Mr. Limekiller, is some rum. Rum is vhat I has come to beg of you. De hond of mon, sah, has yet to perfect any medicine de superior of rum.”

Jack groped in the cubbyhold. "What about all those bush medicines down at Cape Mandee?” he asked, grunting. There was supposed to be a small bottle, a chaparita, as they called it. “Where — Oh. It must be. No. Then it must be. ”

Mr. Samuel rubbed the grey bristles on his strong jaw. “I does gront you, sah, de wertue of de country verba. But you must steep de yerba en de rum, sah. Yes mon.”