Limekiller!

“Didn’t know it was here, Old Boy! Couldn’t have gotten here if he did, you see. First of all,” he said, drawing on the counter with his finger dipped in the w ater which had distilled from his glass (Tony now' sliding another glass, tinkling with, could it be? — yes, it was! Ice! — over to Jack, w'ho nodded true thanks, sipped) — “First of all, you see, coming from east to west, there’s Pharaoh’s Reef — quite enough to make them sheer off south in a bit of a damned hurry, don’t you see. Then there’s the Anne of Denmark Island’s Reef, even bigger! And suppose they’d sailed south to avoid Anne of Denmark Island’s Reef? Eh? What w'ould thev find, will you tell me that?” “Carpenter’s Reef. unless it’s been moved,” said Jack.

Sneed gave a great snort, went on, “Exactly! Well, then — now, even if they’d missed Pharaoh’s Reef and got pahst it. even if they’d missed Anne of Denmark Island’s Reef and got pahst it. even if they’d missed Carpenter’s Reef and got pahst it.. why, then there’s that great long Barrier Reef, don’t you see, one of the biggest in the world. (Of course, Australia’s the biggest one.) No. No, Old Boy. Only the British lads knew the way through the Reef, and you may be sure that they were not pahssing out the information to the Spaniard, no, ho-ho!”

Well (thoughtjack, in the grateful shade of the shop), maybe so. It was an impressive thought, that, of infinite millions of coral polyps laboring and dying and depositing their stony “bones” in order to protect British Hidalgo (and, incidentally, though elsewhere. Australia) from “the Spaniard.”

“Well!” Captain Sneed obliterated his w'atery map with a sweep of his hand. “Mustn’t mind me, Old Boy. This is my own King Charles’s head, if you want to know'. It’s just the damnable cheek of those Spaniards there, there, in the Spanish Hidalgo, still claiming this blessed little land of ours as their own, when they had never even set their foot upon it!” And he blew out his scarlet face and actually said “Herrumph!” — a word which Jack had often seen but never, till now', actually heard.

And then Tony Mkeloglu, w'ho had evidently gone through all, all of this many, many times before, said, softly, “My brother-in-law’s brother had just told me on the telephone from King Town —”

“Phantom relay, it has — the telephone, you know — sorry, Tony, forgive me — what does your damned crook of a kinsman tell you from King Town?”

tells me that there is a rumor that the Pike Estate has finally been settled, you know.”

Not again? Always. thought Limekiller.

But Captain Sneed said, Don’t you believe it! “Oh. What? ‘A rumor,’ yes, well, you mav believe that. Alwavs a rumor. Whv didn’t the damned fellow make a proper will? Eh? For that matter, why don’t you, Old Christopher?”

There was a sound more like a crackle of cellophane than anything else. Jack turned to look; there in an especially shadowy corner was a man even older, even smaller, than Captain Sneed; and exposed toothless gums as he chuckled.

“Yes, why you do not, Uncle Christopher?” asked Tony.

In the voice of a cricket who has learned to speak English with a strong Turkish accent, Uncle Christopher said that he didn’t believe in wills.

“What’s going to become of all your damned doubloons, then, when you go pop?” asked Captain Sneed. Uncle Christopher only smirked and shrugged. “Where have you concealed all that damned money which you accumulated all those years you used to peddle bad rum and rusty roast-beef tins round about the bush camps? Who’s going to get it all, eh?”

Uncle Christopher went hickle-hickle. “I know who going get it,” he said. Sh’sh, sh’sh, sh’sh. His shoulders, thin as a butterfly’s bones, heaved his amusement.

“Yes, but how are they going to get it? What? How are you going to take care of that? Once you’re dead.”

Uncle Christopher, with a concluding crackle, said. “I going do like the Indians do. ”

Limekiller hadn’t a clue what the old man meant, but evidently Captain Sneed had. “What?” demanded Captain Sneed. “Come now, come now, you don’t really believe all that, do you? You do? You do! Tush. Piffle. The smoke of all those bush camps has addled your brains. Shame on you. Dirty old pagan. Disgusting. Do you call yourself a Christian and a member of a church holding the Apostolic Succession? Stuff!"

The amiable wrangle went on. And, losing interest in it, Limekiller once again became aware of feeling ill at ease. Or. was it. could it be?. ill?

In came a child, a little girl; Limekiller had seen her before. She was perhaps eight years old. Where had he seen her?

“Ah,” said Mikeloglu, briskly the merchant again. “Here is me best customer. She going make me rich, not true, me Bet-ty gyel? What fah you, chaparita?"