Fairly early in his stay there, fairly fresh from Canada and wanting to do things “right,” as right was understood in Canada, he had spent several days going from office to office in search of enlightenment which he did not find. At first he was purely puzzled: how could government officials not know the law’s of their own government? Then, later, he suspected that he was being, given the old runaround. Later than that, much later, he decided that it was nothing of the sort. No one could give him an opinion on the matter because at the time no one had any opinion on the matter. Almost every employee of Government was a National, and hence a boatman by birth: and they all knew about not rocking boats. “A license, Mr. Limekiller? To carry passengers, Mr. Limekiller? Well, Mr. Limekiller. you see, sir.
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.
And the list continued down to the bottom of the page, where nestled numbers of small properties of odd sizes involving measurements in roods and perches, and on which odd sums of money were owed. “I don’t know what I’d want with land that nobody else wants,” Limekiller said. What did Limekiller look like? He w'as not taller than most men in a country where most men w-ere tall. His hair, w'hich had once been light-blond, had grown light-brown, had begun to turn dark-brown, was now', under the inexhaustible suns of the Spanish Main, beginning to turn dark-blond in streaks and — but enough of Limekiller’s hair (and beard), w'hich was rather long. His face was broad and so was his nose. His eyebrows thick, his eyes sometimes seemed blue or green or something darker than either, sometimes (seemingly) depending on the color of the Carib Sea: w'hich is, however, never wane-dark; sometimes they w^ere also bloodshot and often this was the result of saltwater or of lack of sleep and sometimes, of too much National rum, and even — though not verv often — the result of a native herb locallv called “weed” when it was not called “ganja”. and this was rather interesting because some of the older Nationals sometimes called a certain kind of banana “ganja,” and both plants, after all, are members of the hemp family. His family name indicated descent from at least one man who once burned limestone in a kiln or kill, presumably in England; sometimes he said that his mother’s family were Ukrainian, sometimes he said Scotch, and sometimes he said they were Kalmuk Tartars who entered Canada by way of Bering Straits on dogsled during a particularly frozen winter: perhaps he was not serious in saying this.
“What would I want with land nobody else wants?” he asks. “I have enough troubles without it.”
His nameless companion says, “Ah, but some of these small parcels of land are so cheap, Mr. Limekiller! You could plant them in mango or coconut. Eventually, you might re-sell them, perhaps.” A tray materializes on the table, trough Jack recalls ordering nothing more since the initial round.
“Re-sell? Ed have to show it, wouldn’t I? And I can’t even get a license to carry passengers —” He looks rather moodily into his glass, raises it in thanks, drains it.
“Ah, but Mr. Limekiller. Government would not require you to have a license to carry people to whom you were showing your own land for possible sale, you know.”
There seems something more in this statement than in the glass. He considers it. “Government wouldn’t?"
“No, no. Cmainlv not.”
Jack considers this for a long time and then ha says, “Oh.”
“It has been a pleasure speaking to you, Mr. Limekiller. I hope,” the man adds in the charming phrase of his nation after a first meeting, “I hope we’ll be no more strangers.”
“Hoew you like Mr. Lofting?” the barkeeper asked Jack, some small while later.
“Who?”
“Honorable Mr. Lorenzo Lofting, Permanent Under-secretary to Government.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Lerdinand,” Jack said; “I was advised, when I first came here, to sign the Visitors’ Book at Government House. But. somehow. either I didn’t have a clean shirt, or my trousers were tom, or, or something. So I never did. And so I never get invited to occasions where I’d be meeting people like that.”