The matter was almost at once resolved. “Scuse me, sah, you doesn’t mind I ox you ah question?”
It was now permissible to turn and look. The same fisherman who had spin-dizzied the other fisherman. Not, however, seeming inclined to repeat it with Jack. “Fire away, friend,” saidj.
“What you t’ink, sah, ahv de Ahrahwock?”
A few years earlier, this question asked him in North America, Jack would have at once said, “The Arawack are extinct.” And, as far as North America is concerned, the Arawack are extinct. In Central America, however, not necessarily. Limekiller said, perhaps cautiously, but, certainly, truthfully, “Well, they have never bothered me. ”
This was perhaps not what the man meant. The Fisherman Wharf, Jack recollected, was not, after all, an Arawack bar, it was a Bayman bar. The Arawack for the most part lived farther south, in a string of tiny coastal hamlets, many of which, oddly enough, had Scotch names: Aberdeen, Inverclyde, Mull, and others.
The fisherman said, “Mon, what I mean to ox, dev Block like we, nah true, sah? Nah true, dey Block like we? Some of dem, dey blocker than some of we. Whv dev no like ahd eet dev Block like we? Suppose, sah, you say to dem, ‘What, you no Block? You not Nee-gro?’ You not know, sah, what dey ahnswer? ‘No sotch teeng,’ dey say. ‘Notteeng like dot. We Eendian,’ dey gwevn tell you. Dey not want fi speak Baytahk. Dey w’onlv want fi speak dey w’own lahnguage, sah, which dey not want teach noo-bod-dy. Ahnd wot de troot, sah? De troot ees, dey mustee.”
Jack didn’t know the word, his face showed it.
The fisherman, seeing that, explained. “‘Mustee,’ sah, what we cahl mustee, eet means, meex. Wheech ees to say, dey ahv meex race. Yes sah. Block men from Africa, lahng, lahng time w’ago, dey meexing wit’ de w’old Ahrawock Eendian een de West Eedies, sah. Dev loosing de African lahnguage, sah. Becahs, sah, dese w’old- time Africa men, sah, coming from many deeferent tribe, sah, no common tongue, sah: and meengling weet de Ahrawock Eendian, dey adop de Ahrawock tongue. De Eendian become Block, de Block becoming Eendian. Ahftah while, sah, mi-grat-mg from de West Eendies. Settling here, sah.”
Still cautious, Limekiller said, “Yes, I believe you are correct.” A curious people, the Black Arawack. A mystery people, sure enough, with their black skins and their Indian faces and their archaic and (save of course to themselves) their unknown language. Mysterious, but certainly harmless. Harmless, certainly — but different. Harmlessly different, but — still — different.
“Yes, sah,” the fisherman said. “Dey settle here, Enn Breeteesh Heedalgo. But sah. We settle here forst. ”
It had been a fairly faint and fairly forlorn hope which had broughtjack down to Port Caroline. As far as imported goods were concerned, merchants and suppliers there did not order from abroad: they ordered from King Town. There did not seem to be any more stock in their warehouses than in the capital (and only) citv: however. None of them had ever studied Business Administration at Harvard. Their ways of administering business would have flunked not only any test administered in North America, they would probably have failed any Mexican examination as well. But their wavs wrere their own wavs and thev knew their own country. knew, certainly, their own local District and their district’s wavs.
Wilbur Velasquez, Hardware and Ironmonger, does not depose, but says: Yes, Jock, I does hahv dot amoent ahv roofing metal [corrugated iron]. Yes, Jock, I weel sell eet to de bee-shup, sortainlv. Noew, Jock, de w’only problem: Hoew' we go-een get eet doewn from Mt. Maria?
Ascander Haddad, Dealer in Ground Victuals, Citrus Fruits, Cement: Well, Mr. Limekiller, as it is for the church, very well, Mr. Limekiller. I have three sack of cement, store at my farm at Mile 23. I have another sack in the shed at my other house at Bendy- Creek. Suppose you can find some way of bringing them down, you can have them at same price.
Gladstone Lionel Piggott, Lumber Contractor and Dealer in Wood, Timber, and Planks: Me b’v, I be delighted to help you. Motta ahv foct, ahlthough I do not hahv your requirement directly at hond, not here in Port, I hahv a pile ahv season timber exoctly cot fah your need. Some five year ago I dismontle sahmill doewn aht Bamboo P’int, but timber still pile ahp, ahnd nicely season by noew, you see.
It all made sense, it made, all of it, excellent sense. Wilbur Velasquez had moved the corrugated iron to Mt. Maria because, at the time he had moved it, people were roofing houses at Mt. Maria. The cultivators there were cultivators in a small way, they were of a thrifty disposition, they straightened nails as long as there were bent nails to straighten; and they bought sheets of corrugated iron as they had money to spare to buy them. One by one. Sheet by sheet. It would not have paid Wilbur to have moved the material sheet by sheet from Port Caroline, so he had moved it en masse, and erected a ramada to cover it. Since that time, however, there had been a decline in the price of bananas, and, as a result, no one now at Mt. Maria was buying corrugated iron. And, as Wilbur did not know who would want it next, or where, or how much — being (as he more than once point out) neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son — he had simply. and sensibly. left it where it was.
Ascander Haddad had cement in sack at his two properties because he sometimes required cement at his two properties. Moreover, his neighbors, did they require cement, and from time to time they did, would certainly find it more convenient to buy it by the bucket right there at Mile 23 or at Bendy Creek, rather than come down to Port for it. It was not news to Ascander that no fresh supply was coming soon from King Town, but that was no reason why he should have moved such supply as he had from right where it was.
And Gladdy Piggott, cousin to Lemuel, like every small lumberman in the colony, followed the age-old practice of moving the saw-mill — or, exactly, its machinery — from cut-over site to uncut-over site, every few years or so. His present machinery was standing idle back at St. Austin’s Range, because, for one, he had not felt like bidding for the most recently offered Government contract; and, for another, because most of his sawyers had moved on to Pine Tree Creek, formerly Plum Tree Creek. And, as for the cut timber left over at the old mill at Bamboo Point, why, that was safe enough there, it was even getting seasoned there. It was like money in the bank, there.
Paint, now. There was some paint of the sort wanted, in Port Caroline. Not enough. There was enough to make enough, though, at the Forestry Station in Warree Bush — where, no one knew why, more had arrived than had been ordered, last year: and had of course stayed there ever since. Why not? It was perfectly safe there. If someone were to require it. someday. well.
And so on. And so on.
Stepping out into the pre-dawn was like stepping into a clean, cool pool. Already, at that hour, people were about. grave, silent, polite. the baker setting the fires, the fisherman already- returning with their small catch. The sun climbed, very tentatively, to the edge of the horizon. For a moment, it hesitated. Then, all at once, two things happened. The national radio system, which had gone off the air at ten the night before, suddenly awoke into Sound. Radios were either dead silent or at full-shout. In one instant, every radio in Port Caroline, and in the greater Port Caroline Area, roared into life. And at the same moment, the sun, suddenly aware that there was nothing to oppose it, shot up from the sea and smote the land with a blast of heat.