What was she doing?
She was reading a sheet of paper.
He leaned over. It was a, it was a. well, it was something typed.
Hoping that being the first to speak would not result in a pudding or a cheese or something attached to his nose, he said, “What’s that?
“It fell out of the book. back there.”
“And you just took it?” Whoa, there, Limekiller!
She shifted, shrugged, and swiftly shook her shoulders, as if trying to cast off a touch which he had not applied. “Well, he said it was a copy. So he can easily make another one, and besides Iwanted to finish it without seeming nosy; why are you being so judgmental?”
Iniquity, transgression, and sin. Judge not, that ye —
Limekiller had learned enough to know that he still had much to learn, and so, silently complimenting himself on his wisdom, thought to drop the matter. Only to learn some more, to wit, that when someone wants an argument, really wants it, nothing and nobody is going to prevent it. There is then no Right Way to Handle It. So they had It. Not “Had it Out,” just had it. And he felt miserable. How could love turn to this? And then bv and bv she opened the paper again and they both read it and read it together.
Linzer and Quashee. About that time, one Linzer or Linzen, a Native of Austria and Quashee a Natuve of Guinea, made a Devilish plot to blow up the Poweder Magazine which would worke great loss of Life both Black and White and in the Confusion they rightly expected to follow, it had been their Plot to steal the Gold in the Publick Treasury, which they had reckoned to have opened with a small Blast of Powder simultaneous with the greater and thence they would head for Spanish Waters not doubting but to receive a Welcome after they’d dishonestly profess the Papish Religion. But one or the other attempting to inviegle a Woman of Colour along of them, she having the fear of God before her eyes, divulged the Scheme. Linzer and Quashee were taken tried and sentenced to be hanged. HOWEVER it having come about that the Chapalin’s Wife Mris. Manningtone being at that Time in a delicate Condition and their being no point in the Settlement, scarcely, which was not overlooked from the Chamber in which twas expected she would be confined, Govemour Endderby a most humane and merciful Man, gave orders that contrary to the usual prackticke, Sentence of Execution was not to be carried out in the Settlement but ye Gallowes was erected on Tanbarke Cave as twas then known, on 6th Decern being St. Nicholas Dave. Quashee expressed a degree of Contritione but Linzene with many Oaths and blusterings declared that ‘by G—’ he was glad of the Excursion ‘Yea he had eat many a great green tortle on said Cave and had rather be hanged there where the Sea Winds blew than in any stinking Settlement and regretted Nothing.’ Sentence was carried out and that Part of Tanbarke Caye (the red- brown Mangrave being used for the Purpose of preparing Hydes) has since ben known as Galleowes Point.
Two pennys in the Pund a Bounty on Torbinado Sugar
“Couldn’t spell worth a fiddle-head fern,” he began, hoping that the Black Dog might be sent firmly from their midst by a diagonal change in subject. But it was not to be. Her look was no friendly one. It was still the slightly sidewise gaze of an accountant who wishes to make clear that although he has yet to lodge an Information with the police he has by jove become fully aware of the attempt to queer the books; “You are sailing under a curse aren’t you?” — and what, demanded the Look, had he done which deserved it? he must have done something to deserve it, said the Look; sacked a cathedral, or what? and what did he plan to do to undeserve it? malignantly involving her, said the Look —
“What do you mean? What curse? Why just me?”
Protests of innocence would get him nowhere, said the Look. “It’s just one weird thing after another with you, isn’t it? Was one of your ancestors a hanging judge, too?” And she cited and related to him other of his odd adventures which he had. with some hesitation. related and cited to her, events explicable only by accepting the fantastic and the metaphysical. Events which had happened here within the compass of this so small yet so astonishing nation: the size of Wales? larger than the Atlantic Province of Prince Edward’s Island, where so many Limekillers were buried within sight and sound and scent and touch of the circumambient sea. - But he would accept no guilt on his own broad shoulders. “That’s the kind of country it is. WTien you’re in a country' that’s still partly in the last century —”
‘“the last century’! Jesus
„— or the century before that, well, that’s what it’s like here. Nobody travels to Harvard or McGill in a dugout and nobody’s car in Ohio ever gets hit by a tapir, but here, here, that’s what it’s like. Here. In North America,” he used it in the Canadian sense of The United States and Canada, “in North America you’ve got smog —”
“I haven’t got smog!” — and so they were at it again. Having it again. “And oh my God that’s what those ‘curtains’ were! Those ‘bundles of rags and that ‘window frame’ as I thought they were! It was a gallows and it was those bodies hanging on it until they rotted and fell down! Oh Christ pity women,” she moaned.
And there in the dying day, with the curls of white foam, the perilous seas of faerie lands forlorn, and the emerging stars, and a line of fading light to the west above the Mayan Mountains, he was astonished and vexed and perplexed and pleased and all the rest of it: was he to be a father? Good! “- but I thought you said you’d decided you weren’t pregnant.”
And she: “Oh I don’t mean me. I don’t mean me. I mean that poor woman in the old paper. That chaplain’s wife. Life within her, life inside of her, because that damn dumbell dominus vobiscum man of hers couldn’t get it together to pull out in time, life inside of her and then from any window she could look out of, all she could see was death. A child hanging inside of her from a cord, and anywhere she looked, what were they getting ready to do, why hang some other woman’s child by cords. Ropes, lines,” she gestured to those on the boat; “goddamn you all, goddamn it all, all of it
A new noise out of the sea, a hum and a buzz, and new lights out of the sea: Noddy’s motor-cruiser, or Alex’s, and the faint sounds of music and laughter; she lifted the flashlight and waved it and shouted; he made to seize it more in astonishment than anything else, shouted What was she doing? and she made to strike him with it and then she just as suddenly flung it down and ran a few steps and leaned against the side; he could hear her heavybreathing. She was sorry, she was not sorry, she wept, she did not weep.
The new noises and new lights faded and were merged into the sea again. A new star rose up from the sea, wavered an instant, then it swung slightly to and fro. Then it was still and hung steady in the firmament. Captain Barber’s light. Limekiller adjusted his perceptions. Nodded. Swung the helm just a bit to port.
Having adjusted the inadvertancies of the boat, he thought, he still thought, still he thought he might, readjust the inadvertancies of their lives. their life… In a low and calm voice, he said, “Well, we don’t like it, but we don’t have to like it, that the wind almost didn’t take us there. It’s the anniversary of some grim event, but it’s also the anniversary of St. Nicholas Day, and he is the patron saint of sailors. So the wind wasn’t very willing, but it took us there, and now it’s more willing and it’s taking us back.” Another and a farther and a fainter star skimmed over the sea further out: another of the motor-craft bringing the guests back to port: Alex Brant? Stickney Porster? and who else? Didn’t matter. He saw that she saw- it. “And, anyway, now we’ve got the name cleared up. We don’t like the name? Not Gallants, not Galliards, not Galleon’s. So it’s Gallows Cave. At least now- we know. Now we know, eh. Maybe that ghastly tree does fill the air there with its. whatever they are. Whatever it is. Vibrations? ‘Vibes’? Emanations?” He did not say, but he thought, and he thought that she thought so too: affecting the very winds to drop, to slow, and to delay, one’s arrival. The winds had no power over the power boats? So be it. The twentieth century moved on, moved on; dissipating what once had been projected: the infinite reluctancy of those ancient criminals and their prayers not to get quickly to their destination. For St. Nicholas was the bringer and giver of gifts. It was grotesque, was it, to recall that St. Nicholas became Santa Claus? Life was often grotesque. And death, too.