Smiling, Mr. Blossom asked, “And what he tell you, then, Doctor?”
Dr. Rafael’s smile was a trifle rueful. “He said, ‘Let the dead bury their dead’—” The others all laughed. Mr. Ferdinand Rousseau was evidently known to all of them, “—and he declined to take it. Well, I was aware that Mr. Blossom’s mother was a cousin of Mr. Rousseau’s mother—” (“Double-cousin,” said Mr. Blossom.)
Said Mr. Blossom, “And the doctor has even been there, too, to that country. I don’t mean Guernsey; in Africa, I mean; not true, Doctor?”
Up ahead, where the coast thrust itself out into the blue, blue Bay, Jack thought he saw the three isolated palms which were his landmark. But there was no hurry. He found himself unwilling to hurry anything at all.
Doctor Rafael, in whose voice only the slightest trace of alien accent still lingered, said that after leaving Vienna, he had gone to London, in London he had been offered and had accepted work in a British West African colonial medical service. “I was just a bit surprised that the old gravestone referred to Mandingo as a country, there is no such country on the maps today, but there are such a people.”
“What they like, Doc-tah? What they like, thees people who dey mehk some ahv Mr. Blossom ahn-ces-tah?”
There was another chuckle. This one had slight overtones.
The DMO’s round, pink face furrowed in concentration among memories a quarter of a century old. “Why,” he said, “they are like elephants. They never forget.”
There was a burst of laughter. Mr. Blossom laughed loudest of them all. Twenty-five years earlier he would have asked about Guernsey; today…
Harlow the Hunter, his question answered, gestured towards the shore. A slight swell had come up, the blue was flecked, with bits of white. “W’over dere, suppose to be wan ahv w’ol’ Bob Blaine cahmp, in de w’ol’ days.”
“Filthy fellow,” Dr. Rafael said, suddenly, concisely.
“Yes sah.” Harlow agreed. “He was ah lewd fellow, fah true, fah true. What he use to say, he use to say, ‘Eef you tie ah rottle-snehk doewn fah me, I weel freeg eet…’ “
Mr. Blossom leaned forward. “Something the matter, Mr. Limekiller?”
Mr. Limekiller did not at that moment feel like talking. Instead, he lifted his hand and pointed towards the headland with the three isolated palms.
“Cape Man’tee, Mr. Limekiller? What about it?”
Jack cleared his throat. “I thought that was farther down the coast…according to my chart…”
Ed Huggin snorted. “Chart! Washington chart copies London chart and London chart I think must copy the original chart made by old Captain Cook. Chart!” He snorted again.
Mr. Florian Blossom asked, softly, “Do you recognize your landfall, Mr. Limekiller? I suppose it would not be at the cape itself, which is pure mangrove bog and does not fit the description which you gave us…”
Mr. Limekiller’s eyes hugged the coast. Suppose he couldn’t find the goddamned place? Police and Government wouldn’t like that at all. Every ounce of fuel had to be accounted for. Chasing the wild goose was not approved. He might find an extension of his stay refused when next he went applying for it. He might even find himself officially listed as a Proscribed Person, trans.: haul ass, Jack, and don’t try coming back. And he realized that he did not want that at all, at all. The whole coast looked the same to him, all of a sudden. And then, all of a sudden, it didn’t…somehow. There was something about that solid-seeming mass of bush—
“I think there may be a creek. Right there.”
Harlow nodded. “Yes mon. Is a creek. Right dere.”
And right there, at the mouth of the creek—in this instance, meaning not a stream, but an inlet—Limekiller recognized the huge tree. And Harlow the Hunter recognized something else. “Dot mark suppose to be where Mr. Limekiller drah up the skiff.”
“Best we ahl put boots on,” said Sergeant Ruiz, who had said not a word until now. They all put boots on. Harlow shouldered an axe. Ruiz and Huggin took up machetes. Dr. Rafael had, besides his medical bag, a bundle of what appeared to be plastic sheets and crocus sacks. “You doesn’t mind to cahry ah shovel, Mr. Jock?” Jack decided that he could think of a number of things he had rather carry: but he took the thing. And Mr. Blossom carefully picked up an enormous camera, with tripod. The Governments of His and/or Her Majesties had never been known for throwing money around in these parts; the camera could hardly have dated back to George III but was certainly earlier than the latter part of the reign of George V.
“You must lead us, Mr. Limekiller.” The District Commissioner was not grim. He was not smiling. He was grave.
Limekiller nodded. Climbed over the sprawling trunk of the tree. Suddenly remembered that it had been night when he had first come this way, that it had been from the other direction that he had made his way the next morning, hesitated. And then Harlow the Hunter spoke up.
“Eef you pleases, Mistah Blossom. I believes I knows dees pahth bet-tah.”
And, at any rate, he knew it well enough to lead them there in less time, surely, than Jack Limekiller could have.
Blood was no longer fresh and red, but a hundred swarms of flies suddenly rose to show where the blood had been. Doctor Rafael snipped leaves, scooped up soil, deposited his take in containers.
And in regard to other evidence, whatever it was evidence of, for one thing, Mr. Blossom handed the camera over to Police Corporal Huggin, who set up his measuring tape, first along one deep depression and photographed it; then along another…another…another…
“Mountain-cow,” said the District Commissioner. He did not sound utterly persuaded.
Harlow shook his head. “No, Mistah Florian. No sah. No, no.”
“Well, if not a tapir: what?”
Harlow shrugged.
Something heavy had been dragged through the bush. And it had been dragged by something heavier…something much, much heavier ... It was horridly hot in the bush, and every kind of “fly” seemed to be ready and waiting for them: sand-fly, bottle fly, doctor-fly. They made unavoidable noise, but whenever they stopped, the silence closed in on them. No wild parrot shrieked. No “baboons” rottled or growled. No warree grunted or squealed. Just the waiting silence of the bush. Not friendly. Not hostile. Just indifferent.
And when they came to the little river (afterwards, Jack could not even find it on the maps) and scanned the opposite bank and saw nothing, the District Commissioner said, “Well, Harlow. What you think?”
The wiry little man looked up and around. After a moment he nodded, plunged into the bush. A faint sound, as of someone—or of something?—Then Ed Huggin pointed. Limekiller would never even have noticed that particular tree was there; indeed, he was able to pick it out now only because a small figure was slowly but surely climbing it. The tree was tall, and it leaned at an angle—old enough to have experienced the brute force of a hurricane, strong enough to have survived, though bent.
Harlow called something Jack did not understand, but he followed the others, splashing down the shallows of the river. The river slowly became a swamp. Harlow was suddenly next to them. “Eet not fah,” he muttered.
Nor was it.
What there was of it.
An eye in a monstrously swollen head winked at them. Then an insect leisurely crawled out, flapped its horridly-damp wings in the hot and humid air, and sluggishly flew off. There was no wink. There was no eye.