His heart wrenched for her; he tried a religious approach; surely that would work: “Surely you don’t believe that a loving God would give such dreadful powers to any human being?” he asked, he thought, persuasively. Expecting that at once she would become restored; but -
“I do! I do!. - in a passion of conviction she had cried the words in a low and wavering voice; and again she hid her face in her hand; and she trembled. “Don’t talk about it,” she said.
Limekiller — did he love her? He often made love to her; therefore, say what you will, in a way he did love her — Limekiller sought swift and deep for some verse, scriptural or even merely literary, for instant quotation and comfort: woe that he had been raised in the mere afterglow of the once-fierce fires of the Churches of England and of Scotland; and could think of nothing, not one word more, than this:
The rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity.
— and what was that from? from Silas Marner, poor dear horsefaced “George Eliot,” Mary Anne something-or-other-who-gave-a- spit: utterly useless, now, as, seemingly, utterly true. Insofar as any comfort to Bathsheba w'as concerned. My greatgrandFather was Black and my grandMother was an Indian woman and my grandFather was an Englishman and if God had wanted me be born White I would have been born White: lam Bay folk. Welclass="underline" every man hath his own madness; every woman as well; and one need not be Bayfolk to be afraid of and not comforted by the evidence of things not seen.
Though some — some? — many — claimed to have seen them.
Some Yankee had said to him, quite without hostility', laxly and idly even, “Canada is kind of nice but it, somehow, oh, it lacks sparkle;” and he had said, instantly, “It’s not flashy, if that’s what you mean…” And yet he knew it was in search of either flash or sparkle that he had left Canada (whose own 20th century, despite Sir Wilfred Laurier, had never yet come, was yet to come: never). And whenever, doom here, say on some day of boiling heat or torrents of rain, he felt in any w'ay homesick, he obliged himself to remember Canada at its own dimmest coldest starchiest dullest; the Monday smell of Sunday’s heavy greasy dinner in or on Prince Edward’s island; the old red brick farmhouse in the outlands of Kingston, Ontario, with the hundred year-old scrapbook of church news for light reading, and the unlovely chemical toilet (“Yes,” said Cousin Alix with great satisfaction, “it is so nice having it, and indoors, too.”); Sunday in Sudbury; the sullen even surly faces of every all who would answer no question not couched in French, or anyway Joual, simply turning away without even a denial of having any English. Canada too had heat and rain; Canada had snow as well. and snow. and snow. and snow. and.
It was safe enough sailing there, inside (and well inside) the Great Reef; like sailing in a giant bath; if coral was high enough to spring the boat, the boat would not much sink.
The Duckersons had brought along a pair of binoculars, they had not brought along two, but Jack by now realized well that, however other the couple might seem to him, they were nevertheless fairly solid and trustworthy and although he might not have cared, had he awakened with a case of clap, to trust its cure to Doctor’s adjustments of your subluxation of your third or any other vertebrar: still, they did not drop things. So he had taken out his much-be-loved and leather-bound spyglass. And lent it to them. While he tended the tiller, they allowed their vision, much magnified, to pick and play along the white and distant strand and the green walls of woods behind them. and, perhaps, for he did not attempt to calculate the angles of their viewing, perhaps also and now and then the Mountains of the Morning. these last obviously named by people who had lived on the other side of the said mountains: the Japanese after all had not themselves in Japan named their nation The Land of the Rising Sun: if you live in japan, the sun rises from the Pacific.
“What’s that, Daddv, over there bv those two trees?” Mrs. now enquired.
Somewhat marvelously, her husband knew exactly which two trees she meant, and at once; “It’s a man,” he said, “no it’s not no man.”
“I thought ut was a man, well, ut’s gone, now.”
Jack suggested it might have been a babboon; adding that, locally, this meant a howler-monkey. “But I thought they were noctoreal, John,” she said. John was so impressed by this combination of nocturnal and arboreal, so well worthy of Lewis Carroll, that he did not at once reply. Then he did (noting, also, that she had evidently, for all her to-him-funny speechwavs, done some homework on the local scene; and why not? showed good sense: She was not one of the tourists who asked, innocently, “How about we take a gander at the French and Dutch colonies whiles we’re down here?” and who had to be reminded that this was British Hidalgo, not British Guiana, and that, hence, there were no “French and Dutch colonies,” not for leagues and leagues. Sometimes the penny dropped at once; sometimes the maps had to be shown; sometimes people were very disappointed, God knows why.).
“There aren’t any regular settlements along this part of the coast, Mrs. - Ella. But even when there aren't, here or elsewhere, that doesn’t mean that nobody is ever around — hey, see that sting-ray?”
It lazed along right under the surface, it would not come and rub its back against the boat, neither did it display any alarm; maybe when you’re a sting-ray, you don’t have to; Question, Where does a 3,000-lb. gorilla sit, Answer, Anywhere it wants to (Second Joe Miller, XI, 6–7). The Duckersons conjointly exclaimed Well they Never! and of course they never, not in Cow Pat, Kansas, or Moose Mammaries, Manitoba; that was what they were paying for, wasn’t it? — to see things they had never seen before?
“Well usn’t that unteresting!” she took her last long look at the sting-rav, now lazily tarrying behind; turned back, binoculars in hands. “And what do they do, then, these people who might be over on the shore there, if there’s no regular settlements?”
Sometimes (he explained) they might be hunting game — he had to add game: the word “hunting,” alone, meant scouting out for mahogany trees — sometimes they actually might be scouting out for mahogany trees. although in a different way. “Sometimes the mahoganv logs break loose from the rafts or tugs. And they drift. they drift pretty far, sometimes. And the logging companies, well, anyway the main one, Tropical Hardwoods, they have their own boats, hm, probably only one boat I guess, which goes nosing up and down the coast looking for lost logs. And if someone else finds a log before the Company finds it, it’s usually not too hard to cut the Company’s mark off it. Then, well, maybe they sell the whole stick on the black market, you might call it, or maybe they cut it up and sell the planks or the parts, and maybe even, sometimes, thev make stuff out of it. And sell that."