Often in the savannahs they saw the white egrets with the orange bills, usually ashore amidst the cattle. Another kind of egret seemed to prefer the sand and gravel bars and the stumps or sawyers in midstream, and these were a distinctive shade of blue mixed with green, though lighter than the blue-green of the iguanas. Something like a blackbird took its perch and uttered a variety of long, sweet notes and calls.
Swallows skimmed and brighter colored birds darted and drank. And like great sentinels in livery, the great buff garobo- dragons peered down from the tall trees and the tall stones. Clouds of lemon-yellow and butter-yellow butterflies floated round the wild star-apples. Here, the stones lay in layers, like brickwork; there, the layers were warped and buckled, signs — perhaps — of some ancient strain or quake. But mostly, mostly, the stone rose and loomed and hung in bulbous worm-eaten masses. And over them, among them, behind them and between them, the tall cotton trees, the green-leaved cedars, the white-trunked Santa Maria, and the giant wild fig.
“Now, as to how you catch the crocodile,” Captain Sneed answered an unasked question; “simple: one man stays in the dory and paddles her in a small circle, one or two men hold the rope — “
„— rope tie around odder mahn belly,” Marin said.
“ Quite so. And that chap dives. Machete in his teeth. And he ties up the croc and then he tugs. And then they haul them up, you see. Simple.”
Felix said, “Not that simple!”
May said, “Seems simple enough to me. Long as you’ve got a sound set of teeth.”
Limekiller knew what was coming next. He had been here before. That was a mistake about his never having been here before, of course he had been here; never mind, Right Branch, Left Branch; or how else could he know? Down the steepy bluff a branch came falling with a crash of its Crack! falling with it; and the monstrous garobo hit the water with a tremendous sound and spray. It went down and it did not come up and it did not come up.
And then, distant but clear: the echo. And another echo. And — but that was too many echoes. Jack, who had been looking back, now turned. Spray was still flying up, falling down. Ahead: one after another the garobo were falling into the river. And then several at once, together. And then —
“Call that, ‘The Garobo Church,’ ” said Captain Sneed.
That was an immense wild fig tree, hung out at an impossible angle; later, Limekiller was to learn that it had died of extreme age and of the storm which finally brought half of its roots out of the ground and forward into the water and canted it, thus, between heaven, earth, and river. It was a skeletal and spectral white against the green green of the bush. Three separate and distinct ecologies were along that great tangled length of great gaunt tree: at least three! — things crept and crawled, leaped and lurched or lay quiescent, grew and decayed, lived and multiplied and died — and the topmost branches belonged to the iguana and the garobo -
— that were now abandoning it, as men might abandon a threatened ship. Crash! Crash! Down they came, simply letting go and falling. Crash!
Sound and spray.
“Won’t the crocodiles eat them?” cried Felix, tightening her hold on Jack’s hand.
The boatmen, to whom this was clearly no new thing, all shook their heads, said No.
“Dey goin wahrn he’m, el legarto, dot we comin. So dot he no come oet. So cahn tehk care. Horita el tiene cuidado.”
“Tush,” said Sneed. “Pif-fle. Damned reptiles are simply getting out of our way, they don’t know that we haven’t any pike. Damned old creepy-crawlies. ”
Only the sound of their crashings, no other sound now, and Limekiller, saying in a calm flat voice, “Yes, of course,” went out of his shirt and trousers and into the river.
He heard the men cry out, the women scream. But for one second only. Then the sounds muffled and died away. He was in the river. He saw a hundred eyes gazing at him. He swam, he felt bottom, he broke surface, he came up on his hands and knees. He did not try to stand. He was under the river. He was someplace else. Some place with a dim, suffused, wavering light. An odd place. A very odd place. With a very bad smell. He was alone. No, he was not. The garobo were all around and about him. The crocodile was very near up ahead of him. Something else was there, and he knew it had crawled there from the surface through a very narrow fissure. And some thing else was there. That! He had to take it and so he took it, wrenching it loose. It squilched, but it came. The crocodile gazed at him. The garobo moved aside for him. He backed away. He was in the water again. He -
“Into the boat, for Christ’s sake!” old Sneed was shouting, his red face almost pale. The boatmen were reaching out to him, holding hands to be grasped by him, smacking the waters with their paddles and banging the paddles against the sides of the boat. The women looked like death. He gasped, spat, trod water, held up something —
— then it was in the boat. Then, all grace gone, he was half in and half out of the boat, his skin scraping the hard sides of it, struggling, being pulled and tugged, wet skin slipping.
He was in the boat.
He leaned over the side, and, as they pulled and pressed, fearful of his going back again, he vomited into the waters.
Captain Sneed had never been so angry. “Well, what did you expect crocodile’s den to smell like?” he demanded. “Attar of roses? Damndest foolishest crack-brainedest thing I ever saw —!”
Felix said, smoothingjack’s wet, wet hair, “I think it was brave!
“You know nothing whatsoever about it, my dear child! — No, damn it, don’t keep waving that damned old pipkin pot you managed to drag up, you damned Canuck! Seven hours under fire at Jutland, and I never had such an infernal shock, it was reckless, it was heedless, it was thoughtless, it was devil-may-care and a louse for the hangman; what was the reason for it, may I ask? To impress whom? Eh? Me? These good men? These young women? Why did you do it?”
All Limekiller could say was, “I dreamed that I had to.”
Captain Sneed looked at him, mouth open. Then he said, almost in a mutter, “Oh, I say, poor old boy, he’s still rambling, ill, looked well enough, must have the fever…” He was a moment silent. Then he blinked, gaped; almost in a whisper, he asked, “You dreamed. Whom did you see in your dream?”
Limekiller shrugged. “Don’t know7 who. Oldish man. Sharp face. Tan. Old-fashioned clothes. Looked like a sort of a dandy, you might say.”
And Captain Sneed’s face, which had gone from scarlet to pink and then to scarlet again, now went muddy. They distinctly heard him swallow7. Then he looked at the earthenware jar with its faded umber pattern. Then, his lips parting with a sort of dry smack: “. perhaps it zm’t stuff and piffle, then. ”