— and then, perhaps, too, with its oarlocks muffled —
“What can we do for you, Captain Barber?” asked Jack, returning with silent sigh entirely into the twentieth century.
The old man gave a deep nod. “Do you suppose, sir. sir and mistress. that you could help me out with just a bit of sugar for me tea?”
“A cup of sugar?” Felix instantly had on an imaginary gingham apron. “Why of course;” she half-turned to go -
“Oh, no, mistress! Not a cup. Half a cup will do. Be some other boat, some next one, by and by. today, tomorrow. when God send. whenever. Sailingmen must help the old loightkeeper out: else, may-be: boi and boi: no light. Not your task to do it ahl yourself. - Where vou bound, mahn?”
South Gosling was as near the desert island of the cartoons as anything could be; Jack realizing and relishing the fact — and the sight — was a bit slow in answering. Back came Felix with the sugar, asked, with an air that showed the question had just occurred to her, “Do you say, ‘Gallards Cave,’ Captain Barber? Or ‘Galliards Caye’? Or — ”
Limekiller broke in, “Or ‘Gallants Caye.’ Eh? Which?”
Old Barber nodded slowly. “Galleons Caye, so. ” Then quite evidently a thought suddenly came to his own mind. He faintly frowned. “What day, today? Not St. Nicholas Day?”
Still rolling over in his mind the sound of “Galleons Caye” and mildly amused by yet another variation on a theme, Jack said, “Beats me. Why?” (“Galleons Caye?” murmured Felix, half-smiling, half-surprised, herself.)
Aloud (said she): “But I will have to ask for the cup back. Because we only have two, and he likes his sweeter than I do.”
The abstracted, faintly unhappy look vanished from the old man’s face; face a sort of worn and faded map onto which Europe, Africa, India, and Amerindia had blended. He gave once again that antique, courtly bow. “‘Sweeter than you. ’? Why, what could be sweeter than you, me choild? Captain Limekiller, sir, you have certainly plucked a beautiful blossom in the garden of love.” No bullshit about, perhaps they were just crewing together: in tropical British Hidalgo (and is not one of the Tropics that of old goatfooted Capricorn?), a he and a she of any age above the snottynosed and below the entirely senescent never did anything like just crewing together: any more than they ever lived together as brother and sister. unless of course they happened to be brother and sister… in which case one could be damned sure that the he was involved with someone else’s sister and the she with someone else’s brother.
And why not.
“Why, Captain Barber, how very nice and gallant of you. Not Gallants or Galliants Caye, then? You say, ‘Galleons Cave’?” Captain B. at the moment was saying nothing. From one pocket he was drawing a pair of specs of gothic mold, and from another a copy of the five-year almanac which, from frequent usage, looked as old if not older. Having searched out the current year, he slowly- traced down the days with one finger. Came to a line. Stopped. Read slowly. Slowly looked up. ‘Why, y7es, oh yes. You see He held the almanac up and out. “The 6th of December. St. Nicholas’s Day. Can’t go there today, Oi doubt.” And he waited for them to acknowledge the truth of what he said. And waited.
“What, ‘can’t get there from here’?” — Limekiller. Amused.
“Is there some local superstition against it?” — Felix (original name, Felicia; and the hell with it, she’d said). - Felix. Interested.
Also, tactless.
She had used a word which, like treason, like perversion, is never acknowledged to be such by those who practice it. Anything as impolite as a display of annoyance was not likely to be shown by Captain Barber to A Lady. Not even disapprobation. He did allow himself, however, to become exceedingly grave, and, in so doing, wiped the smiles off their own faces most effectively.
“Oi am not superstitious. Oi have been educated at the old Anglican Academy. And Oi recollect quite well what St. Pahl said to the Athenians. The sea does not roise boi superstition. The wind does not drop boi superstition. The rains do not commence in Yucatan the same w-eek they do in Darien. Is the day longer on St. John’s Day than on Christmas? Tis, ’tisn’t it?”
St. John's Day. Great-uncle Leicester Limekiller, a great Freemason, always let everyone know when St. John’s Day was, that day of Masonic festivity, or should one say solemnity? Either. Both. What the hell.
‘June 21st? Longest day in the
“Just so. Just so. And today is St. Nicholas’s Day. And no day to be going to Galleons Caye. Oi tell you. A bod day for it. Maybe you won’t even be able to fetch up there at all. Oh, not that Oi say that St. Nicholas has anything to do with it himself Maybe. Patron of sailors, though, hm. so. No.” Captain Barber got a firm Anglican hold of himself. “Oi cannot hold with the vain worship of the Saints. Simply, you do see, this 6th day of December, however it be marked: not a good day to go to Galleons Caye. It be the wind, you see.”
He reached for the worn old almanac, now so close to obsolescence and desuetude. ‘No,” said Limekiller. “Frankly, I don’t see.” He held the little booklet out, waited.
The old light-keeper took it back.
“You will,” he said.
It was because of Alex Brant.
There were a number of North Americans down there in old British Hidalgo, down there on the boggy barm and brink, the soggy margin, of the Carib Sea: and some were very good people and some were not and most of them were variously in between. This is of course true of most people in most places, Truisms are called them because they tend to be true. And one of these North Americans was Alex Brant, and Limekiller had known him for quite a while. Had they first met in the Pelican Bar? Or in Reuben Swift’s boatyard? And if in the Pelican Bar, adjacent and adjunct to the Hotel of the same name, had they been waiting for a drink? Or for a woman? Because they had met, and not just once and again, in both those places. And in others. Someone had summed Alex up as being “slim, muscular, and nervous”; like all summings-up, it left much unsummed. Sometimes he had a moustache or a beard or both. Sometimes he had not. He had formerly lived in another Commonwealth Country, on an island thereof, which he persistently, and, it may be, a trifle bitterly, referred to as “Great Exzema.” Had Limekiller himself been asked to sum up his friend, it would have been at greater length, and somewhat as follows:
“Is currently running a small plantation but on occasion acts as a ‘White Hunter’ or maybe he is not now running a plantation but maybe it’s chicle time and he is a chicle buyer… or buying crown gum, which Wrigley’s will not take but will be taken by Third World markets which don’t care about any difference but price. Brant buys tortoise-shell, too. Sponges. When available. Exports orchids. At times. Has a small distillery and when sugar is cheap, makes cheap-cheap rum. Sometimes takes boat charters, or he sometimes may plant rice. - Doesn’t ha ha hunt Whites, hunts tigers.; not his fault that the local jaguar is locally called a tiger, always explains the critter has spots not stripes; still, the very name, you know. Well. Tiger hunts as run by Alex Brant in these 1960s are $1,500 for ten days, kill guaranteed or money back; if an early kill leaves days unused, will run wild hog hunt if desired, at no extra cost. Sometimes runs boat charter. Lost his ass once in an inter-island cargo schooner and doesn’t like to get that tied up (or down) since that time. Will mate with White women or Brown, Black, or Brindle. Smuggling? A wry grimace. Spent seven months in a Spanish-speaking jail once for that; took him seventeen months to recover. Has been All Around, but prefers British Hidalgo because, well, ‘it’s too poor to be too much corrupted, small enough to put your arms around, just big enough to keep you from getting claustrophobic. Unspoiled? — yes, well — Great Salt Cave is unspoiled, too, but there’s nothing there worth spoiling, damnit.’