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sack drop.  Ahnd noew, he said, portentously,  let us broach de rum.
After the chaparita had been not only broached but drained, for the
second time that day Limekiller dined ashore. The cooking was done on a
raised fire-hearth of clay and sticks, and what was cooked was a bread-fruit,
simply strewn, when done, with sugar; and a gibnut. To say that the gibnut,
or paca, is a rodent, is perhaps though accurate unfair: it is larger than a
rabbit, and it eats well. After that Samuel made black tea and laced it with
more rum. After that he gave a vast belch and a vast sigh.  Can you play de
bonjoe? he next asked.
 Well... I have been known to try& 
The lamp flared and smoked. Samuel adjusted it& somewhat& He
got up and took a bulky object down from a peg on one of the roof-poles. It
was a sheet of thick plastic, laced with rawhide thongs, which he laboriously
unknotted. Inside that was a deerskin. And inside that, an or-dinary banjo
case, which contained an ordinary, if rather old and worn, banjo.
 Mehk I hear ah sahng ... ah sahng ahv you country.
What song should he make him hear? No particularly Canadian song
brought itself to mind. Ah well, he would dip down below the border just a
bit& His fingers strummed idly on the strings. The words grew, the tune
grew, he lifted up what some (if not very many) had considered a
not-bad-baritone, and began to sing and play.
Manatee gal, ain t you coming out tonight,
Coming out tonight, coming out tonight?
Oh, Manatee gal, ain t you coming out tonight,
To dance by the light of the
An enormous hand suddenly covered his own and pressed it down.
The tune subsided into a jumble of chords, and an echo, and a silence.
 Mon, mon, you not do me right. I no di say,  Mehk I hear a sahng ahv
you country? Samuel, on his knees, breamed heavily. His breath was
heavy with rum and his voice was heavy with reproof... and with a
some-thing else for which Limekiller had no immediate name. But, friendly it
was not.
Puzzled more than apologetic, Jack said,  Well, it is a North American
song, anyway. It was an old Erie Canal song. It Oh. I ll be damned. Only
it s supposed to go,  Buffalo gal, ain t you coming out tonight, And I
dunno what made me change it, what difference does it make?
 What different? What different it mehk? Ah, Christ me King! You lee
buckra b y, you not know w ehnnah-teeng?
It was all too much for Limekiller. The last thing he wanted was
any-thing resembling an argument, here in the deep, dark bush, with an
all-but-stranger. Samuel having lifted his heavy hand from the instrument,
Limekiller, moved by a sudden spirit, began.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
To save a wretch like me.
With a rough catch of his breath, Samuel muttered,  Yes. Yes. Dot
ees good. Go on, b y. No stop.
I once was halt, but now can walk:
Was blind, but now I see&
He sang the beautiful old hymn to the end: and, by that time, if not
overpowered by Grace, John Samuel having evidently broached the
sec-ond and the third chaparita was certainly overpowered: and it did not
look as though the dinner guest was going to get any kind of guided tour
back to the shore and the skiff. He sighed and he looked around him. A bed
rack had roughly been fixed up, and its lashings were covered with a few
deer hides and an old Indian blanket. Samuel not responding to any
shakings or urgings, Limekiller, with a shrug and a  Well what the hell,
covered him with the blanket as he lay upon the ground. Then, hav-ing
rolled up the sacks the supplies had come in and propped them under his
head, Limekiller disposed himself for slumber on the hides. Some lines
were running through his head and he paused a moment to consider what
they were. What they were, they were, From ghoulies and ghosties, long
Ieggedy feasties, and bugges that go boomp in the night, Good Lord,
deliver us. With an almost absolute certainty that this was not the
Authorized Version or Text, he heard himself give a grottle and a snore and
knew he was fallen asleep.
He awoke to slap heartily at some flies, and the sound perhaps awoke [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]