Limekiller!

“Many visitors here for the velorio, eh?” Mr. Zuniga asked. “Plenty rum?” A comely, middle-aged senora smiled faintly and shook her head. There was no sign of any excesses. A table stood near the wall, converted into an altar with a baldachin-canopy adorned with colored paper barber-stripes. An enamel dish of copper coins, candles, and a curious black-and-white photograph of a religious nature involving (but not seeming to be confined to) a crucifix, completed my rapid glimpse of the scene, and something was said of “Los Senores de Esquipula” — or so I understood it — but soon we were out of the house again and into the dories again. The whole thing was very Latin-American, Catholic, child-bright, and pagan.

I noted that each young hunter had a barbed harpoon with thin greenish nylon line (ubiquitous in B. H.) attached, intricately. Mr. Faustino Z. caught my glance and conveyed my alarm: We didn’t want to kill our dragons, we wanted them to live. The boys nodded. They spoke English well enough, but exclusively Spanish among themselves.

It was hopeless for me to estimate how far upstream we were, but later I learned that “Bul” (the place taking its name from the man) was approximately six miles from the sea; I’d guess that Casa or Quinta Ramirez was a few miles above Bul; and after that we proceeded perhaps another mile, foam-flecks floating on “the buxom flood” — and then they cut the motor and glided towards an enormous, colossal, gigantic monster of a giant wild fig tree, white and slick. It must have been at least a century old. Two of its immense branches hung far out over the stream. It had vines twisting all over it, and I do verily believe that its vines had vines! Clumps of grass flourished on it as it loomed up from the feathery green thickets of wild bamboo thorns, and on it, too, were all sorts of parasites and saprophytes; and likely enough (remembering the Anecdotes of Joseph Roberteau R-o-b-e-r-t-e-a-u) there were tortugas and crocodiles in cavernous hollows under its roots. It was an absolute Eighth Wonder of a tree, it was a whole ecology all to itself.

As we approached, the great gargoyles carven into the tree came alive, enormous garobos lifted their heads and commenced to dive off it into the water. The younger hunter, Santiago, took his harpoon and went ashore to climb the tree: he had to approach it from behind as the water side was too sheer and smooth. And all the while the Iguana Exodus continued — I expected Tomas to produce something like a huge butterfly net and catch them as they come down — scrabble! fall! PLOP! SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLASH! — but, no. Instead, he buttoned his shirt firmly over his thick, sturdy chest and said, “Put me under that limb over there” — the dory was paddled thither — several of the limbs trailed into the river, where they had collected enough debris to harbor minnows and insects and water weeds: enough to constitute a sort of sub-ecology -

To my perfect astonishment, he seized hold of the thin lower branches and, saying, “No other way up this tree,” proceeded to pull. haul. grip. and shinny himself from limb to limb. up and up. holding his harpoon with his toes, mind you — his toes!. Mr. Zuniga grinned at me. “Tar-san,” he said. And indeed it was — the most Tarzan-like thing I have ever seen, in the movies or out. Up and then in, on hands and feet along one of the chief- most limbs, Tomas proceeded slowly from the left; meanwhile, holding onto the thick vines and the branches which partially obscured him from us beneath, Santiago moved in from the right. And all the while, the iguanal Descent From Olympus continued, showering us time and again, till one would think they must surely all have dived off by now — but both small green girls and (in effect) great grim old men might still be seen glaring and crawling and be heard scrabbling and clattering.

. Tomas struck — hurled his barbed harpoon — an archaic, primitive, and beautiful gesture, one which I had never expected to see in my life: alas, it failed of effect, a twig deflected it, staff and barb and line alike fell like stones into the water. And did not rise again.

This surprised me, rather. I was more greatly surprised, though, when I realized that the line was not devised ever to be used (as I had thought) as a snare — picturing something like the pole-and- loop the Mongols used to take wild ponies on the run. I was a bit disturbed on seeing that the staff was to be used as harpoon alone — and now my surprise as the whole apparatus sank like a stone, for, surely, the weight of the iron barb could not have been sufficient; perhaps some troll, or, likelier an irate garobo, is holding it under? — Curious, unlike systems in often use elsewhere, there was no device attached anywhere which floated to show the location of the sunken staff (and it’s called just that, “the staff”) -