Limekiller!

Santiago did not strike as yet (and that’s what it is called, too, “to strike”), and Tomas called to us that he saw a mountain cow drinking of the river, upstream. Off we paddled, not particularly quietly, and, not surprisingly, the tapir wasn’t there when we were; though the signs of its having been there were evident. underbrush broken by its heavy body, soft muddy bank enprinted by its heavy feet. Indeed, the slots and slides of tapir are evident all along the river: I looked back and, just for a few seconds, before grass and tree and bush intervened, saw the odd black form on the side of the hill. too big for a pig, too low for a cow, making its way in a gait between a trot and a lumber; it looked wrong, somehow — didn’t look dangerous, just wrong— “There ought not to be such an animal,” was my instant half-thought; seen broadside, in broad day, I felt no more than that about it; but had I for the first time “seen” it out of the corner of an eye and no hint as to what it was, I might well have wound up in the tip top of the great fig tree before I had stopped making ik-ik-ik noises: Mountain cow, go away from my door.

Meanwhile, back at “the Iguana Church” (for such, I later learned from a knowledgeable and pretty Papal Volunteer, was the local name for the Monster Tree), Santiago had been stalking a monster garobo: no sooner had we glided up, he struck — and pierced — the dragonet; the barb entered and held in the skin beneath the spiny crest, the staff came loose, as was intended, and followed, clattering and slithering, held fast by the line, as the great garobo carried it after him into the underbrush. We shouted, pointed, Santiago saw the staff, seized it, hauled it in slowly and steadily by the line with one hand as, machete in the other, he chopped away at the concealing vegetation —

— and all this on the tree! for, as I have said, grass and shrub and thicket had all taken root and flourished on the great canting trunk and limbs —

Tomas came to his assistance. What a thrashing there was in the tree! And so at length down came Dragon, by a line tied around his lengthy tail, was firmly grasped by Chocho and Ranq’el, the Carib boatmen, one hand at the nape of the neck and one at the back abaft the hind legs. He was a monster, at least five feet long from the slate-blue/grey-mottled snout and wattled chin to the tip of his tapering orange-brown tail, and dull near-black stripes vertically along his body. whence the name of tiger iguana, and rather seldom seen in the United States. He was, it seemed to me, of a somewhat duller color than the bright buff dragons of the East Branch of the Belize — but, fo’ true, I never saw one of these last up close. And his spines (whose perceptible limpness at the moment made visible the basic meaning of “crestfallen”) lacked the red tips of the Cayo dragons.

The manner of his being rendered harmless was curious. “Pull the claw through the hole where you strike,” advised Mr. Faustino Z., who knew whereof he spoke. The barb only penetrated the skin just below the spinal crest and only went in a short distance, — through this orifice (which F.Z. assured me would soon heal: “We put some mud or ash on it; cure him good.”) one claw of each forelimb was passed, after the limbs had been drawn up behind and above. The hind legs were similarly fastened by making a slight incision in the spare skin of one of them and passing the claw of another through it. He was now, if not totally immobilized, at least semi-totally so, being able only to slither a wee bit on his belly. “Touch his back if you like “I don’t like-” but don’t go near his head. He can almost mangle off a man’s finger if he get it in his mouth. Now,” he said, turning to the Nature Boys, “buscamos una embrita — Let’s look for a little female.”

I demurred, suggesting that one was, after all, enough. that I didn’t intend to ranch the beasts, after all. But Mr. Z. merely smiled. “No, no, must have another. Can’t leave poor brute alone — no one to talk to? — no one to scratch his back? No, no. ” he shook his head reproachfully, and added, “Altogether against the Natural Law.” He, too, I perceived, had been well-educated by the Jesuits.