Limbo Lodge Read Free

get back, jist! – So what in tarnation are you doing out here at the back of nowhere in the Kalpurnian Sea?”
    Talisman said: “I thought that, before starting to work as a doctor, I’d come back to Aratu and see if I could find my real parents. There can’t have been so many children, twenty years ago, who fell off a cliff into the sea. Aratu is quite a small island.”
    “That’s so. We reckon to find old Lord Herodsfoot easy enough. I guess your ma and pa ’ud be main pleased to know you ain’t drownded, but safe and well.”
    She thought of her own story – shipwrecked off a Scottish island, picked up by a Nantucket whaler, carried across half the oceans of the world without any chance to inform her family that she was still alive – how astonished they would be when she finally arrived home! But pleased? Dido shrugged and turned her attention to the doctor, who was going on:
    “One reason why I was so keen to visit Aratu was that my adopted father the Count made a friend on some of our gambling visits to Bad Szomberg – a man who came from Aratu. This man used to tell me about the place, and taught me a bit of the language. His stories made me curious to come back. It’s a strange place. Angrians still live in the town – the people who came from Europe so long ago. They are very stern and gloomy. Women aren’t allowed in the streets of Regina – not until their hair is white. Not unless their faces are veiled or wrapped in leaves.”
    “Great fish! Why ever not?”
    “I am not sure. There is a king – called King John.”
    “Did this man – your friend – what was his name?”
    “Roy – Manoel Roy.”
    “Did he know who your parents might be?”
    Mr Multiple put this question. He had sat silent through most of Doctor Talisman’s story, watching and listening with great attention.
    “No, he said he had never heard of a small child being lost in such a way. But he has been away from Aratu many times. Like my foster father, he loved to gamble. But he did not enjoy such good luck as the Count. He mostly lost.” Doctor Talisman glanced along the deck and said, “Here comes Captain Sanderson. I must remind him to take his quinine.”
    The doctor, who had been sitting cross-legged, rose in one swift, smooth movement and strolled to meet the Captain; picking a casual, easy path among all the coils of rope and belaying-pins, canvas buckets, fishing nets, and pots of tar and other obstacles that littered the deck.
    “Dido,” said Mr Multiple in a low voice when the doctor was out of earshot, “did it ever strike you that there’s something rum about the doc?”
    “Rum?” said Dido. “Why yes. If you mean what I think—”
    Her words were interrupted by a sudden yell of warning from the rigging. One of the men was aloft just above them on the yardarm trimming the sail – and at this moment he dropped something that winked in the sun as it fell, then landed with a crack exactly on the crown of Multiple’s head. His skull was protected, to some extent, by his hat, but even so the blow could be clearly heard, and Multiple toppled as if he had been shot, and lay motionless on the deck.
    “Murder!” exclaimed Dido. “Doc Talisman! Come quick! Mr Mully’s copped a fourpenny one – he’s out cold. Quick , come and help him!”
    The doctor came running back, with Captain Sanderson close behind. The sailor who had been up above in the rigging now scrambled down, blubbering out words of apology.
    “Misery, misery me! a hundred thousand sorrows! That such a mishap should mishappen!”
    “Oh, be quiet, you silly lubberkin!” snapped Captain Sanderson. “What good does that do, yelling out woe, woe? What was that thing ye dropped on the poor lad?”
    “Was my wedhoe .”
    The sailor began searching distractedly round the deck, finally found what he was looking for and pounced on it with a cry of relief and joy. “Aha! my wedhoe!”
    “What is that thing? Let’s see it?” said the doctor,