Tide Clocks

The setting is in Portobelo Panama 1757. The cripple is actually Long John Silver (from Treasure Island) this story takes place after the story of Treasure Island.

It was late afternoon on the 5th of August in the year 1757. The cathedral clock in the center of the sleepy pueblo boomed four times, while a one-legged seaman with a battered crutch hobbled up from the beach on the eastern shore.

He ignored the tide tugging hungrily at the small skiff in which he’d arrived, drawing it farther and farther away down the rocky shoreline. It didn’t matter what happened to the boat, for he had no intention of soon leaving this place.

Mangy dogs slept on dusty thresholds. A thousand eyes peered from slightly-open doorways and through windows, following the cripple as he tottered down the dirty streets. Never had there been a more wretched-looking vagrant, but this one had eyes. Not like the usual vagabond’s eyes, filled with broken defeat and glazed with inane purpose. His eyes were filled with intelligence and burned with a bitter light. His movements were precise, driven by an unquestionable intention.

He made his way through the maze of adobe and dusty streets that filled the hillside, finding that each building was a near replica of its brother. The outer corners had been chipped away by time while the white stucco walls, stained with the mud of countless rainstorms, were aglow with the smoldering fire of the setting sun.

Chickens and pigs hungrily edged the streets, pecking and grunting and generally unaffected by the strange man. Outside of an inn, an old man snored on a bench shaded by an oversize mango tree, and it was here the cripple stopped. A sign swung back and forth over the dark doorway squeaking as the wind blew. It had once been painted but later faded to gray with three simple words that read: El Gato Negro.

It is here that he came to bury himself and hide deep in the labyrinth’s heart, and he knew he would not be found. Forget finding a needle in a haystack: finding him would be like finding a needle in a stack of only needles.

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