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.Then her arms were dragged behind her back and secured, and her shoulders touched the stake.Another cord was being passed round her throat, and dragged tighter than she had expected, so that she had to stand on tiptoe to prevent herself being strangled.And now, without warning, there was a puff of breeze, which blew her hair in a cloud across her face, and left it there for a few precious seconds, shutting out all the horror around her, before dying to allow the strands to drift back onto her shoulders.Now, if ever, was the time to close her eyes.But now she could not.She gazed at the men surrounding her, shouting and screaming, waving knives and shells, and gourds, to catch her blood.They surged right up to her, pulled the hair on her head and the hair on her body, squeezed her belly and her breasts; she tensed her muscles against the coming cut which would be the signal for her destruction, and stared at them with as much resolution as she could manage, and discovered that she was still alive.Yet still they danced around her, driving thought from her brain with their maddening cacaphony.And still the terrifying cadaver that had been Hal Leaming hung to the stake only a few feet away.Were they trying to make her scream, as they had made him scream? Were they, after all, only children?Edward had told her, often enough, about the Caribs.'They are not cannibals,' he had said, 'for the love of human flesh.It is almost a religious act, with them.They eat the flesh of a conquered enemy to obtain his strength, his speed, his brain, perhaps.For instance, you will never hear of a woman being eaten.Why should they, when they would expect to obtain nothing of value from her?"She sucked air into her lungs.She had been so wrapped up in her own terror that she had forgotten those words.She raised her head and looked through the throng, and found Wapisiane, standing by himself beyond the immediate crowd, arms folded across his chest, staring at her.He sought only to terrify her.Warner's woman must be made to grovel for her life.Whatever fate he intended for her, afterwards, this was a necessary first stage.Aline stared at him for several seconds, summoning all her resolution.Then she threw back her head and laughed.'You'll find the place has changed,' Robert Anderson said as he put the tiller over and brought the lugger round on the starboard tack.The wind was off the shore, and now they were moving into the shelter of the Christ child.‘I'd not expected less,' Edward said, and shaded his eyes.Changed, was hardly a reasonable description.He saw first of all the French trading vessels anchored in a cluster in Great Road, and beyond, a series of docks and jetties protruding from the beach, and only then the houses of Basseterre.Here were dainty balconies and sloping roofs, a clock tower and what appeared to be a cathedral, all in white wood, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.But already Brimstone Hill was looming into sight, and even this was different to his memory of it.In place of a bare rock with two cannon peering over its lip he looked at crenellated battlements sheltering a broadside, and behind the roof of a barracks, while above the fortress the cross of St George fluttered lazily in the wind.Soon they were off Sandy Point, scarcely inferior to Basseterre, although the houses were perhaps less imposing, and the streets more haphazard.Streets, where there had been but one? But now the town stretched in every direction, quite overlying the old tobacco field, while the forest itself had been cleared back to the very foothills of old Misery, and replanted entirely in the slow waving, graceful canestalks.A sloop was standing out of the roadstead, and now she hove to and hailed them.'Dandy, of St Kitts.What ship is that?’Anderson glanced at his governor."You'd best tell him, and warn him,' Edward said.Anderson cupped his hands.'Susannah, of Antigua.You'll keep a watch for Caribs.''Caribs, you say?" queried the captain of the Dandy.'Aye.They attacked us yesterday, destroyed the settlement, and took prisoner the Governor's wife.'Edward walked away from the tiller.There was a sensation: The Governor's wife.He looked down into the waist of the lugger, where the men and women clustered to stare at the shore.They were crawling back, with their tails between their legs.And as yet no one in St Kitts was even aware of their plight.What sort of a welcome would they find? What sort of a welcome would he find? Home the prodigal, the beaten man, who wanted only blood.But where would he find those willing to spill their blood for Edward Warner?The sloop was gone, and the lugger's draft was shallow enough to allow her alongside the largest of the jetties.Edward scooped Joan into his arms—she had wailed the night, a mixture of hunger and alarm, no doubt, and only recently fallen into an exhausted sleep—took little Tom by the hand, and stepped ashore, to be stopped by the armed guard on the dock.'You'll be from Antigua.Your business, if you please.''My name is Edward Warner,' Edward said.'And I'd be obliged if you'd stand out of my way.And out of the way of my people.'The man scratched his head.But he stood aside.Edward handed Joan to Tom, and walked up the dock to the sand, to gaze in amazement at the series of buildings which dominated the foreshore, some distance to his right.The first stood close to the edge of the nearest canefield, separated from it by a stream of water, clearly man-made, for he recollected no stream there in the past, but which now came tumbling down the sloping fields, perhaps laid out from the very spring where Yarico had first taken him swimming, when they had been children.Now its purpose was less to irrigate than to drive, for the rushing water forced a huge wheel into constant rotation, and this in turn drove three massive rollers, round and round, placed so close to each other that the stalks of cane being fed into the first by the attentive slaves were ground into straw; while the juice dripped through the slatted floor into a wooden duct which ran off for a distance of some twenty yards to the next shed, where it entered a huge copper vat, beneath which was an immense fire, constantly being fed, as Father had prophesied, by the crushed cane stalks, while the boiling juice was stirred and skimmed by another group of black men.At the far end another duct took the by now thickened liquid into cooling pans, where it slowly solidified, and waiting here there were several more slaves to cart off each filled pan to the third shed, where more of their compatriots were waiting to put it through a final purifying process, separating the molasses from the crystals, these last being placed in casks, over the top of which a clay paste was set in place, to keep the sugar fine until it was ready for shipment.The whole scene was one of such bustle and endeavour on the part of the blacks, and such evident discomfort too, for the heat was intense, the fires adding their efforts to that of the sun, and naturally the aroma as well as the presence of so much sweetness seemed to attract every insect from the entire forest, that Edward almost forgot his own misery.'Edward? Edward? By God, but what brings you to St Kitts?'Philip, wearing a white shirt over loose white breeches, and brown boots, and carrying no weapon save a whip.His hat was a broad-brimmed straw.Edward squeezed his hand.‘I was but admiring the industry.' He glanced at the whip [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]