Seas of Fortune(21)

“I wish. You can’t get a lot of coffee beans out of one tree, I don’t have room for a whole bunch of trees, and it’s too cold in Thuringia to grow them outside. The coffee comes from the Turks. When they feel like selling it to us.”

“I don’t care for the taste myself,” said Maria. “Too bitter.”

“Okay, here’s another tree. Any guesses?”

Maria looked it over closely. “Some kind of fig?”

“Yep.” He favored her with a big smile. “This is Ficus elastica, the Indian Rubber Tree. East Indian, that is. Cut it, and it bleeds a sap, latex, that hardens into a kind of rubber.”

Maria fingered the stem. “So that is where you Americans get the rubber you use in your tires?”

“Uh, uh. Some of that’s made from the latex of a different rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, and the rest is synthesized from chemicals. But if you want to know more about that, you’ll have to check the encyclopedias.”

“Perhaps I will.”





Fort Zwaanandael (modern Lewes, Delaware), Early December, 1632





Bones. They gleamed in the winter sunlight, amid the white sparkling sand, and the chill that Captain David Pieterszoon de Vries felt was not entirely due to the coldness of the air. Here was a femur, there, a skull. David reached down and picked up an arrowhead. It was easy enough to visualize how this particular colonist had met his Maker. David didn’t know if he had been fleeing, or had bravely faced his attacker. Certainly, he had not escaped from this beach to the dubious haven of the waters of the Zuidt River Bay.

The dismal find had not been a surprise. In May, the Kamer Amsterdam of the West India Company had heard, from its agents in Nieuw Amsterdam, that the Zwaanandael settlement had been wiped out, save for one survivor. David had been about to leave, with two ships, to go a-privateering in the Caribbean. Since the easiest return route to Europe was to go partway up the American coast before heading east, he logically had planned to stop at Zwaanandael along the way. Sell them European manufactures in return for tobacco, grain, and fresh meat. And perhaps do a bit of whaling as well.

The news of the massacre, of course, had been devastating to David and his fellow patroons. And surprising, because the Lenape had been friendly the previous year. But David had hoped that either the ill tidings would prove to have been exaggerated, or that the breach with the natives could somehow be remedied. At the least, that he could trade for furs.

Briefly, David had toyed with the idea of making a quick trip to Grantville, the mysterious town from the future, to see if its fabulous library could tell him whether Zwaanandael had indeed survived. But he couldn’t afford the time; it would have delayed him enough so that he would have been sailing in the Caribbean at the height of the hurricane season.

David’s longboat was beached just behind him. One sailor had stayed behind, to guard the boat and man its swivel gun. The small cannon was loaded with grapeshot. The yacht Eikhoorn stood just offshore, ready to lay down covering fire if need be. David’s own ship, the Walvis, was anchored in deeper water, closer to Cape Hinlopen. It was a four-hundred-ton fluyt, with eighteen cannon, which likewise were in range.

Still, David couldn’t help but feel a little anxious about how exposed he and his landing party were. The dark forest could conceal ten Indians, or a thousand.

The sailors spread out in a ragged line abreast. Ahead of them was Fort Zwaanandael.

David’s cousin, Heyndrick de Liefde, put his hand on David’s shoulder. “Where are the walls of stone? The moat and drawbridge? The portcullis?” He had been shown the settlement plans.

“Just what I was wondering,” David replied. “Especially since we went to such expense to provide them with everything they needed. And I checked the equipment myself, before it was loaded onto the Walvis.”

Instead of a granite wall, the settlement had merely a palisade. There was no portcullis, just a wooden gate, now hanging askew from a single hinge. The only part of the fort which was more or less as David expected was the great brick blockhouse, the warehouse and strong point of the colony. Although it was ash-black now.

“They should have given me command of the Walvis back then, not that idiot Heyes.”

Heyndrick nodded. “Even back home in Rotterdam, people were talking about him. He sent the Salm ahead, and lost it?” The Salm was a yacht, like the Eikhoorn, used for inshore work.

“That’s right. Taken by a Dunkirker, with all our harpooners, and their equipment. And he brought the Walvis back, nine months later, without a cargo.” That was sacrilege, to a Dutch merchant. “We lost a mint.”