Seas of Fortune(37)

Carsten bent to pick up a particularly interesting one. It was egg-shaped, and mottled red in color, and it shone as though it was made of the finest Chinese porcelain. It was a cowry, a snail shell. Like the cowries of Africa, which Carsten had seen in a nobleman’s collection, it had a ribbed slit opening. In Africa, that made it a fertility symbol.

Frau Vorst was right, Carsten thought, this must be an ancient sand dune. Carsten decided to save the shell for her; she loved to collect curiosities. He also decided not to say anything about its symbolic significance.

Johann Mueller, a glassmaker, was more interested in the sand. Every so often he would pick up a handful and bring it so close to his eyes that Carsten wondered whether Johann was nearsighted.

It wasn’t common for fledgling colonies to have glassmakers, although Carsten had heard that there was one in Jamestown, Virginia. But it was the second part of the master plan to make a tropical colony viable without resort to slavery.

The up-timers knew they had to find a way to get the local Indians to work, day in, day out, without coercion. And Captain de Vries, who had been to both North America and the Caribbean, told them that there was only so much one could accomplish with the standard trade goods. An Indian might work to acquire one steel knife, but he didn’t need a dozen. Strong liquor was a possible lure, but it had its own disadvantages.

Knowing that glass beads were a good article of trade, the Company had decided to coax a glassmaker to join the colony. That way, they could sell or barter a variety of glass articles, not just beads, and not just to the Indians, but also to Europeans in Guiana and the islands.

On the long voyage over, Carsten had delicately drawn out the details of Johann’s background. Johann was a Thuringer from Lauscha, a journeyman with many years experience, who had failed to make master. Solely for economic reasons, he assured Carsten. He hadn’t botched his masterwork or been caught seducing his mentor’s daughter.

Carsten was inclined to believe him. You could only become a master in a guild if you found a town whose guild chapter had a vacancy. Because of the war, the demand for glassware had declined, and masters who were scrounging for work weren’t likely to welcome a newcomer.

“In this Suriname,” Johann said, “I don’t have to marry an ugly old widow just to get her husband’s shop. And I don’t have to worry about competition.”

Just about pirates, Indians, jungle beasts and tropical diseases, thought Carsten, but he kept the thought to himself.

“Oh, look at this,” Johann chortled. “This sand, it’s almost a pure white. And look at the size of the grains. They are so even, it’s beautiful.”

Carsten was reminded of the adage, Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But that, too, he kept to himself.

* * *

“Captain, the plan won’t work. It’s hopeless. You should just take me back to Hamburg.” The speaker was Denys Zager, the master sawyer hired by the Company. They knew that Suriname had plenty of wood, so why not sell wood articles to the Indians? Things they couldn’t make with their primitive tools. And Zager’s planks would also be used for constructing buildings and furniture for the colonists. Zager would cut the wood and the colonist’s carpenter would do the fine crafting.

Unfortunately, the person who hired Zager, on the Company’s behalf, wasn’t the one who had to work with Zager. That is, poor David. Zager was the sort of person who, if he found a pot of gold at one end of the rainbow, would complain that there wasn’t another pot at the other end.

David sighed. “What’s the problem?”

“The Company wants me to build a wind-powered sawmill. Like the one Cornelis Corneliszoon had invented in 1593. A wonderful idea.”

“And the Grantville-made saw blades are satisfactory, I suppose.” They were, of course, better than anything he had seen before, of course, but Zager would never admit it. They had been provided on the theory that it was better to use steel to make saw blades and use them locally to manufacture wood articles, than to make steel trade goods that would have to be produced at home.

“Only . . . where’s the wind? All we get here is a light breeze.”

“What about using a water wheel?”

“Well . . . the most efficient water wheel is an overshot. Water comes down from above, onto buckets. But you need a decent drop, and where’s the drop?” Zager waved his arm toward the placidly flowing Suriname River. “Not there, I assure you.”

David shrugged. “Come with us upriver, perhaps we can find you a waterfall there. We know from the up-time maps that there are mountains to the south.”