Seas of Fortune(62)

Two of the sailors had come with Maria, and, on her instructions, cut down a few of the trees, trimmed them to logs of manageable size, and skidded them back to the Eikhoorn. Back in Gustavus, the carpenter would test them out and, if they were as good as the encyclopedias said, they would send the supply ship on to the Essequibo, with orders to pick up a cargo to take back to Europe for sale. Assuming that Maria and Heyndrick didn’t find a greenheart stand closer to their own colony.

Henrique, Maurício and Kasiri decided to go swimming; this stretch of the Essequibo was pleasantly free of piranha, electric eels, and crocodilians. Coqui watched Maria and the Lokono women for a while, then grabbed his bow and headed to the river.

In the meantime, Maria noticed that the larger of the trees were surrounded by nuts the size of apples. She decided that it might be advantageous to collect these, and plant them near Gustavus. If the greenheart trees were useful, it would be better if they didn’t have to go each year to Essquibo to harvest them.

As she put the nuts in her basket, the Lokono women started giggling. She tried to figure out why, but her linguistic skills weren’t up to the task. One woman did pat her own tummy. Maria took this to mean that the nuts were good to eat, but the Lokono didn’t seem interested in sharing Maria’s haul.

Maria returned to the fort, basket in hand, and got out her sketchbook. It wasn’t until sundown that Henrique and company came back.

“What is it that the Indian women find so funny about me being interested in the nuts of the greenheart?”

“Mevrouw Vorst, it will be an honor and a pleasure for me to find out,” said Henrique, bowing. He and Maurício went off in search of their Lokono friends, with Coqui and Kasiri trailing behind.

Curiously, at the dinner table, Henrique wasn’t quick to share his findings. Maria managed to contain her impatience until they were all done eating. “Well, Henrique, what did you find out?”

Henrique looked at Maurício. Maurício looked at the ceiling.

Henrique also seemed to have trouble looking straight at Maria. “Mevrouw Vorst. Umm. They use the nuts to, um, keep from having babies.”

* * *

Coqui wasn’t thinking about babies, but he was devoting some thought to the related subject of women.

He had decided to join Henrique, Maurício and Kasiri on their little trip because he wanted to find a mate. And none of the girls of his own village appealed to him particularly.

As they made their way down the Rupununi, they had passed through the lands of the Wapishana and the Macushi. Unfortunately, they had done so at the time that the upper Rupununi was in flood, creating a great lake that bridged it to the rivers of the Amazon. While that made travel relatively easy, it meant that it was hard to fish, and the Indians of the region spent that season mostly in the uplands, where they could hunt land game.

The bottom line was that he hadn’t met any eligible females en route. As to the women of the Lokono Arawaks, they fell into three categories. The pretty and available ones, who had struck up relationships with the Dutchmen at the fort. The pretty and unwilling ones, who had prudently moved deeper into the forest, where they could avoid unwanted advances. And the old women who insisted on flirting with him at every opportunity.

Logically, then, he should go deeper into the forest, but he was reluctant to trust his sister Kasiri to the highly dubious wilderness skills of her new boyfriend, Maurício. It was too bad that she hadn’t picked Henrique, who was actually competent. For a European.

This Maria said that there were Indian women near her colony. He would have to investigate.





Gustavus (Paramaribo),

Short Dry Season (February–March, 1635)





The black schooner rounded the sandy spit that marked the eastern edge of the entrance to the Suriname River. As it continued westward, it came into view of the recently constructed Fort Lincoln, which lay on the broad vee of land between the mouth of the Comowine River, and the main channel of the Suriname River. Gustavus itself was some distance farther up the Suriname, on the west bank, where the ground was less prone to flooding.

Fort Lincoln, at this point, was more bark than bite. Most of its “cannon” were actually artfully blackened logs. However, there was just enough real ordnance to fool an enemy ship that merely wanted to test the defenses. For all it knew, if the fort didn’t fire all its guns, perhaps it was just conserving ammunition.

Captain Dirck Adrienszoon, the original skipper of the Eikhoorn, and acting fort commander, lowered his spyglass.

“Slaver,” he said.

“How can you tell?” asked Heinrich Bender. He was a member of the colonial militia.