* * *
Coqui crawled through the brush. In due course, he came close enough to hear Kojo struggling with his bonds. He motioned for Kojo to stay still, and cut him free. Kojo then whispered to him what had happened.
“You’re sure they left the paddles in the canoe?”
Kojo nodded.
“Then our best bet is to make our escape in their canoe. On my signal . . .”
Coqui studied his surroundings with his eyes, ears, even his nose. Then he made a sharp arm gesture, and he and Kojo ran, half-crouched, for the canoe. Coqui cleaved the tie line with his machete, and Kojo jumped in and grabbed a paddle. As Coqui pushed the little craft into the water, they could hear the colonists rouse themselves. “Huh, did you make a noise? Wasn’t me! So what was that snap I heard? You stupid shithead, you just stepped on me! Hey, where’s the prisoner! Shit, they’re stealing our canoe!”
Coqui pulled himself into the canoe as the first kidnapper stumbled down to the bank and fired in the wrong direction.
Once he was sure he was out of range, Coqui yelled, “have a nice walk back home!”
* * *
After they were safely away, and had beached and hidden the canoes, they talked about what to do next. Kojo told them that these weren’t the first colonists to harass him, only the nastiest. And predicted that it was only a matter of time before like-minded whites went after his fellow explorers Coqui and Tetube, even though they weren’t gold miners like Kojo.
They decided to leave the Suriname River—there were too many potentially gold-hungry Gustavans traveling on it—and enter the swamp-and-ridge country to the east. There were African and Indian camps there, and they could take refuge with them. They would have a message taken to Maurício, Coqui’s brother-in-law, at New Carthage, and he would let them know when Maria and Henrique returned. Maria and Henrique would protect them. At least, if Maria forgave Kojo for breaching her trust.
Gustavus
The acting governor, Carsten Claus, looked up from his paperwork. “Heyndrick. How may I help you?”
“Carsten, something very odd is going on. First the Ashanti stopped mining, and then the whites.”
“What are they doing instead?”
“Doing? I have no idea. They have disappeared into the forest.”
“Without explanation?”
“None that any of their friends are willing to share with me, at least. I am afraid that as the boss’ cousin, I’m not likely to get a straight answer.”
Carsten stood up, and started pacing. “Shit, I don’t need this now, I have to go upriver to check on the English at Marshall’s Creek. Dirck’ll be in charge in my absence, so tell him what you’ve told me. . . .”
He stopped in mid-stride, and laughed. “I hate it when I do that.” He sat back down, and leaned back. “I suppose it’s not the end of the world. They’ll tire eventually of whatever it is that has caught their fancy, and we can go a few months without bauxite mining. It’s just being stockpiled until Essen Chemical gets the kinks out of their aluminum refining process.”
With this rather tepid assurance, Heyndrick left.
Not for the first time, Carsten Claus wished that the official governor, Heyndrick’s cousin David Pieterszoon de Vries, had as much enthusiasm for governing as he did for exploring, trading, and starting colonies. He had not skippered the last supply ship to service Gustavus, and the captain of that ship had not been willing to venture a guess as to when David might deign to reappear.
The next day, Carsten took the Siren upriver, leaving the colony in the hands of Captain Dirck Adrienszoon, the commander of Fort Lincoln. On the journey south, he thought about Heyndrick’s warning. Adrienszoon was competent, if a bit on the unimaginative side. But Carsten didn’t think it likely that anything would happen that Dirck couldn’t handle. It wasn’t as though the Gustavus Colony was producing anything that the Spanish or French would deem so valuable as to justify the expense of a major invasion force.
* * *
Elias, the carpenter’s apprentice, was thinking, for once, of gold, not skinny-dipping Indian girls. Rumors were circulating, whispered by one lad to another—always under an injunction of secrecy—that Kojo had found a gold nugget. As big as an up-timer’s baseball. Unfortunately, the rumors disagreed as to where this golden baseball had pitched itself into his lap. Some said the gold was farther up the Suriname, others remembered Kojo’s little expedition and favored the Marowijne. And still others agreed that Kojo had found gold on that trip, but urged that he only pretended to go to the Marowijne, and in fact had sailed westward, to the Saramacca.