Seas of Fortune(88)

Exchanging bird calls, they caught up with their sentry, who explained why he had raised the alarm. “Two men we know, Heinrich and Erasmus, were panning where the Abonsuo meets the Lawa.” An abonsuo was what they called a calabash when it was used for gold panning; the Abonsuo was the creek immediately downstream of the Dammabo. “I saw them when I did my walk-around. I came back here.

“At mid-day, I heard arguing from the direction of the Abonsuo. I went back there and saw that there were three new white men there. All of the whites had hands near their weapons, and their faces were snarly. They complained that Heinrich and Erasmus had had plenty of time to pan the Abonsuo and it was time they gave someone else a chance. They said that they should ‘help’ Heinrich and Erasmus, and split what was found. Heinrich and Erasmus kept telling them to go away. Finally, they did. I followed them, and heard them talking to each other. They plan to wait until it is dark and then kill Heinrich and Erasmus, and take their gold dust and their panning place.”

The two Ashanti reinforcements exchanged looks, then Awisu ordered. “Tell Antoa. We will watch now.” The sentry picked his way back up the creek.

Some minutes later, the sentry returned with Antoa and many of the Ashanti warriors.

“These are very bad men,” said Antoa. “They will try to kill Heinrich and Erasmus, who are our friends. I think we should kill them instead. But let us talk to Heinrich and Erasmus first, so they can tell the other whites that we are not starting a war with them.”





Near Fort Lincoln, Mouth of Suriname River





David de Vries hadn’t a care in the world. He was at sea, with a clear sky, the trades blowing firmly on his starboard quarter, and a flying fish had just jumped on deck in front of him.

By day’s end he should arrive at Gustavus, the colony he had founded, and he expected to be fawned over. He was the governor and founder, after all.

The lookout called down from the masthead. “Captain, you better take a look at Fort Lincoln. It just don’t look right.”

David sighed. So much for a life without care. He raised his spyglass. The fort seemed deserted. What did it mean? Had the Spanish, or the Caribs, attacked and killed everyone? Had there been an outbreak of plague?

Not an attack. The fort looked too, too neat. And even if plague killed everyone in the fort, it wouldn’t wipe out the entire colony, and the fort would be reoccupied. Well, unless it were, what did Maria call it? Septicemic or pneumonic plague.

Wait. There was someone at the fort. And that person was hopping about, therefore not sick, and yet had not raised the yellow quarantine flag to warn off visitors.

David ordered his dinghy lowered, and made his way down the rope ladder.

* * *

“Thank God you’re here, David,” said Captain Dirck Adrienszoon.

“So what happened?”

“I think we should talk in private,” Dirck replied, minutely jerking his head in the general direction of David’s coxswain.

David ordered the coxswain to go up to the fort’s watchtower, and stay there until David called for him or he saw something that ought be reported.

In Dirck’s office, David got the bad news.

“We’ve had an attack of the fever, David.”

“Malaria? Yellowjack?”

“No, gold fever. One of the Ashanti, Kojo, went exploring with Coqui and Tetube, up the Marowijne, and apparently they came back with some nuggets. Then the rest of the Ashanti decided to try their luck, followed by many of the whites. There’s no bauxite being mined, and no one wants to play soldier any more. We still have most of our craftsmen, and farmers at least. Not because they aren’t gold-hungry, but because they’re not willing to abandon the comforts of home on the say-so of an African or Indian. And the women have stayed here, too. But once a white man comes back with gold, this place’ll be a ghost town, I’m sure.”

“But how the hell did they find out about the gold?”

Dirck shrugged. “I don’t know. . . . Hey, wait a minute. You said, ‘find out,’ not ‘find.’ Did you know it was there?”

David nodded. “It was in the American encyclopedias. But I was under orders to get food, rubber and bauxite production ramped up before letting the colonists get involved in anything as chancy as gold panning.”

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, that is for sure, David. In fact, it may be more of a tiger than a cat. There’s a deserted fluyt in port right now. Sooner or later, its crew will return to Europe, and start spending their gold. That will attract attention.”

“You’re right about that. We need to get a fort built at the mouth of the Marowijne, tout de suite. So no other power claims the gold fields.”