No luck.
His third mate caught two men plotting to sneak back to the new Ashanti village, near Maria Falls, and force one of the Ashanti to divulge the secrets of gold mining that they had obviously held back from the whites. Those men were summarily executed.
David wished, fervently, that they would find a waterfall, as Kojo had suggested. But there were no waterfalls marked on David’s map of French Guiana—the American atlases hadn’t shown much interest in that region—and the highlands, where one might reasonably expect to find a waterfall, were well to the south.
* * *
“Captain, come quick!” One of David’s sailors was shouting.
David wasn’t the only man to rush over, but he was the first to speak the word that was in everyone’s thoughts.
“Gold?”
“Yes, sir. Look.” The sailor held out a small nugget. He pointed at the base of a boulder, in the middle of the stream they had been following. “That’s where I found it.”
David realized that the stream had changed grade here, from steep to shallow, depositing gravels and even a few small boulders. “Spread out, men! Along the rock line!”
It proved to be a very respectable pay streak.
Buoyed by this find, David and his crew continued to explore southward for the rest of the dry season, then returned to the established gold field.
Surinamese Short Wet Season (December 1636–January 1637),
Gustavus
A distant boom drew the attention of everyone in the Gustavus town square. A sentry called out, “Signal cannon from Fort Lincoln.”
The townspeople who were members of the militia dashed into their homes to grab their weapons, just in case hostile warships had been sighted.
“I see smoke on the horizon,” said Johann Mueller. “Is the forest on fire?”
“Is the fire on this side of the river?” asked another.
“I can’t tell,” said Johann. “You know how the river twists and turns.”
They heard a chugging sound, one totally outside their experience, and then a great whistle. His Danish Majesty’s Armed Steamship Valdemar came into view.
* * *
“So that’s the little secret you’ve been hiding,” declared Henrique. “A steamship. I should have guessed; you did tell me that Henry Wickham got rubber tree seeds from Brazil to London that way.”
Maria smiled sweetly.
“How long will it take to steam back to Europe?”
“About a month, according to the letter that told me to expect it.”
“Amazing. A sailing ship captain would count himself lucky to make the passage in two months. That will certainly improve your chances of making it there with viable seeds.
“But how are you planning to get up and down the Amazon without the Portuguese stopping you? You must enter by the Canal do Norte or the Canal do Sul. On the northern approach, you pass Fort Cumau.” This was the modern town of Macapa. “We took it from the English, and left it in ruins, but when I fled Belém, there was talk of rebuilding it.
“If you come from the south, then on the south bank of the main channel you will find the fort of Gurupa. The channel there is narrow enough so that you are within cannon range. And they’ll hear your engines from far off. The garrison is fifty Portuguese and perhaps twice that number of Indians.
“The Valdemar has sails as well as a steam engine, so I suppose that if the winds are favorable it can sail up quietly. But there are many Indians living by the banks, and boating in the water. The Valdemar cannot escape detection, especially since you must enter in daylight in order to see where you are going. Perhaps it will have the advantage of surprise when it arrives, and can pass the forts before the cannon are loaded, but when it returns downstream, the Portuguese will be ready for it.”
“Not to worry,” said Maria.
“It doesn’t look like one of the ironclads that the last supply ship told us about. But it has some American superweapon on it, yes?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You’re just going to be infuriatingly reticent, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
* * *
The varnished cotton skin quivered like a living thing. Hydrogen bubbled out of the generator, traveled through a hose into a scrubber, and then by a second hose into the envelope of the slowly inflating airship.
Henrique snorted. “So that’s your superweapon.”
Maria nodded. “Notice the hoses? Made with our rubber.”
“What are the Manao Indians going to do when this damned thing flies overhead? Run away in terror, I would think.”
“I told Coqui that I would come to him in the belly of a giant bird. He will tell them that the bird is friendly.”