by Scott O'Dell
Konje knew what the bomba was trying to do, but when I told him that he was killing himself, he only clenched his hands.
7
Late one afternoon, when the distillery had been running on sugar cane stored months before, and Konje had hauled more seawater than ever, a ship sailed into Hawks Nest Bay. A cannon went off, horns sounded, and a flag ran up the mast.
The cannon shot roused Jost van Prok, who lay in his hammock asleep. I had just gone to work with his wife's hair, making the three little curls she wore on her forehead.
Master van Prok bounded to his feet and ran to the window that looked down on the bay.
"Spaniards," he shouted in his bull-like voice. "Devil's spawn. Robbers from Puerto Rico. What will they want for their water this time? Last year it was two rigsdalers a tubful. Twice that this time, you can be sure!"
Mistress Jenna skipped to the window. "What good fortune!" she cried. "No matter the cost. Now we can have a garden. Now we can fatten a few sheep and eat fresh meat instead of that salt stuff from Holland."
She was beside herself. The whole plantation was excited, for now every slave could plant a small garden. Everyone was excited except Jost van Prok, who had to pay.
The Spaniards sold the water at three rigsdalers a tubful. A tubful was what a slave could carry on his head. The tubs were all the same size. A small man could carry a tub a third full. A strong man a tub two-thirds full of water.
This was how Konje became the most important slave on Hawks Nest plantation. He could carry a full tub on his head, up the long hill path to the storehouse, without spilling a drop.
The Spanish captain was not pleased with Konje. And when Master van Prok cut the number of carriers to four, to Konje and three others, the captain threatened to sail away unless he was paid double the number of rigsdalers.
Master van Prok paid, muttering under his breath, "Thieves. Spanish cutthroats." But the water had brought the plantation to life. The storehouse rang with laughter. Slaves sang. They came down from the fields and worked.
Many of the rain barrels in the storehouse had dried out and fallen apart. They had to be put together again. Our two carpenters worked all day and by torchlight. Dozens of barrels still had water in them, but, full of wriggling eggs and young mosquitoes, they had to be cleaned out.
The bomba went around banging his ironwood club, with a smile for everyone except Konje.
It was dusk. Konje had been working since dawn. He came into the yard while I was bringing Mistress Jenna's supper from the cookhouse. His feet dragged and water spilled over the side of the barrel.
After he had emptied the barrel and come out of the storehouse, I made him sit down. I offered him a piece of Mistress Jenna's salt mutton. He refused it but took a drink from her cup of rum, then spat it out.
The bomba had been watching us from the shadows. He came limping across the yard and looked down at Konje sprawled on the ground.
"You are not to drink Mistress Jenna's rum," he said. "You are not to touch the cup she uses. Do you understand?"
Konje did not answer. It was an insult not to answer, but the bomba let it go when he saw Konje get to his feet.
We waited until he was in the house, probably telling the van Proks all that had happened.
"I have noticed the distillery is at work," Konje said. "There's fire under all the pots. One of the pots is full of muscovado."
Muscovado was the coarse yellow sugar left in the first pot as the sugar cane started down the line.
"When I quit tonight, after one more barrel, I'll introduce the bomba to the muscovado. They'll make a good mixture, don't you think?"
"You can't do that. They'll cut you up into small pieces. Besides, Nero is a sick man. You can take his insults, we both can."
"For how long?"
"Until we find some way to escape."
"I've found a way already. I was told by sailors on the Spanish ship that there are runaways at Mary Point. They don't know how many. They think ten or twelve. Mary Point is surrounded on three sides, they say, by straight up-and-down cliffs. On the fourth side is a cactus wall so thick that a snake can hardly get through it."
"How are you to get through?"
"I'll find a way. The way the runaways found."
"What will I do?"
"You'll stay here until I come for you."
"In a year?"
"Before then."
"I'll die."
"You will not die. You will live and I will come for you."
"When are you going?"
"Tonight."
He lifted me off the ground and kissed me. He put the empty barrel on his head and started down the trail. I listened until I could hear his footsteps no more.
8
At the moment when the big drum at Mary Point began to talk, the sand in the sand clock quietly ran out. I turned the clock upside down and started the sand flowing again. Jost van Prok was very particular about the hours between dusk and dawn, for these were the hours of terror.
Now that three months had gone by, the talk came from the west and from the east, from everywhere the runaway slaves had a camp. The talk was the same as last night and the night before and many nights before that. The big drum at Mary Point always talked the loudest. It was the drum Jost van Prok feared the most.
After I turned the sand clock, I went to comfort Mistress Jenna. The sand flies were bad. They're tiny, you can scarcely see them, but they have a ferocious bite. Mosquitoes were bad, too, though for months now not a drop of rain had fallen. Most of my twelve hours as her body slave were spent waving a palm leaf fan.
Master van Prok lay in his hammock, with his legs hanging over the sides, rocking himself to sleep after a small supper of needlefish and yams. At the sound of the drums he put his feet on the floor and sat bolt upright. He was a stout man, as thick through as he was wide, with long arms and knotty fists. He stared through the doorway into the night with his cold blue eyes. His whip lay coiled beneath the hammock.
"The runaways are making a good time of it," Mistress Jenna said. "But once their food disappears, they'll come running back."
"Ours will disappear first," Master van Prok said. "They steal from the storehouse. They steal from the fields. And our slaves give them food on the sly."
"You worry so about the runaways," his wife said. "Why is it that you and our neighbors don't arm yourselves and wipe them out?"
"Because it would take ten times the number we could muster," Jost van Prok said. "The runaways would never stand and fight. They'd slink off somewhere and we would never find them again. These new slaves, the bussals, are different from the slaves who were born in the islands. If we did capture these new ones, they would up and kill themselves. To die by his own hand means to a bussal that his spirit returns to Africa and lives once more in the bodies of a nobleman. Or so I am told."
"How silly," Mistress Jenna said.
"The only way to control the runaways is by stricter laws. We've been far too gentle with them," Jost van Prok said.
Dondo stood beside the hammock, waving a fan. At the words, "too gentle," the fan hung still in the stifling air.
Master van Prok pointed a finger at Dondo. "What do the drums say?" he asked.
"I do not understand the drums," Dondo answered.
"Angelica," Master van Prok said, pointing the finger at me, "you've been here for months. You have heard the drums talk. What do they say?"
I knew the drum talk. I knew what the drums were saying. The runaways planned a revolt against all of the white plantations on the island of St. John. They were getting ready, storing guns and knives and food. It would take months. It would be November before they were ready to revolt.
"What do the drums say?" the master asked again, still pointing his finger at me.
"I do not know about the drums, sir."
"You should know, especially about the big one at Mary Point. The man you think about night and day, Apollo, the one you are thinking about
now, while you stand there looking so innocent. He is the one who tells the big drum what to say."
Mistress Jenna stopped sipping the air I stirred up with my palm leaf fan. "Forget about the drums," she said to her husband. "Why not ask Governor Gardelin to bring his army and have a wonderful parade? A parade will impress the new slaves and the old slaves, too."
"An army? The governor doesn't have an army," her husband replied.
The cat was after the house gecko, stalking the shiny lizard along the shelf that ran around the room. I was told to put the cat outside. By the time I caught him, my tasks were nearly done for the day.
I helped Mistress Jenna get into her nightdress and brought her a cup of Kill Devil rum. Kill Devil came out of the coils first, raw and strong enough to kill the devil himself. Before the drums began to talk so much, she drank Kjeltum, the rum that came out last and was much milder.
She drank the Kill Devil from a small cup with cupids painted around the rim. She drank two of these cups of rum. Then she looked around in her closet and found a dress she hadn't worn for a long time. She told me to put it on. The dress was far too large, but I put it on over my cotton shift.
Master van Prok raised up from his hammock and said that I was prettier in my shift, without the dress. This did not please Mistress Jenna.
9
I would not see Konje tonight. Since dusk as I waited on Mistress Jenna I had said this to myself. I said it to myself as I walked up the path to my hut. I had seen him four nights ago.
It was a dangerous walk from the camp at Mary Point, through steep ravines and rock-strewn gullies, four long miles back and forth, at night. It could be weeks before he came again. It was better to know this than to look for him in vain.
A half moon shone in the west. I passed the mimosa tree where I always met him. I did not look.
Drums were talking. Waves broke on the rocks below. Voices drifted down from the slave huts. Yet suddenly I heard soft steps in the dust. It could be a spirit following me. I did not turn around and walked faster.
The night wind was behind me. On it I heard my name called, called twice before I could stop. He was there, tall and shining in the moonlight under the mimosa tree. My heart was a bird. It beat against my breast.
"You went by haughty," he said, "and did not even look."
"I was afraid to look for fear you were not there," I told him, quickly, in what little voice I had.
He felt the sleeve of my dress. "I was afraid to speak to you when you went by. I didn't know you in a dress. I thought you were somebody else. Where did it come from?"
"From Jenna Prok. She gave it to me."
"Another gift."
He took out a necklace of blue stones, the kind the sea polishes and leaves on the beach, and put it over my head and around my neck. He lifted me high. He enclosed me like a storm cloud.
When he set me down, I said, "You promised to take me with you the next time you came."
"Food's scarce at the camp," he said. "We have more people than we can feed. In another month it will be different. I will come for you then."
"That is a long time off," I said.
"It may be sooner," Konje said. "We heard from St. Thomas this morning that the governor is on his way to Hawks Nest. He'll be here tomorrow and stay for a few days, talking to planters, spying on things. He'll bring powder and bullets from the fort, like the last time. Tell Dondo that we need both. Tell him to steal what he can. Tell Dondo to hide them here behind me in the cactus."
"I will tell him tomorrow morning," I said, "when he is through with Master van Prok."
The drums at Mary Point had stopped talking. No waves broke on the shore below. In the silence there was a sound I often had heard.
It was Master van Prok and his whip, the tschickefell. He was walking up the path that led to the huts. He did this every night, now that runaways were camped at Mary Point. He wanted to scare any of his slaves who might be tempted to join them.
The whip was long, woven of strips of goatskin, and had a piece of metal at its tip. From twenty feet away he could flick a bird from a branch. The tschickefell cracked like a pistol shot.
The sounds came closer. Konje lifted me again and set me down. "Tell Dondo," he whispered. "Do not forget." Quickly, he was gone.
I went to my hut and took off the dress and stretched out on my mat. Master van Prok circled the huts, cracking his whip.
Before dawn, at four o'clock when the field slaves went to work, I hid the necklace under my mat. I put on the dress and went down to the house to give Dondo Konje's message, afraid I might miss him.
The van Prok toilet was outside the house. The sun rose over the ridge and Master van Prok came out naked and stretched himself. After he was through with the toilet, he bent over and Dondo whisked him clean with a horsetail brush. This was the custom of the planters on the island of St. John and the island of St. Thomas. They would not think of starting the day otherwise. Dondo did this task with his jaws set tight.
I waited until Master van Prok had gone down to the distillery, where the mules were going around, turning the grinding stones that crushed the sugar cane. Then I gave Dondo the message Konje had given me.
He shook his head. "I stole powder when Governor Gardelin was here two months ago. Remember?"
"I remember. You almost got caught."
"Almost. I had a bagful, all I could carry. I hid in the cave under the hill. The guards searched the house. They searched the beach. They were about to search the cave when the tide came in. The tide kept them out but it soaked the powder. Since that time van Prok hides it in a closet near his hammock. Sometimes, when he's asleep, when I am waving the fan, I have had a notion to put some fire in the closet."
The way Dondo spoke, this was more than a notion with him. "You'll blow yourself up," I told him. "Me, too."
"I will do it when you're not around."
"Thank you," I said.
"I will get Konje some powder."
"He wants you to be careful."
"I'll get powder," Dondo said. "And be careful."
10
While we were talking, Governor Gardelin's ship was seen on the blue waters between the island of St. Thomas and the island of St. John. Master van Prok left the sugar mill and hurried to the fort. It was a thatched hut, a stone wall, a stone platform, and a cannon. The cannon puffed quietly. It was answered by three loud roars from the ship.
"Big roars," Dondo said, "mean the governor has a lot of powder and he's angry."
"The governor's always angry," I said.
The ship sailed into the bay and the anchor went down and two men were rowed in close to the beach. Mistress Jenna named them. One, Governor Gardelin, came the rest of the way on a slave's shoulders. The other was Preacher Isaak Gronnewold, she said. He refused to be carried on the backs of black men. Instead, he stepped into the water and got his pants wet.
A longboat left the ship and landed on the beach. It was piled high with food, which the slaves balanced on their heads and carried up the trail to the cookhouse.
They carried thick-leafed kaleloo, bunches of ellube herbs to sprinkle around, Guinea corn and okra, sweet-rooted taro, sugar apples, a basket of fish—not pot fish or salted poorjack but big fish from deep water, red meat—bundles of it, and firkins of beer.
Last came three sacks marked with X's. They were heavy. The slaves who carried them panted under the weight.
"Powder," Dondo whispered.
We watched them carry the food into the cookshed and the three sacks of powder into the house.
"They will put it in the closet," Dondo said, "near van Prok's hammock."
"Be careful," I warned him.
Laughter came from the house, but there was no laughter when I went in early to help Mistress Jenna. The door that faced the sea was open and the two men sat in the doorway, where what little breeze there was would reach them.
Philip Gardelin's pants were pulled up to air his naked knees. He was gover
nor of the West India and Guinea company, king of everything they did or thought of doing. He frightened me. I was scared to be in the same house with him.
The governor was talking to Isaak Gronnewold, the minister on St. John, a tall young man burned almost black by the sun.
"I see you brought your Bible, though it's against the law," the governor said. "You carry it around and preach it to the slaves, and I permit you to do so. But it hasn't made any difference that I can see. They're a benighted lot."
"I have been preaching the Bible for only two years," the minister said. "Others have preached for hundreds of years. And most of us, all of us, are still benighted."
"Why do we have so much sickness on St. John?" the governor asked. "On St. Thomas there's nothing like this. If it goes on, we won't have a slave left."
"And it will go on," Minister Gronnewold said, "until the slaves are given food fit to eat. You will notice that not one of the planters has died from starvation."
Master van Prok's tschickefell lay under his chair. He picked it up and laid it in his lap. "My slaves eat as well as I do. Am I to blame for the drought and the hurricanes that have ruined their gardens? Is it my fault that the slaves have forgotten what work is, if they ever knew? And how do I keep them from running away when the bush is filled with runaways and the nights with talking drums?"
As the governor started to answer the questions, Mistress Jenna called me away to help with her bath. She could have gone down to the sea and bathed, but she didn't like the salt the seawater left on her skin. She bathed in the seawater hauled up the hill when the salt was boiled out.
After I bathed and dressed her, she joined the men. The talk changed.
Nothing more was said about sickness and starvation and death. Governor Gardelin did the talking. It was about the happy life in Denmark, how he hoped to bring the same happiness to the Virgin Islands someday.