King of the Jungle
February–March 1635 to August 1635
Paramaribo (Gustavus), Suriname,
Short Dry Season (February–March, 1635)
“My children. Help find?” The Dutch words were painfully enunciated, clearly learned by rote.
Maria Vorst put down the chalk with which she had been drawing, and studied the questioner. The tall black man, by his markings, was Coromantee. They were the people living in what the up-timers called Ghana. He was one of the two hundred or so slaves whom the Gustavans had freed from the distressed slave ship Tritón when it had come hunting for drinking water.
Perhaps half of the slaves knew some Portuguese, either because their tribes had traded with the Portuguese, or because they learned it after their capture. Only a few knew Dutch, the Dutch presence in Africa being more recent and more limited.
Unfortunately, the Gustavans were mostly Dutch and German, and hardly any of them knew Portuguese. Maria, despite being far better educated than the rest of the colonists, didn’t know much herself, although she was trying to fit language lessons into her schedule.
Fortunately, her teacher was nearby. “Maurício, come here please!” Maurício, a freed mulatto, born in Portuguese Brazil, had been trained there as a scribe and interpreter. Because of the large slave population in Brazil, he knew African, as well as European, languages. Once, he and Henrique had lived in Recife, and Maurício had gone time after time to the dock to meet and greet, in his capacity as interpreter, the “wild” slaves, just delivered there to work on the sugar plantations. Most came from Angola, but there were slaves from all over Africa.
Maria remembered that there had been a few children among the slaves they had freed. She explained the situation to Maurício and had him translate. “What are your children’s names? How old are they? What do they look like?”
Maurício turned to the Coromantee. They spoke rapidly together, first in Portuguese, and then in the Twi dialect of Akan.
“I am Kojo of the Ashanti. My boy Manu has seen thirteen summers, and his sister Mansa, eleven.” Kojo described them.
“Where did you see them last?”
The answer was not what Maria expected.
“In Edina.”
“Edina?” interjected her companion, Maurício. “You mean São Jorge da Mina?” The man nodded.
Maurício turned to Maria. “He was separated from his children back in Africa, in the Portuguese fortress you Dutch call Elmina.”
“Elmina? My husband, may God rest his soul, spoke of it once, as a place of great trade. Somewhat enviously, I must say.”
Maurício nodded. “Enviously? That’s for sure. The Dutch tried to take Elmina in 1625.” He paused. “Where is this husband of yours, by the way?”
“He was lost at sea,” Maria said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. It was years ago. And to be honest, I didn’t know him all that well.”
“Anyway,” Maurício continued, “Elmina was the first Portuguese base in Africa. On what we call the ‘Gold Coast.’ A century ago, it accounted for a tenth of the entire gold trade. There’s still gold mined in that area, but nowadays Elmina is mostly a slave depot. Dozens of slave ships visit every year.”
“Does he know which ship they were put on? Not the name, of course, but can he describe it? The number of masts? Or of its gunports? The figurehead?”
“I’ll ask.” He questioned Kojo further, then shook his head.
“Sorry, Maria. They don’t give the captives the run of the fort, you know. The children were taken first. He saw them at one point, in a different pen, so they were there when he arrived, but the guards didn’t let him join them and they were sold off before he was. When he was put on the Tritón, he hoped that it would take him to the same place.”
“So, is it hopeless? What do we tell him, Maurício?”
Maurício suddenly looked much older than usual. “I don’t know. It does seem hopeless. If I think of something, I will let you know. In the meantime, all I can do is say that we will pray that they are safe, and that if we learn anything about their whereabouts, we will tell him right away.”
“That seems so . . . ineffectual.”
Maurício shrugged.
“Wait,” said Maria. “If he can provide a good enough description, I can draw them. Then you and he can show the drawings around, see if anyone knows more. And at worst, perhaps the drawings will give him some comfort.”
Maurício explained what Maria wanted to do. Maria didn’t want to waste her precious paper, so she drew on a piece of slate. It was easier to erase that way, too. She decided to try to draw the boy first, guessing that his features would be similar to, but younger than, his father’s. She erased a line here and added a curve there until the father seemed satisfied.
Then she pulled out a second slate, duplicated the boy’s picture, and then had Maurício find out what needed to be changed for it to represent the girl. That took quite a bit more give and take, but at last it was done.
Then she made a copy to paper of the images of the boy and girl, for Maurício, and gave the slates to the Coromantee. She had plenty of slate from one of her expeditions upriver.
“I hope this helps,” said Maria.
* * *
The Coromantee reverently set down the slates. He had been pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the whites was a tindana, a priestess of the Earth Goddess. Who else would place a magical incantation on a rock?
Now she had blessed him with a talisman by which he could speak to his children. Perhaps even call them back to him.
He had almost lost hope, had contemplated walking into the Great Sea.
He wondered how he could possibly repay her.
* * *
“Blue or red?” said Johann Mueller, spreading his hands, each pointing at a different pile of beads.
The young Eboe woman reached slowly toward a blue bead, then jerked her hand back. Two Eboe matrons, baskets on top of their heads, watched the interplay. Johann had no idea what they were saying, but he fancied they were placing bets on which color his customer would settle on.
Business had been good. The Eboe were very fond of beads. Both men and women were accustomed to wearing beaded necklaces. Since they had come to the New World as slaves, they had only whatever they had been wearing when they were sold to European slavers. And once they were freed, they wanted to adorn themselves, to distinguish themselves from their companions.
To buy beads, or anything else, they needed something to trade. And that meant that they needed to fish, hunt, grow crops, mine, or craft artifacts. Either on their own account, or as contract labor. Samuel Johnson’s epigram—about liberty being the choice of working or starving—was known only in countries exposed to up-time literature, but the Africans were quick to appreciate the limits of the liberty the Gustavans had conferred upon them.
Of course, thought Johann, they were no worse off than the Gustavans in that regard. It was fortunate that the slave ship still had several months’ supply of food. Better yet, they had seeds to plant. Maurício had told Johann that there was an Eboe insult, “I bet you even eat your yam seeds.” The colonists had supplied water, and they had made and sold farm implements to the Africans, but they were expecting a return.
“Hello, Johann, how’s business?” asked Maurício.
Johann jumped. If Johann were a superstitious man, he might worry that his thoughts had summoned Maurício.
“Fine, fine. Would you ask this young lady whether she has made up her mind?” Maurício did so. She ended up trading for an equal number of both colors.
Maurício walked over to the watching women. He held up the drawings Maria had made. “Did you see these Coromantee children before you boarded the giant canoe with the white wings?” That was, more or less, the proper way to describe a European sailing ship.
They shook their heads.
He heard a cough behind him. He turned, and saw Heinrich Bender. “Teach me some Portuguese, Maurício. I need to be able to bargain with the blacks.”
“What do you want to know?”
Heinrich smiled. “You can start with ‘How much?’ and ‘Too much.’”
Maurício laughed. “I should start a school.”
“You should, Maurício. You’ve been teaching Portuguese to Maria, I know, so why not teach a bunch of people at once?”
“I could, I suppose. Although Maria knows Latin, which makes it much easier for her than it would be for you German peasants.” Maurício smiled to show he was joking.
“I mean it, Maurício. Teach Portuguese to us, and English or German to Africans. Earn some money.”
“Perhaps I will. I can teach the Mandinka trade talk, too. The problem isn’t just us talking to the Africans, it’s getting them talking to each other.”
* * *
The Eboe stood up, shading his eyes with one hand and hefting his fishing spear in the other. He kept his balance in the canoe with the ease of long practice. He had often gone fishing on the Niger and its tributaries. The dugout canoe, made by one of the local Surinamese Indians, was made from a strange tree, but he had learned to handle it quickly enough.
It was a good time to fish; early on a Sunday morning, when the colonists of Gustavus, across the river, were at prayer, or enjoying their day of rest.
There. A dark shape in the water. He threw.
Missed. The float bobbed in the water, as if it were laughing at him. He shrugged philosophically, and pulled on the retrieval line. He took in a few feet and then it resisted. Clearly, the spear was caught in something.
Back home, he might have chosen to abandon the spear. Here, he couldn’t afford to do so. The Gustavans had freed the blacks, but that didn’t mean that they felt obliged to give them much in the way of goods. For anything more than water, and a bit of food, they expected the blacks to work. The hospitality of the Indian tribes also had its limits.
He didn’t care about the spear shaft—there was plenty of wood around—but a metal spear point, made by the Gustavan smith . . . that was another matter.
He tied the near end of the rope about the canoe, as best he could, and then dived into the water.
When he emerged, his teeth were chattering. Not with cold, but with fright. There was a boat, with dead men, resting on the shallow river bottom. And not just any men, but the terrible white men who had taken them across the Great Sea. Had they turned into river demons?
He clambered into the canoe and just lay there, trying to calm down. The pleasant warmth of the sun had a lulling effect. He drew a knife, and was about to cut the rope away and head back to shore, when he had a change of heart.
If the bad men turned into river demons, surely they would have drowned someone weeks ago. And there would have been talk.
So these were just dead men. Dead men still holding their weapons, and with other valuable goods on their persons.
Who needs a spear shaft, if one has a sword? he thought. And with that, he paddled the boat closer to the sunken longboat, and then jumped back into the water.
Some time later, he beached the canoe, and gazed with satisfaction at the pile of goods heaped beside him. A half dozen cutlasses, a gold bracelet, and other odds and ends. He was rich now, by the standards of the ex-slaves. Rich beyond his wildest dreams.
With this, he would be an ozo, a big man. A giver of great gifts. And when he ran out, he could slip back here, and collect more goods. He would have a round stool, with three legs, and a stool carrier. He would have the town smith make him an iron staff, with bells attached. He would wear a red hat.
As he mused over these attractive possibilities, he was grabbed from behind. He tried to reach for one of the weapons so close to his feet, but the attackers pulled him back, away from the canoe, and tapped the side of his head with a war club.
When he came to, he was hanging, head down. One of his fellow ex-slaves, from an unfamiliar tribe, was studying him. Three others, who seemed from their markings to be of the same tribe, lounged nearby.
“Ah,” the warrior said to his fellows, “our fish is squirming. Should we toss him back into the water, or throw him into the pot?” His filed teeth suggested that this was not a metaphor.
The Eboe had no idea what they were saying, but was pretty sure it didn’t bode well for him. He began pleading for his life, first in his native tongue, then in Mandinka trade talk.
The warrior held up one of the weapons. “Where did you get these?”
“Spare me, and I will show where to find more.”
Near modern Paranam, Suriname
Heinrich Bender held up the chunk of rock. “This is what we are looking for.” Kojo had asked Maurício whether the Gustavans had any mines, and one thing had led to another.
Kojo, and the two Coromantee he had brought with him, studied the specimen. Kojo took it in his hand, then returned it with a moue of distaste.
“Worthless clay. We gold miners, not dirt farmers.”
“This is bauxite,” said Henrich. “Very useful. The Americans can make it into a metal which looks like silver but is as almost as light as wood. They call it ‘aluminum.’”
“You smelt it?” The Coromantees had been smithing for centuries.
“Not exactly. Uh—Maria, could you explain?”
Maria had researched the possible products of Suriname before the expedition was launched. She knew more about aluminum than anyone else west of the Line of Tordesillas.
“We wash the bauxite with hot lye to make alumina, and then we run electricity through a mixture of alumina and cryolite to melt it down and transform it.”
“What is cryolite?”
“It is a stone that it is found in Greenland—that is a land far to the north, where it is so cold that the water is hard like rock.”
The Coromantees digested this information. Magic stone, they thought.
“And electricity?”
“That is like lightning.”
Any doubts which Kojo’s fellow Coromantees had, as to whether Maria was as powerful a priestess as Kojo had told them, were now dispelled.
“Anyway,” said Heinrich, “don’t worry too much about the color—it can be white, yellow, red or brown. It is soft, so soft I can scratch like this, see?” He scratched with his fingernail. “But the real proof is that it has this funny ‘raisin pie’ texture.” He pointed at one of the little pea-sized concretions.
“And where do we find it?”
“It is usually easiest to dig it up from the sides of stream banks.”
Kojo flashed his teeth. “Fine. Now let’s talk price.”
The Gustavans didn’t care for digging in the constant heat and humidity; it was worse than farming. So they were happy to give the Coromantee the opportunity to mine the bauxite.
Of course, that meant that the Coromantee had to be allowed to shift their village to the west side of the river, the Gustavus side, since that’s where the known deposits were. The colonists debated this a bit, but Carsten Claus, the acting governor of the colony, pointed out that the deposits were still more than a day’s march south of Gustavus, and so the Gustavans didn’t have to worry about casual thievery on the part of their new neighbors.
What really clinched the deal was when Heyndrick de Liefde, who was the cousin of the colony’s founder, David de Vries, suggested that the Coromantee would act as a buffer if the English colony farther south, at Marshall’s Creek, got restive. There were many Dutch among the colonists, and given the treacherous attack by the English on the Dutch fleet at the Battle of Ostend, they weren’t happy about the proximity of the English, who had come before them to Suriname.
* * *
Borguri, who had been the highest ranking of all the Imbangala on board the Tritón, had declared himself their chief when they were freed by the Gustavans. He fought two duels to secure his position, but in view of their small number, had declined to kill either challenger. To make sure that they didn’t consider this a sign of weakness, he beat them to within an inch of their lives. They now obeyed him with seemingly doglike devotion.
It was a pity, he thought, that the guns recovered from the longboat were unusable. But he kept them. If his warriors carried them openly, their opponents would think that they worked, and would respond accordingly. They might flee, instead of charging, perhaps. And, if they weren’t fooled, well, the guns were reasonably good war clubs.
The freed slaves had divided into groups along tribal lines, and spread out in the area east of the Suriname River. The Imbangala had raided the weakest of the nearby groups, for provisions and tools that might be used as weapons, but since the Africans started with little in the way of possessions, they weren’t very productive targets. Not yet, at least.
For the moment, while the Imbangala regained their strength, they concentrated on stealing, not killing. The only exception was if they encountered any of the Ndongo, who they had fought back in what an up-timer would call Angola. ‘Ngola was the title of the Ndongo king, Nzinga. Who actually was a queen.
The white traders who circulated among the African settlements were more tempting prey. But Borguri wasn’t ready to attack the whites yet. Not even those traders, let alone the white colony west of the river. The whites were too well armed, he didn’t want to draw their attention yet. His warriors could steal from the whites, if they could avoid being spotted, but no more. If spotted, they must just flee. No killing. Yet.
The Indians, now . . . At first, the Imbangala had avoided confrontations with them. After all, this was their land. Who knew what spirit protections they had? And of course they had missile weapons, which the Imbangala had to make for themselves. But the Imbangala’s contempt for the Indians grew. They were clearly primitives, like the upriver Africans the Imbangala once captured for sale to the Portuguese.
The Imbangala chief studied the Indian villages nearest to the Imbangala camp. When did they hunt, what weapons did they carry, did they make war on other villages, did they set sentries when they held festivals. After some time, he picked the Imbangala’s first native target.
The Indians had been drinking piwari all day and night. They were ripe for the plucking. There was just one more matter to attend to.
Borguri looked at the Eboe fisherman. His head had been shaved, and ashes from the Imbangala hearth fire sprinkled over it, to erase his old identity, to remove him from the protection of his ancestral spirits. Assuming that they cared what happened to him across the Great Sea. In the ordinary course of things, in a few weeks he would go through a binding ritual which would make him property of Imbangala’s lineage, and drive thoughts of escape from his mind.
But no war party could set forth without at least one human sacrifice, to please the gods and feed the warriors.
* * *
Maurício spoke to the sentry. “I need to talk to him.” The guard shrugged. “Watch your step.”
Maurício took a deep breath and entered the hut. The change in illumination, from the high tropical sun to the indoor gloom, was stunning. It was several minutes before he could see much beyond the tip of his nose, and he said nothing until his eyes adjusted. At last he could make out the dark figure sleeping, or pretending to sleep, at the far end of the hut, his arms and legs both shackled, and the leg shackles in turn fastened to a chain which circled the great tree trunk that rose from the ground, piercing the roof of the hut.
“I have a few questions for you.”
“Do you now? Come a little closer, so I can hear you better.” The erstwhile slaver captain rattled his chain. “It’s not as though I can come closer to you.”
“I’ll just speak louder, thanks,” said Maurício. The first day after his capture, the captain had half-strangled the man who brought him food. The captain was then punished, by being given nothing to eat for several days, and was fed only after he apologized properly. Maurício was not especially reassured by this expression of contrition.
The captain laughed and laughed, then stopped abruptly. “Well, well, I am a busy man, as you can see. So be quick about it.”
“It’s a small matter. One of the Coromantee said that his two children were kidnapped and taken to Elmina for sale. He pursued the kidnappers and was captured in turn.”
The captain snickered.
“He spotted the children in a pen, but that was all.”
“How old were they?”
“The boy twelve, the girl eleven.”
“Ah, a good age. They can be trained as domestic servants, or be taught a trade and hired out. Of course, they are long-term investments.”
Maurício suppressed the urge to strangle the captain. “So, do you know what happened to them?”
“I can make an educated guess. But what’s in it for me?”
Maurício hesitated. He had already read the ship’s log, and quizzed all of the other survivors of the slaver’s crew. The captain, damn his soul, was Maurício’s last hope.
“I suppose I could do something about your rations, if I thought your answer was sufficiently helpful.”
“My rations, eh? Well, that’s not good enough. I want my freedom.”
Maurício turned and started to walk out.
“Wait, young fellow.” Maurício stopped.
“They can put a ball on this chain and let me walk about a bit, outside. Where would I run to, after all? If the Africans didn’t get me, the Indians would.”
“I promise that if you give me the information I need, I will speak to the governor, and request this boon.”
“Not on my behalf. As a favor to you. To redeem your word.”
“Yes, as a favor to me! Now talk, damn you!”
* * *
The attack took the Indians by surprise. The men were too drunk to put up a fight at all. The women weren’t in much better state.
The men of warrior age were slain and eaten, to the horror of their kin. Not that cannibalism was unknown in South America, but of course the Africans had different rituals and so far as the Indians were concerned, what the Imbangala were doing was completely wrong!
The younger boys were gathered together. They would be taught, brutally, that they were now Imbangala. The young women would become wives of the senior Imbangala warriors, and the older men and women would be put to work, as slaves, in the fields. If the old men thought that farming was beneath their dignity they would be beaten until they rethought the matter.
A week or so after the assault, one of the young women managed to escape. Tetube hid in an old hunter’s shelter that her brother had once pointed out, until the Imbangala tired of searching for her. Then she slipped downriver.
Long Rainy Season (April to August, 1635)
Carsten raised his hands. “All right, I can’t hear anyone if you all talk at once.”
“We’ve had goods stolen, time and again,” one colonist, who frequently made trading forays across the river, complained.
“Anyone killed?”
“Not yet,” the trader admitted.
“That’s not all,” said a second colonist. “The Africans are already killing each other.”
“Are you surprised?” asked Henrique, Maurício’s white half-brother. “It’s not as though they were all that friendly back in Africa, you know. That’s how at least half of them ended up as slaves in the first place. They fight these little wars, and the prisoners get sold.”
“So the villages are armed camps, now,” added the trader. “It makes it tough to do business. The Africans are thinking more about fighting than about farming, I assure you. They have less to trade and sooner or later some nervous sentry is going to shoot an arrow or throw a spear into one of us.”
“We just find out who started it, and teach them a lesson,” said Heyndrick. “That’s what cousin David did with the Indians in America.”
“You mean kill them?” asked Michael Krueger. “I have a better idea. If a tribe can’t keep its people from stealing or killing, then I think it should be considered lawful to re-enslave them all.”
“Ah, lawful war,” said Maurício. “The Portuguese did that in Brazil, with the Indians. Funny thing was, there always seemed to be a lawful reason to enslave any tribe which was too weak to resist.”
Henrique held up his hand. “There’s worse news.”
Carsten gave Henrique his full attention. He knew that Henrique was a woodsman, and he and Maurício’s Manao Indian brother-in-law, Coqui, moved freely among the Indians in the affected region. “What?”
“We’ve had reports that some of the Africans have real weapons. Steel swords. Guns even. Some Indian villages have been attacked.”
“Where could they get them from?” Carsten wondered, aloud.
“The Spanish. Or the Portuguese,” Denys Zager suggested. He scowled at Henrique and Maurício.
Henrique scowled right back. “We are wanted men in Brazil. And Maria and Heyndrick transported us here, from hundreds of miles away. They can vouch for the fact that we brought only our personal weapons with us.”
Zager folded his arms across his beer barrel chest. “You say you’re refugees, but how do we know? Perhaps your Indian friends are helping you smuggle weapons here from your friends in Brazil.”
“Enough,” said Carsten firmly. “The accusation is ridiculous. Please don’t distract us from the real problem.”
“Perhaps,” Maria offered tentatively, “we should help the good Africans, the ones who are just trying to defend themselves, deal with the troublemakers themselves.”
“You mean, give arms to the ‘good’ Africans? That’s crazy.”
Carsten clapped his hands. “We will try to figure out which Africans are the source of the problem, and deal with them. With or without African allies, as seems best at the time.
“For the moment, the Africans who wish to trade will have to come to us, not us to them. We’ll set up a trading post just outside Fort Lincoln. We’ll strengthen the inland defenses there, too. And I think we better institute river patrols. Hopefully, the blacks’ll all calm down after a while.”
* * *
Borguri held out his favorite whetstone, and one of his new Arawak wives dutifully poured water over it, letting the liquid cascade down into a waiting basin. A tied-up African watched in fear, not knowing what would happen next.
He pointed to the basin. “Drink,” he ordered. The cowering captive complied.
Borguri then hit him over the head with the stone. “My sword serves me, my stone serves my sword, my water washes my stone, you have drunk my water. Your ancestors have forgotten you; mine watch your every move, your every thought. You are mine.”
He gave the slave a playful cuff, and ordered, “Back to work.”
The slave should be thankful. Now that he was officially part of Borguri’s lineage—albeit at the lowest level—he was unlikely to be picked as a pre-battle sacrifice.
Borguri frowned. The process of assimilation just wasn’t fast enough. Borguri needed a cadre of true Imbangala to serve as role-models for the coerced recruits, and to discipline those who didn’t comply with the rules. There were only so many new recruits he could absorb within a period of a few months.
But if he took too long to build up his strength, the Ndongo would make or buy themselves decent weapons, and counterattack.
So Borguri had made a decision. Just as the Imbangala of old had allied themselves to the Portuguese, Borguri would ally his tribe to one of the Carib Indian tribes. One which, he had learned, was not happy about the white presence in their vicinity. Borguri felt confident that they would be delighted by the prospect of revenge and plunder that Borguri would hold out to them.
Of course, once the whites were driven out, the Caribs would no doubt turn upon the Imbangala.
Except that the Imbangala would turn on them first.
* * *
Maurício walked up beside Maria, coughed. “About that Coromantee man.”
Maria looked up. “Yes? You thought of something?”
“I questioned the crew. Even the captain. They didn’t remember the children, of course. What’re two slaves among hundreds? But they did know which ship left Elmina before they did. And where it was headed.”
“Well?”
“The Fenix. Bound for Havana.”
“Well, that’s something. I imagine there would be records of who was sold out of which ship, to which plantation. And there can’t have been that many children. But he certainly can’t go there and ask, can he?”
“He would need to learn Spanish, of course. And if he didn’t want to be a slave within seconds after stepping onto the dock, he would need a letter of manumission. Preferably, from a Spanish source.”
“Henrique could write the letter, couldn’t he? Portugal being under the Spanish crown, they would honor a Portuguese document. And I wouldn’t think a minor port official in Havana is going to have been informed that Henrique is a heretic.”
“Probably not. But then there’s the other problem. The financial one. He would have to buy his children. And he doesn’t have any money.”
“Well, it’s going to take him months, if not years, to learn Spanish, and more important, how he must act if he wants to be successful. The important thing is that we can give him a reason to hope.”
A moment later she added, “A reason to live.”
* * *
Carsten Claus looked out across the expanse of the Suriname. The river was perhaps half a mile across here. The vegetation on the far bank was dense; there could be an army of Africans hiding there, for all he knew. He wished he knew how the troublemakers were arming themselves. He suspected that the Portuguese in Belém do Pará, or the Spanish in Santiago de León de Caracas, were involved, to harass the USE. But would they arm slaves who had been taken off a Portuguese-crewed, Spanish-licensed ship? Could any of the colonists have been so short-sighted as to sell arms to the ex-slaves without permission?
To reassure the colonists, he had put the Eikhoorn on river patrol duty, and banned the Africans from fishing within a mile of the colony. He was waiting for the Eikhoorn to return from upriver; he had some questions for its skipper. But what he wanted most of all was for David de Vries to show up with a ship of force, and more colonists, so that they clearly outpowered and outnumbered the Africans. David should have been here a month ago.
At least, if their African informants were correct, he could now put a name to the problem: Imbangala. Maurício, sitting beside Carsten, had just explained to him that since 1615, the Portuguese of Luanda had used the Imbangala as mercenaries in their wars with Ndongo. Ndongo warriors, if captured in battle, were exported to the New World to work on plantations and in the mines. But the Imbangala? Since they were allies of the Portuguese in Luanda, Maurício hadn’t expected to find them sold into slavery. Perhaps these had disobeyed orders? Or had the Portuguese beaten the Ndongo into submission, and decided the Imbangala had outlived their usefulness?
Carsten expressed the hope that the Gustavans’ African friends were, indeed, friends. Maurício nodded, but offered no reassurances on that score. They sat in silence for a few minutes, then both realized simultaneously that they were no longer alone, and turned their heads.
“Forgive the interruption,” said Maria.
Carsten forced a smile. “How can a visit from you be considered an interruption?”
“You perhaps know that Maurício and I have been researching the whereabouts of the children of one of the Coromantees? We think it very likely that they were shipped to Havana. I wondered—could the Anti-Slavery Society send someone there, to find and redeem them? I am sure it would be very good publicity, to reunite the children with their father.”
Carsten swatted a mosquito. “The Society has discussed the possibility of redemption.”
“And?”
“Decided against it. First, because our financial resources are limited. Second, because we fear that any concerted policy of that kind would just encourage the slavers to fetch more slaves so they could sell them to us for a quick profit. We would be, what’s that American term, a ‘revolving door.’ Once naval resources can be spared to stop the slave trade at its source, and we have better funding, we may reconsider redemption.”
“So what would you recommend?”
“Well—” Carsten was distracted by the appearance of the Eikhoorn, just coming around the upriver bend. It reminded him of the exciting day that they had seized the Tritón, and sunk its longboat, not many yards from where the Eikhoorn was plowing back downriver.
The longboat. He started cursing.
“Carsten, what’s wrong?” asked Maria.
“We know from the reports that the Africans who have been causing trouble have weapons. I just figured out where they got them from.” He pointed upriver.
“I don’t understand . . . oh . . . the longboat? But wouldn’t the weapons all be rusted?”
“By now they would be. But if they were found early enough, not irretrievably. The rust could have been scraped off.”
“But how would they have known where to look? You don’t suppose a colonist told them?”
“Perhaps. It might not have been evil in intent. A colonist might have bragged about the battle. Anyway, I will have the damn boat brought up. We’ll take a count of how many bodies, guns and swords are still there, and that will let us make a good guess as to what was taken.”
Carsten stood up. “The crew of the Eikhoorn is going to have to wait a little longer for their supper, I’m afraid. As for your problem, I think you are going to have to find a way for your Coromantee protégé to find the money himself. If he does, then the Society could perhaps find a trustworthy agent to send. A priest, perhaps.”
* * *
The three Ndongo warriors, Mukala, Aka, and Miguel, studied the bodies of their fallen comrades. Both bore diagonal gashes on their foreheads, but their death wounds were elsewhere.
“Imbangala,” Mukala said. The Imbangala were in the habit of distinctively marking their kills so that each warrior could claim the bodies of the enemies he had slain, have them carried back to the camp by his slaves, and then eat them with the proper formalities so that their ghosts couldn’t haunt the slayer.
Miguel pointed to the death wound. “That wasn’t made by a spear.”
“No,” Mukala agreed. “It’s a slash, not a thrust.”
“And look how clean the edges are,” said Aka. “That wasn’t made with sharpened wood, or flint. It was a cut from a steel blade.”
“This is very bad news,” said Miguel. “The whites are arming the Imbangala with cutlasses. That is the only possible explanation.”
“We should have wiped out the filthy Kasanje Imbangala right after we landed,” said Mukala. “We had the advantage of numbers then.” Many Ndongo, warriors and farmers alike, had been captured and shipped to the New World, to work Portuguese sugar plantations and Spanish silver mines. There were relatively few Imbangala on the slave ship because most were Portuguese allies. But Kasanje, who led one of the Imbangala bands, had set up an independent state in 1620, and so his people were fair game.
“That is easy to say now,” reproved Aka. “But we were so thirsty we could barely move our limbs when we were freed.” The slave ship had gone first to Angola, and tried its luck, even though it didn’t have a proper license and therefore had to collect slaves on the sly. It ventured farther north, among the Coromantee, Eboe and Mandinka, only because it hadn’t been able to fill its hold. So the Angolans had endured the privations of middle passage longer than any of their brothers in suffering.
Mukala made a gesture of propitiation to the gods. “Powers forbid we suffer so again!”
Miguel added thoughtfully, “If we had attacked the Imbangala immediately, the whites might have feared that we would attack them next, and turned their swivel guns on us.”
“Do you think the Imbangala have guns, too?” asked Mukala. “If so, we are in big trouble.”
“Don’t know, but we better tell the elders what we found.” Aka pointed at the bodies. “In the meantime let’s rig a sled for these bodies. I’ll not leave them for the Imbangala. And be quick about it; we don’t know when they’ll be back.”
A few days later, the Ndongo moved their encampment some miles farther east, away from the Gustavans and, they hoped, the Imbangala.
* * *
The Gustavans’ spirits were lifted by the somewhat belated arrival of the four-hundred-ton, eighteen-gun Walvis, their lifeline to the USE. It was commanded by Captain David Pieterszoon de Vries, president of the USE-chartered United Equatorial Company—their employer. It was accompanied by a jacht, the six-gun Siraen.
He brought news that was both welcome and unsettling. Welcome, in that peace had finally come to the Low Countries. Unsettling, in that there was now a Catholic king in the Netherlands, Don Fernando. The colonists, many of whom came from the Netherlands, were mostly Protestants, and therefore not inclined to trust the ex-cardinal infante’s promise of religious tolerance—even if Fredrik Hendrik was now a “trusted advisor.”
On a personal level, Maria was overjoyed when David brought word that her brother Adolph and his wife Catarina had survived the Spanish invasion. Her cup of happiness overflowed when David gave her a letter from Adolph.
This reaction was somewhat tempered once she had read the letter. Adolph was a professor of medicine, and the curator of the Leiden Botanical Gardens.
He complained about the damage the Spanish troops had done to the garden. He complained that the students weren’t paying attention in class. And he complained that the administration had unfairly reprimanded him for not showing more activity.
It was, he pointed out, all Maria’s fault. He would have sent his Catalogus plantarum to Elzevier for publication two years ago if Maria hadn’t sent him all those new plants from Grantville, thus throwing him off schedule. And then made matters worse by sending him exotic specimens from Suriname.
To add insult to injury, since she was gallivanting around the New World, without the slightest regard for her reputation (and for the damage she was doing, by association, to his dignity as a professor), that meant she wasn’t back home drawing the plant illustrations for him.
At the end of this litany, he closed by hoping she was well.
Maria crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the Suriname River. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s a brother,” she announced.
* * *
David digested the news without any more change of expression than an up-timer might have seen on the faces carved upon Mount Rushmore. But he knew that the Imbangala couldn’t be allowed to get away with killing colonists, even ones who foolishly ventured into their territory.
“All right, this is what we’ll do. First, we need to fortify the town and Fort Lincoln. Fortunately, I brought cement, and instructions on how to use it to make concrete. Concrete is stronger than wood, and doesn’t need to be carved like stone. Besides cement, we need sand, gravel and water, but I believe this country has those materials in abundance.
“I also have the materials for a proper gatehouse, that is, I brought a portcullis and the like. And I have cannon in ballast. They are pedreros that were being sold off and replaced by newer designs, but they should be fine for fighting these Imbangala.
“We will need the Africans or the Indians, or both, for fighting in the forests. While the colonists are seeing to the defenses, we will send out emissaries. Heyndrick and Maria, you’ll take the Eikhoorn upriver to talk to the Coromantee. And see if Captain Marshall, or his Indians, are willing to offer any assistance.
“Henrique and Maurício, you’ll go to the Mandinka and the Eboes.”
“The Ndongo are much more numerous, and they are already at war with the Imbangala,” interjected Maurício. “Wouldn’t I be more use talking to them?”
“Perhaps, but we know that they are also more hostile to Europeans, thanks to what the Portuguese have been doing in Luanda the last hundred years. I can speak Portuguese—I was Jan Pieterszoon Coen’s right-hand man in Asia. But I can tell them honestly that I am Dutch, and the Portuguese are my enemies. Present company excepted, of course.
“Also, we hear that they’ve moved pretty far to the east. We’ll need a big ship like the Walvis to force its way back to windward, find them, and move them some place more useful. And I’d be needed to skipper the Walvis in any event.
“Coqui will come with me, to talk to the local Indians. And also—what’s her name?”
“Tetube?”
“Right. The lass who witnessed Imbangala atrocities first hand. Anyway, we’ll organize a Grand Alliance, and put down the Imbangala for good.”
* * *
“He’s coming, he’s coming!” the Mandinka children shrieked, running up the path to their village.
“Who’s coming, children?” said the adult on guard duty.
“‘He Who Talks’!”
The Mandinka had quickly realized that Maurício was one of the select few who had more than the usual mortal allotment of nyamo, the secret energy that allowed one to practice sorcery. It was held by great hunters, skilled blacksmiths, gree gree men, and of course the nyancho, the hereditary warrior aristocracy from whom they drew their rulers.
Had not Maurício presided over the ceremony in which their shackles were removed? No doubt his nyamo had subdued the cruel whites who had crewed the slave ship, forcing them to yield up the key and accept the loss of their property.
When they learned that Maurício spoke the languages of all the Europeans, and seemingly all the Africans, that was further proof of his power. The Mandinka did argue as to whether this was a natural, spontaneous manifestation of his nyamo, or whether he actually cast a spell when he wanted to learn a new language. But either way, he was a man to be respected, even feared.
* * *
Henrique, watching the fuss made over Maurício, was privately amused. He knew of the epithet, “He Who Talks,” which had been given to Maurício, and had told Maria that once the Africans knew Maurício better, they would no doubt change it to “He Who Talks Too Much.”
But for the moment, it worked to the Gustavans’ advantage. Henrique and Maurício were ceremoniously ushered into the hut of Faye, the leader of the Mandinka.
* * *
“So,” concluded Heyndrick, “the people who freed you now call upon you to fight with them against the Imbangala threat.”
The reaction of the Coromantee miners wasn’t quite what he had hoped for.
“What’s in it for us?” asked Antoa.
“That’s right,” said Owusu. “We’re here on the west side of the river, and the Imbangala are on the east. Let the Imbangala and the Ndongo kill each other.”
Heyndrick tugged nervously at his earlobe. “Maurício tells me that the Imbangala have crossed rivers before.”
Antoa shrugged. “They’re afraid of your ships with the cannon, so they aren’t going to cross.”
“Perhaps not this month, or next, but they will cross once they have enough numbers. If only to get at our goods,” Heyndrick warned.
“The good whites are helping me find my children,” interjected Kojo. Heyndrick gave him a quick smile of thanks.
“Fine, when they bring the children to you, we can talk again,” said Antoa.
Maria whispered to Heyndrick.
“Let us talk more after dinner,” Heyndrick declared.
* * *
“That didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped,” Heyndrick muttered. “What makes you think that they will be more receptive after dinner?”
“Actually, it’s tomorrow morning that they will be more receptive,” said Maria. “So don’t press too hard after dinner.”
“I would think that tonight, when they’re drunk, they’ll feel more martial than tomorrow morning, when they’re all nursing hangovers.”
“Trust me, I know the Coromantees. And now you must excuse me.” Maria rose.
“Where are you going?”
“I must be polite and help the Coromantee womenfolk prepare dinner.”
* * *
Heyndrick followed Maria’s advice. The next morning, Owusu and Antoa were the first to lay their spears at Heyndrick’s feet.
Heyndrick was dumbfounded. What had happened?
Maria gave him a nudge. “Uh, thank you,” said Heyndrick. “Take up your weapons, warriors.” He raised his pistol. “Victory!”
They brandished their spears. “Victory!”
* * *
“What just happened there?” asked Heyndrick, as the Eikhoorn made its way upstream toward the Marshall’s Creek settlement.
“I had a word with the womenfolk, as I told you. And they made it clear to our valiant warriors that if they didn’t go off to war, the ladies would make them wish they were already dead.”
* * *
The crew of the Walvis’ pinnace pulled at the oars. They picked their way through the mangroves, and stared into the verdant growth of the Suriname coast. Now and then the leaves were disturbed as a bird landed or took flight, but they saw no sign of the presence of man.
David de Vries, sitting beside the helmsman, wondered just how, exactly, he was going to find the Ndongo, let alone bring them into the alliance.
Coqui stood at the prow, and occasionally gestured to turn one way or another. David hoped that he, or the local Indian woman, Tetube, who sat behind him, had some idea of where to look.
Eventually, they beached the boat, and left a couple of guards behind. The rest followed Coqui and Tetube, who led them to a trail. Tetube, it seemed, knew of a friendly Indian village in the area.
Friendly to her tribe, at least.
But there wasn’t cause to worry. The Indians were indeed friendly. And while they had no contact with the Ndongo, they knew another tribe, which traded with them. David distributed a few presents, and acquired a new guide, who went back to the pinnace with them and directed them to the mouth of a nearby creek. Not far up it, they encountered a Ndongo fisherman.
When he spotted them, he immediately sat down and reached for a paddle. Clearly, his trust in the good intentions of a party of white men, even here in Suriname rather than in Africa, was minimal. However, after a moment he obviously decided that there was no way he could outpaddle the crew of the pinnace, even for the moments needed to reach the bank and disappear into the forest. He set down the paddle and slumped, head bowed.
David identified himself as the “Father” of the Gustavans. The fisherman recognized the name of the colony and this seemed to soften his attitude toward them. At least fractionally. David rummaged in a chest and produced a metal fishhook, which he presented to their new acquaintance. That finally loosened the fisherman’s tongue.
He told David that if he brought the visitors to the village unannounced, his people would assume he was acting under duress. He asked David to let him bring word of David’s arrival to the villagers, and assured him that he would receive a proper welcome if he did this.
After a moment, David agreed. Although not without some anxiety as to what, precisely, was the Ndongo concept of a “proper welcome” for white men.
The fisherman headed upriver, and, once he was out of sight, David had Coqui and the other Indians in the party climb trees on either side of the creek, to warn David if the approaching party appeared to be hostile.
Perhaps an hour later, several dugout canoes came down the river. The first canoe had just a few men in it, unarmed. Behind them, but obviously holding back, were two more canoes, both carrying bowmen and spearmen. Clearly, the Ndongo were ready to either parley or fight, as the situation dictated.
David, an experienced explorer, managed to persuade the Ndongo of his good intentions, and the Ndongo invited the Gustavan party to follow them back to their settlement.
The Ndongo, of course, didn’t need to be convinced to fight the Imbangala. Their concerns were over how did the Imbangala get European arms and was David willing to supply their equivalent to the Ndongo.
David explained Carsten’s theory as to the Imbangala windfall, and assured the Ndongo that the Gustavans would give them weapons, provided they came back with him to his ship.
“No, not your ship,” they cried. “You might be trying to put us back in shackles.”
David told them that they didn’t have to come on board, they would be given the arms on the beach. But the arms could only be handed over where the crew of his ship could see the interchange and see that the Ndongo weren’t up to any tricks.
The Ndongo saw the sense of this and agreed.
They came to the beach and admired their new cutlasses. “Guns?” one of them asked hopefully.
“Some other time, perhaps,” said David.
Beginning of Long Dry Season (September to November, 1635)
With the Gustavans’ support, the friendly African and Indian tribes built up their defenses, and set up patrols, curtailing the expansion of the Imbangala. But it was all a big distraction from more productive activities, and it wasn’t long before the allies were debating how to bring the Imbangala to a decisive battle. Especially now that the rains had stopped, and it was easier and safer for the Europeans to enter the forest.
David summoned a grand council of the score or so of tribal leaders, African and Indian, large tribes and small ones.
“Can your scouts locate the Imbangala encampment?” David asked the Ndongo leader, Lucala.
“Perhaps. But destroying the camp does not defeat the Imbangala. They are not a settled people, they are a mercenary troop. We would, at best, deprive them of their slaves and their women, and perhaps the children they are training for war.”
Faye, leader of the Mandinka, stood up. “A thousand pardons for the interruption. But rather than search the jungle for these pestilent Imbangala, why not bait them into a trap?”
“What kind of bait? And what kind of trap?”
* * *
Borguri trembled with rage. “Who has seen this, besides you?” he asked the warrior.
“Just a slave, oh great and wise leader.”
“Kill him.”
Borguri tore down the sign, and mutilated it with his sword. He then got out his tinder and flint, made a fire, and burnt it. Finally, he collected the ashes and tossed them into the nearby stream.
* * *
The next day, a second sign was found. Like the first, it featured a caricature of Borguri, wearing woman’s clothes, and surrounded by various Ndongo symbols of ridicule. Maria was good at drawing things other than plants and animals. And her Ndongo informants had thought instructing her to be great fun.
A necessary skill for drawing wild animals, especially those of the rainforest, was the ability to draw from memory, from a fleeting glance. Maria had remembered Borguri from the deck of the slave ship—despite the ravages of thirst and imprisonment, he was formidable, and received deference from the other Imbangala—and, when the Ndongo described Borguri to her, she realized who they were referring to, and could draw him. Especially with the Ndongo by her side as she drew, quick to point out errors to her.
This sign was seen by a large party of warriors and slaves. Borguri had it chopped to pieces, and burnt, and then he peed on it. He then ordered an immediate raid on the nearest African village, and the sacrifice of six slaves to achieve success.
They arrived at the village only to find that it had been deserted, with all the inhabitants and their moveable possessions gone, and the crops destroyed. They did leave behind a lot of signs, however.
Borguri had to kill one of his warriors that night, who, in his cups, made derogatory remarks about Borguri’s leadership. It was clear that Borguri had to take quick action, but it wasn’t so clear what his target should be. The source of the signs was clearly Gustavus, but Borguri knew that a direct attack on Gustavus, or on Fort Lincoln, would be suicidal.
The answer came a few days later, from one of his spies. This fellow prudently remained in his dugout canoe as he conveyed his news. A dozen or so miles east of Fort Lincoln, in the strip of land between the Great Sea and the Commewijne River, a fetish hut had been built, at a site which the European leaders and the African sorcerers deemed propitious for that purpose. Inside the hut, there was a wood statue of Borguri, surrounded by curse objects and more of the insulting signs. In exactly a week’s time, there would be a ceremony at which the statue would be burnt, in a ritual that would assure the ignominious defeat of Borguri and the Imbangala.
Borguri asked him more questions, assuring himself that the fetish hut was out of cannon range of Fort Lincoln. Then he gave his orders.
Wait. Was that a smirk he saw on the face of his spy? He grabbed a spear and threw it.
The insufficiently prudent agent toppled into the water.
* * *
The Imbangala and their Indian allies crossed the Commewijne River in a swarm of dugout canoes. Borguri left behind the children trainees, with a few wounded regulars to supervise them, as a rear guard.
Borguri led the rest of his war party in the direction of the reported fetish hut. His Caribs scouted ahead and to the flanks, watching for an ambush. They found no one.
At last, the war party entered the clearing that held the fetish hut. They milled about it, singing war songs and building up their courage. At last, one of the Imbangala strode into the hut, and triumphantly grabbed the infamous statue.
His triumph didn’t last long. With the statue dislodged, a spring-loaded pan rose. Inside the pedestal, a concealed trigger mechanism, protected from the tropical damp by rubber and tar, struck a spark, igniting priming powder inside. This lit a safety fuse, which in turn set off the barrels of gunpowder arrayed beneath the floor of the hut. The wood planks fractured, and the shards hurtled upward.
The bold Imbangala, still peering curiously at the statue in his hand, was impaled. So, too, were several of his companions. Others simply fell into the pit.
Borguri wasn’t one of the victims of the trap. He immediately ordered the Imbangala back to the boats (and didn’t trouble himself as to whether his Indian allies were doing the same). They got there, only to discover that their escape had been cut off.
The fluyt Walvis, the captured caravel Vreedom and the jacht Eikhoorn had taken advantage of the the great depth of the river Commewijne, even well upriver, and were already patrolling it, and firing their cannon and swivel guns at any likely targets.
Borguri briefly considered attacking the ships. It was true that his warriors only had to cross some five hundred feet of water, from the north bank of the Commewijne to the sides of the ships, to attack them, but the high tumblehome hulls of the Walvis and Vreedom would be difficult to assault from the low-slung canoes. The Eikhoorn was a more manageable target, but it, like the larger ships, had boarding nets out. For that matter, their decks were packed with Coromantee, Eboe, Mandinka and Arawak warriors, and there were musketeers in the rigging.
Where are the Ndongo? he wondered.
He got his answer. The Atlantic Ocean, the Suriname River, and the Commewijne River formed a horizontally stretched C, facing east. The Ndongo had been hidden, screened by friendly Indians, far enough to the east to escape detection by the Imbangala’s scouts. Once the Imbangala attacked the fetish hut, they surged westward, driving the Imbangala against the reinforced defenses of Fort Lincoln at the confluence of the Suriname and the Commewijne.
Borguri was one of the last to fall. He had his back to a great tree trunk, and several Ndongo approached him. Borguri dared them to pick a champion to fight him, one on one. The Ndongo backed off slightly, and heatedly argued whether this challenge should be accepted and, if so, which had them had precedence.
At last Faye arrived, a Dutch cutlass in hand. “What is the problem here?” They explained.
“Young idiots,” he muttered. The Ndongo stiffened.
“Bowmen!” Faye’s people raised their bows.
At that, Borguri charged. To no avail. The Ndongo danced back, taunting him and pricking him with their spears, and first one arrow and then another plunged into his body.
Borguri sank to the ground. Faye moved forward, and swung his cutlass. Borguri sank to his knees. “This is real life, not a song,” he admonished the spearmen. “Defeat your enemy at the least cost to yourself.” Faye made a final sweep, beheading Borguri.
Akan village, Paranam
“Kojo, months ago, we spoke of what must be done to recover your children.”
“I remember, Maria. At home, I had gold. I was an obirempon, a holder of an elephant’s tail.” It was the Akan way of saying that he was a gold-mining tycoon. “Here, I am but a leaf in the forest. How will I ever be able to buy back my children?”
“There is a way of getting gold from streams, rather than by digging holes in the ground. My friend from America, Lolly, calls it ‘panning.’ You take a shallow dish—”
“You need not explain this ‘panning,’ Maria. All the women and children of the Ashanti know how to gather the flecks of gold which the River God has scattered amidst the gravel.”
“And do you know how to do this?”
“Of course. I was a child once. And I watched my wife teach our children, and saw my Mansa find her first nugget.”
“Well, I wish I could just give you the gold you need, but I can’t. But I have consulted our oracles”—that was how the Africans interpreted her references to encyclopedia articles—“and learned that there is river gold in this land.” She started drawing in the sand. “This is our river, the Suriname.” She added two more sinuous curves. “And the Saramacca to our west, and the Marowijne to the east.
“Upriver, the Marowijne forks like so.” She drew in the Tapanahoni and the Lawa, and then added an “X” between the locations of the up-time towns of Grand Santi and Cottica. She twirled her finger around it. “Here, somewhere, there is gold.”
Maria then swept her hand over the upper Suriname and Saramacca. “Here, too, but I can’t be more specific.”
“How do I get to these places? How long is the journey? How friendly are the Indians?”
“You will need to go by canoe. Tetube said that she can guide you. And Coqui said he will go, too, he is bored.” Maria suspected that Coqui’s offer had less to do with boredom than with the chance to get to know Tetube better.
“We Akan usually don’t mine gold alone. It’s most often a family enterprise. I will see if any of my people want to come along.”
Maria grimaced. “I must ask you not to. I want this kept a secret. I don’t want all the Gustavans running off to look for gold when they should be farming to keep themselves fed.”
Fort Lincoln, Suriname
“Getting the colonists to follow orders without griping was hard enough. But if every plan you make has to be presented to every kinglet in this Little Africa you have created, in some kind of grand palaver, you will go insane before the rains return,” said David.
“What do you suggest I do?” asked Carsten.
“Get the chiefs together and tell them that you want them to meet and pick a paramount chief. Someone to represent them on all save the most important matters.”
“Right, I’ll do that.”
* * *
The chiefs had been huddled in the great ceremonial hut for twelve hours straight. Carsten had told them a few hours earlier that none of them would be leaving it until they picked the chief of chiefs.
Now and then, Maurício was called in to clarify some point or other that they were arguing about. No one wanted an error in translation to get a blood feud started. Finally, after a long waiting period, he decided to snatch some sleep while he could.
Perhaps an hour later, the curtain that had been hung over the hut opening to keep mosquitoes out was pushed back once again, and Faye stuck his head out. “Maurício, please,” he said.
Carsten sighed. “Maurício!” he called.
“He’s asleep,” said Henrique.
“Well, wake him up. We want them to finish one of these days.”
Still rubbing his eyes, Maurício arrived, and entered the hut.
He emerged a few minutes later, looking wide awake, even a little wild-eyed.
“Well? Have they picked a paramount chief, yet?”
“Yes,” said Maurício. “For the love of God . . . Me.”
Maria gave a whoop. “All Hail Maurício, King of the Jungle!”