1636: Seas of Fortune (27 page)

“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.”

“Good thinking, but there’s one catch. Who’s going to labor at building a fort, when there’s gold to be had?”

David pondered this for a time. “Someone whose labor earns them gold,” he answered. “Because the fort gives them the privilege of charging a toll to fortune hunters. And selling them supplies . . . at wilderness prices.

“In the meantime, while hardly any ships come by here, other than our own, we best stop doing an imitation of a sitting duck. I’ll lend you some men who are too sick for traveling, let alone gold hunting, to wear uniforms and swagger around your parapets. You might put some of our female colonists in uniform, too.”

“Women soldiers?” Dirck’s tone made it clear that he was horrified to the very depths of his by-the-book soul.

“Think of them as Amazons. Anyway, they probably won’t need to fire a shot, just look properly martial at a distance.”

Next, David had his own crew to worry about.

“All hands on deck!” bawled the high boatswain. The watch below roused itself, and blearily made their way up the hatches. Their expressions were puzzled; there was no storm, and no foes, to be seen. But Captain de Vries was dressed in his best uniform, and standing on the poop deck with his hands clasped behind him. Clearly the captain wanted to address them about something important.

David cleared his throat. “Lads, we’ve got a fine opportunity for fame and fortune before us, but only if we use our heads. There’s gold to be found up a nearby river but it will take time and effort, and the gold won’t do us much good if we don’t have a ship to return to. That gold’ll spend much better in Europe than in this blasted jungle.

“There are plenty of fools who have left their ships to rot while they chased gold, but we won’t be among them. The problem, of course, is that no one wants to be left behind while others make their fortune. And the solution to that problem is that we will sign a compact that it’s share-and-share alike, whether you’re panning for gold or manning the cannon to make sure the damned Spanish don’t come along to rob us of what we’ve earned.

“So what say you? Shall we have a compact?”

The roar left no doubt of the answer.

* * *

While at New Carthage negotiating with Maurício, David learned of Kojo’s predicament. David persuaded Maurício to set up a meeting, and then sweet-talked Kojo into coming aboard the
Walvis
as a guide. He had three cogent arguments. First, as “patron” of Gustavus, he had more authority over the colonists than anyone else, and hence could protect Kojo from the greedier Europeans. Second, by coming along, Kojo would be more quickly reunited with his fellow Ashanti. Third, that on the way to the goldfields, Kojo could learn how to use the fancy gold mining equipment that David had bought from Master Baum, and then be the “expert” for the benefit of his fellow tribesmen.

It was David’s intention to resell much of that gold mining equipment at a stiff markup to the colonists already upriver, and have Kojo provide, what did his up-timer friends call it? A “celebrity endorsement.”

* * *

Jan Smoot cleared his throat. “It has pleased the eternal and immutable Wisdom of Almighty God to call Dirck van Rijn to His bosom. He has passed from this sinful world to the blessed joy of God’s Eternal Kingdom, where the great street of the Eternal City is of pure gold. Revelation 22:21.”

Like Master Baum, Jan had decided that it was more profitable to sell goods to the miners than to pick up a pan or shovel himself. Unlike Master Baum, he had decided that the road to riches was to bring his goods to the goldfields, where competition was scarcest.

Near the old-time-line town of Grand Santi, Jan had found an island where, thanks to the poorness of the soil, there were few great trees, just ground cover and some small shrubs. There, he had built a small building to serve as both dwelling and shop. He had an Indian to serve as a go-between with the nearby tribes, and two Ndongo boatmen to ferry supplies up the Marowijne.

Jan looked around at the assembled miners, mostly colonists. “Anyone have anything they want to say about Dirck?” He paused. “Anything nice, I mean.”

“He was a hard worker,” said Pieter, Dirk’s former partner. They had split up in a dispute as to whether the stretch they were working was producing enough; Pieter had stayed and Dirk had moved on. Unfortunately, Dirck had picked a new location that had been recently worked by a pair of crewmen from the
Patientia
. When they returned, he insisted that they had abandoned the location, and they thought otherwise. The words became heated, he made a move they thought threatening, and one of them clubbed him in the noggin with a reversed pistol. He picked himself up, and walked off, seemingly wounded only in his pride. A few hours later, he lost consciousness.

The sailors had found Dirck when they were on their way to Jan’s shop to resupply, and brought him to Jan for treatment. Unfortunately, while Jan had learned some first aid from Maria, he couldn’t do much more than keep Dirck comfortable. Dirck died the day after his arrival.

This might have started a feud between the colonists and the crew of the
Patientia
. Fortunately, the sailors had tried to help Dirk once they realized he was seriously injured, and Pieter admitted that Dirk had a temper and might well have acted imprudently. Still, Jan was troubled by the larger implications of the incident.

By now, there were perhaps a hundred Europeans on the Marowijne and its tributaries, looking for gold. More arrived, usually in twos or threes, every week.

Some of the newcomers respected the knowledge of the first arrivals, and worked for them for a few weeks, in a rough and ready apprenticeship, before finding their own panning spots. Others, like the three the Ashanti had disposed of, tried to intimidate their predecessors into giving up part, or all, of their territory. Even those that didn’t intend to take what wasn’t theirs could get into honest disputes, fueled by fatigue, frustration, and fermented Indian drinks.

Jan raised his voice. “Folks, it’s obvious that we need some rules, or miners’ll spend more time arguing and fighting than they do mining. And some are going to end up dying, like Dirk. So think about what would be fair, and let’s talk about it on the next full moon.”

* * *

The
Walvis
anchored about fifty miles up the Marowijne, just below the whitewater that David christened Maria Falls. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a waterfall, but rather a series of rapids by which the river dropped about fifteen feet over half a mile. Still, there was no way that the
Walvis
, or any other blue water vessel, was getting past it.

David was more than a little concerned about the risk that a European warship would come upriver and attempt a hostile takeover. But he had to worry about the local Indians, too. Hence, the
Walvis
was anchored with springs on her cable, so that by heaving one spring and paying out the other, she could be turned readily to fire her broadside at an opponent downstream or on either bank.

To protect the
Walvis
—and to make sure that any would-be gold seekers from other colonies paid for the privilege of going farther upriver—David left a guard force on board. He sent an advance party upriver, to the head of the rapids, and they established a camp there. The crew spent several days ferrying supplies and portaging canoes up to this camp. Finally, they were ready to follow Kojo and David to the supposed El Dorado of the Lawa.

* * *

Kojo suddenly stood up in the canoe. “Heinrich!” he called out. He had seen Heinrich as the German’s canoe came around the bend a few hundred yards upstream.

Heinrich waved back. Soon, he brought his canoe alongside Kojo’s, and grasped Kojo’s arm, hand to elbow. “Good to see you!”

“Well, did you find gold?” asked David.

“We found what we were looking for,” Heinrich admitted. “Enough to make the trip worthwhile, I’d say. And I think a fair number of the creeks off the Lawa have gold. You just have to know where to look, and how to pan, and be willing to work hard and long. You glean a speck here, a speck there. It’s not like capturing a treasure galleon.”

Some of David’s men bristled. They perhaps had a different view of what it took to capture such a ship.

“We brought tools to make it easier,” said David. “What they call—” he gave Elias a quick glance.

Elias recognized his cue. “A rocker. Like the ones the Forty-Niners used. Perfect for use by a pair of miners.”

“That’s good news,” said Heinrich. “Although I am done for this season. But Captain, there’s been trouble here. Three men tried to take our creek and our gold dust, and it might have turned out badly if the Ashanti hadn’t shown up and stopped them.”

“The Ashanti?” asked Kojo. In his excitement, he nearly fell out of the canoe. “Where, where did you see them?”

“I will tell you in a moment. But that’s not all, we’ve had a killing.”

“A killing?”

“Of one of the colonists, by a couple of crewmen off a visiting Dutch ship.”

Seeing David’s scowl, Heinrich hastily added, “it was something of an accident. Still, there’s going to be more trouble if we don’t have some kind of mining law here. Remember Jan Smoot? He came up with a proposal. It might have been accepted if it had been made up front, before anyone started panning. But now folks can see immediately how the law will affect them, and if they don’t like it, they don’t want to give their consent. So they make a counterproposal, and of course that displeases other miners. Instead of fighting over the claims, now we’re wrangling over the rules for making the claims.”

* * *

“I’m going to be honest with you all,” said David. “Those of you who are from Gustavus, you were brought to the New World by my ships, under contract. Those of you are from the
Patientia
, you are now in the USE Territory of the Wild Coast, of which I am the appointed governor, and your mining rights are what I say they are.”