1636: Seas of Fortune (9 page)

David turned to Vogel. “Order them to halt.”

The Indians looked at the leveled arquebuses and the steel breastplates of the sailors, and stopped, lowering the dugouts onto the ice.

One stepped forward. “We mean you no harm.”

“But you are dressed for war,” David declared.

“We are Minquas, and yes, we are at war, but with the Armewamens, not you. Six hundred of us have come, and the Armewamens flee in terror. We have burned their homes, and their women are now ours. We hunt the few braves who escaped into the forest.”

“There are no Armewamens on this ship, so you have no reason to linger here.”

“No reason,” the spokesman acknowledged. However, the Minquas did linger, carefully inspecting the
Eikhoorn
and its crew, before they finally trudged on to the far bank.

* * *

“Tide’s coming in, sir,” reported a crewman.

“Good,” David said. “Let’s get this ship out in the mouth of the kill, where the water is widest. Preferably before nightfall.”

David divided the men into two parties, and sent one to each bank, with a heavy rope in hand. There, they started hauling the
Eikhoorn
downriver. They moved it twenty-five painful paces, no farther.

David went out on the ice and studied the lie of the ship. “The creek’s too shallow, we must lighten the
Eikhoorn
to make more headway. I need four men to go to the ship and toss out the ballast.”

“We can’t do that, Captain,” said the helmsman. “The
Eikhoorn
is tall-masted, prone to listing.”

“That’s right, sir,” said one of the mates, “we’ll capsize before we reach the
Walvis
.” There was a general murmur of agreement.

David frowned ferociously. “It’s a risk we must take. Did you see those painted savages, the Minquas, eyeing us? They’d love to take our guns, our gold, our food. And do you know what they’ll do to us? You’ll be lucky if you are just shot with an arrow, or tomahawked, in battle. If they take you prisoner, they’ll torture you for their evening entertainment. You must lighten the ship, and trust to Divine Providence to save you from the river’s embrace.”

The mate was unimpressed. “If we are going to trust to Divine Providence anyway, why not trust it to save us from the Minquas, instead?”

“What do you want me to do, David?” whispered Heyndrick. “Start throwing out ballast myself? Shoot the ringleader of this mutiny?”

David ignored him. “The tide’s going out, men, even as we argue, and soon the Minquas will be coming in, with blood in their eyes. I have three demijohns of rum in my locker, and I’ll share one out tonight if you throw the ballast overboard. But you must act now.”

Sullenly, the crew came aboard, and jettisoned the ballast. The ship slowly rose in the water, and lurched downstream. It reentered the main river, but proved difficult to control. A thousand paces below the kill, it was swept toward the bank, and the bowsprit was wedged in between the horns of a double-crested hillock of ice.

At dusk, the Minquas attacked. Several feet of icy water still separated the exposed part of the ice from the actual bank. Hence, they had to first leap across the water, onto the midget iceberg, then clamber onto the bowsprit, which pointed landward.

Two of the Indians made it onto the ice, but were confronted by all eight of the crew, armed and armored. They retreated. Throughout the night, David kept two men on the alert at the bowsprit, and the others slept on deck, in their armor, with their weapons beside them.

At dawn, they were still alive. Standing, half-asleep, David read to them. “Let us, with a gladsome mind, praise the Lord, for He is kind.”

The river rose. The ice floated away from shore, carrying the
Eikhoorn
with it. The iceberg ran aground on a sandbar, and the river swirled angrily around them. The ship creaked in response, and David wondered how long it could endure this treatment.

Then the Indians who were their foe unwittingly became their saviors. The lookout spotted two dugout canoes, unmanned, floating toward them. At David’s order, the crew caught them, and pushed them under the bow. As the waters rose still further, they buoyed up the canoes, and thus the
Eikhoorn
’s bow as well. At last, when David had almost given up hope that this ploy would succeed, the
Eikhoorn
was freed from the ice.

By the fourteenth, the wind shifted to the southwest, and brought in warmer air. The ice softened into slush. At their first opportunity, the crew gathered stones for ballast, to restore the yacht’s balance. Soon, they were back in Zuidt River Bay.

* * *

By the end of March, it was clear that the whaling had been a failure. Jan’s people had harpooned seventeen whales, but had little to show for it. Most had been struck in the tail, whereas a Basque or Cape Verde harpooner would have aimed for (and hit) the fore-part of the back. As a result, only seven carcasses had been brought in, and those were the puniest of the lot.

David sighed. “Thirty-two barrels of train oil. My partners will be furious.”

“It’s not your fault that they didn’t give you experienced harpooners, or proper whaleboats, or strong enough cables or winches to handle the larger whales,” said Heyndrick. “Godijn chose the ships and the whaling expert.” They were back on the
Walvis
, where Jan couldn’t hear them. Still, he kept his voice down.

“Godijn won’t remember that when I return,” said David gloomily. “I will be thrown to the sharks. The financial kind, that is.

“But that’s how it goes.” David raised his voice. “Helmsman, set a course for New Amsterdam. Pieter, signal the
Eikhoorn
to follow.”

David turned to Heyndrick. “After we reprovision there, we’ll head home. And then I am going to find myself a new patroonate, and new partners. Ones with more trust in my judgment.”

Grantville, July 1633

The theater at the Higgins Hotel was packed with people. The men wore everything from a twentieth-century jacket, pants and tie, to seventeenth-century breeches, blouse and cloak. The women were even more varied in their appearance; black cocktail dresses for some, bodice and bell skirts for others. And of course there were those who wore some combination of up-time and down-time styles, or who had decided to copy a garment of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.

“This is a madhouse,” said de Vries. He was seated at a small table near the front of the theater.

Kaspar Heesters, an Amsterdamer who had escorted David to Grantville, shrugged. “There’s method in their madness.”

Hugh Lowe, standing at the podium, tapped the microphone. The loudspeaker squealed. “Can everyone hear me? Welcome to the Grantville Investment Roundtable.

“I am sure that many of you know me already. I used to be the president of the Grantville Chamber of Commerce, and I am now the chairman of the Roundtable.

“Our first guest is Captain David Pieterszoon de Vries, a patroon of the Dutch West India Company. He has an investment proposal for us. Remember, Captain, we limit the summaries to two minutes. My assistant will bring the portable mike to you.”

De Vries took it and stood up. “Thank you, Herr Lowe. My proposal is to establish a colony on the Wild Coast, the area of northern South America between the Orinoco and the Amazon. Your English compatriots call it the Guianas. In your late twentieth century, there were three countries there: Guiana, Suriname, and French Guiana. My colony would be in Suriname. What was once called Dutch Guiana.

“I intend to transfer my patroon privileges in the West India Company from America to Suriname. I would be entitled to a patroonate of, oh, about twelve hundred square miles.” There was a gasp from somewhere in the audience.

“This would be, primarily, an agricultural colony. It would grow tobacco and cotton, of a surety. Orlean, too, that’s an Indian dye plant. Sugar cane, if we can find a suitable teacher. And I hope that there may be plants not yet known to us which are of value.

“As to other possibilities, once the colony is established, I can take a yacht upriver, to look for the gold which Suriname is reputed to possess.” He was referring to the legend of El Dorado, and the Lake of Manoa. “Or I can take my squadron privateering; that can be very lucrative.”

David finished off by discussing how much money he was trying to raise, and what it would be spent on. “There is a—” He looked blank for a moment.

“Handout,” whispered Kaspar.

“—handout by the door. Thank you for listening to me.” He sat down.

“Are there any questions for the captain?” said Hugh.

David Bartley stood up. “Aren’t you worried that the Spanish will wipe out your colony?”

David de Vries was surprised that a youngster would ask questions in such a gathering, but answered his question politely. “There are already Dutch, French and English settlements on the Wild Coast, and the Spanish have simply ignored them. Well, most of them.”

“And where are you going to get your colonists? I don’t think you’re going to find many here in Grantville.”

“There are many displaced peasants in Germany and Flanders, thanks to the wars. This would be their big chance to own land of their own.”

Chad Jenkins, one of the major landowners in Grantville, stood up. “Captain De Vries, you are going to have to find a suitable site for this colony of yours. Do you have experience as an explorer?

“Yes, in the Barents Sea, in my youth, and more recently in the Americas, between the Zuidt and Noord Rivers.”

“The South and North.” Kaspar Heesters explained. “What up-timers would call the Delaware and Hudson Rivers.”

Chad wasn’t finished. “And have you been in more tropical climes?”

“I spent several years with Coen in the East Indies, and I also visited several islands of the West Indies on my last voyage.”

Claus Junker raised a newspaper. “Joe Buckley says here that you were involved in the Zwaanandael disaster. The attempt to found a colony in Delaware.”

David’s face reddened. “That was hardly my fault. I had sought the command of the first expedition, but it was denied. Indeed, I had to stay at home, trusting to the leaders picked by my partners. And on the second trip, it was the so-called whaling expert who failed, not me.”

Endres Ritter chimed in. “You know all about financial disasters caused by picking the wrong partners, don’t you, Claus?” It was a reference to Claus’ ill-fated investment in microwave ovens. The two men glared at each other.

Claus returned to his original target. “But even if it weren’t your fault, your . . . association with a failed venture has made it difficult for you to raise money for your latest enterprise, hasn’t it?”

David folded his arms. “It made it difficult for me to fund it myself. But I do have prospective investors. Jan Bicker of Amsterdam, for one. And two of his friends.” There was an answering murmur from the financiers in the room. “Coming here was not a necessity. I was hoping to raise more money, to be able to give the colony a more secure foundation.

“And I hoped that there might be some Germans here who had a yen to own their own farm in the New World.”

An up-timer stood up. “And I imagine your colonists are going to steal their new farmland from the natives. And then either force them into labor, or kill them outright.”

“That’s Andrew Yost,” Kaspar whispered to David. “He’s manager of the Grantville Freedom Arches, and one of the leaders in the local Committee of Correspondence. I told you about that.”

“Herr Yost, if you examine the history of what someone earlier referred to as the ‘Zwaanandael disaster,’ you will find that despite great provocation—the murder of thirty settlers in America while I was still in the Netherlands—I did not retaliate in kind. I was able to trade for furs, with the Lenape. And I kept all of my crew alive, without having to kill any Indians.”

A gentleman with a moustache and a goatee stood up. He was dressed in a staggering variety of colors, leaving David with the impression of a somewhat cadaverous peacock. “Captain, I am Doctor Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz. You mentioned mining for gold. But there is a mineral, prolific in Suriname, which is a necessary precursor to the preparation of the ‘Quinta Essentia of the Human Humors.’ This mineral is called bauxite. Perhaps—”

“No,” Tracy Kubiak moaned. “Not aluminum, again.” Bauxite was the principal ore of aluminum, an up-time metal that fascinated the alchemists because of its silvery appearance and extraordinary lightness.

Doctor Phil sighed. “Perhaps we should talk about it privately. I will call upon you.”

There were no more questions. Hugh Lowe repositioned the mike. “Okay, our next speaker is going to bring us an update on the concrete project. . . .”

* * *

“Captain, I am Johann Georg Hardegg, an attorney from Rudolstadt. My clients were quite interested in your presentation last week. They think there could be some commonality of interest.”

“I beg your pardon?” said David. He had learned English in his youth, but he wasn’t sure whether that was what Hardegg was speaking.

“He thinks you can work together,” Kaspar explained.

“If you will follow me, I will introduce you to the principal members.”

They walked down an elegantly decorated corridor of the Higgins Hotel, and Hardegg knocked on the door. David heard a muffled “About time.”

There were both up-timers and down-timers in the room. David recognized several of them, and exchanged greetings with Hugh Lowe and Endres Ritter. There was no sign of Claus Junker.

The nobleman at the head of the table said, “My name is Count August von Sommersburg.” David bowed.

“Our group has some interest in that part of the world. For example, in Trinidad. It has great deposits of tar.”

“The place Sir Walter Raleigh visited when he needed to caulk his ships?”

“Yes, that’s right. We can use that tar in road building. Then there is a material called rubber. It’s used in the tires of our cars. The rubber comes from—call it the sap—of certain trees.”

David raised his hand. “I know nothing about trees.”

“That’s all right. We have a tree expert who wants to go to Suriname to study and do research. As for your proposed colony, Captain, hopefully it will be able to tap the Surinamese rubber trees. If not, we have some other economically interesting plants which we are hoping can grow there. Coconut palms, coffee, a few others. Of course, you should be looking for native plants of value.”