While Sam Bowles and his mates were removing the corpses from the slave chains and tossing them overboard, Hal squatted in the rank of captives and watched from afar as Katinka was ushered into the carriage by Governor Kleinhans on one arm and Colonel Schreuder on the other.
He felt his heart tear with love for her, and he whispered to Daniel and Aboli, "Is she not the most beautiful lady in the world? She will use her influence for us. Now that her husband has full powers, she will persuade him to treat us justly." Neither of the two big men replied, but they exchanged a glance. Daniel grinned with broken teeth and Aboli rolled his eyes.
Once Katinka was settled on the leather seats, they boosted her husband aboard. The carriage swayed and rocked under his weight. As soon as he was safely installed beside his wife, the band struck up a lively march and the escort shouldered their muskets and stepped out, a stirring sight in their white cross belts and green jackets. The procession streamed across the open parade ground towards the fort, with the crowds running ahead of the carriage and lining both sides of the route.
"Farewell, gentlemen. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to have you aboard." The Buzzard touched the brim of his Hat in an ironic salute as Sir Francis shambled across the deck dragging his chains, and led the file of his crew down the ladder into the boat moored alongside. So many men in chains made a heavy load for it in this condition of swell. They were left with only a few inches of freeboard as they pushed off from the Gull's side.
The oarsmen struggled to hold the longboat's stern into the breaking white waves as they approached the beach, but a taller swell got under her and threw her off line. She broached heavily, dug in her shoulder and rolled over in four feet of water. Crew and passengers were thrown into the white water, and the capsized boat was caught up in the wash.
Choking and coughing up seawater, the prisoners managed to drag each other from the surf by their chains. Miraculously none was drowned, but the effort taxed most to their limit. When the guards from the fortress hectored them to their feet and drove them with musket butt and curses up the beach, they were streaming water and coated with a sugaring of white sand.
Having seen the state carriage safely through the gates of the fort, the crowds poured back to the waterfront to have a little sport with these wretched creatures. They studied them as though they were livestock at a market, and their laughter was unrestrained, their comments ribald.
"Look more like gypsies and beggars than English pirates to me."
"I'm saving my guilders. I'll not be bidding when that lot go up on the slave block."
"They don't sell pirates, they burn them."
"They don't look much, but at least they'll give us all some sport. We haven't had a really good execution since the slave revolt."
"There's Stadige Jan over there, come to look them over. I'll warrant he'll have a few lessons to teach these corsairs." Hal turned his head in the direction the speaker pointed to where a tall burgher in dark, drab clothing and a puritan Hat stood a head above the crowd. He looked at Hal with pale expressionless yellow eyes.
"What do you think of these beauties, Stadige Jan? Will you be able to get them to sing a pretty tune for us?"
Hal sensed the repulsion and fascination this man held for those around him. None stood too close to him, and they looked at him in such a way that Hal instinctively knew that this was the executioner of whom they had been warned. He felt his flesh crawl as he looked into those faded eyes.
"Why do you think that they call him Slow John?" he asked Aboli, from the side of his mouth.
"Let us hope we never have to find out," Aboli replied! as they passed where the tall, cadaverous figure stood.
Small boys, both brown and white, danced beside the column of chained men, jeering and pelting them with pebbles and filth from the open gutters that carried the sewage from the town down to the sea front. Encouraged by this example a pack of mongrel dogs snapped at their heels. The adults in the crowd were turned out in their best clothes for such an unusual occasion and laughed at the antics of the children. Some of the women held sachets of herbs to their noses when they smelt the bedraggled file of prisoners, shuddering in horrified fascination.
"Oh! What dreadful creatures!"
"Look at those cruel and savage faces."
"I have heard that they feed those Negroes on human flesh."
Aboli contorted his face and rolled his eyes at them. The tattoos on his cheeks stood proud, and his great white teeth were bared in a fearsome grin. The women squealed with delicious terror, and their little daughters hid their faces in their mothers" skirts as he passed.
At the rear of the crowd, hanging back from the company of their betters, taking no part in the sport of baiting the captives, were those men and women who, Hal guessed, must be the domestic slaves of the burghers. The slaves in the crowd ranged in colour from the anthracite black of Africa to the amber and gold skins of the Orient. Most were simply dressed in the cast-off clothing of their owners, although some of the prettier women wore the flamboyant finery that marked them as the favourite playthings of their masters.
They looked on quietly as the seamen trudged past in their clanking chains, and there was no sound of laughter among them. Rather, Hal sensed a certain empathy behind their closed impassive expressions for they were captives also. Just before they entered the gate to the fort, Hal noticed one girl in particular at the back of the crowd. She had climbed up on a pile of masonry blocks for a better view and stood higher than the intervening ranks of spectators. This was not the only reason why Hal had singled her out.
She was more beautiful than he had ever expected any woman to be. She was a flower of a girl, with thick glossy black hair and dark eyes that seemed too large for her delicate oval face. For one moment their eyes met over the heads of the crowd, and it seemed to Hal that she tried to pass him some message that he was unable to grasp. He knew only that she felt compassion for him, and that she shared in his suffering. Then he lost sight of her as they were marched through the gateway into the courtyard of the fort.
The image of her stayed with him over the dreadful days that followed. Gradually it began to supersede the memory of Katinka, and in the nights sometimes returned to give him the strength he needed to endure. He felt that if there were but one person of such loveliness and tenderness out there, beyond the gaunt stone walls, who cared for his abject condition, then it was worth fighting on.
In the courtyard of the fort, a military armourer struck off their shackles. A shore party under the command of Sam Bowles stood by to collect the discarded chains to take back aboard the Gull. "I will miss you all, my shipmates." Sam grinned. The lower decks of the old Gull will be empty and lonely without your smiling faces and your good cheer." He gave them a salute from the gateway as he led his shore party away. "I hope they look after you as well as your good friend Sam Bowles did. But, never fear, I'll be at the Parade when you give your last performance there."
When Sam was gone, Hal looked around the courtyard. He saw that the fortress had been designed on a substantial scale. As part of his training his father had made him study the science of land fortifications, so he recognized the tlassical defensive layout of the stone walls and redoubts. He realized that once these works were completed, it would take an army equipped with a full siege train to reduce them.