"Is that ready too?" A husky voice came from somewhere in the crowd.
"Aye, and I've already had enough pots made to get started. We let the molasses drain out and the sugar cure for three or four months, then we move the pots to the knocking house, where we turn them over and tap out a block of sugar. The top and bottom are brown sugar, what the Portugals call _muscavado_, and the center is pure white." He reached again for the bottle and took a deep swallow. "Twenty pence a pound in London, when our tobacco used to clear three farthings."
"To be sure, the mill and the boiling house are the key. We'll have to start building these all over the island." Thomas Lancaster removed his black hat to wipe his brow, then pulled it firmly back on his head. "And start training the Africans in their operation. No white man could stand this heat."
"She should have this one trained in a day or so." Briggs
thumbed toward Atiba, now standing opposite the door examining the planters. "Then we can have him train more."
"I'll venture you'd do well to watch that one particularly close." Edward Bayes lowered his voice, speaking into his beard. "There's a look about him."
"Aye, he's cantankerous, I'll grant you, but he's quick. He just needs to be tamed. I've already had to flog him once, ten lashes, the first night here, when he balked at eating loblolly mush."
"Ten, you say?" Dalby Bedford did not bother to disguise the astonishment in his voice. "Would you not have done better to start with five?"
"Are you lecturing me now on how to best break in my Africans?" Briggs glared. "I paid for them, sir. They're my property, to manage as I best see fit."
Nicholas Whittington murmured his assent, and others concurred.
"As you say, gentlemen. But you've got three more Dutch slavers due within a fortnight. I understand they're supposed to be shipping Barbados a full three thousand this year alone." Bedford looked about the room with a concerned expression. "That'll be just a start, if sugar production expands the way it seems it will. It might be well if we had the Assembly pass Acts for ordering and governing these slaves."
"Damn your Assembly. We already have laws for property on Barbados."
Again the other planters voiced their agreement. Bedford stood listening, then lifted his hand for quiet. Katherine found herself wishing he would be as blunt with them as Winston had been. Sometimes the governor's good manners got in the way, something that hardly seemed to trouble Hugh Winston.