My Name Is Not Angelica by Scott O’Dell Read Free Book Online

enough powder for eighteen or twenty pistol shots. I hid it where you told me to, beyond the mimosa tree, in the cactus. I wrapped it up. If it rains it won't wash away. Not tomorrow, but soon, I will take more. But that's the end. I am afraid to take more."
    I lay awake after he was gone. The big drum at Mary Point was talking, seven notes over and over, ten times, then a pause. It was counting the time before the day of the revolt. All the slaves from Mary Point to Coral Bay were listening. Across the bay on St. Thomas Island the slaves would be listening, too.
    Before dawn a north wind sprang up. The sky clouded over and rain began to fall. I hurried downthe trail to the cactus bush to see if the powder was dry. It was gone. I searched carefully. The powder was gone. Konje had been there.
    I felt angry that he hadn't bothered to tell me. Then I felt ashamed of myself. He was always in danger when he traveled from Mary Point to Hawks Nest.
    The rain drifted off and the sky cleared, but the wind still blew. A short distance from our shore lay Whistling Cay, a tumbled pile of rocks and caves with a coral reef surrounding them.
    If a north wind blew, strange noises came from the cay. Sometimes they sounded like a child. Sometimes like the cries of a wounded beast, a serpent from the deeps. Other times the sounds were like the cooing of doves. On this night, while Konje was on his way back to Mary Point, the sounds were like his footsteps in the dust.
    The sky clouded over yet again. A breath of rain sizzled in the dust. Nero the bomba blew the tutu. The horn roused the big red rooster. He stretched his neck and helped to rouse the field slaves. In the black dark before dawn they went to work building a terrace on the hill behind the mill for the cotton roots Master van Prok hoped to plant.
    Usually, I slept beyond the bomba call. But sooner than an hour, with the first light, Isaak Gronnewold would be up. This was the time we talked together when he came to Hawks Nest.

    I hurried down the cliff to the beach and took my bath. The water was clear as air. I waded out shoulder deep, then swam back to the shore and put on the dress Mistress Jenna had given me.
    I watched Preacher Gronnewold walk down the trail. I thought he would never reach the shore. He would take a step or two, then stop and read his Bible, then look at the sky and the sea, then take another step or two.
    "Good morning," I shouted when he was only halfway down the trail. He didn't answer, but after that he closed the Bible and came fast. He had long thin legs like a stork. They straddled the rocks, leaped the bushes.
    I met him at the bottom of the trail and fell to my knees, for Isaak Gronnewold loved all the slaves on the island of St. John, even the runaways, even black-browed Nero. It was strange to me that he could love everyone, good or bad, yet he did, he did.
    Isaak Gronnewold put out a long, bony hand and got me to my feet. He didn't like my bows, what he called "prostrations," yet I made them anyway, I had to.
    "Last night," he said, "you heard Governor Gardelin set down new laws?"
    "I heard."
    "The other slaves heard?"
    "They heard."
    "But do you believe, do the other slaves believe,that the new laws are only threats to scare the timid, to warn the bold?"
    "I don't know what the others believe. I believe that the governor is a cruel man. He is pleased to have an excuse to be cruel. The laws were cruel enough before he changed them."
    "The new laws are not threats. They are real. You and all of Master van Prok's slaves must understand this."
    "They understand. I understand."
    "Before the new laws, when we had the old laws, I went from plantation to plantation. And I read from the Bible many Sundays during the last year."
    "Yes, you read over and over, 'What doth the Lord require of thee but to walk humbly with thy God?'"
    "That was not done. Slaves from Cruz Bay to Hawks Nest and from here to Mary Point and from there to Coral Bay and back did not walk