The New World by Andrew Motion Read Free Book Online

a woman was grinding corn in a bowl.
    They were watching too, but not watching the sunset. And when I squinted sideways I could see why. A party of men was winding through the fields, following the same path that we had taken earlier in the day, and all singing in unison. I knew them at once; one of their leaders was wearing Mr. Stevenson’s blue coat, still back to front with the tails flipping over his knees and the high collar covering his jaw.
    The savages had finished their day’s work and now they were swaggering home for food and congratulation, telling the village what they had found and showing them too: pewter cups from the captain’s cabin; pans from the galley; a carved gilt picture-frame with no picture inside it.
    Only the four men heading the party, including the one dressed in Mr. Stevenson’s coat, were carrying these bits and pieces. The eight who followed behind them had a much more significant task, and I thought would have swaggered much more boldly if they had not been so weighed down. If they had not been carrying two stretchers they had made out of sticks and rushes, and if these stretchers had not been stacked with our silver. Two large and heavy loads, glittering like an enormous catch of herring.
    On the Island I had often troubled myself about the silver, thinking we should not call it ours. Yet when I saw it lugged along by these savages, and the smiles splitting their faces, and the other brutes rushing out from their tepees to gloat over it, I thought I had lost something I deserved to call my own. They might as well have broken into my father’s house and robbed him while he slept. And robbed Mr. Silver too, who in that moment I remembered as a reformed character, launching the
Nightingale
on her adventure simply to right a wrong and finish a story.
    When they reached the chieftain’s house opposite our prison they halted with a triumphant shout, and applause from the people now crowding around them. This noise finally woke Natty, who scuffled to my side. But we did not speak. We were too full of dread—and, if I am honest, of curiosity as well. The simplest actions seemed remarkable: the villagers returning to their tents and beginning to prepare for a feast—lighting fires, scouring pots, pouring oil, dropping in pieces of fish and meat and vegetable; the scavengers carrying the silver into their chieftain’s house. Yet as each man disappeared with his load, or stepped back into the twilight empty-handed, smoothing his hair and straightening his tunic, he kept his eyes on the ground and never once looked in our direction. Even when the work was finished they still ignored us, leaving two of their tallest fellows as guards (who immediately lay down on the veranda of the house and fell asleep), while the rest carried away the stretchers they had made, and joined their families in the village.
    As they withdrew, a woman and child broke from the shadows around the tepees. At first I thought they merely wanted to see the silver again, or to wake the guards who were meant to be protecting it. But when they reached the veranda they turned in our direction, drifting over the ground as if their feet hovered above the earth and did not actually touch it.
    I signaled to Natty that we should shift away from our peephole, so they would not discover it and close it up again. This meant that when the door opened—after a little scuffle with the locking-pole—we saw two silhouettes against the darkening sky, and could not read their expressions.
    I wanted to say a friendly word and show we meant no harm, but as I was about to speak Natty put her hand on my shoulder. Our visitors kept silent as well, the child (a girl, no more than six or seven years old) staring and hunching a little, the mother more nearly upright and square-shouldered. So far as I could see, both wore the same sort of dress, made of hide and decorated with small stones. The mother’s hair was pulled back from her face into a