North and South Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page B

“seasoning.” Breaking the slave’s spirit was what he meant. A second gentleman discussed new land grants being made along nearby rivers and creeks.
    “Yes, but what’s the use of owning land if you can’t pay your quitrent and there’s no crop that’s accepted in lieu of cash?”
    “Maybe there is such a crop now,” the first man said. He displayed a plump little sack.
    The others crowded around, curious. Even Charles drifted up to listen; the auction was stalled while the man with the sack answered a question put to him.
    “This is seed. From Madagascar. The same kind of seed that’s growing so well in those overwatered gardens in town.”
    A man pointed, excited. “Is that some of the rice Captain Thurber gave Dr. Woodward last year?” Thurber was captain of a brigantine that had put into Charles Town for repairs; Charles had heard the story of some rice brought ashore.
    The man with the sack tucked it safely away in his pocket. “Aye. It thrives in wet ground. Nay—demands it, Many in town are agog over the possibilities. There’s a rush for land all at once. And a feeling that a profitable use has been found for these benighted lowlands.”
    The doubter had another question: “Yes, but what white man could stand to work in swamps and marshes?”
    “Not a one, Manigault. It will take men accustomed to intense heat and nearly unbearable conditions.” The speaker paused for effect. “Africans. Many more than we have in the colony now, I warrant.”
    In France, Charles Main had suffered for his religion. But the hypocrisy of schemers like Emilion, and the cruelty inflicted on Jeanne, had all but destroyed the faith that had dragged him into the ordeal in the first place.
    His own will, not some supernatural power, had sustained him under the hot irons of the torturers. So, although he still harbored a vague belief in a Supreme Being, his picture of that Being had changed. God was indifferent. He had no benevolent plan for the cosmos or its creatures; very likely He had no plan at all. It therefore behooved a man to rely solely upon himself. It was all right to give God a courteous nod now and then, as you would a doddering uncle. But when it came to shaping the future, a wise man took matters into his own hands.
    And yet, in that firelit clearing in the midst of a vast, dense wood that reeked of damp earth and rang with the cries of birds, a curious thing happened to Charles. He felt his old beliefs surge up with unexpected strength. For one intense moment he felt the presence of some outside force that had willed he survive the past couple of years in order to reach this place at this precise instant.
    In that instant he set a new course. He wouldn’t put a shilling of his earnings back into trade goods for the station. Whatever it cost to consult one of those twisty lawyers, he would pay, in order to learn how he might secure a grant of land down here, closer to the sea. He would investigate what he had just heard about the Madagascar seed. He was, first and foremost, a man who had worked the land. If he could raise grapes, he could raise rice.
    But the labor did present a problem. He knew the inhospitable nature of these lowlands. He wouldn’t last a month working waist-deep in the water that bore disease, not to mention alligators, on its slow, serpentine tides.
    The answer was obvious. A Negro slave. Two, if his earnings would stretch that far.
    With the warped logic of someone who knows he is guilty and must find a way to prove otherwise, Charles had always considered himself a man who sold slaves without endorsing the system. Deep in him something recoiled from the whole process. Moreover, he never saw what actually happened to the Indians he caught and sold. Perhaps—the ultimate saving sophistry—kindly owners later freed them.
    Now, however, conscience had to abdicate completely. He himself had to own at least one prime African buck. It was a matter of economics. Of opportunity. Of