"What do you mean?"
"Look around you." Atiba turned and gestured. Out of the palms emerged a menacing line of black men, all carrying cane machetes. "My men are here. We could kill all of you now, senhor, and simply take your muskets. But you once treated me as a brother, so I will barter with you fairly, as though today were market day in Ife. I and my men will seize this branco fortress and make it an offering of friendship to you—rather than watch you be killed trying to take it yourself—in trade for these guns." He smiled grimly. "A life for a life, do you recall?"
"The revolt you started is as good as finished, just like I warned you would happen." Winston peered through the rain. "You won't be needing any muskets now."
"Perhaps it is over. But we will not die as slaves. We will die as Yoruba. And many branco will die with us."
"Not with my flintlocks, they won't." Winston examined him and noticed a dark stain of blood down his shoulder.
Atiba drew out his machete again and motioned the other men forward. "Then see what happens when we use these instead." He turned the machete in his hand. "It may change your mind."
Before Winston could reply, he turned and whispered a few brisk phrases to the waiting men. They slipped their machetes into their waistwraps and in an instant were against the breastwork, scaling it.
As the seamen watched in disbelief, a host of dark figures moved surely, silently up the sloping stone wall of the breastwork. Their fingers and toes caught the crevices and joints in the stone with catlike agility as they moved toward the top.
"God's blood, Cap'n, what in hell's this about?" Dick Hawkins moved next to Winston, still holding a grapple and line. "Are these savages . . .?"
"I'm damned if I know for sure. But I don't like it." His eyes were riveted on the line of black figures now blended against the stone of the breastwork. They had merged with the rain, all but invisible.