"They're sound workers, for all their peculiar ways." Briggs paused and pointed to a large drum resting in front of one of the larger huts. It was shaped like an hourglass, and separate goatskins had been stretched over each mouth and laced together, end to end. "What do you make of that contrivance? The first thing they did was start making this drum. And all this morning, before sunup, they were pounding on it. Damnedest racket this side of hell."
"Aye, mine did the very same," Lancaster volunteered. "I heard them drumming all over the island."
Briggs walked on. "They gathered 'round that Yoruba called Atiba, who's shaking some little seashells on a tray and chanting some of their gabble. After a time he'd say something to one of them and then there'd be more drumming." He shook his head in amazement. "Idolatry worse'n the Papists."
"I've a mind to put a stop to it," Whittington interjected. "The indentures are already complaining."
"It's a bother, I grant you. But I see no harm in their customs, long as they put in a day's work. The place I drew the line was when they started trying to bathe in my pond every night, when any Christian knows baths are a threat to health. But for it all, one of them will cut more cane than three Irishmen." He cast a contemptuous glance backward at Timothy Farrell, who was following at a distance, holding several bottles of kill-devil. "From sunup to sundown. Good workers, to the man. So if they choose to beat on drums, I say let them. It's nothing from my pocket."
Katherine watched Winston shake his head in dismay as he paused to pick up the drum, turning it in his hands.
"You seem troubled about their drumming, Captain. Why's that?"
He looked up at her, almost as though he hadn't heard. "You've never been to Brazil, have you, Miss Bedford?"
"I have not."
"Then you probably wouldn't believe me, even if I told you." He looked back at the huts and seemed to be talking to himself. "God damn these Englishmen. They're fools."