"She's supposed to know how fast to feed the furnaces to keep the temperature right. And when to ladle the liquor into the next cauldron down the row." He stepped back from the furnace, fanning himself with his hat, and turned to the men. "According to the way the Portugals do it in Brazil, the clarified liquor from the last cauldron in the line here is moved to a cistern to cool for a time, then it's filled into wooden pots and moved to the curing house."
"Is that ready too?" A husky voice came from somewhere in the crowd.
"Aye, and I've already had enough pots made to get started. We let the molasses drain out and the sugar cure for three or four months, then we move the pots to the knocking house, where we turn them over and tap out a block of sugar. The top and bottom are brown sugar, what the Portugals call muscavado, and the center is pure white." He reached again for the bottle and took a deep swallow. "Twenty pence a pound in London, when our tobacco used to clear three farthings."
"To be sure, the mill and the boiling house are the key. We'll have to start building these all over the island." Thomas Lancaster removed his black hat to wipe his brow, then pulled it firmly back on his head. "And start training the Africans in their operation. No white man could stand this heat."
"She should have this one trained in a day or so." Briggs
thumbed toward Atiba, now standing opposite the door examining the planters. "Then we can have him train more."
"I'll venture you'd do well to watch that one particularly close." Edward Bayes lowered his voice, speaking into his beard. "There's a look about him."
"Aye, he's cantankerous, I'll grant you, but he's quick. He just needs to be tamed. I've already had to flog him once, ten lashes, the first night here, when he balked at eating loblolly mush."
"Ten, you say?" Dalby Bedford did not bother to disguise the astonishment in his voice. "Would you not have done better to start with five?"
"Are you lecturing me now on how to best break in my Africans?" Briggs glared. "I paid for them, sir. They're my property, to manage as I best see fit."