The Daredevil Snared

Tomorrow, they would take the path to the mine.

CHAPTER 2

“John told me at breakfast that he doesn’t know how much longer he can drag his heels over opening up the second tunnel.”

Katherine Fortescue glanced at her companion, Harriet Frazier; the pair of them had elected to stretch their legs in a stroll around the mining compound during their midmorning break from their work in the cleaning shed.

Of course, the real purpose of their stroll was to facilitate communication; while they walked, they could talk freely, with no one likely to overhear their exchanges.

The “John” to whom Harriet referred was her sweetheart, Captain John Dixon, the erstwhile army engineer who had been the first of their company to be kidnapped from Freetown. When Dixon had refused the mercenary leader Dubois’s invitation to plan and implement the opening of a mine to exploit a newly discovered pipe of diamonds for unnamed backers, Dubois had merely smiled coldly—and the next thing Dixon had known, Harriet had joined him in his captivity.

The threats against Harriet that Dubois had used to force Dixon to acquiesce to his demands were, quite simply, unspeakable. Harriet carried a fine scar on her cheek that Dixon still regarded with sorrow and remembered horror. But Harriet bore the mark with pride. In her eyes—indeed, in the eyes of all the captives now there—Dixon had only done what he’d had to, what he’d been forced to do to ensure he and Harriet survived.

And he and all of them continued in that vein, using that as their touchstone; if they didn’t survive, they couldn’t escape.

Despite their carefully cultivated appearance of being resigned to their lot, every man, woman, and child of their company had banded together, and all were unswervingly committed to escape.

Escape first; retribution could come later.

Katherine had long grown accustomed to keeping her features composed; she and Harriet maintained unconcerned, outwardly unperturbed expressions as they paced slowly around the well-worn clockwise circuit that would take them from the cleaning shed, where they worked at chipping heavy concretions of ore from the rough diamonds extracted from the mine that had eventually been constructed, past the eastern end of the long, central, main barracks building in which Dubois and his band of mercenaries worked and slept when they weren’t on guard, either at the gates of the compound, pacing the perimeter, escorting groups of captives to fetch water from the nearby lake, or perched in the high tower that stood at that end of the long building.

Shading her eyes, Katherine glanced up at the pair of mercenaries on lookout duty in the tower. “Given how our output from the shed has been dwindling,” she murmured, “I can—sadly—see John’s point.” She glanced at Harriet. “Let’s meet tonight and see how the others feel. There’s only so long we can put Dubois off without damaging our own position.”

The “others” were the de facto leaders of their small community—the officers who had been kidnapped, plus Katherine and Harriet. Katherine had been taken because, as a governess, she had experience managing children, but another of her skills was fine needlework, and Dubois had quickly recognized the sharpness of her eye and the quality of her work in the cleaning shed; he had effectively made her the spokesperson and leader of the women and children.

So she spoke for both groups, and Harriet was one of her deputies among the six women, most of whom had been taken for their ability to do fine work.

As she and Harriet continued their promenade, the hems of the drab, featureless gowns they’d been given to wear stirring fallen leaves, Katherine contemplated—as she was sure every one of their number did these days—the delicate balance they were striving to maintain. “I wish there was some easier—more obvious and less stressful—way we could manage this.”

Harriet grimaced, then smoothed her features into a mask of unconcern. “It’s a constant juggle. I know it weighs heavily on John.”

“And he’s doing a wonderful job—we wouldn’t have any hope if it wasn’t for him.” Katherine laid a hand on Harriet’s sleeve and lightly squeezed. “We all understand the dilemma. We have to keep giving Dubois diamonds enough to appease his masters—whoever the blackguards are—while at the same time holding back as much as we can to stave off the time when the deposit is exhausted and they decide to shut the mine.”

None of them harbored the slightest illusion about what would happen once a decision to close the mine was made. They would be killed. Lined up and shot—or worse.

Given the atrocities Dubois and his men had committed against one young girl early in the life of the mine, and the threats Dubois occasionally made when using one of the women or children to reinforce his control over the kidnapped men, worse, in this case, would be horrific. So horrific none of them dwelled on the prospect.

That was the other reason Dubois had arranged to have women and children added to the mine’s captives. Quite aside from their necessary contributions to the work, they were the perfect pawns with which to ensure the men’s compliance.

As the location of the mine dictated that Dubois’s impressed workforce had to be European and, given his source was Freetown, that meant mostly English, he’d realized he would need an effective means of controlling said workforce. Dubois was all about effectiveness and control—he was coldhearted, ruthless, and appeared to possess not a single scruple or finer feeling in his large, powerful frame.

Because the mine was located within one of the native chief’s lands, Dubois and his masters did not dare kidnap natives—not of any tribe. But the chief did not care about Europeans; in his eyes, they were not his concern. So Englishmen from Freetown it was. In addition, kidnapped English were also more useful in that all those taken had some training in skills required for the mine.

Captain John Dixon had been targeted because he was an expert sapper—an engineer skilled in the construction of tunnels. Several of the other men had carpentry skills; others were laborers used to wielding picks, and all of the women had some talent Dubois or his masters had deemed useful. The children hadn’t needed to be anything but children—quick and healthy, with small hands and keen vision.

They even had several men and women with medical and nursing experience, which had proved useful in treating the occasional injury. Mining was inherently unsafe, and accidents had occurred, but the compound contained a decently equipped medical hut.

Katherine cynically acknowledged that the one helpful aspect of Dubois’s rule—absolute and unchallengeable as it was—was that his single-minded quest for effectiveness and efficiency meant he considered keeping his workforce as hale, healthy, and able as possible to be in his and his masters’ best interests.

So regardless of his threats—which not a single one of them doubted he would carry out without a blink if they pushed him to it—he ensured that their needs were met so that they could continue to work and produce the raw diamonds his masters sought.

That was what Dubois was being very well paid to ensure—that the mine was properly exploited and the raw diamonds dispatched in secret to Amsterdam on behalf of his masters.

Just who those masters were, no one had yet learned. However, although Dubois was French and his band of mercenaries hailed from every quarter, the general consensus among the captives was that the blackguards behind the scheme were Englishmen.

Katherine dwelled on that for several seconds, then shook the thought aside. Time enough to focus on whom to blame after they’d escaped.

She and Harriet rounded the base of the tower, passing the supply hut and, beside it, the large kitchen with its wide, palm-frond-covered overhang beneath which three small fire pits with cook pots suspended above them were watched over by Dubois’s huge cook. The man was the grumpiest individual Katherine had ever met, perennially scowling at everyone—even Dubois.

They continued circling the mercenaries’ barracks, on their left passing the long barrack-like building in which all the women and children slept, followed by the compound’s double gates, as usual propped wide open with a pair of guards lounging, one to each side.

The roughly circular compound was crudely but effectively palisaded by planks lashed together with thick vines and wire. It appeared rather rickety in places and wouldn’t be impossible to break through, but if they escaped and fled, where would they go?

The simple fact that they had no real clue where they were and how far it might be to any form of safe harbor, along with the knowledge of the hideous retribution Dubois would unquestionably inflict on those left behind should any of them successfully flee, ensured that they continued apparently acquiescent in their captivity.

They were anything but, yet circumstances and Dubois had forced them to be pragmatic.

They couldn’t escape unless they got everyone out all at once and until they knew in which direction safety lay and how long it would take them to reach it.

Skirting the captives’ communal area—a circle of logs surrounding a large fire pit—Katherine and Harriet walked slowly past the long building where the men slept and on past the open maw of the mine. Unless dispatched on some other chore, all the male captives labored inside the tunnel, now more than fifty yards long, that had been hacked, inch by foot, more or less straight into the side of a steep hill that rose abruptly from the jungle floor, as if some elemental force had thrust it upward. The hillside above the mine entrance was relatively sheer.

As she and Harriet passed the mine, they both looked inside. Although lanternlight played on the walls, glinting off the roughly hewn planes, none of the men were presently visible; they would all be farther down, hacking out the remnants of the original deposit, or with Dixon supposedly examining the second pipe—a rock formation associated with diamonds—that Dixon had, thank the Lord, discovered to the right of the original find.

If he hadn’t found that second pipe, the mine would already be on its last legs, and they would be facing death.

That new deposit had given them a second wind, as it were, in that it held out the chance of surviving long enough to figure out some way to escape.

That it was up to them to save themselves was now accepted by all. Initially, they’d waited, simply surviving, in the expectation that help would arrive in the form of a rescue party sent from the settlement.

It had seemed inconceivable that this many adults, women as well as men, many with positions and connections in the community, let alone the small army of children, could be snatched from one place without any hue and cry being raised.

But weeks and then months had passed, and no rescue had come.

With their hopes dashed, for a while, they’d grown dispirited and despairing.

But they were English, after all. They’d rallied.

And grown increasingly resolute in their determination to survive and, eventually, escape.

They hadn’t yet figured out how to do it, but they would.

Katherine never wavered from that stance, because to do so would mean that there was no hope, not for her or any of the ragtag group of children she now considered as being in her care.

Part of that group lay ahead, mostly older girls crouched by a pile of ore that the boys, both younger and older, plus the few younger girls, had fetched out of the mine. That was the role the children played. The boys and young girls darted in and around the men as they worked, grubbing out and collecting all the rock pieces as they fell from the walls and loading the rock into woven baskets. They then lugged the filled baskets outside and upended them onto the pile the older girls were sorting.

The girls sat or crouched in the shade cast by a crude movable awning Katherine had persuaded Dubois to provide and steadily worked their way through the pile of ore dumped before them. The diamonds came out of the mine heavily encrusted with a mixture of ores. The girls examined each clump of broken rock, searching for the signs they’d been taught signified that a diamond lay within. They tapped the rock, listening for the sound, then searched for the lines where diamond met ore. The girls sorted and, eventually, passed the potential diamonds to the women, who more carefully cleaned each find using small chisels and hammers to tap off the encrustations, ultimately rendering the raw diamonds small enough and light enough for transport.

The captives had heard that the cleaned stones were sent to Amsterdam via ships passing through Freetown harbor.