Grant opens the pamphlet and, haltingly, reads aloud in the lantern light: “ ‘I tell you Americans—unless you speedily alter your course, you and your country are gone—’ ”

“You the ones is going to get gone!” somebody yells.

“ ‘God will not suffer us always to be oppressed—our sufferings will come to an end.’ ”

“That is quite enough. You six may be sure your sufferings will come to a speedy end.”

“But cap’n—”

“You heard him, gentlemen.” The Colonel holds up the pamphlet. “Preaching insurrection.”

“Spell it out,” says one of the men. “Read us the law.”

The Colonel clasps his hands behind his back. “The Insurrection Law of 1741 requires that three or more slaves found guilty of conspiring to rebel must be put to death. These niggers claim to be free, but they have no proof. Therefore, under the law, they are held to be slaves. They are strangers—dangerous lurkers-about. They have on their persons evidence of conspiracy.”

He turns to a man next to him, who is waving a horse pistol. “Take them to the marketplace. The time has come for Anglo-Saxon justice.”

Sunrise, at the foot of Market Street. They have had their trial, in the slave marketplace. The white men line up in two ranks of twenty-odd each between the six black men and the river.

The river is running fast and high, the tide sweeping up from the sea in brown wavelets. There is no breeze. The sun is up behind the town, but the wharf still lies in shadow. Grant looks west across the river and, though he knows better, begins to calculate how far the other bank is, how long it will take to swim there—a quarter of a mile, more, the swift current choked with logs and debris. His hands are tied behind his back. Without his hands, any man in that fast water will surely drown.

“You came from the river,” the Colonel says quietly. “Now go back where you came from.”

On his signal, the first black man is shoved into the gauntlet. Hands behind him, he cannot quite maintain his balance. He lurches from side to side as the first blows strike him—ax handles, gun butts, fists, boots. Halfway down the line, he is snorting bloody mist.

Pistols are cocked.

He is four, then just three long steps from the sea wall, running—trying to run—on his knees.

They all fire at once. The bullets kick him headlong into the dirt. His body convulses, sprawling, legs spastic. Then he is still. They fire again into the corpse. Then there is a ringing silence into which the Colonel says softly, “Reload.” It is almost military.

The crowd cheers them, even the women and children.

Grant watches. As each new man is fed to the gauntlet, he feels his tongue swell larger in his mouth. He has no words—his tongue is a dry lump. His eyes burn. He must quiet himself, he thinks. Regain control.