The drum was luck, you see, a talisman of hope, the regiment’s beating heart, not to be lost. It marked the safe path through the blinding smoke and fire of battle. The boys who drummed were loved and tossed coins the soldiers had kissed and muttered quick prayers over. The drummer boys were loved like favourite nephews, and looked like them too, for every man, eventually.

The drummer boys were fragrant yellow apples!

The fifers kept their voices low, out of misfortune’s ear, lest they made things worse than they already were.

‘We’re all done for.’

‘Shut up!’

‘Better it’s said.’

‘Then say it somewhere else.’

‘Too late!’

‘Arsehole!’

Nobody liked the look of Johannes Meyer.

THE WORLD THROUGH A TUNNEL

The carriage driver still hadn’t returned and neither had the Prussian.

Wesley Lewis Jr was covering the distance (action! poise!). He restrained his stride and placed his feet carefully. There was a length of oak in his right hand, a branch about the size of an axe handle, thick and hefted. He’d picked it clean of leaves and loose bark. It was a terrific piece of wood.

The sun was high now. It was a crisp, beautiful day. Mr Hendrik was still asleep.

Wesley Lewis Jr was sweating and his mouth was dry.

CAPTAIN VAN DER VELDE’S BIBLE

Captain van der Velde had inherited the Bible from his wife’s first husband, who’d brought it to Paramaribo from Holland. It had been specially crafted for him by a bookbinder in Antwerp. The leather-bound boards had been made thicker than usual, and the bookbinder had cut a cavity into the boards, creating a sleeve beneath the endpapers.

‘Nobody ever steals a Bible,’ the first husband had explained to his wife. ‘It will protect our stake better than any iron box under lock and key.’

In one sleeve alone, there were enough flat, lozenge-shaped gold ingots to purchase an abundance of land, slaves, barges and connections in Paramaribo.

Captain van der Velde liked to read to the slaves from this clever holy book, but a few days before Wesley Lewis Jr and Mr Hendrik departed for Europe with the barrel of electrical eels, he’d called Mr Hendrik into his study and shown him the hidden sleeves beneath the endpapers.

‘The American needn’t know.’

And he still didn’t know, though Wesley Lewis Jr was much closer, closer than he’d ever been. He stood over Mr Hendrik and watched him for a moment, asleep, his head resting on the Bible. Then he tapped the Negro’s lame leg with the oak bough in his hand.

‘My daddy used to say bad dreams at night when you doze in the day,’ he said. ‘So time to get up now.’

Mr Hendrik blinked at the sun flashing over the American’s shoulder. It made a bright haze around his head.