The masters pooled a woeful purse and secured a beggarly regiment of freed slaves and former soldiers with gruesome, mercenary résumés. One of them was Captain Willem van der Velde: originally from Haarlem, barely a year in the colony and looking for any opportunity.

He quickly acquired a reputation for ruthlessness, and proved an innovative and creative dispenser of summary justice (the masters approved enthusiastically). A favourite method was to stake captured rebels to the ground, have their legs and arms crushed with an iron bar, then wait for the fire ants to swarm out of their giant breasted hillocks and bite the runaway slave to death.

‘Just chew,’ he’d said to September, an Ouca Negro from Jocka Creek, as the ants crawled into his mouth and nose and ears, filled his eyes, the man writhing and screaming. ‘I’ll bring you a good claret.’

One day, when the Bonis attacked the Nederpelt plantation on the River Cottica, the captain met his future wife.

Katrijn Nederpelt watched the handsome and healthy Captain Willem van der Velde stride towards the house. His Black Rangers had chased the raiding Bonis into the forest and slaughtered them to a man, and she’d thanked God for His great and infinite benevolence. The previous year, in a drunken stupor, her husband, Hansie Hendrik Nederpelt, had fallen into the river and drowned. Maybe he was pushed (there were rumours). Regardless, she’d overseen the plantation ever since, though this was no place for a woman to be alone, and certainly not for one still so full of desires. Katrijn Nederpelt was a woman in her prime, and wasn’t the only one who thought so. Alas, choices were few among the Dutchmen of Surinam, who expired like flies in the heat and debauchery. But the captain, well, obviously, here was someone special.

She invited Captain van der Velde to join her for a drink that evening, to celebrate his victory against the Bonis, in the cool shade of her deep verandah.

The Black Rangers busied themselves with hanging their haul of severed rebel hands on a rope stretched between two tamarind trees, then setting fires beneath to smoke and dry them. Each smoked hand was worth twenty-five florins back in Paramaribo and they’d gathered a prize collection, one of their best of recent months. Their mood was exuberant. Katrijn Nederpelt, not usually generous, had gifted them a few barrels of Kill-Devil rum. ‘With thanks,’ she’d said to Captain van der Velde, ‘for your brave efforts.’

He removed his hat and stepped up into the shade of the verandah. She saw that his hair was rusty blond and his teeth gleamed like old porcelain.

‘Please, Captain. Sit.’