Chuck was interested in the reaction. This young nigger who took everything he dished out, who never looked him in the eye, who always stood to attention, was now totally focused upon the goddamned book that he held in his hand. This book was obviously something of great value to the boy. Chuck decided to extend the game a little further.

‘So where’d you get this from, nigger?’ he asked, carelessly waving the book about, watching as the boy’s eyes nervously followed its path through the air. ‘If you didn’t steal this here book, then where did you get it?’

‘A gift … it was … a gift, sir,’ Ant stammered, his mind pleading, Give it back, give it back …

‘A gift.’ Chuck pretended once again to be impressed. ‘My, my, a gift indeed.’ He made a further pretence of examining the book. ‘Yep, sure looks valuable to me, an old book, I’d say.’

‘Yes. Yes, sir, it is.’ Ant was thankful he’d stopped waving the book around.

‘And who would give a nigger like you a valuable book like this, I wonder.’

‘A teacher, sir, a teacher in town, a lady called Mrs Sanderson.’

‘A lady, you say?’ Chuck’s voice now had a distinctly dangerous edge. He didn’t like the sound of this. ‘You mean a white lady?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You been messing with a white woman, have you, boy?’

‘No, sir, no …’ Ant protested. He was desperate now, forgetting to avoid the captain’s eyes, appealing to him directly, begging him.

‘A white woman gives a young nigger like you a gift? Only one reason I can see why that might happen, boy. You been messing with white trash.’

‘No, sir, I swear. She’s a teacher lady, like I said. She was teaching me to read.’

‘White teacher lady or white trash, makes no difference to me,’ Chuck said, opening the book and grasping a half in each hand. ‘I’ll show you what I think of a white woman giving a gift to a nigger.’ And ripping through the central binding, he tore the book in two. It wasn’t a difficult feat. The book was old, and the binding came apart with relative ease.

Ant let out a howl. Instinctively, he launched himself forwards to grab at the severed halves of his precious book as they fell from the captain’s hands. But he was not successful. The butt of Chuck Maxwell’s pistol smashed into the side of his skull with such force that his head whipped back and he fell to the ground, landing right beside the two halves of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories.

Chuck waited a moment or so before prodding the young man’s body with his boot. He hadn’t thought he’d hit the boy all that hard, but he was lying very still, and his head seemed to be at a weird sort of angle.