Jane was always the pretty one and she even prettier now. Ellen was the shy one, but she not so shy anymore. She tell me bout them life, how hard it was at first. No mother or father to protect them. That them get many a beating, to make them learn faster. The plantation grow indigo trees, use the leaves to make dye. Blue gold, backra call it. Ellen work in the factory where she dry and press the dye into blocks. Package up the blocks to be sent off to the Mother Country. Jane working in the Great House, the mistress personal slave, just like her mother.

On the day I am leaving, a good deal of sadness well up when we say goodbye. If Stella and Sydney not enemies, I would be trying to come back for a visit.

After that, we spend many weeks travelling through the parish of Saint James. At first I feel the excitement of reaching somewhere different. Seeing and learning new things. Shaping the stone and laying it out. Sometimes we stop for a short while, do the work and leave. Sometimes is longer, if Mister Buchanan is a friend of the massa and him want something built. Then there is much dining and drinking and merriment in the Great House and Mister Buchanan always wake in a good mood. After a while, though, every place we stop at, I come to see the twisting hand of fate that mark me life. Decide if a slave going be lucky enough to belong to a kind massa, or trodden down by a cruel one.

Is late afternoon. We getting close to the end of our journey. All day we been riding down a narrow winding road that start high up in the hills and going end in the heart of the famous town of Montego Bay. On one side, far below us, a deep ravine, tall moss-covered trees covered in vines, growing one over the other. On the hillside, big leafy plants, flowering bushes, noisy with birds. The sound of crickets striking our ears, the heat making us sweat. Me grateful when we come round a bend and Mister Buchanan call a halt. Him want to stretch him legs, admire the view from a little hilltop ledge.

I can’t believe me eyes. I never seen so much water. No matter how far I look, you can still see it way off in the distance. In the growing sunset that water turn into a sheet of sparkling yellow glass with sailboats nodding gently up and down. Small ones, close in. Big ones, further out, they have what Mister Buchanan call masts. Some with two, some with three, them sails tied up at rest and flying flags to let it be known which countries of the world them come from.