Beyond the sheds, toward the center of the clearing, were two or three large fires, over which huge kettles steamed in the sunshine, suspended from tripods.
“They’ll be cookin’ doon the turpentine, a-boilin’ it intae pitch,” Josh explained, taking me within eyeshot of one of the kettles. “Some is put intae the barrels as is”—he nodded toward the sheds, where a wagon was parked, piled high with barrels—“but the rest is made intae pitch. The naval gentlemen will be sayin’ how much they’ll be needin’, so as we’ll know.”
A small boy of seven or eight was perched on a high, rickety stool, stirring the pot with a long stick; a taller youth stood by with an enormous ladle, with which he removed the lighter layer of purified turpentine at the top of the kettle, depositing this in a barrel to one side.
As I watched them, a slave came out of the forest, leading a mule, and headed for the kettle. Another man came to help, and together they unloaded the barrels—plainly heavy—from the mule, and upended them into the kettle, one at a time, with a great whoosh of pungent yellowish pinesap.
“Och, ye’ll want to stand back a bit, mum,” Josh said, taking my arm to draw me away from the fire. “The stuff does splash a bit, and happen it should take fire, ye wouldna want to be burnt.”
Having seen the man in the forest, I most certainly didn’t want to be burned. I drew away, and glanced back at the sheds. Jamie, Mr. Campbell, and the naval men were sitting on stools around a table inside one hut, sharing something from a bottle and poking at a sheaf of papers on the table.
Standing pressed against the shed wall, out of sight of the men within, was Jocasta Cameron. Having abandoned her pretense of exhaustion, she was plainly listening for all she was worth.
Josh caught the expression of surprise on my face, and turned to see what I was looking at.
“Miss Jo does hate not to have the charge o’ things,” he murmured regretfully. “I havena haird her myself, but yon lass Phaedre did say as how Mistress takes on when she canna manage something—a’rantin’ dreadful, she says, and stampin’ something fierce.”
“That must be quite a remarkable spectacle,” I murmured. “What is she not able to manage, though?” From all appearances, Jocasta Cameron had her house, fields, and people well in hand, blind or not.
Now it was his turn to look surprised.
“Och, it’s the bluidy Navy. Did she not say why we came today?”
Before I could go into the fascinating question of why Jocasta Cameron should wish to manage the British Navy, today or any other day, we were interrupted by a cry of alarm from the far side of the clearing. I turned to look, and was nearly trampled by several half-naked men running in panic toward the sheds.
At the far side of the clearing a peculiar sort of mound rose up out of the ground; I had noticed it earlier but had had no chance to ask about it yet. While the floor of the clearing was mostly dirt, the mound was covered with grass—but grass of a peculiar, patchy sort; part was green, part gone yellow, and here and there was an oblong of grass that was stark, dead brown.
Just as I realized that this effect was the result of the mound’s being covered in cut turves, the whole thing blew up. There was no sound of explosion, just a sort of muffled noise like a huge sneeze, and a faint wave of concussion in the air that brushed my cheek.
If it didn’t sound like an explosion, it certainly looked like one; pieces of turf and bits of burnt wood began to rain down all over the clearing. There was a lot of shouting, and Jamie and his companions came rocketing out of the shed like a flock of startled pheasants.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” He grasped my arm, looking anxious.
“Yes, fine,” I said, rather confused. “What on earth just happened?”
“Damned if I ken,” he said briefly, already looking round the clearing. “Where’s Ian?”
“I don’t know. You don’t think he had anything to do with this, do you?” I brushed at several floating specks of charcoal that had landed on my bosom. With black streaks ornamenting my décolletage, I followed Jamie into the small knot of slaves, all babbling in a confusing mixture of Gaelic, English, and bits of various African tongues.
We found Ian with one of the young naval ensigns. They were peering interestedly into the blackened pit that now occupied the spot where the mound had stood.
“It happens often, I understand,” the ensign was saying as we arrived. “I hadn’t seen it before, though—amazing powerful blast, wasn’t it?”
“What happens often?” I asked, peering around Ian. The pit was filled with a crisscross jumble of blackened pine logs, all tossed higgledy-piggledy by the force of the explosion. The base of the mound was still there, rising up around the pit like the rim of a pie shell.
“A pitch explosion,” the ensign explained, turning to me. He was small and ruddy-cheeked, about Ian’s age. “They lay a charcoal fire, d’ye see, ma’am, below a great pot of pitch, and cover it all over with earth and cut turves, to keep in the heat, but allow enough air through the cracks to keep the fire burning. The pitch boils down, and flows out through a hollowed log into the tar barrel—see?” He pointed. A split log dangled over the remains of a shattered barrel oozing sticky black. The reek of burnt wood and thick tar filled the air, and I tried to breathe only through my mouth.
“The difficulty lies in regulating the flow of air,” the little ensign went on, preening himself a bit on his knowledge. “Too little air, and the fire goes out; too much, and it burns with such energy that it cannot be contained, and is like to ignite the fumes from the pitch and burst its bonds. As you see, ma’am.” He gestured importantly toward a nearby tree, where one of the turves had been thrown with such force as to wrap itself around the trunk like some shaggy yellow fungus.
“It is a matter of the nicest adjustment,” he said, and stood on tiptoe, looking around with interest. “Where is the slave whose task it is to manage the fire? I do hope the poor fellow has not been killed.”
He hadn’t. I had been checking carefully through the crowd as we talked, looking for any injuries, but everyone seemed to have escaped intact—this time.
“Aunt!” Jamie exclaimed, suddenly recalling Jocasta. He whirled toward the sheds, but then stopped, relaxing. She was there, clearly visible in her green dress, standing rigid by the shed.
Rigid with fury, as we discovered when we reached her. Forgotten by everyone in the flurry of the explosion, she had been unable to move, sightless as she was, and was thus left to stand helpless, hearing the turmoil but unable to do anything.
I recalled what Josh had said about Jocasta’s temper, but she was too much the lady to stamp and rant in public, however angry she might be. Josh himself apologized in profuse Aberdonian for not having been by her side to aid her, but she dismissed this with kind, if brusque, impatience.
“Clapper your tongue, lad; ye did as I bade ye.” She turned her head restlessly from side to side, as though trying to see through her blindfold.
“Farquard, where are you?”
Mr. Campbell moved to her and put her hand through his arm, patting it briefly.
“There’s no great harm done, my dear,” he assured her. “No one hurt, and only the one barrel of tar destroyed.”