Dragon Bay by Violet Winspear

Author:Violet Winspear [Winspear, Violet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

WHEN the afternoon sun had cooled and the shadows were lengthening, Lucan took Kara on a tour of the plantations. She could ride, and he mounted her on a cream-coloured filly called Silky. His own mount was mettle some and black as night. Jet the hound went with them, bounding at the hoofs of the stallion.

The sugar cane was planted in endless rows that would, as the weeks went by, grow silver-green and taller than the men who would harvest it by burning off the leaves and cutting down the sugar-loaded cane with sharp cutlasses.

‘The fields are already showing their green,’ Lucan said, sweeping out an arm and indicating the miles of cane. ‘With luck we shall have a good crop this year, and men will come from all parts of the island to harvest the cane and sing the old songs as they swing their cutlasses in the hot sun. It’s quite a sight, Kara.’

She could well believe him, and she smiled as she glanced at him. He wore a field hat tilted down over his eyes, such arresting eyes, alight with his pride in the plantations. His horse jibbed as a large-winged creative hopped off a stalk of cane and skimmed the proud head. Lucan soothed his mount with a caressing hand, so brown and work-hardened.

‘The cane fields are like a rippling ocean of green,’ Kara said, and she did not look beyond this moment to the time of the harvest. They cantered on towards the sugar refinery, with its smoke stacks looking black against the sky. The sun was setting across the fields and the whole scene was grand and unforgettable.

‘Would you like to go inside?’ Lucan asked.

They dismounted and Kara found that at the present time there was little activity in the big mill. ‘The racket is deafening when production is at full gallop,’ Lucan said, pointing out the choppers and giant rollers beneath which the cane would be cut small and then crushed, the liquid draining off into huge boilers to be clarified and crystallized.

Kara gazed up at the catwalks above the various tanks and containers and she gave a shiver as she pictured the men at work above the great bubbling cauldrons. The chimneys of the tower would smoke dark into the sun and a hot toffee smell would seep out of the factory as the brown syrup was turned slowly into sugar.

As they rode away they passed a knoll on which stood the ruins of a sugar mill where long ago the grinding had been done by wind-power. The sails now hung limp above the blackened tower, and the late afternoon sun peered through the broken windows. The place had a haunted air, a look of brooding disquiet, and Kara could not resist a backward glance...her breath caught in her throat, she could have sworn that someone, something moved in the tower and that for a moment she and Lucan were gazed at through the broken windows.

‘Do children play in that old ruin?’ she asked.

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