An old man lights an oil lamp in the savanne. Black bare feet move silently on white sand streets as lovers go to the beach in pairs. In a dozen doorways, cutlasses sing on stone as their owners sharpen them for tomorrow’s work. In the savanne, old men sit on fallen palm trunks and talk in their bubbling patois, invisible except for the red glow of their cigarettes. Chaka sat in the middle thwart, filling a space wide enough for two oarsmen. Drew felt the narrow pirogue leap forward each time the twelve-foot oars bit the water. The sea seemed to be a mound sloping off in all directions. Ahead, a line of white marked the beach of Barrington’s Isle. “You can blow the conch?” asked Chaka softly. “I will learn,” said Drew. “Three times when he is dead. A man will answer from Petty-lay.” “Yes.” Drew fingered the conch he held in his lap. As large as his head, the whorled shell was cut off at one end to leave an opening like a mouthpiece. Drew slid his hand inside the flange and grasped the pearly interior as though it were a sword hilt.
