Free New York - The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd Page A

hadn’t even a scratch. Itwas new-minted; it shone splendidly. And as the Dutchman gazed at it, a thought suddenly came to him.
    Getting up, he went over to where two Indian girls, about the same age as Pale Feather, were sitting. He showed them the coin, letting them hold it. As they turned the shining disk over in their hands, examined the images and the way the falling sun reflected upon it, their faces lit up. Why was it, van Dyck wondered, that gold and silver objects seemed to fascinate both men and women alike? “It is beautiful,” they said. Returning to the young fellow from Boston, van Dyck told him: “I’ll buy it.”
    “It will cost you,” Tom considered, “a ducat and a beaver pelt.”
    “What? That’s robbery.”
    “I’ll throw in the box,” Tom added cheerfully.
    “You’re a young rogue,” the Dutchman said, with amusement. “But I’ll take it.” He didn’t bother to bargain. He had just solved his problem. The pelt was a sacrifice he almost felt better for making. For now he had a present for his daughter.
    That night, to make sure Tom didn’t steal anything, he slept in his boat. And as he lay back on the pelts, and felt the little wooden box with its silver dollar safe in the pouch on his belt, and listened to the faint breeze in the trees, he imagined that, as she had promised, he could hear his daughter’s voice. And he smiled with contentment.

    Van Dyck left the young Englishman in the morning. He’d be at Pale Feather’s village before evening, stay there with his daughter all through tomorrow, and continue to Manhattan the day after that.
    The weather was warm. He wore an open shirt. Around his waist, he had changed his usual leather belt and put on the wampum belt she’d given him. A little pouch containing the silver dollar hung from it.
    The river was almost free of traffic. Occasionally they saw an Indian canoe in the shallows; but as they slipped downstream with the tide, they had the great waterway to themselves. The high western banks protected the river from the light breeze. The water was still. They seemed to be traveling in an almost unearthly quiet. After a time, they came past a bend where, from the west bank, a high point jutted out above the water, looking like a sentinel. Van Dyck had his own names for these landmarks. This one he called West Point. A while later, the river curved again to pass around the small mountain whose flattened hump had caused van Dyckto name it Bear Mountain. After that, the river opened out into a wider flow, two or three miles from bank to bank, which would extend southward fifteen miles until it narrowed into the great, long channel that ran down past Manhattan to the mighty harbor.
    Time passed, and they were still some miles above the channel when one of the oarsmen nodded to him and van Dyck, turning to look back up the river, saw that some five miles back, another boat was visible, following them. As he stared he realized that the boat was gaining on them fast. “They must be in a hurry about something,” he remarked. But he wasn’t much interested.
    Half an hour later, approaching the entrance to the channel, he glanced back again, and was astonished to discover how far the other vessel had come. It was much bigger than his own, with a mast for a sail; but as the breeze was from the south, the men were rowing. It had halved the distance between them and was advancing rapidly. He couldn’t see how many oars it carried, but one thing was certain.
    “Those boys,” he said, “are rowing like fury.”
    They were entering the narrow channel now, and van Dyck let the oarsmen take it easy. They were coming down the west side of the stream. Above them, the gray stone palisade of cliffs were catching the rays of the afternoon sun. A slight choppiness now appeared in the water. He glanced back, but the curve of the river now hid the boat that, he assumed, must be following him into the channel.
    And then, suddenly, the boat was upon