Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom

fields, with Jack chattering away, expressing his avid interest in how
sugarcane was grown, harvested, then turned into molasses, sugar…
and rum. Jack found himself wondering whether Fenwick’s tour might
include some free samples of high quality rum.…
First, they toured the fields, where sweating, nearly naked
Africans were toiling in the sun, cutting cane. It was grueling,
backbreaking labor. The men, every muscle outlined on their lean
torsos, grunted with effort as they chopped the cane with machetes,
letting it fall to the ground, where other slaves, smaller, slighter ones,
bound it into bundles, carried it over to carts, and piled it up. Still other
slaves drove the creaking, loaded carts to the places where, Jack
knew, yet more slaves loaded the cane into a press, then teams of
sweating slaves pushed against giant, many-spoked wheels that
turned those presses, extracting the liquid from the chopped canes.
Sugarcane production had, Jack knew, the highest mortality rate
of any crop grown in the New World. Cane plantations always needed
fresh infusions of slaves; few men lasted as long as five years after
being unloaded from the slavers.
Now, as he stood beneath the shade of the parasol held by
Chamba, watching the cane choppers work, Jack wondered how any
of them survived even a day of this kind of labor. Personally, he figured
he wouldn’t have lasted two hours.
Boys and youths ran back and forth, up and down the rows,
wearing yokes across their shoulders so they could carry two large
water buckets. As they reached each worker in their assigned rows,
they would stop, scoop up a dipperful of water, and hold it out to the
man chopping the cane.
Jack scanned the rows of workers, trying to see whether any of
the choppers, water boys, or cane bundlers looked anything like
Ayisha, but he knew his chances of seeing Shabako, if he was even
present here, and not at the pressing mill or the place where the cane
syrup was boiled down, were dim. He was tempted to glance back at
Tarek, but he didn’t want to interrupt the big eunuch’s concentration,
knowing he was scanning the rows, worker by worker, looking for a
face he hadn’t seen for four years.
Instead Jack glanced past the field, to where a grove of trees