"Amen," she said.

"More?" Alston said politely, indicating the venison ragout and the single remaining new potato; they'd fallen on those pretty ravenously.

The cadets shook their heads. "Great, Captain," one of them said. "But I'm stuffed."

"Clear up, then, please," she said, turning and pulling a roll of mapping paper from a sideboard.

The three young men and two women made short work of cleaning the table. She'd made a regular thing of these off-duty meetings, to keep in touch with the cadets. Dining-in on Eagle was a little too formal, considering the gap in rank, not to mention the cramped quarters. For that matter, cruises on the Eagle had been a small part of a cadet's education, just enough to familiarize them. The Academy at New London was a very long way away, now.

A whale-oil lamp in the center of the table gave a glow good enough for reading, quite passable if you made yourself forget what electric light was like.

"Take a look at this," Alston said, leaning over the table and unrolling the plans.

She weighted the corners down with saltshakers and candlesticks. The upperclassman cadets picked up their cups of sassafras tea and leaned over it.

"It's the Bluenose, isn't it, Captain?" one of them said, interested.

The plans showed a two-masted schooner with a long sleek hull curving up to a prow like the point of a laurel-leaf spearhead. The design breathed speed, but not the fragile swiftness of a racing yacht-there was hard work in every line of her.

"Not quite, though it's based on it," Alston said. She nodded to the ship model. "That's the Bluenose. This here-" she tapped the plans-"is a little smaller, two hundred tons displacement; she's shallower-draft, with a longer straight run below, and doesn't carry as much mast. Probably not quite so fast, but even better suited for inshore work. Look at it well, ladies and gentlemen, because you'll be officers on something like this in the not-too-distant future."

The cadets sat down slowly. Alston smiled at them. "I'm not deaf. Now that we've a little leisure to think, you're all afraid that you'll spend the rest of your lives hauling ropes and reefing sails on the Eagle… and you signed up at the Academy to be officer-trainees, not deckhands."

"Yes, some of us have been thinking about that, ma'am," one of the cadets said slowly. McAndrews, a big soft-spoken black kid from Memphis. "We didn't like to complain, though. Not your fault, after all."

"That's appreciated."

Another half-raised her hand. "Won't we be building more steamboats?"

"Certainly, for tugs, whale-catchers, 'longshore work generally. But it'll be a long time before we can make deep-sea steamers. For long-distance work we need ships that don't need fuel or machine shops and that can be repaired with local resources where they make landfall, at a pinch. The Eagle's a fine open-ocean ship, but she wasn't built to haul cargo, and she's too deep in the keel for inshore work in this era, without made harbors.

"This"-she nodded her head at the drawings-"is just right. Wood-built, and we're not short of good timber and masts. Big enough to go anywhere on earth and haul a useful amount of cargo, fore-and-aft-rigged, nimble, and not requirin' a heavy crew. Eventually we'll have a dozen or more, in the carrying trade, exploring, swapping our manufactures for food and raw materials. Guarding the island, too, and whatever settlements we make elsewhere. I've talked it over with the chief, and we'll be putting a proposal to start building to the Town Meeting, fairly soon. There's enough seasoned timber on hand now."

Alston saw enthusiasm kindle. "Since we're stuck here, it's better to think of it as an opportunity, not exile."

"Sort of like Francis Drake and those guys, ma'am?" one of the cadets asked.

"Mmmm, not quite, I hope. But lots of exploration, yes."

The conversation broke up some time later. "Stay for a moment, McAndrews," she said. "You had something you wanted to say?" She leaned back, watching the young man twist a little. "I won't bite y'head off for speaking your mind."

"It's… we're going back to England, right, ma'am?"

She nodded.

"What I was wondering was, why England, ma'am?"

"Trade," she said. "We need to develop a secure base for it."

"Yes, ma'am, but why England?"

"Oh," Alston said. "Ah, I see what you're driving at. You'd rather we try, say, Africa?"

"Yes, ma'am!" McAndrews beamed.

"You're thinking that instead of giving the buckra a leg up, we should sail to Africa and get in contact with the great kingdoms and empires there? Ghana, Mali, Dahomey, the Ashante? And with our technology, they'll grow to dominate the world?"

"Yes ma'am!"

Alston sighed. She reached up and removed an invisible hat. "All right, Cadet, for just this once I'm going to take off my captain's cap and speak to you as sister to brother." She leaned forward. "You ever heard the saying 'Free your head and your ass will follow'?" He nodded.

She went on: "Well, I'm afraid your head's gotten stuffed with something that'd fit in better down below, boy. None of those empires and kingdoms exist now, and they won't for a long long time. Thousands of years. South of the deserts it's mostly still hunters, with a few farming villages in the grasslands. Sail to West Africa and all you'll find is jungle and pygmies. And maybe malaria and yellow fever."

McAndrews's face fell. Alston sighed internally. I won't ask him who he thinks sold our ancestors to the white slavers, she thought. That had been one of her more disillusioning personal discoveries. At least, the West African kings and merchant princes were the ones who'd sold her personal ancestors, seeing as she was black as tar. McAndrews was a sort of rye-bread-toast color; more than a few buckra in his own personal woodpile. Let him down easy. He's probably stuffed with shit about ancient Tanzanian jets and the black Cleopatra and suchlike.

"North Africa is mostly filled with people who look like Isketerol, only they're savages," Alston went on. "The only place in Africa that isn't full of savages is Egypt." At his look, she continued: "Have you ever been to Egypt, Cadet?"

"No, ma'am."

"I have. Up in the twentieth, the Egyptian slang for a black person is abdeed, which means slave, in case you hadn't guessed. Look, when Isketerol first saw me, he thought I was a Medjay. Ever hear of them?" He shook his head. "Neither had I. They're mercenary soldiers from Nubia at Pharaoh's court. The only other black folk there are black slaves."

At his look of shock, she pushed on ruthlessly: "Who do you think started the slave trade, Cadet? You go to Egypt as of 1250 B.C., you're just another nigger barbarian, as far as they're concerned, and so am I. Of course, they'd consider Isketerol a nigger too, or Lieutenant Hendriksson. Anyone who isn't an Egyptian is a nigger to them."

"I… suppose I see," he said after a long minute's thought.

"Don't take it so hard, Cadet," she said kindly. "If things work out well here, there'll never be a Middle Passage. And we've got plenty of real heroes. Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth is worth a dozen imaginary African princes any day."

He frowned. "Then what's going to happen to us, here, ma'am? I mean, as a people."

The island had less than two hundred black residents, and fewer still of other minorities; she'd checked the figures, discreetly. The population was 96 percent white. She'd always regarded white people as sort of like the weather; they were there, sometimes pleasant, often not, and you had to deal with them as best you could. Here-and-now they were pretty well the whole damn climate, and that was just that, whether she liked it or not.