Читать книгу Bloody Colonials - Stafford Sanders - Страница 3

A thunder of hooves comes carving at daybreak through the roll and roar of ocean swell crashing against high cliffs.

Wild irregular sandstone crags, they are. Laid down by eons of sedimentary deposit, which ageless motion of wind and wave have scooped and swirled like massive spoonfuls of caramel ice. Far below, huge chunks of this rock, sheared away by the relentless erosion, have crashed to the shelf beneath. There they now lie, like fallen behemoths being slowly consumed in the jagged, frothing jaws of the animal ocean which roars and gnashes and hurls itself repeatedly against the feet of the weatherworn giants.

All this beneath a sky far too blue, a sun far too high and unrelenting than it would appear from the Scottish coast, the White Cliffs of Dover or anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere. This swirling sea is not the North Sea, the North Atlantic or the Mediterranean. It is, rather, the great South Pacific Ocean.

We have arrived, in the bright dawn of this crisp morning, at the oldest continent in the world: Terra Australis, the Great South Land. Later, of course, called “Australia”; but that will be almost a century beyond this fateful morning in the year 1810.

Listen, the thunder draws nearer.

Around the towering cliffs, a horse bursts into view, ridden at a hearty canter along the narrow rocky clifftop track. It moves with sureness born of familiarity.

Its rider is a man of slight to medium build, perhaps middle-aged, possibly grey-haired, probably clean-shaven, certainly hatless, and wearing a plainish brown riding coat. Though the surroundings are not European, the rider in his manner of dress certainly appears to be from that part of the world.

In the rider’s face there is a grim set: brows knitted together just a crease more tightly, jaw set a twitch more firmly, than can be explained solely by the effort of riding. Something is going through the mind of this man. Something that troubles him.

Seeming comfortably set in the saddle and well versed in the twists and turns of the rough track, the horseman digs his heels into the flank and drops his head as his mount approaches a sharpish bend. He shifts his weight automatically in readiness, the horse slowing just slightly to negotiate the oft-taken turn.

But at the very fulcrum of the bend, the rider gives an abrupt and startled cry. A desperate moment of scramble - but purchase is hopelessly lost, centrifugal force doing its inexorable work, body sliding outwards with a rush of fabric and leather.

And whatever concern he had felt up to this point is nothing compared to what he feels now - at finding himself suddenly and finally airborne.

The hapless horseman plummets from view like yet another lump of sandstone towards the rocks far below. Doomed figure followed by something else falling with him, final scream drowned in crash of waves.

Flecked with dreadful crimson, ripples start to spread. And spread.

There now comes the single mournful cry of a seabird – as the horse, having renegotiated its equilibrium following the unexpected loss of burden, comes shuffling to a halt on the clifftop. There it stands, alone in silhouette, whinnying gently towards the unforgiving ocean.