East India by Colin Falconer

Author:Colin Falconer [Falconer, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Cool Gus Publishing
Published: 2014-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 44

The Great Southland

THE loneliest place on earth.

Ambroise slumped onto his knees on the sand. His uniform, soaked through in the storms, had dried in the wind and stiffened like tree bark. His mouth was gummy, his throat parched. What he wouldn't give for some of that putrid water from the ship's barrels now.

This vast emptiness chilled his soul. The coastline stretched away into the distance, and not a town, not a village, not a person or animal to be seen.

The skipper said no white men had ever left their footprints in these sands, as if this was a matter for pride. The Great Southland, everyone said, was quite empty, and so it seemed from the sea. But it was not empty at all.

It was full of flies. The moment they reached the beach, hordes of them descended and would not be denied. They were not like the flies in Holland, lazy and fat; they attacked with the gusto of bees, crawling into ears and eyes and noses. They even flew into his mouth, leaving him gagging.

And still not a drop of water.

Beyond the sandhills, all they saw were endless dry plains the colour of rust. Dotted about these plains were what they first took to be huts belonging to the natives, but when they came close up they found they were giant ant nests, hard as timber.

They returned to the beach and the skipper ordered some of the men to dig holes in the sand but at the bottom of these pits the water was salt as well and the men spat it out and cursed God.

Suddenly a shout from the foot of the limestone cliffs further down the beach. The bosun and his men had discovered some pools of fresh water. Ambroise stumbled after the others and when he got there he went at it shoulder to shoulder with the sailors, the water tasting so sweet and cool he wondered why he had ever in his life thought to drink wine.

They collected eighty kannen of water from the pools, about as much as they had when they left the Houtman Rocks just over a week before. It was not enough for salvation but it gave them all hope.

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