Dan Simmons - The Terror

Crozier and Sophia Cracroft had ridden out that next April morning in 1843 to see the Platypus Pond.

Crozier had expected they’d be taking a buggy as they did for sojourns into Hobart Town, but Sophia had two horses saddled for them and a pack mule loaded with picnic things. She rode like a man. Crozier realized that the dark “skirt” she’d appeared to be wearing was actually a pair of gaucho trousers. The white canvas blouse she wore with it was somehow both feminine and rugged. She wore a broad-brimmed hat to keep the sun off her skin. Her boots were high, polished, soft, and must have cost roughly a year of Francis Crozier’s captain’s salary.

They rode north, away from Government House and the capital, and followed a narrow road through plantation fields, past penal colony pens, and then through a patch of rain forest and out into open higher country again.

“I thought that platypuses were found only in Australia,” said Crozier. He was having trouble finding a comfortable position in the saddle. He’d never had much opportunity or reason to ride. It was embarrassing when his voice vibrated as he jounced and bounced. Sophia seemed completely at home in the saddle; she and the horse moved as one.

“Oh, no, my dear,” said Sophia. “The strange little things are found only in certain coastal areas on the continent to our north, but all across Van Diemen’s Land. They’re shy though. We see none around Hobart Town any longer.”

Crozier’s cheeks grew warm at the sound of the “my dear.”

“Are they dangerous?” he asked.

Sophia laughed easily. “Actually the males are dangerous in mating season. They have a secret poisonous spur on their hind legs, and during the breeding season the spurs become quite venomous.”

“Enough to kill a man?” asked Crozier. He’d been joking about the comical little creatures he’d seen only in illustrations being dangerous.

“A small man,” said Sophia. “But survivors of the platypus’s spur say that the pain is so terrible that they would have preferred death.”

Crozier looked to his right at the young woman. Sometimes it was very difficult to tell when Sophia was joking and when she was serious. In this instance, he would assume that she was telling the truth.

“Is it breeding season?” he asked.

She smiled again. “No, my dear Francis. That is between August and October. We should be quite safe. Unless we encounter a devil.”

“The Devil?”

“No, my dear. A devil. What you may have heard described as a Tasmanian devil.”

“I have heard of those,” said Crozier. “They’re supposed to be terrible creatures with jaws that open as wide as the hatch on a ship’s hold. And they’re reputed to be ferocious – insatiable hunters – able to swallow and devour a horse or Tasmanian tiger whole.”

Sophia nodded, her face serious. “All true. The devil is all fur and chest and appetite and fury. And if you had ever heard one’s noise – one cannot really call it a bark or growl or roar, but rather the garbled gibbers and snarls one might expect out of a burning asylum – well, then I guarantee that not even so courageous an explorer as thee, Francis Crozier, would go into the forest or fields here alone at night.”

“You’ve heard them?” asked Crozier, searching her serious face again to see if she was pulling his leg.

“Oh, yes. An indescribable noise – absolutely terrifying. It causes their prey to freeze just long enough for the devil to open those impossibly wide jaws and to swallow its victim whole. The only noise as frightening may be the screams of its prey. I’ve heard an entire flock of sheep bleating and crying as a single devil devoured them all, one at a time, leaving not so much as a hoof behind.”

“You’re joking,” said Crozier, still staring at her intently to see if she was.

“I never joke about the devil, Francis,” she said. They were riding into another patch of dark forest.

“Do your devils eat platypuses?” asked Crozier. The question was serious, but he was very glad that neither James Ross nor any of his crewmen had been around to hear him ask it. It sounded absurd.

“A Tasmanian devil will and does eat anything ,” said Sophia. “But once again, you are in luck, Francis. The devil hunts at night, and unless we get terribly lost, we should have seen the Platypus Pond – and the platypus – and had our lunch and returned to Government House before nightfall. God help us if we are out here in the forest come darkness.”

“Because of the devil?” asked Crozier. He’d meant the question to be light and teasing, but he could hear the undercurrent of tension in his own tone.

Sophia reined her mare to a halt and smiled at him – truly, dazzlingly, completely smiled at him. Crozier managed, not gracefully, to get his own gelding stopped.

“No, my dear,” said the young woman in a breathy whisper. “Not because of the devil. Because of my reputation .”

Before Crozier could think of anything to say, Sophia laughed, spurred her horse, and galloped ahead down the road.

There was not enough whiskey left in the bottle for two last glassfuls. Crozier poured most of it, held the glass up between him and the flickering oil lamp set on the inner partition wall, and watched the light dance through the amber liquid. He drank slowly.

They never saw the platypus. Sophia assured him the platypus was almost always to be seen in this pond – a tiny circle of water not fifty yards across, a quarter mile off the road in a thick forest – and that the entrances to its burrow were behind some gnarled tree roots that ran down the bank, but he never saw the platypus.

He did, however, see Sophia Cracroft naked.

They’d had a pleasant picnic at the more shaded end of the Platypus Pond, an expensive cotton tablecloth spread on the grass to hold the picnic basket, glasses, food containers, and themselves. Sophia had ordered the servants to pack some waterproof cloth-wrapped parcels of roast beef in what was the most expensive of all commodities here but the cheapest from whence Crozier had come – ice – to keep it from going bad during the morning’s ride. There were broiled potatoes and small bowls of a tasty salad. She’d also packed a very good bottle of Burgundy in with actual crystal glasses from Sir John’s crest-etched collection, and she drank more of it than did the captain.

After the meal they’d reclined just a few feet apart and talked of this and that for an hour, all the while looking out at the dark surface of the pond.

“Are we waiting for the platypus, Miss Cracroft?” asked Crozier during a short gap in their discussion of the dangers and beauties of arctic travel.

“No, I think it would have shown itself by now if it wanted us to see it,” said Sophia. “I’ve been waiting for an interval before we go bathing.”

Crozier could only look at her quizzically. He certainly had not brought beach bathing attire. He did not own beach bathing attire. He knew it was another one of her jests, but she always spoke in such evident earnestness that he was never 100 percent sure. It made her puckish sense of humour all the more exciting to him.

Extending her rather titillating joke, she stood, brushed some dead leaves from her dark gaucho pants, and looked around. “I believe I shall undress behind those shrubs there and enter the water from that grassy shelf. You are invited to join me in the swim, of course, Francis, or not, according to your personal sense of decorum.”

He smiled to show her he was a sophisticated gentleman, but his smile was unsteady.

She walked to the thick bushes without another glance back. Crozier remained on the tablecloth, lying half reclined and with an amused look on his carefully shaven face, but when he saw her white blouse suddenly lifted up by pale arms to be draped across the top of the tall shrub, his expression froze. But his prick did not. Beneath his corduroy trousers and too-short waistcoat, Crozier’s private part went from parade rest to top of the mizzen in two seconds.