Birth Of A Nation

26 January 1788

Several wooden ships with tall masts and big white sails sail into a huge river mouth, surrounded by rolling hills on all sides. They drop their anchors, and, before long, a row boat is lowered over one side, a whole heap of people get in, and they start rowing to the shore.

On the water all around them there are dozens of canoes with people in them who are fishing and doing various things. Smoke is curling off the canoes, which have small fires burning in them, and the people are using traps and nets and spears. At the sight of the big ships they turn away and head towards shore.

In the wooden row boat heading towards the shore there’s a strange collection of people. Some are barely covered in rags, and they are bent over the oars and are pulling the boat closer to land. Others are dressed in bright red coats, and they are holding muskets, not doing anything else. In the front of the boat is a bloke, standing up, one foot in the bottom of the boat, the other on top of the bow, hands planted on his hips, face turned towards the shore. He too is wearing a red coat, as well as white tights and a white wig. There is a faint smell of piss and shit that hangs around him. Next to him stands another bloke who is holding a stick with a rag tied to it; the rag appears to be blue, red and white.

The boat reaches the shore, slides onto the sand, and the bloke with the wig jumps out, landing on the sand. He takes three big strides forwards, stops and looks around, left to right and back again. He lifts his chin up in the air, puts his hands on his hips again and strikes a pose. Selfies haven’t been invented yet, but if they had he’d be taking a few now. A cloud of flies appears from out of nowhere and starts busily buzzing around his head, attracted by the smell of shit. Several crawl into his ears and start laying eggs. He deflates a little bit, waves ineffectively at the flies, and turns around, flapping his arms and snapping orders at the other people now getting out of the boat, carrying muskets, cutlasses, pistols, and the stick with the rag on it.

Meanwhile the people from the canoes have pulled up on shore too, have gathered into a group, and are now coming towards where the people with the red coats are moving around. They are wearing a belt of twisted twine around their waists, from which is suspended a collection of items made of wood, skin and bone, and are wearing nothing else. Several of them are balancing dead fish on top of their black fuzzy hair, and a lot of them are carrying long straight sticks. There are blokes there, as well as women and children of all sizes, all in the nude. They move forwards until they get close to where the people in the red coats are, then they stop. They shuffle around a bit, discussing something among themselves, then one bloke steps forward and approaches the people from the row boat.

The bloke with the white wig has spied them coming their way, and he now moves forwards towards them, along with the fella carrying the stick with the rag, and another bloke in a red coat carrying a musket. He looks the bloke in front of him up and down a bit. He notices the dead fish on his head, the bushy beard, the long sticks in his hand, and, more particularly, the lack of clothing. He looks past him to the group of people waiting a bit further, and his gaze wanders over the naked women and children. Especially the women. He can’t believe his eyes. His cock is going rock hard and he almost comes in his pants at the sight of so many tits and hairy bits between legs.

He’s never seen a naked woman before. Back home in England he’s been married for ten years to a woman of devout and fervent christian persuasion, as is becoming, fetching and appropriate for women, although not, of course, for men. When they sleep together in their damp bed beneath their leaking roof, under five layers of blankets, she wears a white night suit that covers her from the top of her buttoned up collar right down to the bottom of her frill-enshrined fat ankles. He’s never seen her take it off and does not, in truth, know if she ever actually does. Her night suit has a hatch with a fluffy ribbon in her crotch area which she, grudgingly and reluctantly and only after all the candles have been blown out, lowers once a fortnight to give him access to her, after which he goes about his business with much grunting, moaning and panting, while she lies flat on her back, crunches the sheet in her hands, squeezes her eyes tightly shut, grinds her teeth, and recites Hail Marys over and over again while she waits for him to finish.

For the last nine months it has taken the ships to sail here he’s been fucking the cabin boy, bent double over the map table in the captain’s quarters, and he’s just about had a gut full of his dick smelling of shit all the time. More to the point and more importantly, he’s also running out of perfume to mask the smell, and it’s becoming embarassing. The women in front of him are lean and muscly, their black skin is taut and clean, and the tits on the younger ones are so pert and pointy he’s close to a heart attack just looking at them. His mind is running feverishly hot with ideas of just exactly what he wants to do with them. Small columns of steam are slowly rising up from his ears and from underneath his collar, and several dozens of the flies buzzing around his head frizzle, sizzle and fry in the steam and drop dead on the ground.

He turns to the bloke in front of him, scrapes his throat a bit and says:

‘We just got here. We got off that ship over there.’

He points vaguely over his shoulder in the general direction of the ships. The bloke in front of him nods sagely and says:

‘Yeah. We saw that.’

‘We come from England.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Long way over that way.’

‘Ah yeah.’

The bloke in the wig scratches his nuts. They’ve been giving him hell, and he’s been picking crawlies out of his pubes for months. The bloke with the dead fish on his head sticks his left pinkie in his ear and wriggles it around a bit. He pulls a bit of wax and a few flies out and flicks it all away. In the middle distance a choir of cicadas strikes up a steady hum. The bloke with the white tights, which, upon closer investigation, are generously stained with yellow patches around the crotch area, rubs his nose, takes a swipe at a fly, misses, and says:

‘This is beautiful country around here’

The bloke in front of him pulls up one foot, places it halfway on the other leg, leans forward on the three long sticks he’s carrying, and says:

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

The fella in the wig and tights squirms a bit, then appears to reach a decision. He straightens up, scratches his arse and clears his throat again, and says:

‘I want it all. I’m gonna take it, the whole lot of it. It’s mine now.’

The black bloke in front of him leans a bit closer on his long stick, squints at him, and says:

‘Like fuck it is. This is our country. Fuck off back to your own country.’

Wigman lifts up his chin now, the way he was taught to do at admiralty school to show onlookers that he was of high and immaculate breeding. He beckons at one of the blokes behind him and says:

‘Hey mate, pass me that musket.’

The bloke behind him complies. Wigman takes the musket, adopts a wide stance with his feet, and points the musket at the chest of the bloke leaning on his stick in front of him. He cocks the hammer, puts his finger on the trigger, and says:

‘See this thing mate? This thing means this is now my country.’

The bloke with the dead fish on his head looks at him. He looks at the musket pointed at him. He shakes his head and says:

‘What, you got a stick? I’ve got three sticks.’

He puts his foot back on the ground, lifts up his three long sticks and points them at Wigman, who says:

‘Yeah, but my stick’s better. Watch this.’

And with that he pulls the trigger.

‘KAPOW’

Deadfishman gets hit full in the chest by the bullet from the musket, flies backwards and falls on the ground, blood squirting out of a huge gaping hole in his chest.

‘Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh .... eurheurheurheuraaaarrrgh .... you cunt .... gurgle gurgle gurgle’

Behind him the group of people that came with him start to scream; some turn and run away, some come forwards and start throwing their long sticks. Wigman spins around and barks orders:

‘Shoot! Quick! Shoot the blokes, but don’t touch the women! Round them up so they can’t get away!’

The blokes in the red coats fire muskets at the people in front of them. Clouds of gunpowder smoke drift up to the sky. Several people fall down on the ground. Women snatch up kids and run away, but get waylaid by other blokes in red coats, and by some of the fellas dressed in rags, who grab them, hold them, wrap ropes around them. Within minutes it’s all over.

Wigman turns to the bloke behind him again and hands him back the musket. He snaps his fingers imperiously and says:

‘Pass me the flag.’

The bloke who’s been carrying the rag on a stick now comes forwards and gives it to him. Wigman composes his face in an expression which he believes makes him look grave, serious and important, but which actually gives him the appearance of someone who hasn’t had a shit for a week and is feeling it, lifts the stick high above his head, turns his eyes skywards, and declaims in a loud, stentorious and pedantic voice:

‘I claim this country for the British Crown!’

And he rams the stick into the ground. The stick breaks and the rag falls into the dirt. Wigman rolls his eyes and says:

‘Fucking hell. Hey you, go get us another stick, and string this thing up properly.’

One of the blokes behind him rushes off. Wigman turns around and says:

‘All right. Now, get all these dead bodies and go dump ‘em in the water. Then erect my tent over there.’

He points to a shady area beneath some trees.

‘All those black blokes that we caught stick some chains and irons on them, and we’ll see if we can get a bit of work out of them.’

‘Ayay, sir.’

‘Then get all these women we captured, and have them brought over to my tent. I will interrogate them personally.’

He draws himself up to his full height, an impressive five foot one, and casts his eye around him approvingly. That had gone well. Things were looking good. The future lay ahead, bright and shiny, and he was pretty sure he’d be doing well out of it.

And so our country was founded.