Starlight & Promises

An uncharted island in the Furneaux Islands off Tasmania

1892

“S
milodon,”
he whispered, barely uttering the word.

“What?” Richard Colchester, sixth Earl of Stanbury, sharply turned his head. “Let me have the glass.”

James Truett grinned and slapped the spyglass in Richard’s outstretched hand. Richard cut him an annoyed look and examined the distant figure on the rock cairn. Heat coming off the sandy ground distorted the vision. Richard focused the glass again.

He gasped, and as a breeze stirred the heat waves, his eyes watered. He blinked away the moisture. A cat sat on the rocks—a cat as large as a lion. Richard laid the glass on the ground beside him and wiped his face and eyes with his handkerchief. Hesitating a moment to slow his heart, he picked up the glass again and studied the cat.

Sleek yet heavily muscled. An abundant dark mane ran along the ridge of a thick, arched neck. Bunched muscles moved under a tawny coat spotted with irregular white blotches. It moved, stretching out short front legs, warming its belly on the rock surface. Massive paws with long toes ending in sharp, nonretractable claws; a lean abdomen, plainly outlined by the ribs underneath; and powerful, densely packed rear haunches. Small, rounded ears set well back on a broad head. A wide, square muzzle, and dark green eyes, large and tilted at the outer corners. The cat washed its legs, taking leisurely swipes with its tongue, and the unmistakable gleam of eight-inch curved canines extended outside the mouth to below the jawline.

“My God.”
Richard sucked in a breath through parted lips. His hands shook, jiggling the glass, wavering the image. “‘Tis a bloody Smilodon.” He turned to his companion and grinned. “James, we’ve found a bloody Smilodon.”

For two hours, Richard recorded his observations, and James sketched the cat in detail. Though Richard’s primary interest centered on the island’s flora, something of this magnitude was impossible to ignore. He made notes as precisely as he would have done had the cat been a new bromeliad.

Comfortable in each other’s company, the two men—Richard a noted botanist; James a nature artist and disciple of Audubon—worked in silence. At thirty-five, James was ten years Richard’s junior. For twelve years they had traveled together through the world’s unknown corners, observing, recording, collecting samples, and sketching the plant life, producing detailed monographs with illustrations accurately depicting the vegetation of exotic locales. The scientific community eagerly awaited each new contribution.

When the cat moved on, Richard and James backed away from the sandy plain in the island’s interior and worked their way through the dense brush of the jungle toward the temporary camp they had established on the beach. A sultry breeze rippled through the thick foliage, carrying the meaty scents of decaying vegetation and the whistling calls of parakeets and cockatiels. A six-inch-long, rust red lizard scurried across their path, twirling its tail like a propeller. The trail it left on the sandy ground resembled a corkscrew. It halted at the edge of the trees, expanding its red throat sac in a display of miniature bravado. A long-tailed shrewlike animal shrieked overhead and swung off through the treetops. Still dazed by their discovery, Richard and James tramped along, their tongues stilled, each engrossed in his thoughts.

James suddenly stopped—as he was often wont to do when he sighted a strange plant—causing Richard to nearly tread upon his heels. He gestured expansively with one hand. “Just think, Richard, if that storm hadn’t caught us and blown the ship off course to this island, we never would have had this opportunity. We should give thanks to the Lord for His intervention.”

“Fate moves in mysterious ways, as do the vagaries of the ocean in these waters,” Richard replied with a wry smile. “In this case, perhaps we should extend our thanks to Neptune.”

James chuckled. “Ah, Richard, always the heretic.”

Hobart, Tasmania