Kiwi Wars Read Online Free Page B

Kiwi Wars
Book: Kiwi Wars Read Online Free
Author: Garry Douglas Kilworth
Tags: Fiction, Historical, War & Military
Pages:
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they’d lend it to you all right – generous to a fault. Now where’s my three fingers of gin . . .?’
     
    While Jack was comfortably ensconced in the officers’ mess, his men were down at a beer tent, swilling ale. Wynter was on his third jug and Gwilliams, the barber from North America – the United States or Canada, no one really knew which – was not far behind. Sergeant King was with them, though he could have been in the senior NCO’s tent. King did not drink. He was trying to write a letter to his son Sajan, avoiding slops on a rickety table. Sajan was a child King believed he had fathered of an Indian mother. The biological connection was doubtful, but King had declared himself the parent and that, as far as he was concerned, was enough. Sajan was now in England at a Board School in Yorkshire, an exotic pupil amongst mill workers’ children.
    Gwilliams was thinking there were an awful lot of naval men around, but when he asked one of them why, he was told they were actually army. Apparently they had discarded their red coats in New Zealand and were wearing blue serge jumpers and blue trousers. It made a lot more sense to wear muted colours, since in this environment they were not fighting in neat lines, but battling through bush country.
    ‘Well, soldier, what do you reckon on this territory?’ Gwilliams asked of the man. ‘Farming country?’
    ‘Sheep pasture,’ replied the soldier, leaning his elbows on the table. ‘When I get done with the army, I’m like to settle here for good. Rolling hills, meadowland. It’s a paradise, man. You only got here today, but you wait till you get out there and see the main of it. Hot springs, too. Lakes the size of seas. Yes, sir, I’m going to send for the family and settle.’
    ‘A long way from anywhere, though?’ argued Gwilliams.
    ‘Everywhere’s a long way from anywhere, if it an’t home – but if it is, you got the best of it here. No wild beasts. No snakes. When the Maori came there was only birds in the forests – and what forests they are! Hardwood trees the size of cathedrals. Down in South Island they got mountains with snow on top, and glaciers, and them Norwegian inlets, what are they called . . . ?’
    ‘Fjords?’
    ‘That’s them,’ said the soldier, tapping the table now to emphasize his approval. ‘Man, you got everything here, right on the doorstep. I’d be as happy as a king if I had the missus here. Plan to get her out. Bay of Islands – prettiest piece of land and sea you ever saw.’ His face darkened for just a moment when a loud guffaw rent the air. ‘Only trouble at the moment is them damn colonists. Bunch of ruffians.’
    ‘But,’ Gwilliams pointed out, ‘if you settle here, you’d be one of ’em.’
    ‘Well, you hope they’ve been diluted by then, so to speak. Fact is, soldier, at the minute they’re the dregs. Not all of ’em, of course, but quite a sizeable lump of ’em. Ex-cons from New South Wales, drifters from the whaling ships, foreigners thrown out from their own countries. I can see the day we get a better class of citizen here – some good honest ones have come already – but there’s also a lot of riff-raff on the make.’
    By the bar, a big sawyer was lifting two men up by their collars and shaking them like dolls, asking those around him to wager how far he could throw them. The barman seemed afraid to intervene. Gwilliams did not blame him. The sawyer was twice the size of any man in the place. Wynter slammed down his ale jug and stood up. He was a thin wiry creature, pale and bent-looking though still in his thirties. One of his eyes had been pierced by a bush with three-inch-long thorns in India. There was a burn-crease in his temple where he had tried to shoot himself and missed. This poor creature looked like a straw that would break in a draught.
    Wynter caught the attention of the whole tavern by rolling up his sleeves and roaring out, ‘Now who’s the biggest bastard in the room?’
    The

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