The Island

The day the colonist party of Wandsworth reached the new land was the day they doomed themselves to die. Their predescessors had founded countries of their own: America; and Australia. And the Wandsworth party was ready to make their own contribution to the Great British Empire. Some of the party had names for whatever new world they found. But none of those names would ever be repeated again by a living man.

Wandsworth had heard word of land southwest of Africa. The people who lived there would be backwards savages. If their land were to be conquered, which was its destiny, it would have been best to be conquered by the British. A new colony to add to the greatest power in the world.

When the party anchored their ship on the beach of the foreign land mass, they were greeted by the inhabitants. The inhabitants only ever had visitors less than once a generation. People who only knew the stories of the island as myth. The inhabitants didn’t know that skin could come so fair. Unlike other foreigners whom they killed without hesitation, they welcomed the colonists as gods. But that did nothing for the Wandsworth party.

Despite their proclivity to kill any stranger posing an unknown danger, the inhabitants had no need for weapons or defences. They had both in the form of an unseen agent. A potent virus that only they could withstand. The breath they breathed released the bane of any threat that was posed to them. The Wandsworth party started dying. They felt themselves gods, but God had sent them a plague.