Peeking through the branches of his shrub, Crozier waited until the lady’s back was turned as she swam toward the far shore, and then, with much speed and clumsiness, he threw himself forward into the water, stumbling more than diving, abandoning all grace in his single-minded effort to get his treacherous prick beneath the water and out of sight before Miss Cracroft turned her face his way.

When he surfaced, spluttering and blowing, she was treading water twenty feet away and smiling at him.

“I’m delighted you decided to join me, Francis. Now if the male platypus emerges with his venomous spur, you can protect me. Shall we inspect the burrow entrance?” She pivoted gracefully and swam toward the huge tree where it overhung the water.

Vowing to keep at least ten – no, fifteen – feet of open water between them, like a foundering ship surrendering to a lee shore, Crozier dog-paddled after her.

The pond was surprisingly deep. As he stopped twelve feet from her and treaded water clumsily to keep his head above the surface, Crozier realized that even here at the edge, where roots from the large tree came down five feet of steep bank into the water and tall grasses hung over casting afternoon shadows, Crozier’s flailing feet and seeking toes could not at first find purchase on the bottom.

Suddenly Sophia was coming toward him.

She must have seen the panic in his eyes; he did not know whether to back-paddle furiously or just somehow warn her away from his condition of prick-rampant, because she paused mid-breaststroke – and he could see her white breasts bobbling beneath the surface – nodded to her left, and swam easily toward the tree roots.

Crozier followed.

They hung on to the roots, only about four feet from each other, but the water was blessedly dark below chest level, and Sophia pointed to what might have been a burrow opening, or just a muddy indentation, in the bank between the tangle of tree roots.

“This is a camping or bachelor burrow, not a nesting burrow,” said Sophia. She had beautiful shoulders and collarbones.

“What?” said Crozier. He was happy – and mildly amazed – that his power of speech had returned, but less than satisfied by the odd, strangled sound of the syllable and by the fact that his teeth were chattering. The water was not cold.

Sophia smiled. A strand of dark hair was plastered along one of her sharp cheeks. “Platypuses make two kinds of burrows,” she said softly, “this kind – what some naturalists call a camping burrow – which both the male and female use except during breeding season. The bachelors live here. The nesting burrow is dug out by the female for the actual breeding, and after that deed is performed, she excavates another small chamber to act as a nursery.”

“Oh,” said Crozier, clinging to the root as tightly as he had ever clung to any ship’s line while two hundred feet up in the rigging during a hurricane.

“Platypuses lay eggs, you know,” continued Sophia, “like reptiles. But the mothers secrete milk, like mammals.”

Through the water he could see the dark circles in the centres of the white globes of her breasts.

“Really?” he said.

“Aunt Jane, who is something of a naturalist herself, believes that the venomous spurs on the hind legs of the male are used not only to fight other male platypuses and intruders, but to hang on to the female while they are swimming and mating at the same time. Presumably he does not secrete the venom when clinging to his breeding partner.”

“Yes?” said Crozier and wondered if he should have said No? He had no idea what they were talking about.

Using the tangle of roots, Sophia pulled herself closer, until her breasts were almost touching him. She laid her cool hand – a surprisingly large hand – flat against his chest.

“Miss Cracroft…,” he began.

“Shhhh,” said Sophia. “Hush.”

She shifted her left hand from the root to his shoulder, hanging from him as she had hung from the tree root. Her right hand slid lower, pressing across his belly, touching his right hip, then coming back to his centre and going lower again.

“Oh, my,” she whispered by his ear. Her cheek was against his now, her wet hair in his eyes. “Is this a venomous spur I’ve found?”

“Miss Cra-…,” he began.

She squeezed. She floated gracefully so that suddenly her strong legs were on either side of his left leg, and then she lowered her weight and warmth, rubbing against him. He raised that leg slightly to buoy her up and keep her face above water. Her eyes were closed. Her hips ground, her breasts flattened against him, and her right hand began to stroke the length of him.

Crozier moaned, but it was only an anticipatory moan, not one of release. Sophia made a soft sound against his neck. He could feel the heat and wetness of her nether regions against his raised leg and thigh. How can anything be wetter than water? he wondered.

Then she moaned in earnest, and Crozier closed his eyes as well – sorry that he could not continue seeing her but having no choice – she pressed herself hard against him once, twice, a third downward-pressing time, and her stroking became hurried, urgent, expert, knowing, and demanding.

He buried his face against her wet hair as he throbbed and pulsed into the water. Crozier thought the pulsing ejaculation might never end, and – if he had been able – he would have apologized to her at once. Instead, he moaned again and almost lost his grip on the tree root. They both bobbled, their chins dripping beneath the waterline.

What confused Francis Crozier most at that moment – and everything in the universe confused him right then, while nothing in the universe bothered him – was the fact of the lady’s downward-pressing, her thighs strong around him, her cheek pressed hard against his own while she closed her eyes so tightly, and her own moan. Certainly women could not feel the kind of intensity that men do? Some of the doxies had moaned, but certainly that had been only because they knew the men liked it – it had been obvious that they felt nothing.

And yet…

Sophia pulled back, looked into his eyes, smiled easily, kissed him full on the lips, raised her legs into an almost jackknife, kicked off from the roots, and swam for the shore where her clothes lay on the mildly quaking bush.

Incredibly, they dressed, picked up their picnic things, packed the mule, mounted, and rode all the way back to Government House in silence.

Incredibly, that evening during dinner, Sophia Cracroft laughed and chatted with her aunt, Sir John, and even with the unusually loquacious Captain James Clark Ross, while Crozier sat mostly silent and staring at the table. He could only admire her… what did the Frogs call it? – her sangfroid, while Crozier’s attention and soul felt precisely as his body had at the moment of his endless orgasm in the Platypus Pond – atoms and essence scattered to every corner of the universe.

Yet Miss Cracroft did not act aloof toward him nor offer any sense of reproof. She smiled at him, made comments to him, and attempted to include him in the conversation just as she did every evening in Government House. And certainly her smile toward him was a little warmer? More affectionate? Even smitten? It had to be so.

After dinner that night, when Crozier suggested a walk in the garden, she begged off, pleading a previous engagement of cards with Captain Ross in the main parlour. Would Commander Crozier care to join them?

No, Commander Crozier begged off in return, understanding from the warm and easy undertones in her warm and easy surface banter that all must be kept normal in Government House that evening and until the two of them could meet to discuss their future. Commander Crozier announced loudly that he had a bit of a headache and would turn in early.

He was awake, dressed in his best uniform, and walking the halls of the mansion before dawn the next day, certain that Sophia would have the same impulse of meeting early.