An early morning chill pricked at Matthew's lean muscular frame, as he stood contemplating on the task that stretched before him. A task, difficult in the extreme, and he shivered again as the realisation that he might soon be dead, began to gnaw at his forebrain like a dog persistently worrying a bone.
He felt slightly ill as a whiff of porpoise oil rose to assault his nostrils, but as the morning light started its slow incremental climb to full intensity, he tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach which had turned into cormorants diving headlong into the sea of his intestines. He knew he must be going, but he had an irrational twinge of near hysteria and he had the sudden urge to turn and charge up the beach to the safety of the tiny cubicle.
He shivered yet again, but padded forward across the shingle and slipped into the cold unwelcoming sea. Slightly ahead of him, he could hear the slap of the oars of the two man rowing boat as the first onrushing waves lifted its bow from the water, returning it just as suddenly to the following trough.
He concentrated on pressing on through the waves, determined to break through to the calmer and deeper water beyond, succeeding suddenly with a little start of surprise as his head and vision suddenly cleared.
The light was slightly brighter now, and the sounds of gulls wheeling overhead mingled with the crisp salt spray as the light wind lifted little petulant droplets from the tips of the waves callously tossing them skywards. Matthew focused, his arms and legs assuming a mechanical motion almost of their own accord as he gradually slipped forwards trailing the lonely rowboat moving slowly across the miles of desolate water stretching to the horizon.
Time blurred, and his thoughts turned to firstly to his eleven brothers and sisters and then to his father, a doctor, a man of great respect in his home town of Coalbrookdale. His father and mother though supportive of their son, had never really accepted or understood the driving ambition that drove their equally respected son, a Captain in the Merchant Navy and of the modern steamship