Chapter 133 Lashed by the Winds
With her wrists lashed together, Erika's ascent up the ladder-well was
hardly easy, and Slegg's continual pawing at her bare legs and naked buttocks
helped matters not at all. She was still several rungs from the top when she
felt a blast of cold air on her over-heated body. For a moment, the coolness of
the air seemed a godsend, restoring some of the strength and vigor the
sweltering stoking-room had stolen from her, but as Deng-shan pulled her up onto
the main deck, the coolness of the air turned to an icy chill. As he pulled her
body against his own, she realized that he had re-donned the tool belt, two
implements of which now were stained with the blood from her lacerated breasts.
The ship pitched violently, throwing them bodily against the cold metal
hull. Overhead, one flag bearing the ensign of Imperial China and a second
bearing the cross of St Andrew, snapped loudly in the rising evening gale,
giving evidence of the woeful state of vexillary etiquette observed by the
officers and men of the Yang-tze Dragon. A moment later Slegg heaved himself up
onto the main deck and sniffed at the air.
"Aye, there'll be rain enough to drown the steepletops inside the hour," he
mumbled to no one in particular as he rubbed at his tender ribs, just as the
head and shoulders of Yim re-appeared in the stairwell. Yim carried Mao's
slight body over his shoulder as if it were no heavier than a rucksack. Slegg
offered him a hand and pulled him up on deck, at which point the ape-visaged Yim
stalked somberly to the rail before depositing Mao's diminutive carcass into the
foaming sea. The powerfully-built sailor stared downward forlornly until his
friend's body had sunk beneath the seething waves and then he turned and gave
Erika a look that made her weak at the knees. Her only comfort was that she
knew that Yim dared not usurp the authority of the villainous first mate.
Just then that very mate, Jasper Slegg, called out to his companions. "Take
her forward and secure the bitter end of that rope," he snarled, pointing at the
rope around Erika's wrists, "to the bleedin' winch-bar." The crafty Englishman
shivered with cold as he pointed toward an ancient winch which stood on the
larboard side of the ship. At some time in the remote past it had apparently
been used to raise and lower a none-too-seaworthy- looking dinghy. "The rain'll
save us the bother of cleaning 'er up!"
After a few hasty hand signals, a momentary lull in the blustery
quartering wind allowed Yim, much the tallest of Erika's three tormentors, to
loop the end of her wrist-rope around an iron bar which ran across the top of
the winch-frame some seven feet off the ground. "Facin' windward, you lubbers!"
Slegg yelled disgustedly into the whistling wind. "Ye haven't the sense of a
dockpost betwixt the two of ye, do ye? Use a hitch-knot, ye ignorant
barstards!" he added, as the two Chinese wrestled with the rope. "And don't cut
this long-legged wildcat any slack neither!" he added, as he rubbed his tender
ribcage. A moment later Erika felt a strong tug on her shoulders as the ape-like
man with the pony tail secured the rope, pulling her up onto her tip-toes.
.
"Aye, that'll do 'er!" yelled Slegg approvingly, pleased by the way the
tightly-coiled rope had hoisted Erika's curvaceous body to a pleasing tautness.
"Enjoyin' the sea air, princess?" he added mockingly as he felt between her
squirming legs, while the wind turned the remnants of her torn shirt into a
ragged pennant streaming outward from her back. Huddling against the fierce
wind, the three men stared admiringly at Erika's semi-nude body, illumined in
the moonless night only by the faint gleam given off by a row of oil lamps that
lit up the nearby forecastle which housed the sailors' quarters.
And then the winds and sea rose up in earnest, as if angered by the fact
that this sumptuous blonde Nereid had dared to face their fury. Erika felt her
stomach do a somersault as the Yangtze Dragon was tossed on the foaming sea as
if it were a child's plaything. By ducking down below the rail Slegg and his
comrades were able to escape the worst of the blast of wind, but it struck
Erika's helpless body full on, almost flattening her majestic breasts with its
icy fury. "Ye both can stay on deck and keep this wench company if ye like,"
roared Slegg into the howling wind, but I'm haulin' my freezin' arse into the
cuddy!" A moment later the Englishman rose from his crouch and scurried toward
the narrow hatchway that opened into the forecastle, with Deng-shan and Yim in
tow behind him, leaving Erika to brave the storm by herself.
As the flesh-chilling winds whipped at her splendid body it seemed to Erika
that she had been transported, in the space of only a few minutes, and across a
distance of only a few yards, to a different world. A quarter of an hour
earlier her body had been drenched in sweat in the sweltering subtropical
atmosphere of the stoking room. But now she was as cold as she had been since
she had skied cross-country as a girl through the foothills of the Bavarian
Alps.
She twisted her body to the right to avoid the punishing sweep of the wind,
but the Aeolian gusts were unpredictable, seeming to swirl around the hollows
and angles and projections of the ship so that they could come at her from
several directions at once. No matter which way Erika turned, the winds lashed
at her legs and belly and breasts with the fury of an avenging deity. But the
whistling gale seemed to sense that she was near the point of exhaustion, for
suddenly it died down considerably, giving way to a light but chilling rain.
Within a few minutes the steady drizzle had left Erika's long blonde hair
sopping, her nearly-nude body eye-catchingly wet and the ship's ancient deck
decidedly slippery.
But the brief downpour was but a mere interlude, lasting for only a short
time before the winds picked up again even stronger than before, as if
re-invigorated by their brief surcease. A shivering Erika once again tried to
turn away from the bitter westerly, but as she did so she turned toward the
forecastle where she saw a trio of familiar faces. The salaciously smiling
faces of the men who had bound her to the winch were pressed against a row of
porthole-like windows a dozen feet away, their predatory glances knifing through
the bitterness of the gale.
And indeed Erika Weiss was a splendid sight. Dangling helplessly from
the sturdy winch-bar, her pale body was clad only in the shirt that trailed
behind her like the tail of a Cantonese kite, tossed helplessly in the blackness
of the night. Her freshly-showered skin sparkled with moisture as her long legs
and bare feet scrambled in vain to find a firm purchase on the treacherously wet
deck of the ship. Her whip-ravaged buttocks, her feminine loins and her
billowing breasts continued to be buffeted by gusts of wind which had chilled
her pink nipples into swollen tidbits that would have delighted the hands and
mouth of the Emperor himself, much less the misbegotten crew of the Yang-tze
Dragon.
Erika glared at her tormentors defiantly and turned away, only to find that
the rain had begun again. But this time the rain came not in a light drizzle,
but in sheets and torrents, pelting down on her bare, defenseless flesh with the
force of a hailstorm. The heavens themselves seemed to open up and the rain
came down in blinding bucketsful, only to be arrested by the swirling winds and
diverted into an almost horizontal attack on the Yangtze Dragon. The tempest
was relentless, pounding the shipworn vessel and its precariously-exposed
prisoner with its ruthless fury.
Erika cried out in anguish as the driving rain raked her flesh with
needle-like ferocity, scraping her bare skin with its wind-driven claws. Then,
to make matters even worse, the force of the gale began to create waterspouts,
tiny tornado-like whirlwinds of sea water, which the typhoon cast at her in
quick succession, adding, literally, saltwater to her many wounds. The
beautiful blonde writhed in her bonds in utter misery as the seawater splashed
against her rope-scourged body. Each gust of wind caused microscopic particles
of salt to embed themselves in her most delicate flesh, adding their saline
venom to her every bruise, every cut, every gash.
The storm tore at Erika's helpless body for another twenty minutes before
relenting, the rains falling off to first to a light drizzle and then dying away
altogether, as the winds died down to a brisk breeze. The exhausted blonde hung
from her ropes, her chest heaving, as a bank of clouds parted revealing a
gibbous moon whose reflected light bathed her in a pale glow. Only
half-conscious, Erika looked down at the still-roiling sea, utterly spent and
wishing only to sink beneath the endless waves.
But a stinging slap across her bare buttocks roused her from her gloomy
torpor. "Wake up, wench! The skipper might be as drunk as a laird, but the
night's still young!" Slegg leered at her through his good eye, while his hands
roamed freely over her thighs, belly and breasts. "Aye, the wind and the sea
scoured her up good as new. Ye're as fresh and clean as the Cliffs of Dover
now, ain't ye Princess?" he muttered as he ran a callused hand through Erika's
storm-drenched golden triangle before probing the soft puffy lips of her labia
with his middle finger. Erika squirmed miserably as Deng-shan, his circular
earrings gleaming in the moonlight, climbed up on the winch and made short work
of the knot that bound her wrists to the overhead bar. She felt Slegg's
disgusting tongue probing her ear as her weary arms were liberated. "Don't
think it's time for your beauty rest, just yet, my pretty little partridge.
It's the Bird Cage for you, blondie. Time for the rest of the boys on the ship
to have a little fun - and for me and my partner 'ere to pick up a guinea or
two."
