Chapter 134 The Bird Cage
A few minutes later Slegg and Deng-shan deposited their chilled-to-the-bone
prisoner in a dark closet below decks and slammed the door shut behind her
before stalking off to make some last-minute preparations for the evening's
entertainment. After giving her captors sufficient time to leave the area,
Erika began to tug at the knob frantically, but in her heart of hearts she was
hardly surprised to learn that she had been locked in. She tried forcing the
door open by slamming into it with a bare shoulder, but the space was so
confined that she could scarcely turn around, much less build up the kind of
momentum it would have taken to challenge the solidity of the wooden door.
Surrounded by utter blackness, Erika sank to her knees in despair,
massaging the sore shoulder that had done battle with the door. She was seized
by a wave of silent sobbing for a minute or two as she contemplated the
hopelessness of her plight. Her chest grew heavy with emotion and her eyes
began to fill with tears as she reflected miserably on how her life had changed
in the last twenty-four hours. Had it been only last night that Daniel Kauffman
had held her in his arms, had pressed her soft body against his own, and had
spoken of the promise of days to come? But now the days to come promised only
an endless cycle of mistreatment and abuse at the ends of the men of the Yangtze
Dragon and -- once they had arrived at his isolated island -- the evil General
Wang and his followers.
Now that she was no longer under constant attack by the relentless storm,
the dozens of minor injuries that she had sustained in the last few hours began
to gnaw anew at her body. Her back and shoulders were sore from shoveling, and
would, she knew, be even sorer tomorrow. She ran her fingers gently down the
fronts of her thighs. Despite her bout with the freezing rain, the band of
thigh-flesh that had borne the brunt of the baron's vicious sword-stroke still
felt warm to her touch.
She felt the heat of Slegg's lashes to the backs of her thighs anew as she
gingerly dragged herself back to her feet, wiping at the tears that would avail
her naught. In rising, her rounded bottom scraped against a shelf behind her,
reminding her that Slegg's whip had all but flayed a layer of flesh from her
tender backside.
Her private parts still ached from the brutal pounding she had endured at
the hands of Deng and Slegg, but it was her soft, womanly breasts that seemed to
have suffered the most. Even in the utter blackness of the closet she could
still picture the gleaming steel of the baron's sword slamming into her
sensitive nipples; she knew that she would relive that dreadful mental image in
nightmares for months, perhaps years to come.
If she were somehow able to survive at all.
She gently cradled her throbbing love-mounds in her hands, unable to dispel
the memory of Slegg's stinging rope-whip, the cruel pressure of Deng's hands and
teeth, the unequal battle with the coarse chunks of coal slag, and the
flesh-gouging punishment that Mao had meted out with the implements he had found
in Deng-shan's toolpouch.
Stripping off what was left of her wet, tattered shirt, Erika used its
ragged edge to swab at the secret parts of her body that the wind and the rain
had been unable to reach, anxious to cleanse herself of the foul detritus left
by her ruthless ravishers. She wrung the well-soaked shirt out carefully and
hung it over the knob to dry. Then, after managing with some difficulty to turn
and face the shelf she had felt behind her, she began to feel around blindly.
She quickly gathered that she had been thrown into a wide but shallow storage
closet which was lined with shelves that contained blankets, folded-up hammocks,
and bins which contained, judging by the feel and smell of their contents, rice,
and tea, and other staples.
Removing a coarse woolen blanket from one of the shelves she toweled her
shivering body vigorously, and then dried her golden hair. Draping the
makeshift towel casually over her shoulder, she explored the shelves some more,
hoping to find a tool, a weapon, anything that might help her escape the
clutches of the men of the Yang-tze Dragon. Even a crust of bread would have
been of some solace since she had had nothing to eat in many hours. But the
only thing her fumbling fingers could find that could possibly be of any use was
a piece of cotton sheeting, about the size of a pillowcase, which she proceeded
to wrap around her loins, hoping to preserve her modesty, however briefly, when
her captors returned.
The bare-breasted blonde had just finished knotting the low-slung
loin-cloth on one hip when she heard a loud rattling at the door. Bracing
herself for the worst, she held her breath as the door swung open, letting in a
little light and revealing the leering figures of Jasper Slegg and Deng-shan
standing in the doorway.
"Ah! 'ere's the star of our little swar-ay, my friend," Slegg chuckled, as
he held up the whale-oil lantern he carried so as to get a better look at his
comely prisoner. "Enjoyin' the weather on our little cruise, are ye, milady?"
he added in a mocking voice as he adjusted the crude bandage he'd tied around
his brow. Then he reached out and snatched away the damp woolen blanket on
Erika's shoulder that partially concealed her left breast.
Grunting with pleasure at the sight of Erika's nude breasts, Slegg had
just finished placing the lantern on one of the closet shelves when he noticed
her improvised loin-cloth. "So ye've found a ball gown in the armwahr, 'ave ye?"
Slegg jeered as he eyed Erika's scanty attire. "Might I 'ave a look at the
lining, milady?" he added mockingly as he fought off her resisting hands and
reached under the loin-cloth. He groped between her legs for a moment, probing
her rain-damp slit with a hand weathered by wind and sea. Then he spun Erika
around and pinned her against the closet shelf while he raised the skimpy cloth
halfway up the buttocks he'd flogged and ravished so thoroughly.
"What d'ye think, Deng?" he asked as he ran his hands over Erika's rounded
bottom-cheeks. Erika winced in pain as the leering Englishman probed the edges
of the welts he'd etched into her defenseless derriere with his rope-whip. "I
sort of like the 'ide-and-seek look, meself. And besides, we don't want the men
to go 'arf blind all at once, do we now?" Slegg gave her springy asscheeks a
final squeeze before letting the loin-cloth fall and pulling Erika back around
to face him. "But don't go expectin' too many favors from Jasper Slegg, dearie.
I ain't drawn a good breath since ye kicked me in the bloody ribs. Let's go,
sweetie. It's time for the show, and we wouldn't want ye to be late for yer
day-boo, now, would we?"
Dreading the prospect of being put on display to satisfy the depraved
pleasures of the crewmen of the accursed Yang-tze Dragon, Erika instinctively
reached out and grabbed hold of the uprights supporting the shelving behind her
and held on for dear life.
As Erika stood there with arms extended, her captors eyed the delicious
body which was now bathed in the soft light given off by the lantern on the
shelf to her left. The fierce wrath of the gale and the driving rain seemed to
have sanded most of the weals from Erika's finely-sculpted physique. She stood
with her feet planted well apart, her left leg bare to the knot at her hip, her
arm and shoulder muscles taut with the effort of clinging to the uprights. Only
a few faint striations from the rope-whip marred the perfection of her long legs
and bare belly. Higher still, regenerative nature had done much to restore the
pristine beauty of the opulent, proud-thrusting, breasts that had been so
ill-treated below decks. Aside from the pinkish bands left by the baron's
sword, a few thin, red-edged lacerations that Mao had gouged into her left
breast with the screwdriver, and some painful-looking indentations around her
right nipple, the youthful beauty of Erika's sumptuous pleasure-globes had been
completely restored.
Tearing his eyes from the lushness of her breasts, Deng-shan tried to
detach one of Erika's outstretched arms from its death grip on the shelf-post
for a moment or two without success. Then, losing patience, he cursed and drove
a clenched fist into Erika's unprotected solar plexus.
"Unngghh!" Erika groaned in misery, but she managed to maintain her grip on
the uprights, even though her upper body doubled over in agony, permitting the
ear-ringed sailor to trap her swollen nipples between his clutching fingers.
Deng's tightened his grip on Erika's brutalized breast buds and tugged at
them until the tattoos on his muscular forearms seemed likely to split apart, as
he sought to tear her away from the shelf. Erika could feel her grip loosening
as a result of the dreadful pressure on her nipples, and with a heroic effort
she pulled her breasts free of the punishing fingers, and turned her back on
him, using both hands now to cling to one of the shelf uprights.
"Allow me, Monsoor," Slegg snarled as he reached into Deng's toolbag and
withdrew out a short-handled chisel. "You'd do well to come along nice and
well-behaved-like, Princess," he rasped as Deng grabbed a handful of Erika's
still damp mane and pulled her head back painfully. When Erika still refused to
relax her grip on the post, Slegg drove the blade of the chisel into the back of
her thigh.
"Aaaaghhh!" Erika cried out in pain, but it was only when she felt Slegg
ease the edge of the cold steel under the loincloth and into her sensitive
buttock cleft and muttered "Last chance, dearie," that she conceded defeat and
released her grip on the upright.
"Now, isn't that better?" Slegg said in a jeering voice as Erika turned to
face her tormentors. "All friends now, eh?"
But as soon as Erika had completed her turn, Deng was reaching for her
breasts again. Digging his punishing fingers deep into her pink-nippled globes,
the muscular sailor dragged her out of the closet and into the narrow
passageway.
Just as Deng slid behind her to slip a length of cord around her slender
wrists, Erika, counting her blessings that she was apparently being allowed to
keep the loincloth, reached for the soggy shirt that she had hung over the
doorknob.
"You won't be needing that, slut!" Deng scolded her as he pulled her body
back against his own and slid his callused hands up over Erika's midsection and
cupped her aching breast-melons from behind. "Not for the kind of party we've
got in mind."
Meanwhile Jasper Slegg was eyeing her thoughtfully. After a moment or two,
the first mate picked up the nearly frontless shirt and turned it over in his
hands, making note of both its wetness and its thinness. "Let 'er put it on,
Deng."
Erika did her best to cover herself with the thin garment despite the large
scrap that had been torn out of its center; it took her a couple of attempts to
knot the two strips of cloth midway between her half-revealed breasts. Slegg
nodded appreciatively, pleased with the way the wet fabric accentuated the
impetuous thrust of her breasts and drew attention to her prominent nipples.
********
A few minutes later, the two men dragged their scantily-clad captive into a
low-ceilinged room that was something of a forest of timber and bamboo. Bamboo
cages of various sizes filled one side of the room while the salient feature of
the other half of the room were the sturdy wooden cross-beams that formed the
ceiling. Beneath them, a number of lattice-like frames of wood and bamboo were
stacked against the walls. Coils of rope of all kinds hung from hooks on the
wall, and a number of pieces of oddly-shaped framework whose function she could
not divine, were scattered around the room. A huge sheet of sail-cloth
partitioned the visible part of the room from an adjoining area.
"D'ye like it Princess? Here's where we keep our beauties 'til we arrive
at our port-of-call. We dropped off a new shipment just last night, which is why
ye've got the whole room to yerself tonight."
Erika shuddered as her blue eyes took in the numerous cages, some of which
seemed too small to house a human body, even that of a petite young woman. How
many female captives, she wondered, had spent nights of stark terror and
degradation in the Bird Cage before being sold or bartered to the flesh brothels
of China's treaty ports?
"Let's start 'er off with the Screw, Deng," Slegg muttered, "and then you
can round up the boys."
The two men dragged Erika bodily across the room toward a tall T-shaped
bamboo cross and a pair of floor-mounted shackles spaced about two feet apart,
to which her ankles were quickly cuffed. She stood, facing the cross and almost
touching it, while her bound wrists were extended above her so that she was
forced to stand on her toes. It was only than that Erika noticed that the
waist-high crossbar of the T had a circular opening that was large enough to put
a hand through. As she pondered that peculiar circumstance, Slegg growled, "I
can take it from here, Deng - go get the others," before he attended to the last
few details of his pageant...
********
After completing his preparations, Jasper Slegg stood back, pleased with
his work and lifted Erika's loin cloth and slapped her naked bottom with
authority. "That should do it, Princess. Be a good girl tonight, and help
uncle Jasper make a few quid, and maybe I'll forget how ye tried to cave in me
ribs. The Laird said no more rough stuff, but that don't mean me and the boys
can't 'ave a bit o' fun, now, does it?" He gave Erika's springy bottomcheeks
another stinging slap and then slipped through an opening in the canvas that
separated the two parts of the room.
Shackled, standing on tiptoes on the rolling planks of the lower deck and
otherwise encumbered, Erika was uncomfortable but not really in pain as she
listened to the sound of foot-falls and expectant murmurs from behind the
canvas. The audience that was about to witness her degradation had begun to
assemble....
********
Jasper Slegg stared at the expectant faces that had filled the half of the
room on the other side of the canvas. Twelve or fifteen crewmen were milling
around, many of them straining to catch a glimpse of what was going on in the
adjacent room through the tantalizingly small gap in the curtain that Slegg had
artfully contrived.
"What about it, lads?" he asked in a barker's voice. "Which of ye's got
some red blood in 'is veins and wants to get a closer look at what Deng and me
've got 'idden away in the next room?" He waited for Deng-shan to translate his
words, however loosely, into Chinese, as he was to do throughout the evening.
"It's only a shillin', boys - and where were ye going to spend them, anyway, out
here in the middle of the bloody China Sea?"
Several of the men came forward, offering coins to Deng-shan. In the
chaotic aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion, there was no single dominant
currency in the treaty ports of coastal China. Chinese taels minted in half a
dozen provinces and silver sycee money were traded widely for Spanish reals,
Mexican silver pesos and Japanese yen, not to mention marks, shillings, dollars
and francs. The wily Deng-shan had made it his business to stay abreast of the
relative values of these various coinages, and was in a position to add a modest
personal commission to nearly every transaction he brokered. Coins from half a
dozen lands found their way into Deng's metal box as his patrons lined up before
the narrow opening in the curtain.
"What's the matter with the rest of ye? Are ye going to let a little
storm shrink yer manhood? You all saw 'er on deck this arternoon, didn't ye?
Wearin' the cap'n's shirt and fillin' it out as nice as a man could want?"
Slegg paused and gave his audience a disdainful glance. "Are ye tellin'
me that ye don't want to get a better look at those beauties? I've stopped at
every port of call from Cape Town to Calcutta, gents, and I swear that Nelson
'imself never saw a finer pair of cannon! See for yerselves if you don't
believe me! It's only a British shillin', mate. What 'ave ye got to lose?"
********
Erika blushed and shifted her weight as the procession of men began to
file into the room behind her. She could almost feel the heat of their eyes on
the backs of her legs. With her arms elevated above her head, the muscles in
her bare thighs were given added curve and definition, and she sensed that her
loin cloth had ridden up over the base of her buttocks.
"What did I tell ye, lads? Take a look at these legs." Slegg had taken
a position alongside Erika now and was running a coarse hand over the backs of
her thighs. "Long and lovely, ain't they?" he enthused as he eased his hand
upward, letting his eager-eyed audience see just a hint of Erika's lovely bottom
cleft. "And soft as shantung silk, gents, soft as silk."
"What about it, men?" Slegg said cajolingly as he let the loincloth fall
and gave Erika's derriere a good squeeze through the fabric. "How'd ye like a
closer look at this sweet arse, boys? Me and Deng 'ave got a nice show planned
for any of you blokes that's still got a good pair of bollocks. For the
pittance of a shillin' a scene. Seven scenes for seven shillings, mates. Seven
be-yoo-ti-ful scenes of a beauty in bondage. Nothin' 'eld back, lads - for
those who ain't too lily-livered to watch, our sweet little frowlein'll soon be
wearing nothing but rope and bamboo." Slegg looked over the crewmen, confident
that he had them in the palm of his hand. "Rope and bamboo, gents -- just the
way ye want to see her. Step right up, lads! The first man to dip 'is hand into
'is pocket 'll get the best view!"
Deng-shan had apparently done a good job of capturing the flavor of Slegg's
salacious overture, for the crewmen were now jostling with each other to be the
first to throw coins into Deng's metal box.
"What's the matter with the rest o' ye?" Slegg barked irritably at the
stragglers. "D'ye think you'll get a stiffie just from 'earin' these blokes,"
here Slegg gestured toward those who had already paid, "tellin' you 'ow her tits
jiggled when I 'ung 'er from her bloody 'eels?"
Erika shivered as Slegg encouraged a man who had removed a coin from a bag
at his belt. "That's it, mate. Ye don't 'ave to pay the 'ole seven shillings at
once; pay as ye go, men, that's the ticket." Slegg turned and looked back at
Erika's long legs and wiped at his mouth. "But I'll bet 'arf a crown to a Welsh
farthing that there ain't a man among ye, who won't want to stay for the whole
show, once they've seen the first act."
"All right, ye cheap barstards," Slegg grumbled to the few remaining
hold-outs. " 'ave another look then." Slegg, ever the showman, inched the
skimpy loin-cloth up over Erika's heart-shaped derriere a fraction of an inch at
a time, tempting the sailors with the delights that he had already enjoyed. As
he eased the garment higher, there was a sudden intake of breath as the men
began to take note of the jagged marks he had inscribed on pale Erika's buttocks
with the rope-whip. As Slegg glanced around the hold, looking from face to
face, he had little doubt that there was not a man in the room who did not
experience a twinge of raw envy. Nor did he believe that a single one of them
would have stepped forward to prevent him from raping Erika's sweet young arse
when she had been bent so provocatively over the coal cart.
He smiled to himself as he studied his audience. One of the Chinese
sailors was running his thick tongue over his lips as he eyed Erika's saucy
bottom, while a goggle-eyed Malayan was almost beet-red with excitement. The
ship's cook, an aging, sallow-faced Vietnamese, rubbed a bony yellow hand
surreptitiously across the tent that had formed at the front of his trousers
like the foresail of a three-masted junk.
Erika, dreading the events to come, felt a blush of shame suffuse the
length of her body, warming the female flesh that was still a bit chilled from
the squall. A long, shuddering tremor swept through her body as she awaited the
beginning of Jasper Slugg's carnival of suffering.
As for Jasper Slegg, the mercenary peddler of female flesh was in his
element.
