Chapter 141 Shadows of Retribution
As Erika fell, her head struck the corner of the cabinet, stunning her
slightly. She watched, dazed, as Deng-shan burst through the curtain. The
ear-ringed Chinese handyman unleashed a string of curses, but he sized up the
situation quickly and began to tear at the heavy canvas curtain that divided the
two parts of the hold. Having taken one panel of it down, he carefully
approached the source of the fire and threw the canvas over the flaming oil
lamp, hoping to smother it, but with only partial success. Meanwhile Slegg had
seized the still-damp rag that had served as Erika's shirt. Unwinding it
quickly, he used it to beat at some of the trails of fire that led toward the
highly flammable piles of bamboo and wood debris that were stacked in opposing
corners of the Bird Cage.
But there were too many feathers of fire burning too quickly. As heat and
noxious smoke began to fill the room, a seeming battalion of Asian sailors came
racing down the ladder-well into the hold, jabbering and cursing excitedly in a
babel of languages as they tried to douse the fire. Some of the sailors used
their shirts as Slegg had done, others stomped wildly at the spreading fingers
of flame, and others stormed back up topside, hoping to find water.
As Erika's alertness returned she pulled herself up into a crouching
position, knowing that the smoke, the shouting, and the confusion offered her a
last best chance at escape. When she had faced the fury of the typhoon earlier,
she had noticed a small lifeboat a little aft of the winch-frame from which she
had hung. If she could reach it and find a way to lower it, perhaps she could
yet escape the floating chamber of sexual horrors in which she had been so
cruelly abused. But she would have to move swiftly. Even if the fire proved to
be stubborn, the chaos of the moment would eventually produce an organized
bucket brigade, thereby cutting off her only avenue of escape.
Her natural strength and quickness having been all but beaten out of her in
the preceding hours, Erika waited for another few seconds, staying low, trying
to breathe clean air, as she tried to summon up one brief burst of energy. Just
then half a dozen crewman who had gone looking for water clattered noisily down
the metal ladder that led to the upper deck, spilling half the water they were
carrying in all manner of pots and jugs. Some had tucked towels and blankets
under their arms, in hopes of using them to smother the flames.
Her heart pounding, Erika looked on anxiously through the thickening smoke
as the returnees re-entered the tumultuous battle against the spreading fire,
and noted that the stairwell was unattended for the first time since Slegg had
sounded the alarm. Erika stealthily edged toward the ladder through the
deafening cacophony of coughing, cursing sailors, trying all the while to judge
whether still others were about to descend into the hold.
Just then the shirt of one of the Malayans on the front lines of the fire
burst into flames. He screamed in pain and spun around and around like a fiery
dervish, until his blanket-bearing comrades knocked him to the deck, encircled
him, and attempted to smother the flames.
Sensing that this was her moment, Erika sprang toward the ladder and began
to climb it, though the horrors of her ordeal had etched agony into the muscles
in her arms and shoulders. But she bravely pulled herself upward, hand over
hand, looking back over her shoulder, gratified that for the moment only the
flames seemed to be in hot pursuit.
When she reached the top of the ladder she scampered through the open
hatch, onto the storm-slick foredeck of the ship. As she struggled to her feet
she heard running footsteps and voices and ducked behind a projection of the
forecastle, as two of the Foochow sailors, each armed with a brimming bucket of
water, raced toward the ladder that led below.
Once the mariners had disappeared below, Erika ran a hand through the
puddle in which she knelt and scooped a bit of water toward her dry lips. She
sighed pleasurably, and sipped again, hardly mindful of the aftertaste of oil
and metal. Then she rose up and began to make her way sternward, her bare feet
splashing wetly on the deck, a nocturnal sea-nymph, her pale body caressed
with a loving light by an adoring moon. Behind her, the flames in the hold
seemed to shoot their orange glow upward through the hatch, throwing eerie
shadows across the deck.
Erika crept stealthily along the port quarter, her naked body shivering
in the cool night air, her frayed nerves rattled by the constant din of shouts
and screams of pain coming from the men fighting the fire below. At one point
the voices seemed to come from directly behind her and she flattened herself
against the cool, metallic superstructure trembling uncontrollably and seeing
dark shadows everywhere.
Erika tried to calm herself. Just a few more steps and she would be there.
The dinghy she had seen earlier had been carelessly roped to the side of the
vessel; it should be child's play to set it adrift. But it had grown ominously
darker when the moon passed behind an unfriendly cloud. Would there be light
enough to free the boat from its mooring?
She was only a few steps from her goal when she heard Slegg's gravelly
voice rise from below and cut through the night. She froze, looking back over
her shoulder so that she could make out his words. "Good work, lads! All but
out now, and we saved most of the lumber, too! I'll see that ye get double
rations tomorr..." His voice trailed away for a moment but then rasped even
louder than before. "The wench! Where's the bloody wench?"
Erika's heart seemed to her to be pounding as loud as the ship's engines.
In a matter of seconds the crewmen would be crashing their way up the ladder to
the upper deck. She groped for the rail, enveloped by shadows that seemed to
swirl around her like dark vultures of the sea. Reaching the rail, she fumbled
desperately to free the dinghy from the hawser that secured it to the ship,
breathing a sigh of relief that the boat seemed to have survived the typhoon's
wrath fairly well.
As she undid the heavy rope, setting the boat free and allowing it to
drift clear of the ship, she calculated that if she rowed for her life in the
darkness there was a slim chance that she might yet escape her pursuers. She
placed one bare foot on the rail, and was about to vault over the side when the
moon emerged from behind a bank of threatening clouds and for an instant cast
its pale gaze down onto the dinghy before slipping behind its nocturnal shroud
once more. But that brief moment of illumination send shivers of icy panic up
the spine of Erika Weiss. There was no oar in the boat! Where was the oar?
She heard footsteps and coughing as the men began to storm noisily up the
ladderwell. Erika took her foot from the rail and spun around rapidly. Where
was the accursed oar? She turned toward the stern, her eyes frantically
searching the darkness.
Suddenly another shadow, massive and menacing, seemed to separate itself
from the uniform blackness of the sea and sky.
As she turned toward it, Erika was greeted with a horrific WHAPPP!! as a
barely seen object slammed painfully into her belly.
Doubling over in pain, Erika peered in the direction from which the blow
had come, only to realize that the shadow which had frightened her had
materialized into a coat of midnight blue.
"Looking for this, lassie?"
The red beard of Andrew McMahon above the collar of his dark peacoat, had
barely registered in Erika's consciousness when the flat side of the oar
cannoned into her creamy belly-flesh with punishing force for a second time,
its beveled edge just clipping the lower curve of her right breast.
WHAPPP!!! "OOAAAUNGHH!!" Erika fell to her knees in agony, but when she
saw the heavy sleeves move closer, and the brawny hands protruding therefrom,
brandishing the solid wooden oar as if it were no heavier than a broom-handle,
she gamely struggled to her feet and tried once again to flee.
WHAPPP!! The Scottish mariner hammered the oar into the sweet, soft curves
of her backside. Erika groaned as the force of the blow sent her reeling toward
the railing. She raised one foot in hopes of climbing the slippery rail and
leaping soundlessly into the sea, at this point desirous of nothing more than a
quick, watery death. But the red-bearded captain thwarted her scheme by
slamming the oar into her bare buttocks again with a fourth thunderous
WHAPPPPP!!!
The mighty blow drove Erika's midsection into the railing with such force
that her body began to crumple to the deck in pain. But before her fall was
complete, a fifth vicious smash, this one to the backs of her thighs, sent her
sprawling face down on the slippery deck.
Erika rolled over on to her back, hoping to make a grab for the end of the
oar the next time McMahon swung it. But this time the burly captain did not
swing it. He simply placed the tip of the blade against her throat and applied
pressure, slowly forcing her head down until the strands of her golden hair
were flat against the rain-splashed deck.
By this time, the crewmen, following the sound of the blows and Erika's
cries of pain had, had made their way to the stern, with a wild-eyed Jasper
Slegg in the vanguard.
"Cap'n! You found her!"
"Aye, I found her, ye bloody fool," McMahon roared. "But how in the name of
Mary of Scotland did ye manage to lose her? Slegg, if you had a six-inch putt
to win the Open, ye'd manage to lose your clubs walkin' tae the green."
"But, sir, there was a fire ..."
"D'ye think I canna sniff the air, mon?" McMahon bellowed, shaking his head
disgustedly as he surveyed the wet, bedraggled crewmen. "D'ye think I canna
hear? For Gawd's sake, mon, ye were makin' enough of a ruckus below to
celebrate Hogmanay, Guy Fawkes, and the Chinee New Year togither. O' course, I
ken there was a fire! But there's thirty of ye lubbers if there's three. Canna
ane o' ye watch the lassie while the ither twenty-nine o' yer ignorant clan pour
water on each ither?" McMahon shook his head contemptuously. "All o' ye
togither dinna hae the sense o' a half a pound o' haggis!"
The fuming mariner lowered his gaze to the naked beauty he had pinned to
the deck with the oar. His wrathful glare was slowly replaced by a lecherous
smile, as he turned the oar on its edge and slowly traced a line down Erika's
heaving chest. He paused when the oar was midway between her breasts, and
turned it over in his hands so that its flat side pressed against the inner
curves of the superb mounds which rose from her chest with gravity-defying
audacity. "Ah, lassie, if I didn't hae tae turn ye over tae the general the
morra ..." he muttered as he placed the oar across each of her breasts in turn
and gave each of her taut, night-chilled nipples a stinging tap that sent
shivers of dread through Erika's body.
"It's just as well the twa o' them were seasick, after all," he continued,
speaking of General Wang and Hsi Fong. "The laudanum they took to ease their
land-lubbing guts must have knocked them richt out, if they dinna hear this
stramash. The whole British fleet didn't make this much noise at the Battle o'
bloody Trafalgar."
McMahon turned the oar on its edge again, as he continued his southward
journey down Erika's body. When she tried to pull away, four of the crewmen
pounced on here and pinned her out-stretched limbs to the storm-splattered deck.
'Ye're a bonnie lassie, you are," he muttered as he drew the oar's blade across
the sensual notch of Erika's navel, and then across the sweet swell of her mons.
"Tak' 'er tae the infirmary, Slegg, sae that Tranhie can patch 'er up,"
McMahon barked gruffly as the blade crossed Erika's golden triangle. Then,
leaning more heavily on the oar-handle, he slid it downward until it bisected
her delicate vulva. Eyeing the deep impressions the cords and ropes and twine
had left on her soft flesh, he added, "And keep these fools awa' from her for
the rest of the night. If anyone but Tranhie lays anither hand on 'er, I'll
break ye sae low ye'll be salutin' a cabin boy - if ye can find a captain daft
to gie ye anither post."
The captain turned toward the ship's carpenter. "Was your stack o' lumber
lost in the fire, lad?"
"No, sir," Deng replied nervously. "A pile of bamboo went up fast, sir,
but most of the wood was only singed around the edges."
"Ah, we're in luck then. Or at least most of us are," he smirked, casting
Erika an amused glance, before turning toward Deng again. "There'll be a trial
at dawn, mon; take a few of these lubbers and see to it that the apparatus is
ready in time."
"Aye, captain," the earringed carpenter assented, giving Erika an evil grin
as two of the sailors pulled her to her feet and were about to haul her away.
Just then McMahon held up a big hand to stop them. He stepped so close to the
pinioned blonde that she could smell the stale Scotch on his breath.
"Dinna look so surprised," Mcmahon growled as he felt between Erika's legs.
"Ye've dug yerself into a hole as deep as the Firth o' Forth, lassie. Arson,
destruction of ship's property, desairtion. On top of mutiny and murther. But
we'll gie ye a dram o' shipboard justice the morra, lassie. And then ye'll pay
the piper. And it'll be Captain Andrew McMahon who's pipin' the tune! Take her
below, Slegg, and have her tend tae the leather that's gaun tae to stripe her
bonnie back come the morra!"
