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Chapter 145 Prelude to Punishment
Erika Weiss murmured a silent prayer
as she smoothed Gao Lan's eyelids over his dead, staring eyes, and crossed his
emaciated arms over his chest. As she
pulled the thin blanket over his face, she hoped that he would find peace in
whatever world lay beyond the cruel one in which they had both suffered so
much.
Feeling her way in the darkness toward
the heavy trunk she had stumbled across earlier, she removed one of the bits of
cloth, which she presumed to be make-shift bandages, and slowly retraced her
steps to her cot. Easing down onto the humble bed, she spat on
one of the bits of cloth and spread her legs slightly so that she could dab at
the vestiges of the nuoc cham, Tranh's
irritating chili paste, which still clung to her labia.
She was posed in that indelicate position when the door flew open
and two men burst into the room. Tranh,
the Vietnamese ship's cook, led the way,
brandishing a lantern in one hand and balancing a covered basket precariously
in the other. He was followed closely by
Lucky, from whose belt hung a sheathed knife.
The second man staggered noticeably under the weight of the large pail
of water he was carrying. Both men wore the
bemused grins of mischievous schoolboys, and a moment later Erika understood
why. A dense cloud of alcohol had followed
them into the room. Since she had seen
them last, they had evidently found a dark corner of the ship to critique Slegg's
theatrical presentation and to offer numerous toasts to the magnificent body of
its voluptuous heroine.
Blushing, Erika closed her legs quickly and tried to cover her
pubis with one hand and her breasts with the other, but her modesty only amused
the intruders.
"Mishy," Tranh slurred, as his slitted eyes took in the
contours of Erika's nude body, "the
Captain he angry cause you not in too good shape. Tells me give you food and bath, and tend to
your bruises. He wants you ship-shape
for tomorrow, Missy," Tranh grinned crookedly. "Hurry up! Take bath!"
"Please
can I have some water?" Erika pleaded looking
thirstily at the pail of water Froggy had set on the floor.
"No drink that, Missy. Half
sea-water. Salt good for cuts in skin."
Erika's shoulders sagged miserably.
'No problem, Mishy," Tranh continued good-naturedly as he
reached into the basket and removed a stoppered wine-bottle. "Fresh water, Missy, you'll see. Froggy says you earned it." Tranh snickered and elbowed Lucky, who
chuckled in turn.
As Erika tipped the bottle to her lips she remembered how she had
been coerced into taking Froggy's swollen erection between her soft breasts and
bringing him to a shuddering climax in order to earn water for the dying Gao
Lan. The lecherous, hoarse-voiced seaman
had apparently already regaled his pals with the story of his conquest. But,
there was nothing she could do about that now and Erika swallowed the water
greedily, trying her best to ignore the two visitors who were ogling her
luscious breasts, and probably picturing themselves defiling them just as
Froggy had done.
"Hurry up, Missy,"
Tranh urged her. " Shooner you take
bath, shooner I can patch you up and shooner you get food. I got nice soup for you, Missy. Special herbs
make you strong again. You gonna need to
be plenty strong tomorrow," he grinned, winking at Lucky, who snorted his
assent. "Besides you got work to do
tonight, too."
Erika, still half-dazed, tried to take in the slightly-slurred
words of the Annamese ship's cook.
"What
what kind of work?"
"Me not supposed to say. Slegg tell you later on, you
bet. But first you need bath," he
said pointing at the bucket which Lucky had deposited in front of the primitive
bed. "Reach in water bathing
cloth there. You'll shee."
Erika pulled herself to the edge of the cot and reached into the
water and winced. Not only was the water
quite hot, but she could feel the sting of the salt.
Erika shivered but guessed that Tranh's comment about the salt
water had been accurate. The salt in the
sea water would probably greatly reduce the risk of infection, and she knew
that her skin had been broken when Mao had gouged her breast with the
screwdriver. For that matter, Slegg had whipped her buttocks to the blood in
the stoking room as well. Swirling her
hand around in the water, she brushed aside a brick of primitive soap that
smelled of lye and lard, and finally located the rag she was to use as a
washcloth. She glanced up at the two
men, foolishly expecting them to leave the room while she bathed, or at least
to turn their backs or avert their gaze, but Lucky and Tranh merely grinned
back at her.
"Hurry up, Missy," Tranh urged, his eyes sparkling. "Lots to do tonight."
Erika wanted only to sleep, for hours or forever, but there was
nothing for it. She pulled the rag clear
of the water, wrung the water from it and stood up, so as not to drip water on
the cot. Then she unbraided the bit of
fabric and smiled forlornly as she recognized it. The bedraggled piece of cloth in her
hands was all that was left of the shirt
that Captain McMahon had given her in his cabin what seemed a lifetime ago. But
she held it to her breast briefly, cherishing it, because it was, in a sense,
her only belonging. The men of the Yangtze Dragon had stripped her of
everything else clothing, pride, dignity.
Conscious of the men's eyes on her but doing her best to ignore
them, Erika pressed the warm cloth to her face and breathed deeply. Even with the salinity of the water, it was
the first pleasant sensation she had felt in many hours. Not giving any thought to the fact that while
her face was unblemished her body was not, Erika dipped the cloth again,
wringing it out less thoroughly this time, and brushed it across her neck and
throat.
This time, as the excess water streamed down onto her chest, she
felt the microscopic grains of salt gnawing at her irritated flesh with
dagger-like teeth. She groaned audibly,
to the amusement of her jailers, and was far more careful after that.
But as she daubed gently at her tender breasts, removing the sweat
and grime and traces of dried blood, she could not but think back on the grim
irony of her situation. Could it have
really been less than twenty hours ago that she had lain in the luxurious tub
at the German embassy, while Ju had soaped her naked body to the brink of
desire with her feathery touch? And now
here she was, re-enacting those same feminine ablutions, but under the
rapacious gaze of a pair of grinning brutes.
Erika could only console herself that it could have been worse at
least she had been spared the tender mercies of Orang, the ape-like Malayan, or
Khasar, the powerfully built Mongolian.
She bathed quickly, starting nervously each time the staccato
rhythm of Deng, hammering away on the deck above, began anew. As her hands moved the soapy cloth over her
nude body, Tranh and Lucky nudged each
other and exchanged murmured exclamations of approval. Their gaze, it seemed to Erika, was as hot as
the steaming bucket of water.
When her bath was done, Erika signaled to Tranh that she'd like to
wash her hair, and he obliged her, even dispatching Lucky to find a piece of
cloth large enough for her to dry her hair.
Captain McMahon, Erika thought ruefully, as she used her nails to scrape
the dirt and sweat from her blonde mane, apparently wanted her looking her best
for the proceedings.
Lucky returned with the towel just as she finished washing her
hair, and he offered her a bit of broken comb that had apparently been left
behind by one of the earlier prisoners of the Yang-tze Dragon. Erika
thanked him and after she had toweled her hair, she stared fixedly at Tranh
daring him to stop her as she knotted the skimpy towel around her waist. But the two men did not try to stop her from
partially veiling her nudity, seemingly content to ogle the creamy perfection
of her bath-moistened breasts.
When Erika's bath was done, Tranh opened the trunk in the dark
corner of the infirmary, and removed the vial of foul-smelling liquid that
Erika had sniffed earlier. He removed
the cork, and sniffed at the pungent odor of the chemical within. Then he put the stopper back in the bottle
and directed Erika to stretch out on the
cot. Erika looked at her unwanted guests fearfully, but Tranh shook his head
reproachfully and held up the bottle.
"Herb medicine, Missy. Good
stuff. You'll shee. Now lie down."
As Erika leaned back on the cot apprehensively Tranh went on.
"On stomach first, Missy."
Erika rolled over on to her stomach warily, trying to keep the
skimpy towel in place. She half expected the two men to jump her but
McMahon had apparently given the men strict orders to refrain from any more
rough treatment, at least until after the trial, for they made no move to
attack her.
A moment later she sensed Tranh leaning over her, and she heard the
faint pop of the cork being removed from the vial. A moment later she felt a
cool splash of liquid on her shoulders. For an instant the sensation was
refreshing, but as Tranh bent over her to rub the foul-smelling lotion into her
flesh it began to sting like the devil, and Erika tried to push him away.
"Be still, Missy," Tranh muttered as he straddled her
body and worked her muscles with knowing fingers. "Old folk medicine. My grandmother used to brew it from grasses
that grew in the marshes. She call it 'Mekong Lightning'. Very good.
You'll see. Sting a little, but
fix you right up."
'Brewed, indeed,'" thought Erika, visualizing a cackling old
crone fermenting the evil liquor The way
the tonic stung it felt as if Tranh were rubbing her back with Mekong River
schnapps. But she had to admit that,
after the first minute or two, the stinging rub began to take effect. The muscles in her arms and back and shoulders
had been sorely tried by Slegg's seven torments, but gradually the dull
ache began to melt away.
"Ah, you see, Missy?
Very good medicine." Tranh
worked his hands lower, massaging the warm planes and hollow of her lower back
for a minute or two, before sliding one oily hand under the towel Erika had
wrapped around her waist, while he fumbled at the knot with the other.
"Very pretty," he cooed, as he undid the towel, and
peeled it back, baring her behind, spanking clean from her bath.
"Can't
can't he wait outside?" Erika murmured as Lucky
edged ominously closer to the cot. She could feel his eyes devouring the
enticing curves of her buttocks, still crisscrossed with the dark striations
Slegg had carved with his rope-whip down in the stoking room.
"Sorry, Missy. Not yet.
Might need his help, you'll see," Tranh observed. A moment later he splashed her rounded
backside with the pungent balm, and the alcohol seeped into her abraded flesh
and set fire to every fissure and pore in her shapely derriere. Erika's beautiful backside shivered like a
mittenless schoolgirl, but she bore up well enough until the Mekong Lightning
slithered into her enticing buttock cleft and set her most secret places on
fire. Tears filled her blue eyes and her
back arched in agony as she tried to rise up and throw Tranh' to one side, but Lucky stepped forward to pin her wildly
thrashing shoulders to the cot.
"Easy, Missy. Only burn
for a minute, you'll see." With
Tranh straddling her thighs and Lucky pressing her bare shoulders firmly to the
cot, the cook was able to continue his medicinal ministrations, rubbing the
stinging, but healing, liquid, deep into the pores of Erika's resilient
bottomflesh.
"Hey, Tranhie let me know if your fingers get tired!"
Lucky chortled as he watched the old cook's bony yellow fingers knead Erika's
rounded butt-cheeks.
"Tranh old, but he not tired yet!" the Vietnamese replied
gleefully. He used a bony knee to wedge
Erika's thighs apart and a moment later he inserted his middle finger,
well-moistened by his rubbing potion, deep into Erika's bottomhole.
Erika gasped and cried out softly and then her body convulsed again
when Tranh extracted his bony knuckles from her anus, only to plunge his fiery
finger into the warmth of her quivering love-slit. Erika's nude body arched in anguish again as the
stinging liquid found the myriad of tiny cuts the snakegourd had gouged in her
vaginal tissues, but after half a minute or so, the dreadful burning sensation was replaced by
the same cooling numbness that had eased the soreness in her back and buttocks.
Meanwhile Tranh had slid down the backs of her legs and begun to
massage the burning liniment into the resilient flesh of her thighs and calves.
The wily Vietnamese spent a minute or two smoothing the balm into
each of Erika's long legs and then he stood up, put the stopper back in the
bottle, set it on the floor and signaled for his partner to help him flip his firm-fleshed
patient over.
Strong-armed and eager, Lucky had little difficulty rolled Erika
onto her back. The beautiful blonde
gasped as she felt the coarse blanket against the tingling flesh of her back
and legs. Lucky took advantage of her
momentary shock by grabbing her wrists
and pinning them to the cot on either
side of her head. Meanwhile Tranh climbed back on top of her and straddled her
waist, rubbing his hands lecherously as he eyed the pink-tipped prodigies of
nature which rose so majestically from Erika's
chest.
"Bet the girls in the rice-paddies didn't have tits like that,
did they Tranhie?" Lucky cackled.
"No way," Tranh grinned, ogling Erika's proud-jutting
melons while he reached down for the bottle.
"But Mekong Lightning fix 'em up good, you'll see!"
"Bitte
" Erika implored, dreading the thought of the
Mekong Lightning being used on her throbbing breasts which had already suffered
so much in the last few hours. It had
been Lucky, she recalled, who had proposed the Third Torment, when each of the
crewmen in the Bird Cage had been granted two minutes to manhandle her firm
young treasures {Chapter 136}. Her
breasts were still raw sore from their gouging fingers, their clawing nails,
their gnawing teeth, their crushing hands,
Khasar's punishing slaps and later, Froggy's cruel breast-rape. Her tender nipples had three times endured
the bite of Deng-shan's nipple-cords, not to mention bearing the oppressive
weight of the coin-baskets. And now,
after all that abuse, her sensitive girl-globes were to be bathed in Tranh's
volcanic potion? "Bitte" she
begged again. "Please
no
"
But the grinning, bright-eyed cook paid her no attention. Tranh began by pouring a little of his
infernal concoction into the alluring notch of Erika's navel, and then
smoothing it into her bellyflesh, beginning just above her golden thatch. His weathered yellow hands flew over Erika's
torso lightly at first and then more firmly, smoothing the lotion deep into
stomach and rib muscles that had been sorely tried during the Seven Torments.
"C'mon, Tranhie. Stop
teasin' the poor girl. Can't you see she
wants you to work on those big papayas!" Lucky guffawed.
Erika shook her head frantically from side to side and tried to
rise up in protest. But in her weakened
condition, Lucky had no difficulty pressing her back down against the cot,
while Tranh inched his butt closer to her quivering mounds.
Repulsed by the reek of
stale alcohol on his breath, Erika squirmed futilely as the half-inebriated Vietnamese
giggled and moved the bottle directly above her quivering breast-globes and
tipped it until it was almost horizontal.
The mouth of the bottle
hovered directly above the tip of
Erika's right nipple, which was still excruciatingly sensitive from its three
bouts with the nipple cords.
The threat posed by the opened vial forced Erika to cease her resistance. She lay utterly still, holding her breath as Tranh elevated the lower end of
the bottle with infinitesimal slowness, each degree of elevation bringing her
closer to the moment when the liquid fire would drip from the vial and splash
onto her quivering nipple-bud. Erika
watched spellbound as the aromatic liquid crept into view in the neck of the
vial and then at its mouth. For a long
moment a large droplet hung suspended from the lip of the bottle, and then, as
if catching sight of the inviting target waiting below, it threw itself into
space and dove downward toward Erika's inflamed love-nugget.
When the drop of Mekong Lightning splashed against her breast-tip,
Erika's upper torso bucked violently. It
felt as if acid had been dripped on her raw breast-flesh. Holding the bottle safely upright, Tranh
watched Erika's frenzied contortions for a moment. When her writhing slowed, suggesting that the
burning had subsided somewhat, he lowered his wrist and let a second large
droplet splash down onto Erika's other nipple, and was rewarded as his
voluptuous patient's peaches-and-cream breasts began a second frenetic tarantella
on her chest.
"No worry, Missie," Tranh cackled. "Burning stop soon, you'll see," he
added good-naturedly as he doused each of Erika's breasts in turn with a
liberal splash of the liquid fire and
cackled delightedly when her shuddering lust-melons responded as if he'd
touched them with a hot iron. When her
agonized squirming at last had calmed to a gentle oscillation, Tranh replaced
the stopper and set the bottle aside.
Then his hands flew to her breasts and he began working the liquid fire
into Erika's tingling pleasure gourds.
He slid his hands up Erika's belly and attacked her moistened
mounds from below, sliding his hands beneath the underslopes of her breasts,
and lifting them gently with the V formed by the crotch of his thumb and forefinger. Then his slender fingers
curled around the sides of Erika's glistening breasts, working the stinging
tonic deep into the flesh of Erika's firm pleasure-gourds.
"Hey, Tranhy let me give you a hand!" Lucky smirked,
from the head of the cot, where he continued to pin Erika's hands to the
bed. "It's not right that you
should get stuck with all the work!"
Even in her helpless position Erika noticed that the prospect of
fondling her nude body had snapped her tormentors out of their
semi-inebriation. There were no slurred words now. There were only the intense voices of virile
men.
"No problem, buddy she got two. One apiece! We can share!"
"Now you're talkin'!" Lucky chortled.
And a moment later there were two pairs of male hands working the fiery liniment into Erika's throbbing
breasts. Tranh attacked from below and
Lucky from above and behind her, each man sinking his greedy fingers deep into
Erika's melony mounds. As Tranh leaned
forward to massage her breasts, Erika could feel his swollen erection pressing
against her belly.
After a few minutes of this obscene breast-fondling, Tranh spun
around so that he straddled Erika's body facing her feet. While Lucky continued to manhandle her
luscious breasts, Tranh attended to the rest of her body, quickly giving her
ankles and shins a once-over and then spending much more time massaging Erika's
creamy thighs. He smoothed the aromatic
liquid into her thigh-flesh assiduously, beginning at her knees and slowly
making the pleasant progression up her shapely legs.
Erika held her breath as Tranh's fluttering fingers moved closer
and closer to the V between her legs, but mercifully he refrained from dousing
her genitals with the Mekong Lightning.
Erika endured more shame than anguish as his yellowish fingers lingered
on her sex.
"OK, Missy! All
done," Tranh exclaimed as he climbed off of her. "Feeling better, I bet?"
To her surprise Erika was
forced to admit that the restorative powers of Tranh's liquid fire were
remarkable. Her flesh tingled from head
to toe, but the muscular soreness was all but gone. Even the tender flesh of
her backside, which Slegg had flogged so thoroughly in the stoking room, and
the delicate tips of her breasts, which had suffered the constricting grip of
Deng-shan's fiendish cords, seemed, at least for the moment, to be free from
pain.
"Yes, th-thank you." Even though she was feeling much
better, Erika found it difficult to vocalize her gratitude to the man who had
rammed the rough-skinned snakegourd into her vagina with such enthusiasm not so
long ago.
But even in her relief she remained filled with a sense of
dread. Because up on deck Deng-shan was still pounding away
at whatever hellish device he was constructing.
Tranh reached into the basket he had
brought and offered her a covered bowl of pho the noodle soup of his native
land. He also produced a cup of steamed
rice and some strong green tea. Erika
stared at the food hungrily, waiting for Tranh to offer her chopsticks or spoon
but none was forthcoming. Seeing her
questioning glance, Tranh squeaked no chopsticks for you, Missy. Might use as weapon. Stab old Tranhie in the eye."
The Vietnamese winked at her lecherously, and watched as Erika
downed the tea in one long gulp, and then held the soup bowl to her lips, first
drinking some of the broth and then biting hungrily into the long noodles and
slurping them noisily into her mouth, her hunger having transformed the simple
meal into a dish fit for royalty.
"Good pho, you bet!" Tranh grinned proudly. "Pho with beef very old recipe, but
chicken broth make feel better!"
Despite her plight Erika was forced to smile at the universality of
Tranh's belief. She and Daniel Kauffmann
had joked about how often he had had Ju bring her chicken soup during her days
of recovery. It was his only
'superstition'. Despite his years of
medical training, and his uncertainty as to how it worked, he still swore by the restorative powers of
chicken soup, which his own mother had used to nurse him through a number of
childhood ailments.
Erika sipped at the broth again, and then, having no implements,
she dug her fingers into the bowl of
rice and scooped fingerfuls of the fluffy food into her mouth, heedless of the
grains that fell from her hands and spilled down her front.
Trahn watched with amusement as the ravenous prisoner wolfed down
the rice in little more time than it had taken him to fill the bowl. When she was done, Erika handed him the bowl
and picked at the stray bits of rice that had spilled on her shoulders and
breasts, popping them into her mouth hungrily.
"Need any help, Missy?" Lucky chuckled. "I wouldn't mind licking her clean,
would you, Tranhie?
"Count me in," Tranh cackled, extending his tongue and
wiggling it obscenely. But then he grew
serious once again. "Here,
Missy." He said as he dipped into the basket again. "Captain say you gotta have clothes for
trial. These all I could
find." The ship's cook threw Erika
a bundle of clothing.
"But what about my own clo
"
"In Captain's cabin, I think.
But he sleeping now. You want me
to wake him?" Tranh's evil grin
made it clear that only a fool would suggest waking the wrathful Scotsman from
a sound, alcohol-induced sleep.
"N-no.
"Then put these on, Missy.
Chop chop. We no got all
night. And you still got work to
do. Lotta work."
Erika took the clothes from the ship's cook. They were clearly those of a man and
consisted of a pair of thin gray leggings and a short-cropped shirt. She turned her back to the two men and let
the towel around her waist slip to the floor.
When she stepped awkwardly into the leggings, she found them almost
impossibly tight. It was only with
considerable difficulty that she was able to pull them over her thighs and her
rounded hips. When at last she managed
to snap the button at the waistband shut, she felt as if the leggings had been
painted on.
"Fit nice, Missy," Tranh chirped, his eyes staring
hungrily at the unmistakable outline of her buttock cleft against the thin gray
fabric. "Now try on shirt."
The yellow shirt was of a pullover style, and cropped so that the
wearer's belly would be bare. Tug though
she might Erika was unable to pull the hem of the shirt down more than halfway
between her breasts and her navel. The shirt, too, was several sizes too small
for her, and moth-eaten and made of the flimsiest fabric imaginable. Nudity itself was hardly more shameless than
the obscene jut of her breasts against the thin cloth.
"Mao's Revenge," Lucky snorted.
The meaning of Lucky's words words struck home. No wonder the
clothes were so small! Mao, the man she
had crushed against the furnace of the stoking room, had been a tiny little
man, and given that his job was shoveling coal in the infernal heat of the
stoking room, it was no wonder that his shirt was thin and brief. Well, Erika reasoned as she glanced down at
her skintight shirt, he wouldn't be needing the garments any more.
Just then the door to the infirmary flew open and the menacing
figure of Jasper Slegg loomed in the doorway.
"Nice togs you found for 'er, Tranhie," he smirked,
eyeing the bold thrust of Erika's breasts against the flimsy top. " 'as
the wench done 'er job of work yet?"
"Not yet, boss."
"Well, put 'er sweet arse to work, Tranhie" Slegg
snarled, sweeping the rice cup out of Erika's trembling hands and sending it
flying across the room. "The slut
can eat later!"
"Sure boss," said Tranh nervously. "I go get the rope now!"
"Better do a good job, wench!" Slegg growled, as he slid
his hands under Erika's tight shirt and fondled her ripe breasts. "Or it'll be the worse for you
tomorrow!" Slegg gave her tender
nipples a parting twist and then released her just as Lucky pushed her roughly
back down onto the cot. But Erika breathed a sigh of relief when he made
no further move in her direction.
A few minutes later Tranh re-appeared, carrying a length of heavy
rope. Borrowing Lucky's knife he hacked
off an arm-long length of rope.
"Ever make whip, Missy?
No? Not to worry Tranhie teach
you how."
Erika watched fearfully as Tranh used his yellowed nails to attack
the rope, unbraiding two-thirds of its length.
Thick rope, she learned as Tranh tore at the coarse hemp, was nothing more than three strands of thin
rope braided tightly together. And each
of the three strands of thin rope that made up the thick rope were in turn
formed by braiding three strands of tough hempen yarn together. The little Vietnamese's fingers unraveled the
rope expertly and within a few minutes the ship's cook had fashioned a whip
whose handle was a foot-long length of thick rope and whose business end was
comprised of nine slender, but venomous-looking, strands of hemp.
"See, missy? Cat of
nine tails. Easy as 'mot-hai-ba'. "
Erika swallowed glumly. The
numbers ein-zwei-drei had never sounded
so ominous as their Vietnamese counterparts did at that moment. Tranh, holding
the whip firmly by its thick handle, trailed the thin strands of the whip
lightly across the flimsy fabric covering Erika's breasts.
"What you think, Lucky? Good job, eh?"
"Looks OK, Tranhie," Lucky assented grudgingly.
"How about it, boss?" Tranh asked Slegg nervously.
"Maybe you'd better let
me try it out, Tranhie," Slegg said with an evil grin. "We wouldn't want to give the captain a whip we hadn't
checked out now, would we?"
Erika looked fearfully from one man to the other and retreated
until she felt the frame of the cot pressing against the backs of her legs. As
Sleggy eyed her body possessively she murmured, "I
I'm sure there is no
need
."
"I'll be the judge of that!" Slegg snorted. "Turn around wench! Hands against the wall! As high as you can reach!"
"Please
"
" 'Turn around!' I said," Slegg barked again, and having
no choice, Erika turned so that she was facing the wall. Pressing her knees against the edge of the
cot, she had to incline her upper body forward in order to press her hands
against the dank wall.
Jasper Slegg fingered the tough strands of the whip as he drank in
Erika's provocative pose. The
forward-bending inclination of her body thrust the curves of her shapely
buttocks, covered only by Mao's skin-tight leggings, into shameless relief.
THWACKK!!! Slegg snapped the
nine-tailed whip down hard across Erika's saucy bottomcheeks.
"Aaaahh!" Erika
moaned and reached back to caress her burning bottom-globes. Despite the leggings, the nine tails of the
whip had stung like scorpions. She
dreaded to think of the effect the cat might have on her bare skin.
"Seems OK, Tranhie," Slegg mumble grudgingly, as he let
the coarse-textured tails of the whip sift through his fingers. "But remember she tried to steal the
dinghy. The Laird'll want the 'Thief's
Cat' for her."
'The what?" Erika
turned to face her three captors, her lovely face a picture of perplexity.
Tranh scratched at his tapering chin. "Aye, boss. You
right. He'll want the 'Thief's Cat' for sure. Here, Missy," the cook snapped, tossing
the whip to the beautiful blonde who had just felt its sting. "But no funny ideas," he intoned
menacingly, as he brandished Lucky's knife.
"I
I
don't understand." Erika murmured softly as she
turned the ugly-looking instrument of punishment over in her pale hands.
"Nothing worse than a thief on board ship," Slegg
growled. He crossed his arms over his
chest and leered at Erika hungrily. It seemed hardly possible but her ripe curves
seemed every bit as delectable encased in Mao's skin-tight shirt and leggings
as they had been when she'd been stripped naked in the Bird Cage. "In 'er Majesty's navy we always 'ad a
special whip just for light-fingered blokes.
And the Cap'n always insisted that the culprit would learn 'is lesson
better if 'e 'ad to make the whip that would take the skin off 'is back."
Erika felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees were wobbly,
and only the support of the cot kept them from failing her altogether.
"Aye, the Cap'ns got
something special planned for you, dearie, I reckon," Slegg grinned
maliciously. "But you'll find about
that soon enough. For now, take that
whip and tie a series of knots in each tail, about a finger's length
apart."
Erika sank back down on the cot, trying to conceal the terror she
felt. She singled out a strand of hemp
with nervous fingers and clumsily formed the first knot, about four inches from
the end of the whip stock, looping the free end of the strand around the fixed
end and then pulling the free end through the loop, forming a small knot.
"Tighter, wench!"
Erika glared at Slegg and pulled harder on the ends of the strand,
so that the loose knot she had fashioned thickened into an irregular bead of
knotted hemp.
"Aye, that's better!" Slegg snorted approvingly as he
reached down and rubbed the ugly lump between his fingers, testing its size and
thickness. "That'll make a nice
stinger." He winked at Tranh. "She catches on quick, Tranhie."
"Good job, Missy," Tranh grinned. "You can get seven knots in each strand.
Try it. You'll see."
Erika formed another loop with the free end and then pulled it
through, forming a second knot a few inches closer to the tail of the whip.
"Don't forget, Missy," Thanh said grinning as he fondled
his knife. "Make knots tight or
" And he feinted with the knife, jabbing it to within a centimeter of the
fabric hugging her ripe breasts.
Erika nodded miserably and gripped the whip stock with one hand and
tugged on the knotted strand with the other, until the second knot was as tight
and menacing as the first. Already,
after tying only two knots, the coarseness of the hemp had begun to abrade her
soft hands.
"Good girl, Missy. Now, five more knots in that strand, and
then you go to the next. See? Just like
I told you. Easy as mot-hai-ba!"
Erika quickly did the math in her head. Seven knots, nine strands. By the time she was done tying the knots
which gave the Thief's Cat its distinctive character her hands would be raw.
But it was not the soreness of her hands that concerned her most. The cat had clawed her mercilessly threw her
thin garments even without the knots.
She shuddered at the thought of those sixty-three punishing nuggets
striking her bare flesh
"Stop day-dreaming, wench!" Slegg hissed. "Get to
work!"
And Erika Weiss, her heart pounding with dread, began to tie the
next knot
.
Chapter 146
Slegg's Revenge
Jasper Slegg approached Erika Weiss, an
evil leer etched into his homely visage.
She was so beautiful and yet so helpless, her arms extended outward and
slightly upward, her bare feet well parted on the scaffold Deng-shan had built,
and, like her wrists, lashed to the uprights of the wooden whipping frame.
An eerie morning fog had settled over the deck
of the Yang-tze Dragon, and the faces of the keyed-up crewmen, who had gathered
in small groups around the raised scaffold, were featureless in the murky
mist. High above Slegg, on the bridge of
the Yang-tze Dragon, the upright figures of Andrew McMahon,
flanked by General Wang and Hsi Fong, were no more than dark shadows in the
fog. And yet, somehow the sun's golden
eye had been drawn to Erika, for in the middle of that thick swirling fog, the
young beauty struggled against her bonds in a fragile shaft of sunlight.
Jasper Slegg eyed Erika's body
hungrily. Tranh, the ship's cook had
prepared her well; his salubrious potions and ointments had masked, if not
healed, the many marks and bruises on Erika's body almost magically. Erika had been freshly bathed as was evident
from the pleasing glow of the fair skin of her face and wrists and ankles. Her golden, shoulder-length hair, too, was
clean and brushed to a glossy sheen that made a captive of the early morning
light. But despite the beneficent kiss
of the sunlight, Erika's long limbs were extended in an unforgiving X that
portended nothing good, and the crisp morning air had chilled her nipples into
flinty points that pressed boldly against her ragged shirt.
Jasper Slegg clenched his jaw tightly as
he fingered the makeshift bandage over his eye, wincing at the still-aching
wound which Erika Weiss had opened with a shovel's edge the day before. He owed this statuesque beauty a debt of
pain, and he was about to repay it.
Erika's blue eyes blazed with silent
fury as Slegg extended his hands and seized the front of her pale top. His thin lip curled into a malevolent sneer
as he tore at the flimsy garment, opening it from neck to navel with a single
violent wrench. Grinning lewdly, he
spread the fabric wide, baring her superb breasts to the eager eyes of the
crewmen. "Du schwein!" Erika
hissed, as a raucous cheer of delight exploded from the sailors who had
gathered, to a man, to watch and enjoy
the sentence being carried out on their golden-haired prisoner.
"Why so touchy, princess?,"
Slegg gloated as he stripped the rest of her shirt from her nude torso and
tossed it toward a huddle of men
hovering at the starboard rail.
"All of the lads are out on deck early, just to see you."
Erika's azure eyes darted around the
fog-shrouded array of onlookers frantically, in hopes of a sympathetic glance,
but found none.
"It was good joss for me, dearie,
that the Cap'n chose me to swing the lash," Slegg snarled under his breath
as he ran his fingers up Erika's bare belly before seizing her pink-tipped
mounds in his bare hands. He fondled her
firm young breasts roughly for several seconds and then added, "but maybe not such good luck for
you!"
"Squeeze those big tits, Sleggie! Soften 'em up for the lash!"
After receiving an approving nod
from Captain Andrew McMahon, Slegg obliged his cronies, working his
fingers deep into Erika's yielding tit-flesh.
What a pair of beauties they were!
After squeezing them roughly for a moment or two, he slapped Erika's
left breast lightly, marveling that nature had not only endowed Erika's
pleasure-melons with such size and shape and resilience, but had blessed them
with skin so soft and fair. He slapped
her pink-nippled mound again, much harder this time, reddening the sweet swell
of its creamy contours, and drawing a
soft gasp of pain from his voluptuous prisoner.
"Lovely," he whispered,
cupping Erika's succulent lust-hillocks in his hands again and sliding his
wind-weathered thumbs roughly across the coin-sized halos at the very center of
her breasts, teasing her half-taut nipples into an even-more enticing arousal.
"So ye like to play with fire,
d'ye?" he taunted the mutinous young beauty who had started the
conflagration below decks. The fire had
swept quickly through the Bird Cage, the hold for the purchased and purloined
young beauties that the Yang-tze Dragon delivered
to the steamy brothels of the Treaty Ports, but had done only minor damage before
being extinguished by the crewmen.
"I'll tell ye true, princess," he growled as he drove his
ragged thumbnails into the tips of her breasts, "I'm going to take these
big beauties through the fires of hell!"
Slegg took up the whip he had chosen for
the occasion, a menacing, thick-handled instrument whose six braided tails
would test Erika's courage as it had never been tested before. Each of the slender, foot-long fingers would
sting like the devil; together, he knew,
they would transform Erika's proud young tit-globes into throbbing hemispheres
of suffering, but would not tear them to
shreds or ruin them for future pleasures.
Leaning toward her, Jasper Slegg snapped
the tip of the whip across Erika's bare belly. She gasped in pain, and then cried out softly
when he struck her again, this time much harder, finding the sweet notch of her navel.
Noting by the agitated rise and fall of
her peaches-and-cream breasts that Erika's breathing had quickened, Slegg
circled behind her, slashing her lightly across her sculpted shoulder blades. A moment later he delivering a stinging cut
that found the tender hollow at the small of her back, an eyelash above the
ratty, tight-fitting leggings that clung to her rounded hips. Erika's body was still writhing from side to
side from the impact of that blow when he swept the lash forward again, raking
her back with a diagonal slash and then adding a rib-searing backhand for good
measure.
Erika's groans were audible now and the
evasive undulations of her nude torso
above her ragged leggings sent thrills of pleasure through his genitals.
His trousered erection throbbing, Slegg
slipped in front of his hourglass-figured prisoner again and delivered three
quick-slashing strokes to Erika's midriff that caused her knees to buckle ever
so slightly. She dipped forward
slightly, her luscious breasts bobbing
enticingly, and Slegg chose that moment to strike, first sweeping the six tails
of the lash with moderate force across Erika's pendulous breasts and then
bunching the wicked tails together in
his hand and sling-shotting them downward across the top of Erika's luscious
tit-mounds.
CRACKKK!!! "Aaaaghhhhhh!!" Erika threw her head back and screeched in
agony as her well-toned arms strained furiously at the bonds which held her
fast.
Slegg consolidated his upper hand by
launching a side-arm blow that knifed diagonally across Erika's left nipple,
eliciting another cry of pain from the beleaguered beauty. As she writhed in misery, he stepped nimbly
to his right and swung again, a rising stroke which sent the six strands of
leather rocketing toward the outer aspect of Erika's left breast.
SMACK!!
Slegg grinned triumphantly as the stinging tails of the whip wrapped
themselves around Erika's creamy mound, bathing it in suffering. His follow-through sent the lash flying
across his body and he wasted no time in ripping a come-backer that left a
livid weal on Erika's other breast.
SMACK!!
"Aaiiiaaahhh!!"
A
litany of German expletives streamed from Erika's lips, and Slegg, confident
that they had been directed at him, decided to silence her. "I suspected I might have to gag ye fer
a foul-mouthed whore," he muttered as he took a fishing knife and hacked
off a short length of rope from the coil Deng-shan had used to bind her. He crammed the midpoint of the rope roughly
into Erika's open mouth and then wrapped the ends around behind her head and
jerked on them brutally before knotting
the cord so tightly that Erika was on the verge of choking on the
rope-gag.
"That'll shut the wench up!" a
voice cried out.
"Let's see her arse, Sleggie!"
another cried.
"Aye! And the whore's cunt!" a
third voice bellowed from the midst of the swirling fog.
Slegg lifted an arm to acknowledge the
cries from the crowd and then he inserted his hands into the waist-band of Erika's
ragged leggings and ripped them downward, baring the upper halves of her
spankable buttocks. Cupping his fingers,
he squeezed her creamy bottomcheeks with greedy hands as he eased the fabric
downward, revealing a teasing inch of bottom-cleft at a time, until he had
reached the base of her bare buttocks. Then he tore at the fabric again,
pulling it southward until her spread-eagled stance frustrated his
intentions. Striding around to face Erika,
Slegg used his knife to cut the fabric down the entire length of both of her
legs, finally stripping the garment way and tossing it through the mist toward
the larboard shadows, one of whom caught it and waved it proudly above his head
as if it were the new ensign of the Yang-tze
Dragon.
Buoyed by the cheers from the boisterous
crew, who were agog at once again seeing Erika Weiss stripped to the skin for
their pleasure, Slegg took up the whip again.
The young German beauty tried desperately to turn away from him, but he
was too quick, slashing downward at his newly-naked prisoner, letting the
braided tails of the whip etch a trail of fire across Erika's shapely thighs
only a hand's-width below the vertex of her golden triangle. Erika's pretty feet danced in place on the
scaffold, as she groaned into the gag and tried to shake off the pain. Circling
to his left, Slegg lashed out again, targeting the sensuous curve of Erika's
right buttock and leaving a rosy patch of bottom-flesh in its wake.
SMACKK!! "Nnngghh!!"
Circling back in the other
direction, Slegg swung again, this time
from Erika's right side, raking the flank of her upper torso with the whip as
the tip of its fierce-biting tails stretched for and reached the softness of
her right breast. He followed that stroke
with a quick slicing backhand that left a jagged diagonal streak on the creamy
plane of her back.
Still circling like a vulturesque sea bird,
Slegg was back in front of Erika now. The
frothy bubbles of saliva at the corners of her mouth made it plain that the
cruel hempen gag was causing her some
distress. Tightening his grip on the
whip-stock, Slegg renewed his attack on her pink-nippled melons, mixing up the
three distinct strokes afforded by the whip he had chosen.
He gave her a 'Tingler' first, a
light-to-moderate sidearm stroke which allowed the six strands of leather to
spread out and wrap around Erika's majestic pain-globes, enveloping them in a
venomous six-tongued kiss.
He followed with a 'Stinger', a nasty sidearm stroke delivered to the side of Erika's left breast
with enough force to drive her breast inward.
The centrifugal force caused by
the greater speed of the stroke caused the tails of the whip to bunch more
closely together and to land with sharper impact than the smoother motion of
the Tingler.
Slegg aimed another Stinger at the inner
curve of Erika's right breast, and then a back-handed Tingler in a sweeping arc
that enwrapped both of Erika's luscious pleasure-mounds in its clawing
six-fingered grip. But he followed that
almost gentle stroke with a wicked 'Slicer',
using a chopping overhand motion delivered at near-blinding speed. As the tails of the whip whizzed downward
they seemed to fuse together with hellish intent.
CRACKK!! "NGGHHHHH!!" When the whip ripped
into the creamy upslope of Erika's luscious
breast it left a livid weal and drew from her tightly-gagged lips a gurgling
shudder of pain that send jolts of virile pleasure through Slegg's swollen
genitals.
Slegg paused for a moment to drink in
the sight of Erika's bound body writhing in torment, her wrists straining
desperately at the ropes which held her fast, the sheen of perspiration that
dampened her love-nest and gave a lovely glow to her lovely thighs, the
inviting shimmy of her burning breasts, the tasty perfection of her puckering nipples.
Presented with such a pleasing array of
targets, he tossed a mental coin and struck again, giving the wriggling blonde
a nasty Stinger across the fronts of her well-toned thighs.
Erika groaned into her rope-gag again
and then a look of horror crossed her face as she realized which part of her
defenseless body Slegg had chosen for his next target. She screamed, "NNNGGHHH" into the
gag and tried to twist her body out of harm's way, but Slegg was too
quick. He followed the thigh-scalder with an upsweeping
Tingler that found the very core of her feminity.
"NNNGH! NGGHHH!!
NGGHHH!!" Erika grunted miserably as the strips of leather traced
the puffy outlines of her labia and stung
her sensitive bud of desire.
"How about another, dearie?"
he snarled and lashed out again, once again whistling the whip upward between
Erika's bare legs. When the tails of the
whip found their clitoral target, she twisted her body from side to side
furiously, trying to lessen the pain, and Slegg helped her along, firing a
fusillade of cross-bodied Stingers that drove her tender breasts in whichever
direction her body happened to be moving.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! Again and again the side-swung lash found the
outer slopes of Erika's breasts, forehanding her oscillating breast-mounds in
one direction and then backhanding them in the other, as Erika's nude body
pivoted back and forth in a titillating frenzy of pain. The silence of the shadows in the fog around
him, he knew, resulted from the rapt concentration of the crewmen on the
athletic coiling and uncoiling of Erika's torso and limbs. Their eyes feasted on the ceaseless bobbling
of her superb breasts, and the exhausting torque of her sweaty, defenseless
body as it sought to escape the sting of his lash. The knowledge sent shivers of pride and
desire coursing through Slegg's body.
Moving to one side so that he could
deliver a frontal blow, Slegg delivered a flesh-stinging forehanded Tingler to
the very centers of Erika's breasts. The
stroke seemed to set her distended nipples on fire, for Erika threw her head
back in agony, her nude breasts pointed skyward as if seeking solace in the
warm rays of the sun.
But that position left Erika vulnerable
to a southern assault and Slegg fired a
dreadful Stinger at her golden fleece, and then circled yet again, flogging
twice at the backs of her unmarked thighs, before aiming his sights higher and
giving her three flesh-searing Slicers across the dark, inviting cleft that
separated her wriggling buttocks. He
followed those dreadful strokes with another uprising Tingler, enjoying Erika's
shudder of anguish as the tails of the whip clawed at her sensitive love-slit.
Circling until he stood at right angles
to his naked prisoner, Slegg unleashed a downward arcing Tingler that splatted
noisily against the tops of Erika's sweat-sheened breasts. The tails of the
whip seemed to try to cling to Erika's tempting love-gourds, fighting the
indomitable pull of gravity as best they could before slowly sliding downward
over her quivering mounds.
Slegg continued with a strong-armed
nipple-searing Stinger that caught Erika at mid-breast, driving her backward so
violently that it would have knocked her off her feet if her wrist-ropes had
not held her upright.
A bit arm-weary, Slegg stuffed the
whipstock in his belt and moved behind the exhausted blonde. Slipping his hands beneath the undercurves
of her whip-reddened breasts, he hefted
them gently, as if committing their warmth and size and shape to digital
memory. Then he gripped her lust-globes
tighter and pulled her back against his body, almost intoxicated by the
pleasurable pressure of her rounded buttocks against his ragingly erect
phallus. He kneaded Erika's breasts with
punishing fingers as he ground his erection into the tempting cleft between her
buttocks. What he wouldn't have given to
take her where she stood, to bask in the roars of encouragement from his
crewmen, while he pumped his cock into her naked body! But the red-bearded Scotsman's cruel sentence
came first.
Slegg ground Erika's tender
nipple-buds between his thumbs and long-fingers for another moment or two, and
then released her inflamed nuggets.
Reaching for his whip, he noticed that Erika's breasts, which only
minutes ago had been so pale that he could see the faint outlines of the veins
pulsing beneath her tit-flesh, were now well-rouged from the whip.
He struck from behind again,
viciously, SMACKKK!!! wrapping a Tingler
around Erika's ribcage, an inch or two beneath the undercurves of her rosy
breasts.
As Erika's body shuddered in
misery, Slegg noticed that she had
positioned her feet as closely together as the ropes binding her ankles would
allow. Annoyed by this attempt to shield
her feminine treasure from his view, he ordered Erika to spread her legs.
Her response was both slow
and half-hearted and he rewarded her with a vicious stinger to her left inner
thigh. "Wider!" he barked
Still fearful of his
purpose, Erika made only a token effort to comply with his command.
Furious, he lashed out again,
backhanding the inside of Erika's right thigh with another CRACCKK!!ing
Stinger.
"Ngghh!!" Erika
groaned, but her moan was still on her lips when the whip struck again, high on
her left thigh.
"If you won't spread
'em, I'll spread 'em for ya,!" Slegg snarled as he whipped at the backs of
her legs with unbridled ferocity, lashing them repeatedly until Erika's bare
feet were nearly a yard apart, and the puffy petals of her sex glistened in the
morning light.
Transferring
the whipstock to his left hand, Slegg approached the spread-eagled beauty from
behind. Standing alongside her he
fondled her with obscene gusto, thumbing her anal orifice even as he fondled
her vulva with probing fingers.
Distracted by his pleasurable explorations, he never saw the elbow
coming.
Infuriated
by his lascivious groping, and driven to folly by pain and humiliation, Erika
took advantage of what little slack her wrist-bonds permitted and threw an
elbow at her tormentor's head, an elbow which by some strange chance found the
shovel-wound above his brow.
Slegg,
maddened by this new pain to his eye, retreated a few steps and then snapped
the whip upward, so that the tails of the lash clawed at Erika's naked pussy.
She
screamed into her gag, and tried to close her legs, but Slegg was too fast,
sending another six-thonged uppercut into the delicate tissues between Erika's
legs. Erika's nude body shuddered in her
bonds, the staccato clenching and unclenching of her rounded buttocks communicating
the agony which had been silenced by the rope-gag.
Erika
fought desperately to narrow her stance, to reduce the vulnerability of her
target, but Slegg slashed at her thighs mercilessly until the searing pain
forced them to part once again.
Grinning
triumphantly, Slegg twirled the whipstock in his hand and lashed out with
another uprising Tingler that swept
across Erika's tender genitalia like a fiery rake.
Erika's nude body cringed
again, her dipping knees denoting her exhaustion and despair. Slegg, sensing frowns on the faces of the
three shadowy figures on the bridge, decided that it would be foolhardy on his
part to risk permanent damage to Erika's golden-fringed money-maker. He moved cautiously to his right and curled a
Tingler around Erika's ribcage that permitted the very tips of the whip-thongs
to nip at her firm young breast.
The mutinous
blonde wriggled so alluringly in her bonds that he could not resist
taking another step or two to his right and launching a wicked hacking Slicer
at Erika's right breast. The fast-flying
strands of the whip united as one and CRACCKKK!!!ed deep into Erika's
lust-mound, leaving a lurid diagonal weal across its curved surface .
"UNGGNHHHMMPHHH" Erika groaned in misery, gurgles of agony
contending with her gag for voice. Slegg
watched amusedly as the slobber of fear and pain leaked out of her mouth around
the corners of the rope gag, and formed rivulets of saliva which ran down her
chin, past her throat and onto her pain-wracked breasts.
Slegg let fly another
over-hand Tingler that found the tops of Erika's creamy love-goblets and
atomized the perspiration and saliva that had accumulated there. Then, noting
that the mark left by the last Slicer had darkened to an angry red, he decided
to make an X of the diagonal gash he had left earlier. He bunched the tails of the whip in one hand
in front of his face and took careful aim before slashing the whip downward
toward Erika's left breast.
Erika tried to turn away, but the whip was too
quick, for Slegg had managed to carve
his X across Erika's breast, just above her left nipple. An X at whose
intersection, a tiny bead of scarlet
began to form.
Erika's wound inspired
Jasper Slegg to new efforts. He
continued with a withering series of right-to-left Tinglers into the curvature
of her left breast.
Smackk! The force of the first blow caused the
bead of scarlet to shimmer on Erika's quivering breast.
Smacckk!! After the second such stroke the moist red
dot began to widen into a circlet of crimson.
SMACK !! SMACCKK!! Slegg whipped forehand and backhand Stingers
across Erika's other breast, deepening its rosy glow.
Smacckkk!!! Jasper Slegg slashed another punishing
Stinger at Erika' bloodied breast. The
impact of his stroke drove her love-mound inward even as it shattered the red
circlet into whisper-thin streamlets of scarlet that trickled down over Erika's
crinkly aureole.
Smaccckkk!!!! A backhanded Tingler to the inside of the same pale breast. The trickles of blood had now christened her
nipple with its crimson kiss.
SMACKKK!! A fearful Stinger to the outer slope of
Erika's left breast, delivered with such
force that it sent a fine spray of blood across her chest, speckling her other
breast.
Slegg edged to his left,
drawing a bead on Erika's taut nipples, one pale and pink, the other moist and
bloodied. He tightened his grip on the
whipstock and clenched his uneven teeth as he took the whip back. He felt the muscles in his arm tense as he
swept the lash forward toward Erika's proud-thrusting breasts, his senses heightened
in anticipation of the thrilling sound of leather slapping against female flesh
when
.
"Slegg! SLEGG!!"
"Unh? Wha??"
"Slegg, wake up! The captain'll be on deck in ten
minutes. It's time to get the girl. "By the sword of Genghis Khan, man, you're
sweating like a pig. What were you
dreaming about?"
Slegg sat upright in his
hammock grumbling irritably, annoyed
with Deng-shan for waking him from such a pulse-poundingly exciting dream. He shook his head slowly from side to side,
trying to chase away the cobwebs that clouded his brain. As consciousness returned, he rubbed gingerly
at the bandage over his eye. Except for the bruise over his eye, he thought ruefully, it had all been a
dream. The girl in the sunlight, the
eerie fog, the faceless onlookers. But
what a dream, he thought, conscious of his huge erection, as he rolled out of
his 'bed'. A shame that it had not been
real.
On the other hand, he mused,
the real trial of Erika Weiss was yet to come.
And given the taste for cruelty of Captain Andrew McMahon perhaps the
reality would not fall far short of his arousing nocturnal fantasy
.
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