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Chapter 147 Trial and Sentencing
"Thare will be order
in this court or I'll ha'e ye all in irons!" Captain Andrew McMahon thumped the flat side
of one of Deng-shan's hammers on the top of a wooden barrel, silencing the
chatter of the assembled crewmen.
Thirty-odd sailors were scattered haphazardly around the deck of
the Yang-tze Dragon, eagerly craning their heads in order to get a better look
at the comely defendant. Only minutes
earlier Jasper Slegg had dragged Erika Weiss up on deck, and the men were still elbowing each
other seeking better vantage points from which to observe the trial of the
stunningly beautiful blonde.
Her face pale from fatigue, Erika stood facing the improvised
bench, her wrists roped together before her.
The tumultuous rise and fall of her splendid breasts under Mao's
indecently tight shirt betrayed the agitation she sought desperately to
conceal.
Although Jasper Slegg had wrapped the tattered remnants of the
captain's shirt around her eyes before bringing her on deck, Erika Weiss could
almost feel the hot gaze of the crewmen on her body. Their gaze, she felt sure, roamed leisurely from her jutting
breasts which were so tightly encased in the belly-baring shirt, to the skin-tight gray leggings which felt as
if they'd been painted onto her hips and thighs.
She wondered why she had been blindfolded. It was almost as if the blind goddess, Justice, had wanted to share
her sightlessness. Or was it, perhaps,
that that chaste goddess was ashamed of the legal travesty that was about to be
carried out in her name on the deck of the Yang-tze
Dragon.
Erika wondered, too, what had become of the dreadful whip she had
been forced to fashion. She had worked
long into the night tying the punishing knots in the Thief's Cat and her
girlishly soft hands were raw from handling the coarse rope. But she knew that the soreness of her hands
was as nothing compared to the horrors that lash was capable of inflicting on
her tender flesh.
Erika's musings were interrupted when, in front of her, Captain
McMahon gaveled the Scotch barrel, silencing the murmuring assemblage. The red-bearded mariner cleared his throat
noisily and then declaimed, "The accused is hereby charged, under the Navy
Discipline Act of the
year of oor Lourd eighteen hundred and sixty-six, with desairtion, arson,
mutiny and murther." McMahon glared
at Erika, his fierce, bloodshot eyes blazing with righteousness. Hou d'ye plead,
lassie?"
And Erika Weiss felt the icy hand of Andrew McMahon's notion of
maritime justice tightening around her slender throat.
*********
She had been awakened thirty minutes earlier, after little more
than an hour's sleep, by the grip of a callused hand on her shoulder.
"Out of your cot, wench, and on your
feet!" The voice
had been harsh, menacing.
Feeling as if her head had touched the cot only moments earlier,
Erika had sleepily rolled over to face the men who had come for her.
"Is it morning already?"
"Aye, it's morning in the Salt Box, Missy, that it is,"
Jasper Slegg volunteered good-naturedly.
It was strange, Slegg mused. He
hadn't given thought
to the Salt Box, the condemned cell at Newgate, in many years. When he was just a lad his father had taken
him to the forbidding prison to pay a final call on an uncle. Uncle Silas, he recalled, had stabbed a man
over a gambling debt and had been sentenced to dance with Jack Ketch at
dawn. Knowing that he was to meet the
hangman, not to mention his Maker, Slegg's uncle had babbled like a baby
during those last hours.
But to her credit, despite
her fatigue and a slight quaver in her voice, there was no sign of tears or
despair on the face of Erika Weiss as she awaited the judgment of Andrew
McMahon. "Still a bit knackered, are
ye? Stand 'er up, Froggy! 'is lairdship don't like to be kept
waiting!"
As she gazed at her
visitors through bleary blue eyes, it was evident to Erika that Jasper Slegg
and Froggy were the bailiffs who would escort her to the dock of the Yang-tze Dragon, the
bar of shipboard justice, where she would learn her fate.
" 'On your feet,' he said!" Froggy barked as he seized the rounded nape
of Mao's collarless shirt, and yanked Erika roughly to her feet. She staggered awkwardly, almost losing her
balance, conscious of the fact that Froggy's powerful grasp had caused the
yellow middy shirt to ride halfway up her chest.
"Christ! Don't I arf wish the
cap'n wasn't waitin' for us," Slegg growled as he eyed the gleaming
expanse of Erika's bare belly and the outlines of her jutting breasts against the
threadbare shirt. "That's a fine
cant o' togs, Tranhie's given ye, Ladybird," he
muttered sarcastically, still aroused by the electrifyingly like-like dream
from which he had been awakened.
"That bloody shirt looks a lot better on 'er, than it did on the
Mouse, don't it, Froggy? Tranhie must
have had to use a jemmy to cram those big tits into that moth-eaten shirt. 'ow about we
just 'ave another quick look at those
beauties before we take 'er topside? What d'ye say,
matey?"
Froggy quickly grunted his assent, and pinned Erika's arms to her
sides, enabling his partner to place his palms flat on her bare midriff. Grinning diabolically, the English mate
began to slide his fingers upward over Erika's creamy belly until his
fingertips reached the hem of her cropped shirt. Licking his lips, Slegg eased his fingers
under the skin-tight shirt and slid it up over Erika's pink-tipped melons. "Froggy tells me you and him had a nice little swa-ray last night."
From behind, Froggy pulled Erika close against his body, letting
her feel the solidity of his erection, while Jasper Slegg cupped her ripe
breasts in his rough, wind-weathered hands and hefted them gently. "How come you put out
for 'im, but not for me, dearie?" Slegg asked in a cajoling
voice. "I was on the randy, down in
the Bird Cage," he confided crudely to Froggy, "
and I was 'avin' the time o' me life, 'til this sweet-arsed toffer
knocked over the lamp and started that bloody fire."
Erika's frantic attempts to
liberate herself from Froggy's grasp went for naught and Slegg continued to
knead Erika's breasts with insistent fingers, flicking her stiffening nipples
roughly with his thumbs until they stood out with teasing impudence. "Now if you'd played yer cards right,
Ladybird, you
and me could have
"
"Slegg!!" a voice roared from above. "Quit yer` footerin' aboot
and fetch the lassie oop here!" A
dark shadow crossed Slegg's face when he heard Captain Andrew McMahon's bellowing
voice. "
Sometimes that arf-pissed red-bearded barstard thinks he's Admiral
bleedin' Nelson. 'e's in a foul mood, today, dearie,
no two ways about it."
Slegg angrily tugged the
flimsy yellow shirt down over Erika's swollen breasts. "Let's go see what the laird's got in
mind, Froggy. But first, Missy, the cap'n
said I should blindfold you to keep you from getting any ideas. Hmm," he muttered as he picked up
Erika's bathing cloth, which had once been a piece of the captain's shirt. "This'll do as well as anything, I
expect."
Slegg quickly knotted the improvised blindfold behind Erika's
head, and moments later, leaving the infirmary behind them, the two men marched
Erika to the ladder-rail that led topside.
Slegg scurried up nimbly, followed by Erika, who was followed closely in
turn by Froggy, who couldn't take his dark eyes off Mao's grey breeches, which
hugged Erika's shapely buttocks like a second skin.
As she emerged through the hatch topside,
Erika Weiss felt the damp coolness of the morning mist, stirred by a westerly
breeze, against her face. Slegg took her arm and then waited for Froggy
to join them before marching her toward the bow, where Andrew McMahon stood in
all his magisterial magnificence, his reddish beard tossed by the breeze. In front of him, rising to the level of his
waist, was an upright barrel, imprinted with the name of one of
"Deng! Where the de'il is me gavel?"
Deng-shan, the muscular ear-ringed master carpenter of the Yang-tze Dragon quickly stepped forward and
handed the red-bearded sea captain a short-handled oaken mallet from the
arsenal of tools he wore around his waist.
"This maritime coort is nou in session. Present the
accused!"
"Right 'ere, sir," Slegg answered, placing a hand on the
bare strip of skin between the top of Erika's breeches and the bottom of her
middy shirt, "
'ere's the culprit."
As he pushed Erika, sending her lurching forward, Jasper Slegg
glanced around. The captain's bellow had
attracted the attention of every man on board, whether on duty or off. From every part of the ship unsavory-looking
seamen had begun to form a semi-circle around her on the main deck, while
others had gathered at the railing of the poop deck overlooking her as she faced
the stern of the ship. Each man nudged
his neighbor as they ogled the beautiful blonde who was encased in garments so
flimsy that they seemed to have been painted on the curves of her young body.
********
"The chairges are arson, desairtion, murther and mutiny. Hou daes the
preesoner plead?"
Erika Weiss trembled as Andrew McMahon enumerated the counts of
the indictment. She turned her head from
side to side, trying to catch some of the mumbled comments from the crewmen who
had assembled for the trial, but heard only ribald remarks and not a word about
charges or evidence.
"I I am innocent, sir," Erika spoke out as bravely as
she could. But having heard Deng-shan's
nocturnal pounding, his laboring long into the night preparing the engines of
discipline which awaited her, she could not altogether still the quaver in her
voice. "Or if I have committed some
infraction, have done so only in self defense."
"Innocent!" she heard Froggy snort gruffly to Slegg, who
grunted in amused assent. "Not after last night, she ain't!"
"INNOCENT?"
McMahon's voice was leonine in its wrath. "Is there no a man dead, lassie? Did ye nae hagger my first mate wi the blade of a shuil?
Did ye no try tae mak the Bird Cage intae a ragin' inferno?"
"I-it is true that I killed the man in the stoking room,
Sir. But they - he - had done things to
me
horrible things
."
"This coort will be the juidge of that, lassie!"
********
The tribunal, for all of Captain's McMahon's love of pomp and
ceremony, had been a mockery. Jasper
Slegg, the first mate of the ship, had been the principal witness, and he had
outlined Erika's transgressions quickly.
Erika had protested each allegation, but McMahon had been
implacable. Was not one man dead, and another, Slegg,
injured by her mutinous assault below decks?
Had she not started the fire which might have sunk the ship? Had she not then tried to desert the ship by
taking its only rowboat, leaving her shipmates to drown or die aboard a burning
ship?
Again, Erika protested that it was the cruelty of Jasper Slegg and
the others who had driven her to such deeds.
But Slegg had countered by contending that while he may have laid on a
few strokes of the rope-whip in the stoking room, he had only done so to curb
the accused's willfulness and laziness. He was merely enforcing good shipboard
discipline, he added, and that it had been Erika's unprovoked attack upon him
with the shovel which had prompted the resulting melee. As for the Bird Cage, while he might have
paraded her about to entertain the men, where was the harm in that? Had not the charms of its female cargo long
been the chief recruiting tool of the Yang-tze
Dragon? Had any of the Dragon's other shipboard 'guests' tried
to incinerate the ship in order to preserve their modesty?
When Slegg finished his rebuttal, there was a brief pause before
Andrew McMahon intoned, "Haes the accused ocht further to say on her own
behalf before I pronoonce sentence?"
Erika tried to speak, but her mounting despair was heavy on her
heart and the words would not come. Twenty-four
hours earlier, she had been writing her grateful farewell to Ju, saddened by
having to leave Daniel Kauffman, but looking forward to seeing her homeland
again. And then the baron's betrayal,
the general's cruelty, the captain's tyranny, and Slegg's mercenary
ruthlessness had propelled her from one dreadful predicament to another.
"Captain
please
I did not mean to harm any one of
you. I only
I only wanted to be
free."
Andrew McMahon stared at the blind-folded beauty silently for a
few moments, his brow wreathed in thought. Then he cleared his throat and
announced, "this coort haes reached its verdict," and his resonant bass-baritone voice
proceeded to rumble out the counts of the indictment.
"As for the first count, Desairtion Guilty as charged. Since this is an offense against ever
man-jack aboard this vessel, the preesoner will be made tae Run the
Gauntlet."
As this verdict was read, Erika heard a murmur of excitement
surging through the assembled crewmen.
She knew not what the sentence meant, but clearly the crew was excited
about carrying it out.
"As to the second count, Arson
Guilty! The prisoner will Kiss
the Wooden Lady for an oor's time."
Once again, Erika was at a loss to understand the meaning of the
captain's words.
McMahon cleared his throat again and continued to enumerate the
bill of indictment. "As to the third count, Mutiny
Guilty. The preesoner is
sentenced to a dizzen with the nine against the grating!"
Again, Erika could make no more sense of the sentence than she had
of the charges.
As to the fourth count, Murther Guilty.
But," and here McMahon glanced sternly at Jasper Slegg, "with
some provocation. The preesoner shall be
hanged by her bonnie neck, but the drop shall nay be released. Insteid, the preesoner shall receive a flogging of the
bells while wearing the hangman's noose."
"What is the meaning of all this?" The steely voice of General Wang cut through
the morning mist like a knife.
"Och, mon, hae ye joined the living
then?" McMahon bellowed. "And
I see that ye brought yer dour cronie wi' ye."
General Wang and Hsi Fong, both looking like men whose stomachs
had yet to grow used to the sea, and whose heads had not quite recovered from
the opiates they had taken to quiet their stomachs, stood uneasily on the deck
queasily eyeing the captain. "The
woman is mine, captain, not yours," General Wang snapped in as sharp a
voice as he could muster.
Captain McMahon returned the general's stony stare. "The
lassie may be yours, but she's gang tae pay the piper all the same. This vessel
is mine, general, and I'll sae to it's maintenance and
defense. Ye're free tae lave it, if ye
like," he offered ominously, inclining his shoulder toward the choppy
white-caps which lifted the Yang-tze
Dragon and set it back down again in the ceaseless rhythm of the sea.
Wang looked doubtfully at the endless expanse of churning waves
and the glowering faces of McMahon's cut-throat crew, but tried again. "How do I know that you and your men
won't tear her apart?"
"Well, that's an easy one, laddie. What d'ye say we let ye gie her the whiskin'
yerself? Efter the gauntlet, that is, o'
course. We couldn't very well hae a
one-man gauntlet, could we nou? Dae nae
worry yerself tae much, General; the lads mannin' the gauntlet'll rough 'er up
a wee bit, but she'll survive. And then
the whiskin'll be
on yer watch ye can mak it as rough or as smooth as ye like."
General Wang eyed the captain warily and stole a glance at his
prized possession. Even though she was
blindfolded, the tension in Erika's limbs and the blush of color burning in her
cheeks gave her posture an air of defiance.
A defiance, the general thought, as his upper
lip curled into a cruel sneer, that it would be an inestimable pleasure to
crush.
Wang felt a tremor of excitement rising in his loins as he
stripped Erika's skimpy garments from her splendid body with his eyes. He well remembered the lush roundness of her
breasts, her deliciously spankable buttocks, the suppleness of her thighs, and
the enticing treasure between them. His
right hand clenched and unclenched at his side, itching to administer whatever
punishment this almost unintelligible Scotsman had ordained. After all, would he not have given the
ripe-breasted beauty a sound flogging upon welcoming her to his island
citadel? He had not been pleased by the
thought of McMahon's sailors tearing Erika's delicious body to pieces, but with
the whip in his own hand, he would retain control of the situation. What would be the harm in beginning her subjugation
to his will today
instead of tomorrow?
"Very well, Captain," the dark-eyed general
assented. Now what exactly, is this
Gauntlet?"
McMahon nodded approvingly as he regarded Wang and Fong. "I'll e'en let the tae of ye be the
lassie's escorts, General." Then McMahon turned and bellowed to his crew,
"Form tae rows, ye lubbers! Deng, cut the
lines! Slegg, prepare the
prisoner!"
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