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Chapter
154 Sharp
Thorns, Soft Flesh
"Chuise,
lassie!" The third clang of the
ship's bell was still echoing ominously in her eardrums when Erika Weiss heard
Captain Andrew McMahon bark out the command in his coarse Scottish brogue. She had had nearly half an hour to gather
herself for the next cycle of punishment, but that respite from the lash had
given Deng-shan, the crafty Chinese carpenter, ample time to put the finishing
touches on the Mermaid's Necklace.
During the first interval Deng had merely
crimped the broken link at one end of the length of wire-thin chain tightly
around Erika's right nipple, leaving the long strip of mesh to dangle downward
from her firm breast. During the second
interval, however, he had taken the
loose end of the yard-long length of chain, wound it around behind her neck,
and then pulled the chain mesh down over her other shoulder until the loose end
was draped over her left breast. Then,
after using his nails to pinch and twist Erika's nipple-bud into a tempting firmness,
Deng positioned the broken link at the loose end of the chain around her left
nipple.
With meticulous cruelty Deng proceeded
to work the jaws of the broken link against the base of Erika's sensitive
breast-nugget until the tasty morsel was trapped between the edges of the metal
link. His terrible pincers finished the
job, compressing the ends of the link around Erika's swollen teat until tears
of suffering had formed in the corners of her azure blue eyes.
When he stepped back, it was clear to Jesper Slegg and the rest of the
crewmen that Deng
had calculated the length of the chain with his usual precision. The nipple-gripping chain elevated Erika's
firm young breasts slightly, lifting them upwards, but without unduly
distorting their succulent shapeliness.
Erika bit her lip, trying to swallow the
pain. She cursed Deng's thoroughness
under her breath; much of the discomfort inflicted by the 'Mermaid's Necklace'
could have been remedied if only she were able to bow her head slightly. But
the hangman's noose around her neck kept her head and neck fully upright,
exacerbating the strain the Mermaid's Necklace placed on her tightly clamped
nipples.
"Chuise,
wench, or I'll chuise for ye!" McMahon's voice
thundered across the deck again.
Erika, her nude body stretched taut by
the guy-ropes binding her wrists, forced herself to examine the row of
instruments of discipline hanging from Deng-shan's
hooks once again. The three bells that
had just sounded indicated that the coming round of punishment would involve
three strokes with one of the implements.
But the round after that would call for four strokes, and then five, and
so on until "eight bells", signaling the end of the afternoon
watch, had sounded. So it was necessary
that she choose wisely – so that she did not have to endure more strokes than
necessary with the most punishing instruments.
The cruel paradox of her dilemma was that she was virtually forced to
resist every instinct of nature and select the most dreadful weapons first.
Three different whips were left -- the braided singletail,
the thonged whip and the thief's cat which had
already brought her so much suffering --
as well as the bamboo rod, the broad leather belt and the
ghastly-looking thorn-switch. Her mind
raced – the cat and the thorn-switch seemed clearly the worst, but whichever
one she chose now, she would have to endure at least four strokes with the
other. 'Choose, Erika!' she screamed to
herself silently, as she saw Deng-shan eyeing the rope-whip he had used to punish
her earlier indecision.
"Th-the …
thorn-stick," she stammered finally.
And then instantly regretted it. Three strokes with the thorn-switch would
mean four more strokes of the cat – the cat that had already turned her back
and backside into a lake of fire. But
four with the thorn-switch – would not that have been even more
unbearable? Erika was seized by a sense
of panic as the psychological pressure mounted.
How terrible it was to be compelled to choose the manner of one's own
torture!
"Aye, three with the thorn-switch
it shall be then, lassie." The
burly figure of Andrew
McMahon lumbered unsteadily toward the woolen cap which held the names of the
crewmen who had yet to take their turn.
As he passed Erika, her heart sank as she recognized the reek of alcohol on his breath. The red-bearded mariner had evidently been using
the intervals between the sounding of
the bells to quench his rapacious thirst. The captain's fondness for the bottle could
not bode well for her. Despite the
savagery of his sentence, the captain was the only man on deck who seemed to
have any interest in maintaining a semblance of shipboard discipline. Only he stood between her and complete and
utter degradation.
As McMahon reached into the tam, Jasper Slegg leaned back against the starboard rail, a mocking
leer etched across his homely face. The
villainous first mate let his eyes wander lazily over Erika's luscious nudity
as he did his best to shut out the shrill calls of the yammering seabirds that
hovered above the ship. Occasionally a white-winged
gull would swoop down to get a better look at the strange sight of the
golden-haired sea nymph, stripped to the skin and roped to the scaffold, on the
deck of the aging freighter. When yet another
snowy-white seabird fluttered down in front of Erika's face, peering at her
with his piercing eyes, Slegg pondered how ironic it
was that gulls of such a virginal whiteness, had been drawn to such a savagely
sinful ritual! Was it the smell of blood that had drawn them, he wondered, or perhaps the
staccato counterpoint of tough leather cracking against girlish flesh? Or was it the soprano gasps of suffering
that for this one day accompanied the rhythmic and sonorous sounds of the sea?
During the interval, while Deng-shan had
been crushing the chain links tight around Erika's swollen nipples, Jasper Slegg had had a few minutes to reflect on the events of the
prior twenty-four hours. He and Deng and
the two colliers had given the blonde tart a good working over in the Stoking Room
after she had clubbed him with the shovel.
Later, he and Deng had pocketed a few quid and given the boys a good
show when they had subjected Erika to the Night of the Seven Torments on the
prior evening. How gratifying it had
been to bind
the golden-haired wench in a series of erotic positions that had tested her
flexibility and stamina to their limits!
Even so, he
was coming to the conclusion that the rigorous punishments Captain Andrew
McMahon had imposed for the 'crimes' Erika had committed while aboard the Yang-tze Dragon had proved, if anything,
even more stimulating. He had cleverly managed
to position himself at the tail end of the fearful double column for Erika's electrifying run through
the gauntlet. From there he had had a
perfect vantage point from which to watch Erika's stagger bravely through a dozen yards of hell, while his
sex-crazed shipmates had lashed her fore and aft, targeting her creamy thighs,
her rounded buttocks, her trim, tapering belly and her luscious, proud-nippled breasts.
Deng's imaginative contraption, the
Wooden Lady, had been a great success as well. How the delectable young blonde
had squirmed when he and Deng had impaled her on the twin-phalluses at the base
of the device! What a sensation of
masculine mastery he had felt when he had rammed the third wooden phallus
halfway down her throat! How arousing it
had been to watch as Erika's superb breast-melons, bound and bulging,
had been stretched to their limits with every torturous turn of the crank.
The punishment for the third count, the
whipping with the cat o' nine tails had cost him a bundle, it's true. Somehow Tranh and
Lucky had found a way to inform the deceitful wench about the bet and she had
cheated him of all his earnings in the Bird Cage. But it had almost been worth it to see
Erika's nude body writhing against the metal grating as the general had
delivered lash after lash to her lovely body.
Best of all, the sentence for the fourth
count, which had only just begun, promised to be the most entertaining at
all. The general had wielded the cat so
skillfully that every inch of Erika's back and backside was deliciously rosy – primed for further
punishment. And there were still
thirty-three strokes to be administered – beginning with three with the
thorn-switch.
"Cheng Lao, Kai Pu,
Orang!"
An icy chill ran down Erika's body as the captain called out the names
of the three men whose names he had drawn.
For it would be this trio of men who would wield the
thorn-switch.
By a strange coincidence, Cheng and Kai
were the two men who had been manning Erika's wrist-ropes. As they beckoned to a couple of comrades to relieve them while they did their
manly duty, Erika arched her neck upwards and followed the path of the guy-ropes
as they wound their way through the rings in the corners of the gibbet's
cantilevered crosspiece before wending their way back downward toward the
waiting arms of Cheng and Kai.
When the ropes were safely handed off,
Cheng and Kai, clad in ragged shirts and sooty leggings, approached the
taut-stretched prisoner, their almond-shaped eyes drinking in the lush curves
of her body as they moved past her toward the rack of implements. Erika had not noticed it before, but while
Cheng was taller and a few years older, the two seamen were as alike as
brothers; no wonder they had found it easy to work together to jerk her bonds,
orchestrating the movements of her naked body like satanic puppet masters.
Deng-shan muttered something to Cheng
and the latter nodded grimly and removed the thorn-switch from the hook. As he turned it over in his hands, Erika got
her first good look at the ghastly instrument of discipline.
In truth the thorn-switch was not really
a switch at all, but rather a two-foot length of inch-thick bamboo which had
been cut from a young shoot which had not fully hardened. Some anonymous, well-gloved soul had wound
several long strands of sharp-thorned rose stems
around the bamboo in spiral fashion, so that many of the thorns were firmly
lodged in the spongy bamboo. But so
numerous were the braided rose stems and so tightly packed were they, that the
bamboo itself was scarcely visible. Even
more alarming was the fact that dozens of
outward-facing thorns were poised to wreak havoc on anything they
touched. Roughly six inches at one end
of the bamboo baton had been left bare and wrapped in tough leather to form a
makeshift handle, so that the dreadful weapon was one a schoolboy could grip
safely, but wield with fearful effect.
And the three sailors whose names Andrew
McMahon had called
were hardly schoolboys.
Like the other seamen of the Yang-tze Dragon, they were steeped in lust
and villainy.
Cheng Lao rotated the handle of the
thorn-switch in his hand, still not quite believing the length and sharpness of
its spines, some of which reached half an inch in length. Suitably impressed, he turned his gaze back
to Erika. The gusty winds of the China
Sea which caused her long golden air to dance lightly on her shoulders had long
since dried the brine which had soaked her body not so long ago. But now her succulent flesh was bathed in a
fear-sweat that positively glistened on her lovely skin.
Cheng's dark eyes, narrow-slitted but brimming with virile ardor, swept upward over
Erika's bare thighs, lingering briefly on the enticing feminine treasure at
their juncture, before journeying upward toward the appealing indentation of
her navel and the mouthwatering perfection of her jutting, sweat-moistened
breasts.
Despite the constant upward pressure the
chains were putting on her aching nipples, Erika was grateful that the
'Mermaid's Necklace' provided her tender breasts with some slight defense
against the thorn-switch. Cheng eyed her
majestic love-gourds hungrily for a long moment, mesmerized by the sight of her
ripe young pleasure-mounds struggling against the fiendish grip of the
Mermaid's Necklace. Cheng's dark eyes
narrowed as he focused on the taut, quivering buds themselves, once such an
appealing shade of pinkish-brown. Now,
after being crimped and crushed by the wire links, they were the color of
toasted cinnamon.
Erika was almost paralyzed with fear as
Cheng stared fixedly at her swollen nipples.
But finally, after a beckoning word from Kai Pu,
Cheng seemed to abandon the enticing notion of whipping the thorn-switch into
her throbbing breasts and he slipped around behind her. Erika exhaled a short-lived sigh of
relief. Short-lived because now she was
face to face with Orang, the third man to have won
the honor of wielding the thorn-switch.
Shirtless, his skin nut-brown and matted
with dense body hair, the muscular Malayan's brown eyes were ablaze with lust
as he ogled Erika's sweat-sheened nudity. Erika remembered how the beast-man had
wrapped his long hairy arms around her in the Bird Cage and squeezed her
breasts with the ferocity of the jungle-dweller he once had been.
Meanwhile the two kinsmen had positioned
themselves behind her. The Chinese
sailors were in no hurry to rush their moment of virile mastery. Erika winced in pain as Kai traced his
fingertips across the
lurid marks the general's lash had left on the planes and hollows of her
tapering back. Cheng,
for his part, could not restrain himself from running a filthy hand over the
curves of her rosy, deep-clefted buttocks and sliding
his fingertips into the shadowy cleavage between them.
Encouraged by the boldness of the two
Chinese, Orang moved closer, until his face was only
inches from hers and Erika could almost taste the foulness of his breath. He threw a furtive glance toward the hatchway
through which the general had retreated.
Seeing no sign of the brooding warlord, Orang
held up a hairy hand, letting a thick-knuckled middle finger spring free from
his clenched fist. Erika could not help
but stare at the repulsive digit, which was proportionate to her tormentor's
ape-like arms in length and thickness. Orang gave his helpless prisoner a gloating grin and then
he lowered his hand. An instant later
Erika felt that fat finger between her legs, driving inward and upward as if
her cervix was the Holy Grail.
Erika squirmed on her blocks, trying to
repel the probing fingers of Cheng and Orang, while
Kai Pu continued to search for an unblemished expanse
of naked flesh on which he and his cousin could leave their savage imprint.
Finally Kai Pu
drew his kinsman's attention to the soft, sensitive crease where Erika's upper
thighs melded so sweetly into her shapely backside.
Cheng grunted with obscene pleasure,
nodded and signaled to the men holding Erika's wrist-ropes to relax their grip slightly
so that her nude body would be free to twist and turn in response to his
blow. The crowd of sailors held their
breath as one as Cheng slowly drew the thorn-switch back. One could have heard a pin drop on the deck
of the Yang-tze Dragon as the Chinese sailor paused imperceptibly at the top of
his backswing, giving Orang an opportunity to thrust
his invading digit even deeper into the musky moistness of Erika's love
canal. Just as he did so, Cheng swung the
thorn-switch with a windmill motion that brought it down low before sweeping it
upward into Erika's creamy thigh-flesh.
THWUCKK!!
"Aaagghhhh!!"
"Haahhhhhh!!!"
The three sounds – the thorn-stick
savaging Erika's naked flesh, her anguished cry of agony, and the bloodthirsty
roar of approval from the crewmen – followed upon each other in rapid-fire
succession, each one drowning out its predecessor.
Erika groaned loudly as she lurched
sideways, the impact of the blow twisting her lovely nude body into a delicious
contrapposto. Only the choking grip of her neck-noose and
her impalement on Orang's rude finger prevented her
from losing her footing altogether and falling off the foot-blocks.
Cheng tried to pull the thick-handled
weapon back, but had some difficulty in doing so, because a number of the
piercing spines had embedded themselves deep in Erika's burning flesh. In the
end the pigtailed sailor had to give the weapon a sudden jerk to free it. Upon doing so he held the barbed thorn-switch
aloft, allowing his cohorts to see that some of the thorns on one face of the
prickly baton bat were tinged with scarlet.
Many of the rest were still imbedded
deep in Erika's creamy flesh.
Buoyed by his comrades' cheers of
approbation, Cheng
Lao bowed and proffered the thorn-baton
to his kinsman. Kai bowed ceremoniously
in return and, seizing the bloody baton, took up a position on Erika's other
flank. The sailors were still buzzing
from the impact of the first blow when Kai delivered the second, using a long,
sweeping backhand stroke that propelled the bristling spines of the thorn-stick
into the soft flesh at the apex of Erika's right thigh.
THWUCKKK!!
"AAUGHHHH!!" Once again, Erika's torso reacted to the
impact of the inside-out swing by twisting salaciously to the extent her
neck-noose would permit. As her upper body torqued on
its axis, pivoting on Orang's thrusting finger, the Mermaid's
Necklace tightened its grip on her nipples.
Erika gave a second gasp again as darts of pain shot through her
imprisoned breast-nuggets even as the spiny thorns bit into her upper thighs.
The two kinsmen backed away from Erika's
writhing body, letting their fellow-sailors have a clear view of the brown,
broken-off thorns that remained embedded in Erika's freshly-bloodied flesh.
As the sailors cheered, Kai extended the
thorn-switch to Orang and then he and Cheng returned
to their posts and took the guyropes attached to
Erika's wrists from the man who had relieved them. Their substitutes pounded them on the back,
applauding their labors. Cheng bowed in
appreciation again and then winked at his kinsman. With perfect timing, the two men gave Erika's
wrist-ropes rope a powerful jerk that once again stretched her still-shuddering
body tall and taut.
There was a half-crazed look on Orang's face as he brandished the thorn-switch. The sailors edged closer, waiting to see how
the brutish refugee from the Malayan jungles would deal with the fair-skinned
beauty.
Orang began by
raking the thorn-switch back lightly down Erika's back in a swirling motion, allowing the sharp
spines to scrape at the livid
lacerations left by the general's whip. That pleasant circuit accomplished, the
shirtless Malayan slowly slid the thorn-switch down through the shadowy crease
bisecting Erika's luscious backside, making certain that the spiny barbs caught
and grabbed at her sensitive inner cheeks.
After raking the barbed baton through
Erika's nether groove, the hairy Malayan dragged the thorn switch across the
base of her buttocks, irritating the bloodied pinpricks left by the two Chinese.
"Du schwein!" Erika
hissed audibly, as the thorns tore at her flesh.
Orang was hardly
a linguist, but there was no mistaking the venom in Erika's voice.
Seizing his opportunity, Jasper Slegg threw fuel on the flames of Orang's
sadistic lust. "She called you a pig, mate," Jasper Slegg said in a voice loud enough to challenge the brute's
manhood. Slegg
knew that Orang, like nearly all of the Malayans on
board, was from a locale where Islam was the principal faith. To be likened to a swine was a supreme
insult. "A dirty,
filthy pig."
Orang's ears perked
up at those words and his lips formed themselves into an ugly scowl. His long left arm reached toward the back of
Erika's neck and he seized the Mermaid's Necklace and gave it a vicious twist
that sent flames of agony shooting through Erika's beleaguered nipples.
Slegg, who had
positioned himself so that he could see every contortion of pain work its way
across Erika's lovely face, felt his man-shaft thicken in his trousers as the
Necklace put excruciating tension on Erika's uplifted breasts. Then he leaned forward, straining to confirm
what he thought he had seen.
For Orang, enraged
by Erika's insult, had inserted the thorn-switch lengthwise into the inverted V
formed by her slightly parted legs. The
hairy Malayan growled and gave Erika's breast-chains another hellacious jerk
and at precisely the same moment he ripped the thorn-switch backward, dragging
the spiny barbs through the wisps of golden floss that adorned Erika's feminine
treasure.
Erika's
agonized cry of protest was almost drowned out by the lust-crazed tumult that
swept across the deck of the Yang-tze Dragon.
The seamen, astounded by Orang's boldness and
brutality, edged closer, hoping to get a glimpse of the traces of crimson that
dotted Erika's tempting love-nook. The
muscular Malayan, meanwhile, re-gripped the thorn-switch and fastened his gaze
on Erika's whip-ravaged demi-ovals. He drew the thorn-stick back, extending his
long hairy arm to its fullest, and then swung it forward viciously, targeting the ripe,
rosy curves of Erika's huddling bottom-globes.
"Aaaaghh!!" Erika
screamed again as the force of the blow threw her body forward, and this time
she lost her balance altogether and slipped off the footblocks. Her cry died away into an ugly choking gurgle
as the noose tightened around her throat. She hung there, strangling, her bare
legs flailing helplessly, for some seconds until Andrew McMahon signaled Slegg to step forward and help her regain her footing on
the blocks.
"Did
ye think we was going to let you strangle, luv?" Slegg muttered to her
venomously, as he leaned into her swaying body and lifted her until her bare
feet were positioned awkwardly on the blocks.
"Not a bit of it. The boys
and I are 'avin' too much fun for that, ain't we lads?"
The
sailors roared their agreement as Erika struggled to right herself and to catch
her breath, Cheng
and Kai quickly punctuated Slegg's dire warning by
giving Erika's wrist-ropes a violent jerk that lifted her tortured body back
into position. She hung there, bathed in
pain and perspiration, a vision of erotic beauty that no man aboard the Yang-tze Dragon would ever forget, her
proud breasts still tugged upwards by the links of chain that crimped her
swollen nipples. The brisk sea breeze
whipped the silken tresses of her blonde hair around her shoulders even as it
began to dry the teardrops of scarlet between her legs. And even the violent convulsion of her body
when she had fallen off the blocks had failed to dislodge all of the thorns
which fought for purchase in her shapely thighs, her ripe-rounded buttocks and
in the supremely delicate tissue of her vulva.
The
third stroke of the three bells delivered, the men of the Yang-tze Dragon
reluctantly turned their backs on their lust-arousing prisoner, so temptingly daubed with blood and
sweat, and returned to their labors.
Erica, gasping for breath, was grateful that she would have a few
minutes to regain her strength. But she
was fearful, too, for before too many minutes had elapsed the ship's bell would
toll once again and a fourth round of suffering would begin.
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