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Son of a Gun
Part Three
by Velvetglove
“Question Seven.” I announced. “Explain the phrase, to kiss the gunner’s daughter.”
I watched Misty suck seductively on the pencil and then scribble.
It was a game we sometimes played. I would give her ‘homework’ and then test her on it. A sort of ‘school teacher and pupil’ scene.
The only thing was that a real teacher would be rightly locked up for inflicting any of the punishments for bad marks that I made Misty suffer when she got answers wrong !
Not that she disliked the game. It had the added benefit of preventing her wasting her evenings and weekends with watching rubbish on TV or reading crappy novels. I always chose what she watched and studied and insisted she score high marks in every test.
As a keen footballer, sailor, diver and sportsman generally, I naturally gravitated towards improving Misty’s understanding and knowledge of my world. Thus she had brought two books with her on this trip; The ‘Complete Almanac of Football Facts’ that she had already studied and scored 87% in a test of names, dates and useless data over 130 years of soccer history.
Now she was struggling through a turgid but informative 350 page tome entitled ‘The Authoritative History and Dictionary of World Navies; 1745-1945’.
Not, I grant you, A light read to pack in your vacation suitcase, but much more useful than the latest thriller or some glossy fashion magazine.
“Question Eight.” I continued. “Where does the phrase, ‘no room to swing a cat come from’ ?”
I smiled at her grin of recognition. My questions were ‘topical’ to our own interests. To “kiss the gunner’s daughter” meant to be flogged. Sailors were lashed face down over the breech of a gun or canon to receive the cat.
We all know that “no room to swing a cat” describes a small space. But it doesn’t refer to a feline with four legs. It refers to the cat of nine tails that was six feet long including the handle and the lashes. When swung in a full arc by a man’s arm a further three feet of space was required to flog somebody. Thus any room smaller than nine feet by nine, was deemed as ‘too small to swing a cat’.
Time to move on. Here was a favourite. Popular on certain websites and nowadays more commonly known as the Spanish Donkey. But in naval times to ‘ride the Spanish Mare’ meant the culprit of a crime was put astride a boom with the stay slackened off as the ship sailed along in a strong breeze. If the person survived the perilous ride, he was released. If he fell off …
“Question Nine. What was to ride the Spanish Mare ?”
I checked my watch. I’d give her twenty questions with a pass mark of twenty out of twenty. If she failed and got even one wrong …
*** *** ***
Gradually, the days settled into a routine. It became clear that the island had been visited by mankind sometime before, which gave hope for eventual discovery. They found an empty ship’s chest on the far side of the island and animal bones and a rusted blade from a cookout.
Meanwhile, Wallis and the carpenter constructed a timber ‘Palace’ for Rose and him to live in, while the main shelter housed Helen and her crew.
A cage was constructed for Rufus to be tethered into during the cold nights.
During daylight hours, the three ex-passengers were made to earn their rations. Helen as communal skivvy and missus to her various ‘husbands’, including Wallis, who often visited the main shelter to take his own turn astride her, alongside the crew.
Rose stayed a few hundred yards along the beach, a so-called Queen on the island but in reality a slave to her mate, performing every demeaning and lewd duty. She was frequently threatened with being ‘turned over’ to the crew if she didn’t do her utmost to please Wallis.
Meanwhile Rufus was granted the role of the island’s “Chief Sewage Officer”, meaning he had to dig, clean and care for the latrine system.
He had dug pits behind the fencing built by the carpenter for the mens’ privacy. There was a tin bucket installed as a urinal and also two wooden ‘seats’ above the pits for more serious matters. Each morning Rufus had to empty the pits and, escorted by two crewmen, transport the ordure to a compost heap set up in the middle of the island.
However, the Ladies ‘bathroom’ was not afforded the same degree of privacy. Both women were obliged to squat over a wooden rail set up on the beach in the open air. The men would quite often stop their whittling or games to escort Helen down to enjoy her shame at performing all her ablutions in public.
But it was the decree given by Wallis on their fifth day on the island that caused the women most grief. He declared the fresh spring water to be a rare commodity and instructed that Helen, Rose and Rufus would quench their thirst only on ‘second hand’ fresh water from then on.
Thus it was that the tin bucket urinal became the only source of drinking water for the ‘paying passengers’.
At first, naturally, they baulked at the idea but, the madness of thirst being what it is, it took only a few days to train them to slurp the fetid and sun-broiled amber nectar and be thankful.
In time, Wallis relented and allowed the two ladies to drink fresh water, as they steadily earned his approval by being a good and obedient wives. Rufus survived solely on piss until the end.
Each day, men took turns at the watch in a crow’s nest constructed in the roof of the baobab tree that gave a 360 degrees view of the horizon. They had constructed a bonfire to light in the event that the mast of a ship was espied in the distance.
Needless to say, the three ‘passengers’ were caught between a sharp rock and a very hard place. The ‘rock’ was staying on the island but alive. The ‘hard place’ was knowing that if a ship did appear it was unlikely all of them would be allowed to live.
Two months into the daily and nightly orgies, during which Helen lay on a coarse blanket on the sand and received all her husbands one after the other, she awoke one day and was sick. The next morning she was sick again. On the third day, the crew knew enough for it not to be a coincidence.
Their communal wife was going to have their child.
*** *** ***
Misty held up her glass.
“Cheers !” I said, holding my own champagne.
She stared at hers. This was a first; drinking my urine. I had pissed over her several times in the shower before but never in her open mouth. Now the moment had come. But rather than pee my fresh and frothy brew between her lips I had wanted to crank up the challenge. So my darker, dawn urine had stood in the room’s mini bar all day and it was now cold and stale and, frankly, extremely unappetising.
Meanwhile I had ordered a bottle of South African fizz and a plate of cheese nibbles for myself before dinner.
“Cheers.” She replied unenthusiastically.
Why is it that seeing somebody swallow your piss gives such a sexual buzz ? After all, it’s not like your dick is in their cunt, or mouth or arse. You are not connected to them by any direct sensations. I guess that’s why the ‘vanilla crowd’ don’t rate it. Their lovemaking is all just touchy-feely.
I studied her as she lifted the glass to her lips.
“Not in one, baby. I want you to savour it. Sip it. Taste it.”
I took a small swallow from my own glass, swishing the bubbles across my tongue noisily.
“Delish !” I murmured.
She tilted her head back slightly and sipped. I watched a dollop of my liquid waste enter her mouth and disappear. Her nostrils betrayed her, flaring with distaste, just as her green eyes glinted with excited shame.
“Delish.” She echoed hollowly.
I waited until she repeated the cycle, tilting, sipping, swallowing, several times.
“Please tell me that’s unpleasant.” I said.
She grimaced. “You want the truth ?”
“Oh yes. One hundred per cent.”
“It’s horrible. Chilled, but I can still taste the brine. I can’t decide if it would be worse hot and fresh or like this.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get the chance to compare.”
She stuck out her tongue, not insolently, just in silent, obedient reply.
“It thrills me that you will do this.” I said.
She took another, longer slug, her glass now less than half full.
“Well that’s all I ask for then.” She replied.
I reached for the jug. “Here, let me top you up.”
*** *** ***
Helen was five months pregnant when she heard the shout from the top of the boabab tree.
She was down on all fours in the sand so that the man called Limey Jack could fuck her from behind, now that her belly was swollen.
“Ship Ahoooooyyy !”
And even then, instantly, she feared for her life, and Rufus and Rose. And above all for the life of her unborn child. She knew already she would offer anything for her and her offspring to be allowed to live.
She felt Limey Jack jerking his slippery thing out of her and running to join in with the shouts and frantic waving. There was a crackle of arid wood and seconds later the bonfire tower burst into flames.
Then she caught sight of the blur of Wallis running down the beach towards them all, dragging Rose after him. Rufus’s sister was two months behind Helen and her stomach had only just started to show. And at least Rose knew who the father of her child was.
“She’s turning !” came the next euphoric cry from the crowd of men behind her, clustered on the shore. “She’s seen us !!!!”
It was only now that he was close enough to them that Helen’s eyesight was able to focus on Second Mate Wallis clearly.
He was carrying the gun.
*** *** ***
We are both lying on the beach,
dripping seawater, sweat and suncream onto the edges
of our books. I am enjoying the late afternoon Southern Hemisphere sun and
flicking through
Ben isn’t my real name, of course.
But when I began my internet dating career in search of submissive women, the
moniker I chose was ‘Ben’. It’s been my nickname since I started at
school. With a family name of Gunn and my liking for cheese, it didn’t take a
particularly sharp schoolboy to come up with ‘Ben Gunn’, after the character
marooned on
Of course, ‘Misty’ isn’t her real name either. ‘Shrouded in the mists’ was the name that Mary chose as her internet moniker. Our first emails and phonecalls were all done from Ben to Misty and vice versa. Her name has kinda stuck, especially when there’s just the two of us.
She is lying next to me now, her arm on her forehead shielding her eyes from the rays, studying the dreaded ‘Authoritative History and Dictionary of World Navies; 1745-1945’. Occasionally she reads me titbits.
Tomorrow I am planning another test on the second half of the tome.
She looks over at me quizzically.
“Can I read you something interesting ?”
“Sure.” I close my own book and pull my sunglasses off my nose. They are prescription lenses to bring things in the distance into sharp focus. My family’s all got slightly dodgy eyesight.
“Have you ever considered this ? Apparently, the term ‘son of a gun’ comes from a time when women were allowed on ships and if they gave birth at sea it was usually in the wider part of the ship, under the big midship gun.”
Her green eyes squint over at me, and she’s smiling.
“So ?”
“Well, if paternity was uncertain, the child would be entered in the ship’s log as the ‘son of a gun’.”
She’s giggling now, mischievously.
“So ?”
“Well do you think there’s any chance that’s where your family name Gunn comes from ?”
Sonofabitch ! I mull over her comment for a full five seconds.
“Are you by any chance calling me a bastard, Misty Shrouds at yahoo dot com ?” I ask, putting down my book and sunglasses in the sand and preparing to give chase.
“I guess so, Big Ben at hotmail dot com. In fact, a complete and utter bastard !”
And with that she is off, scrambling along the beach, and I’m after her, knowing that when I catch her will be ‘the moment’.
The moment I will ask her to become the newest member of the Gunn family tree.
THE END