Harriet

by Peter Marriner

  The ‘Barbarian’ was now the centre of a crowd of boats. The latest to arrive was full of black-haired, swarthy-featured sailors who were swarming aboard, eager to pay over their fee to the matron guarding the access ladder. Those who had paid were being welcomed in Spanish by Mrs Podlock and invited to choose from the line of submissive women seated by the hatch, before disappearing below into the prison space to enjoy the services of their purchase. This traffic of eager Juans from the Indies ship had been going all day and had barely begun to ease off when the boat delivered the naked would-be deserter back on board. Shortly afterwards it was followed by a boat that conveyed an indignant island official in full uniform and cocked hat. He was a swarthy little fellow with a drooping black moustache and blue chin and the substance of his complaint was not the business activities aboard, but the events on shore.

  “We are going to have to clear out from here, you stupid slut!” Mrs Podlock raged when Harriet was dragged out to face her accuser. “This officer has charged you with acts of abominable indecency and sacrilege! You were found drunk and engaged in sexual congress with black slaves in the garden of a convent! Then you apparently seduced two of the youngest nuns. He says the authorities intended to make a public example of you, but you escaped into a boat and the rowers claim to have returned you here as an escaped whore!” She pretended to confer with her husband about the official demand, who gravely shook his head. The Captain was about to sail, she averred, and could not hold up his voyage or surrender Harriet without the order of a higher authority, but would offer to have the whore punished on board in the presence of the officer and to his satisfaction. The official reluctantly agreed, looking down his nose loftily while Harriet was being secured belly down along the hard cold length of the barrel of the six-pounder gun, then licking his lips, his eyes protruding like gooseberries, as her thighs were parted to either side of the round cascabel, exposing her gaping sex lips. Bare bottom upwards and fully displayed, Harriet could only shut her eyes as she heard the now familiar swish of air, but opened them suddenly wide with a yelp as the meaty crack of the matron’s cane echoed across the harbour. Harriet’s plump bottom jerked and a livid red weal appeared at once where the pink vestiges of her conventual discipline still marked the pale curves. She clutched the wooden gun-carriage with white knuckles, her feet left the planking in a frantic upward kick, restrained only by the rope across the back of her knees. She let out a long disheartened wail ending in a dismal whimper as she waited for her punishment, her bottom-cheeks clenched in anticipation.

  Mrs Grimes delivered the caning with her customary firm hard strokes. Harriet’s well-used bottom jerked up and down more and more wildly as the skin reddened and then darkened to puce with the traces of the individual cane strokes marked in a multiplicity of darker striations. Her eyes had started with tears at the first stroke and flew from in showers at each succeeding strike. She gasped and squealed alternately, desperately gulping air between the strokes, becoming more and more desperate. Sweat trickled down the official’s cheek as he watched the would-be runaway flex her splayed thighs at every stroke, displaying the most intimate crevices. The other girls watched morosely; they were just merchandise to be used for Mrs Podlock’s profit and were learning what would happen if they threatened its profitability.

  As the matron paused after her first six strokes, the agitated official leaned close to Podlock, evidently reluctant to use the services of a female interpreter. “Captain! These women! They jig-a-jig, yes?” His breeches revealed what was agitating him.

  The Captain roared with laughter. “Come below, sir! We shall share a stiffener and then I’ll fetch the wench to you!” While the anchor was slowly raised by groaning female efforts and sail made, Harriet was made to commute her penance by allowing the official free rein with her person, lest she be sent ashore to serve as scapegoat for the villainy of her fellow convicts.

  Harriet’s hair grew to a decent length and Mrs Podlock permitted her to resume her skirts, though this was not entirely to be welcomed for it made it more easy for her bottom to be bared for her mistress’s slipper whenever that lady suspected the captain’s eye or hand had strayed. At least with the wife so vigilant there was only the randy Benjamin to have to satisfy, though the boy seemed quite insatiable. Harriet feared to trust entirely to beeswax and was forced to act upon the revelations of technique that her whoring messmates had divulged, learning to divert the thrust of his cock to soft but safer parts, or withdraw before his ejaculation could fill her. If all else failed, then wriggling softly and excitingly against his wiry body she might reach down meanwhile to take his burgeoning manhood in a warm hand and operate with safer results. Once when he was in a bad temper she successfully diverted him by taking his cock between her breasts as she clung to him on her knees in propitiation, squeezing the wobbling rounds up together with her elbows; it was all too inevitable where his spunk shot to that time. She knew too, in theory at least, how she could cosset the thing to a conclusion in the warmth and wetness of her mouth, a sure fire solution, which she shrank from employing, but held in mind for possible use to avert a beating.

  “You would rather spend all your time in bed, you slut!”

  “No ma’am,” Harriet squealed, wriggling unhappily over the captain’s desk. Mrs Podlock took careful aim and laid the slipper in a scorching smack in the centre of her ‘cabin boy’s bottom. Harriet yelped and screwed her face up as she felt the effect like a patch of fire emblazoning the crest of her plump behind.

  “You like having a man’s cock stuck up you, don’t you?”

  “Yes Ma’am! No ma’am!” Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The Captain’s wife used the slipper upon her luckless victim with leisurely methodical smacks. The fervour of the anguished apology mounted as each deliberate stroke added its impact to a bottom already burning and sore.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Harriet wailed in a pause between strokes. “Please ma’am, please, I really am sorry, ma’am!”

  “Of course you are! As long as I’m smacking you!” Mrs Podlock said with gritted teeth. There were the sounds of footsteps in the background.

  “Ahhh...” a couple of heavy coughs. “Ahhh... might I my dear...?” It was the Captain. Harriet wriggled in her humiliating position, not sure what was intended, trying to peep over her shoulder for a clue.

  “If you must...” Mrs Podlock said, in a tone of injured exasperation. Harriet had only the briefest glimpse of a bulky form moving up behind her and the next moment she felt his hot penis nudge between her bottom cheeks. Her bottom hole flinched at the first push, tightening against his stiff flesh and Mrs Podlock slapped her bottom cheeks hard. “Too tight, is she? Give me that bottle, husband!” Harriet felt something cold and smooth parting her anal rim and before she had fully identified it as the neck of a glass bottle, it had thoroughly penetrated her. Liquid ran from it through her hot bottom hole.

  “Empty it first, man!” The smooth glass plopped out and the last dregs ran coolly down her bottom cleft, dribbling onto her vagina below. “Don’t waste it!” Mrs Podlock said hoarsely. “Lick it off!”

  Harriet moaned as a hot tongue ran slurping up the entire length from vagina to anus, harsh whiskers tormenting her hard-spanked bottom. When the blunt penis cone was substituted for the tongue she was almost thankful. She tried hopefully to relax her muscles, feeling her anal bud open before the insistent push like a hot wet flower, then become a tight circular orifice straining wide to admit the bulbous head of the man’s cock into her body. She gripped the rung of Mrs Podlock’s chair and gritted her teeth hissing shrilly as the stiff knob strained past the ring of flesh and bulged within. Mrs Podlock assisted her husband with wifely complicity, spanking Harriet where she could, deflecting her attention and slackening her muscles. At last, with its elasticity a little restored by Harriet’s confused responses, the wet hole admitted the whole head and the shaft followed, dimpling the clinging ring as
it pushed deep. Behind her she heard the deep masculine grunts ease too and she was able to draw a welcome breath as he pulled out of her a few thick inches, accompanied by a wet squelching sound, extracting a bubbling fart from Harriet. Podlock sniggered and his wife tittered, then he was ramming enthusiastically into Harriet once more and this time driving deeper until he butted her straining bottom with his thighs, with the entire shaft buried into her bowels and her anal ring strained again to the limit to accommodate the thick root.

  Harriet gasped and moaned, doing the bucking up and down upon Mrs Podlock’s lap herself, reduced to helpless submission as the shaft went in and out of her bottom, squelching with a regular rhythm with regular spanks interwoven every time it withdrew. His heavy balls bouncing against the tender lips of her empty sex-slot at every inward thrust brought sudden recollection of her initiation in the darkness of the tweendecks. Her whole pussy, grinding softly against Mrs Podlock’s thigh, vacant though it was, seemed to have been sensitised by her situation, throbbing at every smack and feeling every individual hair of the husband’s pubic bush drive in and brush its swollen lips.

  The tremendous row of female shrieks and manly bellows impinged upon the consciousness of the trio only because they failed to fade away. The ship had been under easy sail when captain had left the deck, with the watch aloft struggling with a sail. A labour gang of women were heaving on the end of a rope under the supervision of the matron, hauling up a cask from the hold, swaying up, the sailors called it. The swinging cask, inexpertly managed, struck the edge of the hatch as it emerged. Female voices rose shrilly. “It’s burst...!” “It’s pouring out...!” “It’s gin...!”

  “Gin! Gin!” The shrieking work gang tried to stem the flow with their skirts, and then sucking the result. The matron hesitated, then joined in. Big Aggie snatched up an old cutlass left on the deck for use as pry bar, waving it wildly over her head and shrieking encouragement as women, who had been waiting in hope of a ration of water, rushed madly forward, waving tin mugs or bottles. Captain Podlock, clutching his loose breeches, emerging on the main deck with his back to the barefoot rush and his eyes upon the cask, was bowled over amid tumbling females. Then several things happened in swift succession. The captain rose from the crowd, flinging women right and left, skirts hair and legs flying, a slush pot hurled from above felled Big Aggie,and Mrs Podlock in her silk wrapper emerged from the stairway brandishing a heavy pistol, too heavy for her to manage properly, for startled by a rain of angry men from above, she fired the weapon and brought her husband down with a thud like a pole-axed ox.

  The men descending from the rigging joined by the helmsman and the bruised carpenter combined expertly and soon had the women fleeing in all directions. Most piled below before whacking wooden pins, falling over one another in fright, but some time was spent winkling others out of the crevices of the ship. Burly seamen carried them along, kicking or bumping on their shoulders to be identified, before being dispatched below with the rest.

  Mrs Podlock, declaring herself to be the legal representative of the owners, appointed Mr Bones as master under her authority. Big Aggie was identified as the ringleader of the mutiny and condemned to be made an example of. Next day she was brought out and secured at the capstan, tied with arms outspread to one of the long bars thrust horizontally breast high into the slots. The women were marshalled on deck, some moaning or weeping, some nervously giggling, all impressed as the bosun unwrapped the cat o’nine tails from the red bag. They had been forced to watch him making it. A foot long handle of plaited rope the thickness of a broom shank extruded nine thin cords the length of the man’s arm, each having numerous hard knots along its length. The handle was sheathed in red baize and finished off with a Turk’s head knot. Stepping forward, the bosun took hold of Aggie’s brown dress at the neck and ripped it to her waist, exposing a wide expanse of bent white back. The awed spectators fell silent as the nine tails were drawn through the Bosun’s free hand right to their ends. The flogging commenced with the first three strokes landing across the shoulder blades. They made a whizzing sound as they flew through the air, landing with a meaty smack, the multiple tails leaving a fan-shaped area of red striations on the white skin. The rope landed heavily, with a meaty thwack and drove Aggie forward, howling and straining against her bonds. The following strokes fell lower, working their way down the woman’s writhing back towards the waist. A step more forward than usual sent one strand of the cat curling round her ribs to smack one unprotected breast. With an ear-splitting shriek Aggie tossed her head wildly, with the result that more and more of her hair slipped down to entangle with the strands of the cat so that the bosun had to stop between strokes to shake them free. The final strokes had to be delivered lower still across her plump bottom, the only part of her now clear of the swinging ends of her hair. She was stripped further, her clothing a puddle about her ankles. Her big wobbling bottom cheeks, being more plumply cushioned, could take more punishment and all remaining ten were laid there. Aggie’s control of her bladder gave way in erratic spurts, the results running down her thighs and splattering the deck widely beneath her.

  Each morning after that, when the women were first allowed up on deck, Mrs Podlock was there to select one of their number to be bent tightly over the hard iron curve of a gun and have her bare bottom caned. Such, she grimly announced, was destined to be their fate, one to be caned each morning until such time as she was satisfied with their general behaviour and the rest might have their punishment remanded.

  ‘Cormorant’ met with a whole fleet of slave ships including three other ships owned by the Podlock partnership, becalmed off the African shore and waiting for a wind to sail for the West Indies. The ‘Cormorant’ had received a letter in Papilla with information that the scheme to establish a settlement in Madagascar had been abandoned. It seemed that these other ships’ holds were entirely filled with male slaves as the result of a fortunate tribal war lately ended. They were a dangerous cargo, heavily ironed and guarded, instantly flogged at any sign of recalcitrance. Mrs Podlock, having intended to hire more hands for the ‘Cormorant’, first seized upon the opportunity to make more profit from her stock of females.

  “I hope you are flattered,” she told the convicts that she had assembled. “I have chosen you, as being the best looking of the women, to be rowed across to entertain the slavers’ crews. The men over there are discontented because this time the ships have collected no black females. They are used to being able to take their pick among the slave women, so for a suitable price, you sluts are being sent to relieve their needs in place of the missing blacks.” The slaveship crews anticipated a profitable bonus and had drawn an advance on their wages to enjoy this offer. Eight women, Harriet being one, were loaded into the first boat and rowed across to the nearest, the ‘Scorpion’. Half of the transferred females had been accustomed to sell their own services in London and were speculating upon whether they would be able to make anything for themselves when they were grabbed and led off in different directions.

  Harriet was taken below into the sailors’ fo’castle where she was met by a rumbling chorus of lustful masculine appreciation from a crowd of men sitting all round on the cramped bunks. She thought to make some use of their apparent good humour by appealing to them to spare her as an unwilling participant, but they merely told her to keep her mouth shut and get busy. If she had any complaints she could take them up with Mrs Podlock.

  “We hired you out by the hour and you aren’t cheap,” they explained irately. “The longer it takes, the more of our hard-earned money it costs us, so we don’t intent to let your cunt get cool. We mean to have our money’s worth!”

  On a spare bunk in these close quarters, hot and thickly redolent of male bodies, melting tar and African mud from the cables, Harriet was taken by numerous men of all types and sizes, but mostly young and muscular, one after another until by the time the last one finished she was exhausted and too sore to n
egotiate the steep ladder. She was slung over a man’s shoulder and carried up on deck for return, used, to the ‘Cormorant’. The other seven women were already there, having variously been servicing the master and mates and those senior hands able to pay for individual attention or club together for one between two or three. It seemed that Harriet had been made the cheap offer of the batch. Propping her up against the rail alongside the others, the man asked one of the officers. “Do we pay them or Mrs Podlock?

  “Give the captain your money,” he replied instead. “Mrs Podlock has bought some of our slaves and the hire of the women is meant to cover part of the purchase price. They’ll have to wait until the ‘Cormorant’s boat returns.” The boat was just pulling away, loaded with a batch of sullen looking black men loaded with harsh iron shackles and guarded by armed men. The tribal war offered further possibilities of cheap slaves and Mrs Podlock, knowing that her scheme to buy slaves from Mozambique had been rendered unprofitable, decided to take on a part cargo of slaves for Barbados, leaving the other ships with room to collect more.

  There were angry male voices on deck next day. The female captain was faced with a rebellion of her crew who wanted to visit the other ships with greedy intent. They didn’t see why they shouldn’t put their wives to work as she had done with their fellow convicts. She was furious at this pre-empting of her business prospects, but reflection told her that the more women who hid aboard other ships or could be plausibly left behind, the more profitable stock of black male slaves she could take aboard. Every boat on the ship was shortly pressed into service, the men rowing parties of women to be shared out among the other crews.

  Since it was Benjamin’s turn for anchor watch, he and Harriet were still on board when ‘Cormorant’ was parted from the rest of the fleet during a tornado with lightning so bright that it showed colours, ear splitting cracks and tremendous cascades of rumbling thunder. The anchor was lost, sails carried away and they drove helplessly while the few confused women left aboard struggled under Mrs Podlock’s shrieked orders to get over the spare anchor. They were still lying to it at dawn with the other ships out of sight and a surf-lined shore close to leeward when two boatloads of savagely yelling men swarmed aboard over opposite sides. Firing pistols and swinging cutlasses, they quickly came to an astonished halt and the pirate captain, Barbero, with his crew of cutthroats of all nations, found they were in possession of a ship populated only by one boy and a score or so of confused and half-asleep women.