Harriet

by Peter Marriner

  With the tropical sun quickly rising, the pirates were soon busy, having enlisted Benjamin in their crew, searching the ship and assessing the loot, material and female. They debated throwing the women overboard as a probable source of dissention and bad luck among their brotherhood, but a compromise was found and it was resolved that the women should be held in common, that one should be brought up each noon and fastened on deck in a position and posture where until the following noon, any man who would might take his share of her, in properly democratic fashion. The search being resumed, one of the pirates emerged from the after hatch, a giant of a man, having Esmeralda Podlock tucked under one arm, half undressed, in her petticoat and camisole with her hair tumbling undone. The she-captain was kicking wildly and shrieking in indignation, proclaiming that she was the daughter of an important dignitary in the Royal Africa Company and could not be so treated without great hazard.

  “Captain, this bitch claims she is the owner of the ship and the cargo. There are fifty blacks chained in the tweendecks. What d’ye suggest we do about them! Throw them overboard?”

  “Those are my property!” Mrs Podlock remonstrated. “Do what you wish with those wicked sluts, but I am the legal owner of the slaves. If you keep them in good condition and deliver them to my factor at Enogane fort, I shall arrange for you to be granted a free pardon and the payment of ransom.”

  The pirate captain roared with laughter. “We are pirates, not privateers, you crafty bitch.! Were we fool enough to get close to a Company fort or a King’s ship, you would have us all hanged!”

  “A haughty bitch! Teach her a lesson! Over with her!” Mrs Podlock was gripped by eager hands and with one end of a rope whip made fast around her ankles, hoist violently into the air upside down. Her silk skirts collapsed immediately around her head and arms so she was exposed upside down, naked from her navel upwards to her ankles. Dangling from the yardarm, she swung out over the sea as the ship rolled, until the sailors skilfully judging their moment, dropped her vertically into waves. Her hair flew out in a cloud as she descended amid an expanding circle of petticoats. A long shriek was abruptly cut off as she plunged into the sea with a resounding splash. The men laid hold of the whip end with a cheer and Esmeralda re-emerged, shooting upwards, feet first, white hands clawing at the dripping skirts that clung closely about her head and torso, with a long rope of wet hair continuing to emerge for some time after. Three more times she went up and down, with her vocal output lessening each time, losing her petticoats on the second plunge and her camisole on the third, before being swung back aboard silenced and stark naked.

  “She’s right enough, though, men!” the pirate captain said, contemplating the dripping figure collapsed in a heap on the planking before him, all hip and legs and spreading tangles of hair. “The blacks are worth money if we land them in Brazil.” The pirate’s own ship had been wrecked in the surf and, fearing the consequences of their crimes if they landed, they had taken to the boats in the hope of making their escape by just such a capture. Barbero pointed out that the ‘Cormorant’ was well-stored for a larger complement than were now on board, so the pirate crew agreed to take the slaves across the ocean to sell them in the suggested market.

  “She shall see they are kept in good condition all right! She can serve them their food personally, there’s plenty of it on board, so she can bestow a double ration on them. We want them to look good to the buyers when we reach port.” Barbero swigged deeply and surveyed the wilted former owner of the slaves. “Come to think of it, she can do more to keep them happy than feed them.”

  In the thick and stinking confines of the slave deck, the slaves had gobbled down the astonishingly lavish provision of food and scraped the bowls clean. Excited but ultimately baffled argument as to the meaning of this new dispensation came to a sudden silence, the clanking of iron fetters on restless limbs abruptly arrested, as the dark mass of prisoners saw the glimmer of a white shape moving falteringly among them, identified it as female and watched silently as she sank down with a sob of desperation upon one of the recumbent males nearest to the hatchway.

  The naked lady had first been soundly flogged with the very cat o’nine tails she had ordered the ‘Cormorant’s bosun to manufacture, each of the female convicts having been brought up and made to take their turn in giving their haughty former judge a couple of lashes each. She had been ordered, on pain of its repetition, that each evening after she had fed and watered the black slaves, she must offer herself sexually to one of their number, taking a different man as her partner each night and affording them every satisfaction.

  “The black devils deserve some consolation for their fate!” the captain had said jovially, “besides ‘twill keep them quiet down there and ensure a peaceful voyage.” Mrs Podlock had little choice but to surrender to her fate, since apart from facing more floggings, if she continued to refuse a man, she was threatened with being spread-eagled on the main deck during the slaves’ exercise time, to be fought over there by all.

  The male slave she had so unwillingly selected grunted in surprise and tentatively reached to grab this unexpected appearance, his eyes showing their whites in the darkness, not yet certain that the naked woman was not a vivid hallucination.

  “She can go in naked,” the pirate captain had decreed, “just the same as if she’s one of them!” The former slave owner wore not a stitch and her white skin attracting every glimmer of light made that very evident to the avidly straining males. The slave shackles afforded their wearer no useful movement or reach so at last the man was forced to leave it to the lady. She crouched over his torso for a long time while in the darkness the chains and iron bolts clanked and ground as the other men strained to view and savour every detail of her naked figure, the noise building up again all around her as the slaves became emboldened and manhood revived in them despite their plight.

  Mrs Podlock looked wide-eyed about her, then her hands slowly but effectually began to do for the man she had chosen what he was unable to do for himself, directing his stiffened and rearing black cock between her widespread white thighs. Every movement was scrutinised by a hundred eyes, slaves in the farthest recesses of the hold dragging painfully at their iron restraints to get a view.

  The man she bestrode, his limbs thick and hard like recumbent tree roots, encouraged her with hoarse and urgent cries, repeated by his neighbours with mocking variations and soon echoed with seething lust by the rapt mass of shackled men. In the faint light from the hatch their visitor’s white back bowed and her head dipped; pale hair obscuring her face, tumbled down in waves over the black chest of the enslaved warrior beneath her. Her white bottom rounds caught glimmers of light upon their silken curves as they rose and fell over his loins, the deep throated, approving chorus from his neighbours keeping time with the steady up and down motion they were focused upon. The ecstatic recipient of her softly surging, sliding envelopment jerked in his clanking chains, heels thudding on the naked planks. The thick air seemed to throb with lust, the tempo of action and chorus suddenly quickened. The black man, almost invisible beneath his panting white-limbed pale-haired rider, bellowed in sudden triumph from deep in his chest and the woman’s response came immediately after that, a wild wailing mixture of despair and relief.

  Emerging wearily from the slave deck hatch into the sunlight upon all fours next morning, Mrs Podlock was made to mount the capstan top and endure an intimate inspection by the pirates to confirm that she had been properly sluiced. The following evening, a new routine was imposed and the former slave owner was compelled to take with her a pot of tar and a brush and persuade whichever former item of property she chose to be fucked by, to confirm her satisfactory performance by marking her naked body with a tarry X. The slaves, rapidly grasping the purpose, then began to use their own personal symbols to certify their usage so that as the nights passed, black inscriptions soon spread over the lady’s thighs, belly and bottom cheeks.
r />   The pirated ship now headed to cross the equator and that crossing inspired the pirates to lewdly juvenile antics. King Neptune came aboard. The captives, hearing the noise, were at a loss as to what might be the cause. Neptune was represented by the biggest pirate aboard outfitted with a tin diadem and a rope skirt. He was accompanied by fishy constables armed with rope ends and a mermaid princess. Neptune’s ‘princess’ was Benjamin, wearing a pigtailed wig of blonde rope yarn and sheathed in a tail made of skin freshly stripped from a harpooned porpoise. Settled upon Neptune’s lap he/she had the duty of tilting to Neptune’s lips his own particular supply of rum, the others dipping their mugs in a cask abstracted from the government stores. An old sail stretched horizontally by its corners at waist height above the deck created a sagging bath into which had been poured all the filth that ingenuity could discover, fresh piss contributed by the men and the water from the bilge pump bringing up ancient mud and accumulated sludge from the ballast. The captive women were brought up one by one, struggling and kicking under the arm, or over the muscular shoulder of, a brawny pirate, to be introduced to Neptune. Each was forced to do a handstand before the appraising men, which of course they tried to perform as fast as possible, to show as little of what lay beneath their skirts as they might. All were nevertheless loudly adjudged by the court to be unnaturally hairy and were turned upside down again with two constables seizing them by their ankles and spreading their legs almost horizontally, in which opened posture, with their skirts fallen about their heads and arms and a horny foot planted upon their spilled hair, they were painfully shaved with a tarry brush and a sharpened knife, then stripped and thrown into the pool of filth. As the rum took effect, those who had hidden till last were merely held tucked beneath a man’s arm and roughly shorn like sheep, shaven at both ends, their half-cropped heads as liberally anointed with tar as their pussies. As the naked moaning women floundering in the filth grew in number, the drunken constables employed their rope ends vigorously to stir them up, inducing them to fight one another, mud smeared and stinking as they were, for the better inside positions away from the painful lashes.

  The pirates had decided to recruit a man or two for their crew from amongst the slaves and amuse themselves in the process by holding fucking contests. Six chosen women were stripped naked and tied by their wrists suspended from a line between the fore and main shrouds facing outward. They were fastened reaching upwards so that they could only stand on tiptoe on the deck planking. Looking over their shoulders they saw a group of the black slaves emerge from the hold, freed from their chains and uneasily rubbing their chafed ankles and wrists.

  The pirates made it clear by means of a few useful words held in common and even more common gestures that the six chosen black men, who were the biggest and most muscular that could be selected from among the slaves, would be allowed to fuck the suspended girls. The first black man to reach his orgasm and leave his enforced partner properly sluiced would be given the prize of a bottle of gin. The captain went on to warn the female recipients, without need to strain for translation, that the last woman to bring off her partner would be soundly flogged.

  The slaves broke into hurried discussion, their deep bass voices expressing astonishment and lasciviousness by turns, as they worked out what was required of them. Of course they were not unacquainted with the delights of a well-fleshed naked white woman, having all enjoyed the enforced administrations of Mrs Podlock. All five female heads swivelled with a mixture of apprehension and relief. They had feared that they were about to be flogged. The participation of these men and their attitude of eager anticipation as their chains were struck off hinted that they were coming to some more sexual sort of resolution. The five competitors lined up behind the victims. The black men were tall and muscular, warriors captured in war and enslaved by their enemies, their bodies almost deep black embellished with elaborate ridges and cicatrices of tribal scars. Excited by the sudden turn in their fortunes, the encouragement of the rum, and the female bodies offered for their use, their cocks jutted at varying angles, impressive in both length and thickness.

  “On your marks! Get set! Go!” They moved in swiftly, eager to be successful, grabbing their allotted targets behind the hips and lifting them off their toes. They slid their hands down the backs of the girls’ thighs, parting them and lifting them, tucking them under their arms. Alison and Mary chose to object to their allotted part, but a quick swish and a noisy splatt as the cat o’nine tails smacked across one behind and then the other convinced them otherwise. The other four hastened to spread their legs and thrust their hips towards the nearest savage. Hanging by their wrists, the girls were driven backwards by the thrusting pricks, their arm and shoulder muscles burning under the strain. One by one they found, however reluctantly, that the only relief was to be had by using the men’s bodies, clamping their thighs tight to the muscular torsos and crossing their calves behind the clenching male buttocks to relieve the weight. It meant they were most readily accommodating to the men’s spearing thrusts at the same time and only their backward thrown heads, long hair swinging downwards, faces averted, indicated this cooperation was unwilling.

  The slaves panted and grunted noisily, shouting to one another in their own tongue, boasting or taunting the competition, while their victims gasped and whimpered in muted protest. The pirates were even more noisy, making bets upon the outcome, encouraging the males and abusing any female who seemed too recalcitrant, reminding her of the penalty should her abuser fail to finish in time. Cheers from winning and jovial abuse from losing gamblers acknowledged the triumphant shout that was emitted by the winner as he stepped back, simultaneously pulling out of his victim and releasing his hold. For a moment the girl still clung to him, then her legs slipped free and she swung violently back to the vertical, missed her footing and remained twisting helplessly for a moment before the judges captured her by the ankles and parted her thighs to show her wet red vulva, mercilessly peeling back the lips to reveal the inside wet with male cum. Catching onto their purpose, the proud competitor turned, legs slightly bent and knees apart, to demonstrate his wet and sagging penis was tipped with a thread of dangling white. The losers, meanwhile, went on, hardly slackening, though without anticipation of the prize, they would at least provide themselves with a reward.

  Next day the pirates were still inclined to continue their carouse and in the course of it, Benjamin reminded them of the discarded mermaid tail that he had worn as Neptune’s purported princess, still moist and supple, stored in a tub of brine. The others proposed trying it upon Harriet who happened to be the allotted crew-slut for that day. This was harder service than being forcibly married to one man, even though not all the pirates bothered to take advantage of that privilege; the crew-slut having to take all comers, compressed all her service into twenty-four hours. A small slot having been cut in the skin over the appropriate place, Harriet was immersed up to the waist in a water butt from which the top had been removed. This time, moreover, there was more enthusiasm than usual, pirates clamouring to enter the barrel and fuck the mermaid. The addition of a male body made the butt overflow and bore up Harriet’s breasts to float like bobbing white dumplings, tempting her users to grab them as handy implements with which to manoeuvre her. Because the tail held her thighs together, few of the eager samplers got very deep in their underwater explorations and the space inside the skin between her belly and thighs was soon filled with their random emissions. The pirates had been discussing a re-name for the ‘Cormorant’ and it was decide to make it the ‘Mermaid’, and the ‘Cormorant’ not possessing a figurehead, they completed their intention by using Harriet instead, tied to a spar and thrust out over the stem in the usual position.

  The porpoise skin, as it dried, began to tighten over her hips and thighs, while the drying male cum stuck her thighs to each other and both to the skin, so that she welcomed the low swell that made the ship pitch gently tossing up spray to burst in a shimmerin
g rainbow, wetting down her front from breast to belly, trickling down the tail, and dripping off her stiffened nipples. She found her bondage a welcome respite from being used by the crew but darkness coming quickly as always so near the equator, eventually she began to panic. She wondered if, having been replaced in her function as crew-slut by a substitute, she had been forgotten by the pirates. She failed to make her voice heard and none came to use the latrine alongside, so at last she thought she might unfasten herself by squirming round in her bonds. The wetness of the ropes had slackened her bonds a little and she wormed her way round, the undulant movement of her bottom and hips bursting the fishy sheath a little more as she went. At last she could reach up and, putting her arms around the thick timber of the spar, grope for the fastenings. She became engrossed in this and, just as she undid the knot, a black squall caught her unawares, bursting upon the ship out of the warm darkness, heralded only by one general shout of warning from the deck.

  Amid the sudden cracking of canvas the ship lurched, Harriet lost her grip, the rope slipped out of her fingers and in a second she was plunged into the water only six feet below. The watch were fully occupied in reacting to the black squall that descended out of the night and her muffled cries went unheard as the ship and she were swept apart in the darkness. For a moment she went completely under, but fortunately she came up still on her back. She remembered her childhood exploits swimming in the river pools with her brothers. Her feet could move the fins, even though her legs were trapped within the false tail, and she found that salt water was surprisingly easier to float in than fresh. She tried not to panic but lay back, arms moving gently, fins giving an occasional flick, with the warm rain hissing down washing the salt from her face and mouth.