by Lou Cameron
The nights were more fun for Captain Gringo and Antigone, or at least every other night was. She’d weakened the night following their first get-together. But after screwing him silly while bitching all the while about her reputation, she was adamant about him spending every other night with Gaston, who probably found it just as boring.
With nothing to make love to but his fist and a bottle of rum, Gaston was enjoying the voyage less, and bitching about it more than Antigone was.
Captain Gringo wasn’t in the habit of discussing his conquests. But Gaston had things figured out, once he’d seen Antigone at mess in a tight seaman’s pullover. The others on board had of course known earlier that their sea cook was a lady in pants. Gaston said he admired Captain Gringo’s taste and asked him what she tasted like. Captain Gringo told him to find his own stuff to eat, and Gaston said, “Merde alors, if only one could, aboard this stinking species of tub! But the big blonde seems devoted to her damned husband, and the wild-eyed Hungarian creature has been trés difficult to get alone.”
They were having this conversation in the privacy of their tiny stateroom, of course, as Antigone had said no that night. The schooner was sailing through the darkness with the sails reefed and the engine just ticking over, dead slow. Forsythe had to sleep sometime, too.
Captain Gringo let Gaston rave on as he played with himself in the top bunk until the horny Frenchman said, “I’m sure the Hungarian girl is hot for adventure. She shows the whites of her eyes trés alarmingly, considering her Oriental eyes.”
Captain Gringo growled, “Keep it down to a roar, you old goat. The bulkheads are thin, and her husband, Horgany, is a lot bigger than you.”
“Merde, not where it counts, I’ll bet. That little Eva is gushing for a good lay, I tell you. Aside from being perhaps a bit taller than me, Horgany drinks too much for a man who means to keep his woman satisfied.”
Captain Gringo snorted and said, “Shit, Gaston, nobody aboard this tub’s been drinking more than you!”
“That’s different. I have not been called upon to keep it up for that little Hungarian spitfire. Besides, you are wrong. I have only been trying to stay drunk. Horgany drinks himself into a stupor every night before going to bed with all that ooh-la-la! It’s a crime against nature, I tell you!”
Captain Gringo thought about that as he lay naked under the sheet in his bottom bunk. He had thought he’d picked up a few bedroom glances from little Eva at mess that night, and, yeah, Horgany had been socking his booze away pretty good. But he told Gaston, “You’d better stay true to your fist, anyway. Lots of dames flirt just for practice, and we have enough problems now. Speaking of Hungarians, isn’t Hungary part of the Austrian Empire at the moment?”
“Oui, but what has that to do with my poor frustrated cock?”
“I’m trying to figure out how come we’ve been sent to spy on German naval architecture with so many guys who speak German. Keller is a Yank who’s spent most of his adult career in Germany. Horgany’s a subject of the German-speaking Hapsburgs. Fitzke says he’s Swiss. But he’s from the German-speaking part of Switzerland even if he is.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “What of it? Olsen, DuVal, and Forsythe are not Boche, and it stands to reason Hakim would want people who can read German dials and so on, non? Besides, the species of international death dealer has arms factories in Germany as well as England, non?”
“Yeah, if there’s one thing I admire, it’s loyalty. How far in the future do you figure that big war Der Kaiser seems to be arming for gets to start, Gaston?”
“If my French countrymens have anything to say about it, twenty years at the most. We still owe the Boches for 1870, and next time …”
“Yeah, I figure the Brits will get into it too. So where will that leave Hakim, if he doesn’t screw himself to death first?”
“Very rich, of course. That is why he wants to know how Linke-Stettin underbid him. He obviously intended to build submarines for everybody”
Captain Gringo frowned and mused aloud, “I wish I knew if we were doing the right thing, dammit. My own country’s liable to get into it, if it’s a big enough war, and I’d hate to think I helped Hakim if one of his underwater gunboats ever sinks a Yankee ship!”
Gaston laughed and said, “Who says either of us will get to live long enough to find out? If we make it to the end of this century, I, for one, will be astounded. Besides, if Hakim can prove his rival’s submarines are no good, Spain will stop buying them, and a Spanish-American war seems a lot more likely, in our time, non?”
“Yeah, but what if Hakim starts building underwater gun buckets for Spain? He will, you know, if they ask polite.”
“Mais oui, but you forget how slowly the gears of Spanish government turn, Dick. If you Yanks don’t finish off the Spanish Empire within the next few years, you’re not as seriously annoyed with them as young M’sieur Hearst would have one believe. If the Spanish navy is forced to change its plans, it will take them at least ten years of trés tedious discussion. I agree Hakim is a treacherous toad. But in this case he may be on the side of the angels despite his satanic tendencies.”
Captain Gringo yawned and said, “We’re talking in circles. But what the hell, we’ve gone along with the game so far, and even if we had a crystal ball, who’d listen to a couple of guys like us? Let’s get some sleep.”
He closed his eyes and tried to. Then he stared up at the creaking mattress between them and muttered, “Oh, for God’s sake, Gaston, can’t you do that when I’m not sleeping under you?”
“I do. Is it my fault I am more passionate than your cautious Greek girl friend? If I do not keep this damned thing satisfied it tends to get me in trouble. I have never gone in much for sodomy, but that mess attendant, Socrates, is starting to look better to me every time he bats his big brown eyes at me!”
Captain Gringo laughed despite himself and said, “Socrates? Is that the little Greek boy’s name?”
“Oui. Worse yet, he speaks a little French and says he loves me. So if you don’t want me getting merde all over my adorable dong, just leave me alone and let me satisfy it less disgustingly!”
Suiting actions to his words, Gaston proceeded to jerk off harder. Captain Gringo wrinkled his nose, sat up, and pulled on his pants. He knew he was probably being puritan, but it still smacked of homosexuality to him to share a stateroom with a grunting and groaning jerk-off artist. So he decided to enjoy a smoke on deck while Gaston enjoyed himself.
The moon was high and the sea was calm and phosphorescent as he moved up into the bows on his bare feet. The trades were gentle and clean-smelling, albeit a little cool against his bare chest. But he wasn’t uncomfortable enough to go back down for his shirt. He’d only brought one cigar topside. If Gaston wasn’t asleep by the time he finished it, he’d just have to knock out the crazy son of a bitch.
He’d moved to the bows to avoid the effort of conversation with the night watch, aft. He didn’t think it was true about all Greek boys. Save for little Socrates, most of the crew seemed masculine enough. But trying to make small talk with guys who didn’t speak English or Spanish could be another kind of pain in the ass.
So he was a little annoyed when he found someone else up in the bows, leaning against the waist-high forward cabin. He tried to remember what Antigone had said was Greek for “howdy.” Then he saw it was Herta Keller, the big German blonde. So he said, “Gut aben,” and she laughed and said, “It’s Guten abend, Dick. I thank you for the thought, but perhaps we’d better stick to English, nicht wahr?”
He laughed too and said, “Yeah, you would have heard more English than I’ve heard German, married to a Yank.”
Herta looked away and asked, “Why is the water shining so? I have seen phosphorescent waves in European waters, of course, but never so bright as this. The sea looks as if it were on fire all around, nein?”
He moved over to the mounted machine gun and checked the lashings of its tarp as he said, “Yeah, some nights the waves are bri
ght as hell. But let’s not talk about it. It stirs up bittersweet memories of a lady who wrote poetry about green liquid fire and all that poetic stuff.”
“That sounds like the sweet part, Dick. What was the bitter? Did she say no?”
“She said yes. Then she got killed in a fight she had no part in. I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
He was tempted to go back below. He could see that she was as bad as Gaston when it came to talking. But she was a lot prettier, and he’d just lit a claro, so he moved over and rested his buttocks on the cabin coaming next to hers instead. As he did so, the schooner heeled a bit and placed his hip bone closer to hers than he’d intended. She didn’t move away. So he stayed where he was.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Then he said, “I understand your husband worked for Hakim in Hamburg.”
Then it was her turn to look away and ask, “Do you have to talk about him? Oh, look, a shooting star! I wonder if we both just made the same wish, Dick.”
He sort of wondered, too. But he said, “I’ve a reason for asking about what you guys were doing in Hamburg, Herta. Hakim says his rivals built that mystery sub at Kiel.”
“So?”
“So how come he knows so much about Linke-Stettin’s shipbuilding techniques if he’s never worked around ’em?”
She hesitated, then said, “If you must know, my husband did once work for Linke-Stettin in Kiel. They fired him, of course. Sooner or later they always fire him. So now we find him working for a degenerate named Hakim, and is not a life of travel and adventure wunderbar?”
She didn’t sound like she meant it. He said so. She shrugged and said, “When we married I expected him to take me to America. If I had wished to stay in Germany I would have married a German.”
She shuddered and added, almost to herself, “Gott, if only I’d met a nice Russian, or even a Turk. But that is what one gets for guessing wrong.”
He said, “You’re right. We’d better not talk about your old man if you’re ticked off at him.” But then he couldn’t help asking, “What happened, Herta, did you two have a little spat this evening?”
She made a wry face and said, “We never fight. We have an understandings But, Gott im Himmel, with a toy?”
“Holy Toledo! You have to be kidding! A man would have to be nutty as a fruitcake to pass up something as nice as you for … uh, it’s not Socrates, is it?”
She sobbed and said, “Who else? That’s how he lost his job with Linke-Stettin. That’s how he always loses his jobs with real men! He says variety is the spice of life and that I must understand he really loves me in his own way. But, Gott im Himmel, how would you feel if your husband made love to other men, Dick?”
He tried not to laugh as he said, “Pretty weird. I’d feel funny being married to another man even if he didn’t cheat on me. I feel for you, but I just can’t reach you, Herta.”
She took one of his hands, placed it in her lap as she spread her thighs under her thin cotton skirts, and asked calmly, “What if I help you reach me, Dick?”
He was reaching her pretty good. His questing fingers could feel the moistness of her aroused or vengeful vagina as he held her closer with his other arm but said, “Hold it, we’ve got some ground rules to work out here, Herta. You’re a married woman and I’m—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, while you’re acting coy my husband’s locked in our stateroom with my male rival for the night! Don’t you want me, Dick?”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I was a sissy, too. But what if your old man gets excited about the cruel things you’re doing to my hand?”
She lay back atop the cabin as she rubbed his hand harder between her thighs and asked, “Who’s going to tell him?”
He said, “You, for openers. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want more than a feel, Herta, but I’ve been around this block before, and the one thing you can count on when a woman cheats on her husband for spite is that she’s sure as hell going to let him know about it sooner or later.”
She started pulling up her skirts as she insisted, “I said we had an arrangement. He says it’s all right for me to seek variety too, the brute. Naturally he knows I don’t like girls. But he never so much as said I couldn’t join him in his mad passion for men, so what are we waiting for? Stop teasing me, Dick. I want it now!”
He knew she was going to be just as pissed and just as likely to get him in trouble with her husband if he rejected her at this late date. So he stood up, got between her bare chunky knees, and dropped his chinos to enter her, standing, as he held her spread legs like wheelbarrow handles. She gasped and pleaded, “Not so deep! Let me get used to it first, for Gott’s sake. It’s been so long since I’ve had a real man in me and … Ach, nein, forget what I just said and do it, liebling!”
So he did and, thanks to Antigone, was able to do it right. Aside from being rested and not a little frustrated by the Greek girl’s on-again-off-again ways, the contrast between the big chunky German blonde and the dark petite Antigone served to inspire him to new heights. But as soon as he’d made the frustrated Herta come, of course, she started getting cold gray thoughts and said, “Nein, not again. Not here on the open deck! What if someone should come?”
“We just did. But you may have a point. Let’s see, we can’t go to your place and we can’t go to mine so … oh, sure, Socrates has a cubbyhole of his own next to Antigone’s and we know he won’t be using it tonight, right?”
She blanched and asked, “Do you really think I’d let you lay me in that disgusting sodomite’s quarters?”
“Why not? Your husband’s laying him in your quarters, isn’t he?”
Herta laughed, told him how awful he was, and then they pulled down her skirts and pulled up his pants to go somewhere they could do it right.
As they locked themselves into the mess attendant’s perfumed cubby, he lit the lamp and cautioned her, “No conversation. His boss, the cook Antigone, is right next door and we wouldn’t want to give her a bad impression of poor Socrates, see?”
Herta managed not to giggle too loud as he dropped his pants again and helped her undress by soft lantern light. As he got his first good look at the buxom blonde in the buff, it was as if that first quickie up on deck didn’t count. For if Antigone, next door, had the body of a petite marble nymph, this one was built like a Wagnerian soprano made of angel-food cake with lemon frosting.
She fell back on the fortunately fresh sheets the fussy fairy had made his bed with earlier that evening and welcomed him with open arms and legs as his raging erection found its way home again through the familiar blond brush. They went deliciously crazy together for a time, and though they tried to keep the moans of passion down to a roar, they must not have been as quiet as they’d hoped, because they suddenly heard a dainty fist pounding on the bulkhead and then they froze as Antigone, on the other side, cursed them roundly in Greek.
It got worse. As they lay entwined in each other’s flesh, they heard the Greek girl next door get up, stomp on her sea boots, and them slam her own door as she moved out to the companionway. The next time she knocked and swore, it was on the cubby door they’d entered through and, hopefully, locked right!
“Don’t answer!” Captain Gringo whispered as Antigone kicked the door with her sea boots and yelled something awful through the panel in Greek. Despite herself, Herta giggled. On the far side, one feminine giggle probably sounded much like any other, so Antigone spat, “Skata!” and stomped off in a huff.
Herta said, “We’d better get dressed and get out of here schnell!”
But he said, “That’s the sure way to get caught. We don’t dare open that door until she’s back in her own quarters, see?”
“What if she’s going to tell her captain on us, Dick?”
“I don’t think she is. But if she is, we’re no worse off in the end. The odds are better on getting caught if we try to sneak out now after all the hell she just raised out there. Let’s just enjoy life while we wait for
things to simmer down.”
“I am too nervous now to make love! What will you do if the captain comes to that door, Dick?”
“Tell him to go away, of course. He speaks English and I don’t think he’s married to Socrates.”
“Mein Gott, that might make him think you, too, are like mein husband!”
“Yeah, well, better me than you. We haven’t tried it dog style yet, Doll. Or would you rather get on top?”
She laughed a little wildly and said, “This is pretty funny, once one thinks about it, nicht wahr?”
He didn’t think it was going to be funny if Antigone figured out who was in there. But he grinned back at the big blonde reassuringly and said, “You wanted to play dirty tricks on your old man. So let’s get dirty some more.”
She said, “All right.” Then she rolled over on her stomach, placed a pillow under her to raise her rump invitingly, and said, “Let’s pretend I am a Greek boy, too.”
He frowned down at her heroic rear and said, “I thought you said your old man was the one who went in for that sort of thing, Herta.”
She said, “He is. I’ve never let him put it in me that way. So I’ll really be cheating on him if I give myself to you that way, ja?”
“I think I grasp your logic, sort of, but I’m not sure this is such a good idea, if you haven’t done it before. They tell me it’s sort of an acquired taste, Herta.”
“Who told you, boys or girls?” she asked archly as she arched her spine and reached down with both hands to spread her cheeks for him.
