sss Island

Chapter One-2

“Look here, boys, it’s the fine fancy gentleman come to consort with us riff-raff! Think we can make him feel welcome?”

“Some nice soft skin on him, I fancy, and still caulked as tight as the day he were borned!”

“Tsst! Quiet now, fools! Just get ‘im below!”

Rough hands lay hold of me, one clamping about my mouth. In a sudden panic I struggle wildly, but even aided by adrenaline my muscles are no match for theirs. But at least my mad efforts cause the grip on my face to slip, bringing the edge of a palm within reach of my teeth. Desperation like that of the damned makes me as savage as an animal and I sink my incisors deep. A squall of pain and horrible curses are my reward, and the hand is ripped away, spatters of hot blood stippling my chin as it goes. Immediately I overtop the brute with shouts of outrage and pleas for help, and nearly collapse with relief when they are answered. Both the night watch and the first mate respond, and a drum of boots on the deck herald their approach. Abandoning their attack the sodomites retreat below before they can be identified. I’m left shaken but unviolated, and with a lesson to remember.

“All right there, professor?”

This is the mate, a stalwart fellow named Pieter Evertsen. In contrast to the captain he actually seems to know a thing about honor.

“Yes, thanks. A bit of a scuffle and a close call is all. Nothing a dram of rum wouldn’t put right.”

“Come on up then. And stay away from the gun deck, aye?”

“Aye indeed.”

Denied their prize, the scurrilous ruffians grow surlier still, and the ship’s officers – led by the captain of course – more heavy-handed than ever in meting out discipline. I’m witness to floggings that put those I suffer at the hands of the Lady Abigail into proper perspective. Toying and titillation is all I’ve ever been subjected to, and now that the last welts she’s inflicted have long faded I’ve bizarrely begun to pine for even these scandalous intimacies. Along with my longing for her delectable breasts, and the sight of them bobbing wildly as she rides me (my limbs bound to the bedposts by silken cords and her lovely face anonymously masked) come memories of kneeling before her haughty authority and biting back cries of distress as she sneers imperiously and endlessly lashes me.

So compelling are these recollections they make my member stiffen even as I squirm inside and marvel at the depth of my own growing perversity. Before long, however, everyone aboard from tyrannical captain through sullen crew to strangely conflicted passengers have far more serious trials to contend with. Pressing ever further into uncharted ocean we soon find our favorable winds deserting us. Indeed one after another we are beset by fierce storms, each more dangerous than the one before.

Before long we have surely been blown far off course, though the omnipresent clouds shrouding the sky make it impossible to get a position fix. There are grumbles of navigational incompetence from the crew, and as baseless as they are these add to an increasingly mutinous air. Between storms we are often becalmed for long stretches, though the clouds still obstinately refuse to part. Provisions run low, scurvy begins to take its toll and finally even starvation threatens. Even the very seas seem barren but for the sharks that circle us, and our nets and lines come back empty every time. Still we press on into the trackless void, the captain ignoring the clamor of the crew to turn back.

We must strike land eventually, he claims, possibly at the great southern continent we seek. One abortive uprising has already been put down, the leaders among the malcontents thrown to the sharks. By now our crew is seriously depleted. Yet another more global mutiny is obviously brewing, with the captain targeted for death and myself for both buggery and likely even cannibalism. Our straits are desperate indeed when a solitary island is at last sighted on the southern horizon. Might this finally be the first outlier of that fabled landmass? Heedless with need and dangerously undermanned the Dolphin speeds toward salvation. Charging recklessly ahead, she finds her doom instead.

Washed Up

I’m standing by the rail when the first foreboding of disaster comes.

Peering excitedly into the depths I’m amazed and gratified at the number and variety of fish I can see despite the opacity of the water. The seas have gone from barren to fecund in a furlong. The island could account for that: the more niches there are for life, the more life one invariably finds. Thus sea life seems to concentrate around coasts, islands – and coral reefs. No sooner does this last thought strike me than a panicked shout comes from the lookout, and answering roars from the wheel deck.

“Ware the reef!”

“Hard o’ starboard!”

“Secure for collision!”

From knifing smoothly forward the Dolphin swerves sharply, causing me to stagger back from the rail. For a brief moment I can hope the unprecedented abruptness of this maneuver has spared us. But of course, it is too little and too late. A sudden grating screech is followed by a horrific crunch from under us and our momentum is arrested altogether. Fatal as it is for the ship however this abrupt change from reckless speed to almost instant stop proves unexpectedly fortuitous for me – though I’m far from able to appreciate this fact at first. Already unbalanced and with my grip on the rail broken I’m instantly pitched headlong over this and into the sea quite a good distance from the hull.

I have what seems like an eerily long interval of disbelieving surreality to marvel at the sun-spangled waves below, the wind of my passage cooling my sweaty face and fluttering my long unwashed shoulder-length hair. My filthy garments (one of the worst travails of life aboard ship; among so many other things Lady Abigail is strangely demanding of fastidious cleanliness, and I have taken to this unorthodox condition with far more admittable pleasure than most of her other requirements) flutter against my gaunt body and pin wheeling limbs. The certainty of death approaching (if not by drowning then surely by being torn apart by sharks), gifts me with sudden lucidity. It is not the pain of cessation I fear, or any terror of eternal damnation. Living in rational Amsterdam immersed in radical thought and the study of natural philosophy I have long since determined the Church to be a sham and the fires of Hell as pathetic an empty threat as the promise of eternal paradise is a transparent inducement. Surely any self-respecting Creator would prefer moral behavior to be based on ethical convictions rather than threat or bribery. Nor is it any regret over a life’s work left unfinished that strikes me as I’m propelled toward seeming oblivion. Surprisingly it is my perverse, unfaithful, and distressingly domineering wife my thoughts turn to in those brief yet amazingly drawn out seconds of flight. I rue not fulfilling her requirements for this mission. I suffer and yet savor pangs of humiliating love for her despite the travails she habitually inflicts on me. And in an instant of epiphany I surprisingly realize that I have likewise savored just as much as suffered her imperious, humiliating ways. The erections I invariably sprout throughout her thrashings take on new significance. The long-mysterious frisson of lying meekly bound and supine beneath her while she insatiably takes her almost contemptuous pleasure is mysterious no more. Marveling more than ever at myself, I find that I will miss and regret the loss of these discomfiting occasions worse than any of the other myriad joys and fulfillments about to be reft from me. Almost as soon as they are grasped however these staggering perceptions are slapped from my immediate awareness. Suddenly the water strikes me a stunning blow and I’m enveloped in its surprisingly warm embrace.

Somehow retaining the discipline not to breathe that deadly medium in, I struggle weakly, my sodden clothes further hampering my feeble efforts. All is green and murky, yet the blurred gold of the sun shining through the recently finally parted clouds forms a beacon above me that my reflexive animal insistence on life finds irresistible. Recovering somewhat from the violence of my immersion my faculties begin to return. Still obstinately holding my breath I thrash my leaden limbs against the density of the water and the restriction of my clothing. That orb of gold draws closer, and with it the air that my lungs and stubborn insistence on continuance scream for. At last I breach the surface.

A disorienting chaos assails me after the relative serenity of my flight and the silence of my immersion. Even as I’m gasping greedily at that life-giving elixir a wave smacks my face, filling my gaping mouth and washing down my throat and windpipe both. Desperately I choke and cough it out, blackness encroaching on my already minimal vision. Finally, the throe passes. With the receding of this imperative and the clearing of my ears my senses at last begin to properly register and order the horror surrounding me. I hear screams, curses, pleas for divine mercy, the stentorian shouts of the captain and above all an ongoing grinding roar of destruction.

All is still in flux, yet it is apparent immediately that the ship is going down. A huge rent has been opened in the keel, and already the Dolphin is listing and breaking up. Splintered timbers are scattered like jackstraws, and water-chests and smaller kegs of rum are bobbing to the surface among other debris. Still the screaming intensifies horrifically, and I can no longer hear the captain or anyone trying to bring order to the disaster. It dawns on me at last that my being flung so precipitously from the deck may have offered me a tenuous chance at salvation.

I’ve been thrown beyond the fatal reef. Among the flotsam now spreading concentrically from the point of collision is a stout timber somewhat larger than my body. I manage to splash my way over to this, still retching with shock and the seawater I’ve ingested. Gaining this meager float I cling to it momentarily while I marshal my still returning faculties. Then spurred by the screams and rending noises behind me I immediately begin kicking away from the remains of the ship, hoping frantically to escape the suction when she goes down. As I’d feared, soon those screams of terror and entreaty are joined by ones of mortal agony as the omnipresent sharks wade into the fray. Praying that the reef shields me from these as well as the worst of the suction I’m spurred to greater efforts than ever and just barely in time.

The water is pulling me back toward death even as I strive forward. For several frantic moments I make little or no headway. But at last the draught subsides. The Dolphin has gone under; taking those so far spared the sharks with it. Facing resolutely away from the death and destruction behind me I turn my attention to my only possible hope: the solitary island that lured us hence and goaded us to such improvident haste. From the level of each wave crest I can just catch a brief bobbing glimpse of the volcanic cone at its peak a league or so away. Despite the debilitation of scant recent rations and my bruising smash into the sea, despite the restriction of my soaked clothing (I at least manage to kick off the terrible and unrelenting drag of my water-filled boots), I keep this intermittent glimpse in my sights and somehow maintain a gasping, sputtering, kicking progress toward it.

For a while a lateral current seems determined to pull me away from my lone hope of salvation. While not particularly powerful inside the reef this still tests my waning strength to the limit. Finally, however, after a seeming eternity of desperate effort, I feel solid ground under me. Pushing away the now waterlogged timber I crawl equally sodden from the surf onto an idyllic beach of soft white sand. Utterly exhausted and sickened by horror and seawater I promptly collapse insensate, the sole survivor of the doomed expedition of the Dolphin.