AROUND THE WORLD IS NOT A TRIP

I took a last deep puff from the roach, ditched it, and started up the ladder behind her. When I got close, she started climbing again and I followed. About halfway up, she stopped again, taking me by surprise. My head came up hard under her miniskirt and wedged for a moment between her tanned thighs.

“Be cheerful! You bumped my rump!”

“Sorry.”

Blaze caught her breath and we started climbing again. A strong breeze had come up and the rope-ladder was swaying considerably. If not for the pot, I probably would have been a lot more scared. As it was, I sort of swung with the sensation, looking upwards and enjoying the fleshy scenery between me and the sky.

Coming abreast of the Crow’s Nest, Blaze peered inside. “No turds.” She was disappointed.

“No shit!” Despite the pot, I was beginning to tremble now. “Let’s start back down,” I suggested.

There was along silence.

“Well?” I broke it.

“I c-c-can’t.” Blaze’s teeth were chattering. “I’m scared out of my tits!”

“Get hold of yourself!” I told her.

“I’m d-dizzy! I can’t seem to c-c-catch my breast!”

She really was shaky. I could see it and I could feel it. Afraid she’d let go, I grabbed her bottom with both hands and shoved her up and over the side into the Crow’s Nest. The violent movement shook me up and so I quickly tumbled in after her.

It was pretty crowded. No matter which way my hands reached, they came up full of Buxbocks pulchritude. Even when we finally both managed to struggle to our feet, we were wedged tightly together, our limbs entwined intimately. The grass having lowered my inhibitions, I accepted the uprising of my lust against her soft underbelly without embarrassment.

“You’re joking me,” Blaze noted matter-of-factly. She tried to move away slightly and one of her straps caught on my thumb and fell away from her right breast, baring it. “Stop staring like that at my nest!” she complained.

“I was focusing higher,” I told her.

“Another joint might settle my curves,” she suggested.

“Are you sure it won’t make things worse?”

“No. I feel very dense. It should deceive the tension.” She ducked down to light the joint.

A hard nipple pressed against my thigh. I squatted down myself, taking the joint from her when she offered it. I inhaled deeply.

“We're so high up,” Blaze observed. “It’s like riding on a shroud. It’s like being in Heaven.”

“Praise the Lord and pass the marijuana.” I puffed again, staring fascinated at her one naked breast. It reminded me of an egg fried sunnyside-up with a small sausage sticking straight up from the center of the yolk. Grass can do that to you. I’d just eaten, but I was hungry again.

“Feel the way we’re swinging back and forth like the pendulum of a cock.” Blaze giggled.

She was right. The sea breeze had developed into a strong wind. The Crow’s Nest was riding far out over the water and then way back again to the other side. The arc encompassed about sixty degrees.

Blaze’s other strap had fallen, and both breasts were bare now. Because we were so crowded, she was seated on my lap facing me, her knees locked around my waist. As I reached for the joint again, my hand slid across both her naked breasts. I let it linger there. She didn’t seem to mind.

I noticed that she was shivering. There were little goose-bumps on the wide aureoles surrounding her stiff nipples. I struggled out of my jacket and put it around her shoulders.

She sucked at the joint, passed it to me, and unbuttoned my shirt. Now her naked bosom was tight against my bare chest. I handed the joint back to her, ducked my head and kissed the hard tip of one of her breasts.

Blaze returned the favor. Her tongue laved my nipple lingeringly. I reacted.

“You’re getting incited,” she murmured.

“Yeah.” Lightheaded from the marijuana, the wind pounding over me, I slid my hand up her quivering thigh, under the miniskirt. It didn’t have far to go. Her silken bikini panties were slippery and a little moist. Heat greeted my fingertips as they slid under the elastic.

Blaze took one last deep puff and threw the roach to the howling wind. Her hands got busy at the waistband of my pants. In the position we were in, the zipper gave her a lot of trouble. I stood up so she could get at it.

With the upper part of my body no longer sheltered by the Crow’s Nest, I really felt the wind full force. It hit me like a gale! I had to hold onto the edge of the Crow’s Nest with all my strength to keep from being blown away as the ship pitched to an impossible angle that had the mast almost parallel to the water.

I was alarmed, but I was still stoned enough to forget my alarm when Blaze’s knowing fingers on my loins summoned me to squat back down. She still had on the miniskirt, but I noticed that her panties sat on top of my clothes in the corner. She clutched at me as I settled, frightened.

“It feels like a tycoon!” She shivered.

“Probably just the backlash from the hurricane.” I remembered that Maldemerde had decided to avoid it and felt somewhat reassured. “Nothing to worry about,” I told Blaze. “We’re not going to come anywhere near it.”

“That’s a belief!” She snuggled against me.

A cold raindrop pinged off the tip of her breast. She started and I caressed her to soothe her. I stroked her silken back, and when she purred a little, I let my hands drift lower. She raised her face to be kissed.

Her mouth was a warm refuge in a night fast turning chilly. Her soft lips parted. Our tongues entwined. My mind, reminding me, said snatch itch. My penis said, forget it.

One of my hands was under her now, kneading the marshmallow flesh of her derriere. She leaned forward and tickled the underside of my scrotum. I moved forward, wedging my penis between her trembling thighs, probing toward that secret moist place, but unable to reach it.

Her legs were opening and closing, revealing the triangle of red curls with the erect, maroon clitty peeping out of them, and the soft love-lips puckering avidly. I stared and forgot all about the storm blowing up around us. Rarely have I seen such an eager beaver!

But the damn Crow’s Nest just hadn’t been designed for lovemaking. It was like trying to make out in the front seat of a Volkswagen. No matter how we shifted, we couldn’t seem to mesh gears.

We thrashed around in frustration. I managed to force it into the deep cleft between her breasts, but that didn’t satisfy Blaze. And, while it was exciting, I too was bent on other, more succulent game. Finally I figured out a way.

I stood up again, almost flying out of the wildly tossing Crow’s Nest in my impatience. I arranged Blaze on her back so that her arms and legs stuck up over the sides of the Crow’s Nest. Then I lowered myself, kneeling, until I’d wedged my knees under her bottom. By pressing forward this way, I was able to gain access to her waiting, palpitating love-tunnel.

Forcing myself to slow down, I gently pinched at the nipples of her breasts. Blaze hardly seemed to notice. Her eyes were riveted on the juncture of her widespread legs, staring as the stiff battering ram came closer and closer. The tip grazed her fever-hot clitty, and she winced. When I moved forward another half-inch, she moaned deep in her throat and her vagina lips nipped urgently at the crest of my organ. Her muscles relaxed and I slid in to the hilt. Blaze bucked and tightened around me like a vise. I let her feel the full force of my weight, and her teeth bit into my shoulder hard. She fought back, countering each of my lunges with equal force until a savage rhythm had been established between us.

Deep and fierce, the two of us kept pounding away. The skies opened up now, and the rain pelted our hot bodies, an occasional flash of lightning illuminating our writhing limbs, deep thunder pronouncing a judgment that we ignored. I don’t know if it was the pot, or the storm, or just one of those times of passion that come so rarely, but we plunged into an oblivion that was a battle of lusts, and stayed there for a long while, our entire beings concentrated on the joining of our bodies.

We were both screaming wordlessly now. Her teeth had stabbed deep into the flesh of my shoulder. It was bleeding and her lips seemed to savor the blood. My hand was twisting her breast so hard that she was crying with the pain. And at the same time, exultation mounted on her tear-streaked face, and on mine. There was a sky-splitting flash of lightning followed by a nuclear thunderclap, and between the two, in those couple of seconds, we fired off our lust at each other in a discharge that continued past the echo of the thunder. Finally we fell apart like two evenly matched warriors who have vanquished one another on the field of battle.

Not too far apart, of course. The Crow’s Nest was too confining to permit that. Actually, we were still sprawled over one another, spent, exhausted. We lay that way a long time with the wind howling over us and the rain drenching us. And then the ship took an unexpected lurch that seemed to send the Crow’s Nest hurtling into space, and I clicked back fast into full awareness.

For a minute I thought it wouldn’t, but at the last split second the ship righted itself. The mast came back up to a vertical position. The Crow’s Nest felt a little less like a roller coaster on the down-plunge.

“We’d better get out of here!” I told Blaze.

No answer. Her face was white and staring. She was obviously incapable of movement. Still, if I left her there, the next deep roll of the ship might well dump her out of the Crow’s Nest. “I’m going to go for help,” I explained to her. “You stay here. I’ll lash you to the mast.”

Still no answer. Blaze was in a trance of pure terror. Using my pants and jacket, I rigged a harness for Blaze and secured it to the mast and the cross-brace. It let her stay in the Crow’s Nest, but if the Crow’s Nest should be torn away by the wind, she’d still be tied to the mast. Hopefully, the mast itself wouldn’t snap.

I slipped on my jockey shorts and undershirt and started down the rope ladder. About a third of the way down, the ship rolled crazily, the rope-ladder swung out, and the wind hit me like an atomic blast. My shorts and undershirt were peeled away in an instant. I was almost peeled off the ladder myself. Only by wrapping my legs around the spar was I able to keep from falling.

It passed and I continued downward. Twice more I was almost blown away. Finally, my feet touched the deck.

But the deck was slick with rain and sea-water. It slid out from under me and I went hurtling toward the blackness. The Lascivia was listing sharply to port. I was being flung over the side! And there was nothing I could do to brake myself!

Suddenly, something grabbed my ankle and yanked hard. I skidded to a halt, my outflung body dangling over the depths. My other ankle was grabbed, and I was pulled to safety. I flopped over and found myself in the shelter of a cabin, looking up at Mister Jewish and Chief Purser Yenta.

Mister Jewish struggled to close the door against the storm. Yenta looked at me and shook his head ruefully. “Mr. Victor! You simply must keep your exhibitionism under control until this storm is over!”

“Exhibitionism?” I gasped, trying to get my breath back.

Yenta’s eyes roamed over my nude body.

“The wind tore off my clothes,” I explained weakly.

“So you went looking for them, naked, in the middle of a hurricane?” Yenta was skeptical.

“Hurricane? I thought we weren’t going into the hurricane. I thought the Captain decided to avoid it.”

“He did.” Mister Jewish spoke for the first time. “Our course was set to miss it by at least fifty miles.”

“Then what happened?”

“Someone sabotaged the ship’s compass. It’s ten degrees off. By the time we discovered it, we were in the middle of the storm.”

“But whoever did that,” I babbled, “put his own neck in the noose along with everybody else on board. Why would anybody do that? And who? Who'd do a thing like that?”

“I’ve got my ideas!” Mister Jewish was looking straight at me. It wasn’t a friendly look. It was the kind of a look a hanging judge has just before he pronounces a gallows sentence. “One man turns up every time something happens aboard this ship. One man is always right there. And it’s always the same man!”

There was no missing his meaning! He meant me!

CHAPTER TEN

The storm raged. The sea was a spinning roulette wheel, the Lascivia a little steel ball bouncing erratically, at the mercy of the angry Gods of Fate. Their displeasure had cracked the skies wide open and the vessel was being whipped brutally by wind and rain and overwhelming tidal waves. It was a bitch!

I tried to tell Mister Jewish that Blaze Buxbocks was stuck up in the Crow’s Nest, but‘ he wouldn’t listen. His suspicion of me had poisoned his mind, and he wasn’t about to take action on anything I said. Besides which, he let me know tersely, he couldn’t spare a man to look into the matter; even if he could, he wasn’t about to risk one of his men’s lives by sending him aloft in a hurricane.

My only recourse was to appeal to the Captain. I followed along when Mister Jewish went back to the wheelhouse. But the way things were there, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

Captain Maldemerde was hysterical. There’s no other word for it. He was vacillating between quivering, pasty-faced terror and the assertion of his authority by the bellowing of contradictory orders. Click-click.

“Ten degrees port!” he was screaming at the helmsman when we entered.

“You just ordered me to change course to ten degrees starboard, sir,” the helmsman said meekly.

“Are you questioning my orders, sailor?” Click- click. The ship gave a sudden lurch that sent us all sprawling. “Oh, God!” the Captain moaned, cringing in the corner where he’d landed. “We’re going to founder!” Click-click. He closed his eyes and remained there, shaking with fear.

“Straighten her out, sailor!” Mister Jewish leaped to the helm and helped the seaman right the wheel. “We’re not going under, sir,” he reassured the Captain. “She’s righting herself.”

There was a long silence broken only by the click-click of the stripper’s pasties being rolled in the palm of the Captain’s sweating hand. Finally he pulled himself together and opened his eyes. They focused on me.

“That man is nude!” He pointed an accusing finger. Click-click.

“Captain!” The Second Mate was on the intercom with the engine room. “Chief Engineer Gorilla requests permission to jettison the Number Four ballast tank. He says that last pounding we took has started a seam splitting.”

“I will not have a nude man in my wheelhouse!” Click-click.

“The rudder isn’t responding, sir! I can't hold her steady!” The wheelman shouted his alarm.

“I am the Captain of this vessel, and his nudity is an affront to my authority!” Click-click.

“Request permission to reduce speed ten knots, sir. If we keep heading into the wind at this speed, We’ll capsize.” Mister Jewish was keeping his cool.

“Cover him at once!” Click-click.

The Second Mate muttered something about modesty in the middle of a catastrophe, and tossed me an oil slicker. As I was putting it on, the ship rose terrifyingly on the crest of a wave and then slammed down into its trough. The Captain screamed loudly, a high-pitched wail of pure, mindless horror.

Mister Jewish moved fast. He grabbed the wheel and spun it; the rudder was back in the water now, and the ship responded sluggishly. “Tell Gorilla to ditch the ballast tank and cut speed pronto,” he ordered the Second Mate. “Helmsman, hold her here until you feel the next wave. Then ease slowly to starboard. Slowly! Understand? And by no more than ten degrees.”

“Mister Jewish!” the Captain yelled. “That will put us in the center of the storm!” Click-click.

“I know, sir. But the eye of the hurricane will be relatively calm. We can ride it out there.”

“Hurricane?” Click-click. “This isn’t a hurricane, Mister. This is a tornado!”

“Tornados are land-storms, sir. I think you mean ‘typhoon.’ ”

“I thought it was a gale,” the Second Mate interjected.

“The correct terminology is ‘typhoon,’ or ‘hurricane,’ ” Mister Jewish told him.

“The correct terminology is what I say it is, Mister!” the Captain screamed. Click-click.

“What difference does it make what you call it?” the helmsman groaned.

“That man is insubordinate!” Captain Maldemerde roared. “Put him on report!” Click-click. “And relieve him from duty immediately!”

“In the middle of a hurricane, sir?” Mister Jewish was disbelieving.

“A tornado, Godammit!” Click-click.

“But we don’t have a replacement for him, sir.”

“Are you questioning my orders, Mister Jewish?” Click-click.

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid I am.”

Captain Maldemerde shook with rage. “You are relieved of your duties here, Mister Jewish!” he hissed. Click-click. “You will leave the wheelhouse! You will climb the main mast and lash yourself to the crossbeam at the top, alongside the Crow’s Nest!” Click-click. “You will ride out the tornado there! You will not come down until I say so! That’s an order, Mister!” Click-click.

“Yes, sir.” His face impassive, Mister Jewish saluted smartly, turned on his heel and left the wheelhouse.

I watched through a porthole as he began climbing the rope ladder. It was whipping in the wind, but he seemed surefooted as a goat and ascended rapidly. He vanished from sight in a sheet of rain. Oh well, I reflected, at least Blaze would have company in the Crow’s Nest. She’d certainly be safer with Mister Jewish there.

“The tornado is abating,” the Captain decided. Click-click.

“I don’t believe so, sir.” The Second Mate disagreed timidly. “It’s just that we’re in the eye of the hurri-— uh—-tornado.” He corrected himself diplomatically.

“Now hear this, mister!” Click-click. “If I say it’s abating, it’s abating!”

The floor of the wheelhouse slipped suddenly out from under us as a gigantic wave washed over the ship and sent it careening. “Mama!” the Captain screamed. “I want my Mama!”

The Second Mate regained his footing and helped the helmsman grapple with the wheel. Slowly, the Lascivia settled and came about. Maldemerde, weeping in the corner, seemed not to notice.

That was the pattern for the next few hours. We’d ride calmly for a quarter-hour, and then suddenly the ship would be buffeted wildly by the wind, or the sea. But each time, I noticed, the violence would be somewhat less. Maldemerde had been premature, but by the time those hours had passed, the storm was indeed abating.

Toward dawn, with the Second Mate directing the helmsman, we sailed straight into a rainstorm that was mild compared to what we’d been going through. It was like sitting under a waterfall, but the wind wasn’t as strong, and the ocean, while still quite choppy, wasn’t raging as it had been. We were leaving the eye of the hurricane, and passing through its wake at an angle while it continued on its course.

It was still raining steadily, but the danger was past by midmorning when Maldemerde issued the order for Mister Jewish to descend from the Crows Nest. The First Mate came down with Blaze Buxbocks slung over his shoulder. In her sopping miniskirt with the all-but-useless straps, she seemed to be bearing up very well as he set her down on the deck. I noticed that even though they’d alighted, she didn’t stop clinging to him.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, anxious.

“Don’t speak to me, you poultry!”

“You mean ‘poltroon,’” I guessed. “ ‘Poultry is chicken.”

“Then that’s what I mean! You’re chicken! I could have dried up there for all you care! I thought you were coming back for me! If it hadn’t been for Mister Jewish, I’d still be stuck on top of that phallic thimble!”

“I’m really sorry,” I muttered, feeling guilty and ashamed despite all the legitimate excuses I could make to myself.

But Blaze wouldn’t buy the apology. Holding tight to Mister Jewish, she turned her back on me.‘ I watched them walking away, their arms wrapped intimately about each other. Something told me the ordeal of the Crow’s Nest hadn’t been quite such an ordeal for them after all.

It depressed me. Also, I was tired and achy and developing some sniffles. I decided that what I needed most was some hot steam and a rubdown, and then maybe a few leisurely drinks.

The men’s steam room was empty, except for the attendants. Most of the passengers were still trying to put their stomachs together after the sea-sickening jouncing they’d been put through. It was kind of nice to have the luxurious facilities all to myself.

I baked my brains in the steam room for about half an hour, and then showered. I dried out in a sauna chamber, showered again, and then stretched out on a table for one of the Lascivia’s expert Swedish massages by a real Swede hired away at top salary from a Stockholm gymnasium.

He knew his business. I could feel the tension easing out of my muscles, one by one, as he manipulated them. My skin began to glow with some sort of fragrant oil he was kneading into it. I dozed off after a few moments.

I woke when he turned me over on my back; but his soothing hands soon had me snoozing again. When I woke the second time, it was to find him sprinkling talcum powder over my groin. He dusted it in with some sort of feathery thingamajig, repeating this process four or five times until my crotch was as soothed as that of a freshly diapered baby. The talcum powder made the area feel relaxed and cool, smoothed and clean.

I went back to my stateroom, put on some fresh clothes, and then went down to the cocktail lounge for a drink. Dr. Quotabusta was standing at the bar. He beckoned to me to join him.

“What’s up, Doc?” Not having had my Scotch yet, I wasn’t up to being original by way of greeting.

“Six new cases yesterday,” he told me glumly.

“What about today?” I ordered a drink from the bartender.

“Nothing. But people are too busy being seasick to notice, probably. I’ve spent all morning and half the afternoon consoling passengers with the dry heaves.”

“Maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s really stopped spreading.”

“Maybe.” Dr. Quotabusta looked at me, his black face glum. “But if that’s true, then why, Mr. Victor, are you scratching your groin?”

I hadn’t realized I was until he mentioned it. “It’s nothing. My jockey shorts are a little too tight. That’s all. Gee, Doc, you’re getting paranoid about this thing.” I made myself stop scratching.

“Paranoid!” He snorted. “Like Dr. Ehrlich⁷ !”

“You really think it’s venereal disease?”

“What else could it be?”

He had me there. If it was spreading the way he said it was, then this groin-scratching disease certainly would seem to be caused by some bug or other. I finished my drink, had a refill, and then left Dr. Quotabusta to his gloom. I went back to my cabin and caught a nap before dinner.

I woke up scratching!

It was the damnedest thing! It didn’t burn, or anything like that. It wasn’t painful. It was just a steady itching, not really too unpleasant, but summoning my hands crotchwards to provide a steady scratching.

Many of those passengers who’d overcome their seasickness enough to stagger in to dinner were suflering from the same malady. Throughout the meal, hands were as busy under the table as they were atop it. The scene was like a flea circus in a kennel.

After dinner there was a movie. With the weather still on the nasty side, I didn’t have anything better to do than watch it. When it was over, I took a turn around the deck. I scratched as I strolled.

The porthole was open and the light was on inside Cabin B-47 as I approached it. I was neither in the mood for geriatric sex, nor for senile rejection from Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot, so I almost turned around and went back the way I’d come. What stopped me was the sight of the Breast framed in the porthole.

Damn! Miss Amanda must have had one helluva talented plastic surgeon! The Breast was as impressively round and firm as when I’d first glimpsed it upon my arrival aboard the Lascivia.

“Hello there.” The Breast had seen me.

“You’re talking to me again?”

“Why not?”

“Search me. But you slammed the porthole cover in my face the last time, so I thought you were mad.”

“Did I do that?” The tone was teasing.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Poor boy. Don’t feel rejected.”

“Well, in that case—” I marched boldly up to the porthole.

“No-no! I don’t have time. I have to dress.”

“It’s bedtime. Time to undress.”

“You’d better go away now.”

“Make up your mind! I’m not a yo-yo, you know! Age doesn’t give you the right to jerk me around!”

“ ‘Age’?”

“No disrespect. But just because you’re on in years doesn’t mean you can turn me on and oft whenever you feel like it.”

“On in years?”

“Over the hill!” I exploded.

“‘Over the hill’!” The Breast was indignant. “I’m at least ten years younger than you are! Stick your head in here and I’ll prove it!”

I stuck my head through the porthole. “You’re not Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot!” I exclaimed.

“Of course not!”

“But this is her cabin.” I was confused.

“That’s right.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m her maid, Magda.”

I stared. She stood brazenly nude and stared back. Skipping over the Breast, its mate, and the Derriere, Magda was as well put together a lady’s maid to be found this side of Fanny Hill⁸ . Medium height, narrow waist, ball-bearing hips, strong, graceful legs, and a face like a mischievous Circe promising hot ecstasies with her deep, dark, liquid eyes, and threatening retribution with the almost cruel curl of her pursed lips. The visage was framed by a cloud of blue-black hair, long and tumbling in a wild disarray that would have hinted to me of her lack of inhibitions—if I hadn’t already had sufficient reason to be well aware of them.

“Why don’t I come inside and--” I started to suggest.

“You can’t come in! Miss Amanda’s in the next room.”

“I didn’t know there was a next room.”

“It’s a suite. There are four rooms, not counting the bathroom.”

“Which you share with her,” I remembered.

“Then it was you again that first night before sailing. I heard the commotion when I was in the bathroom, but I wasn’t sure.”

“It was me,” I admitted. “And is Miss Amanda the reason you wouldn’t let me in the cabin that first night in New York?”

“In a way. You see, I’d come on ahead to arrange her things. I wasn’t sure if she was going to arrive late that night, or the next morning.” Magda giggled. “Besides, it was more fun that way. I was sort of proving something to myself.”

“Like what?”

“Like that when a man is aroused, he’s completely out of control. As long as he can get satisfaction, he’ll stick it any place. And he doesn’t even have to know, doesn’t really care, what’s attached to where he shoves it.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the point?”

“Power,” she told me sweetly. “In the world today men have the power. But if women can control the men with the power, well, then—-” She left it hanging, but her soft lips were curling more ominously than ever.

“Magda.” A voice came from another part of the suite.

Magda quickly slipped on the uniform dress of a maid. “Coming, Miss Amanda,” she called back. “I have to go now,” she hissed to me. “Look in on me again if you happen to be passing.” She closed the shutter of the porthole in my face.

I resumed scratching and continued up the deck. Turning the corner, I was attracted by soft giggles from the shadows beside one of the bulkheads. Peering through the darkness, I made out Blaze Buxhocks and Mister Jewish. The way they were wrapped around each other, there was no point in disturbing them. I sighed to myself and kept going.

My scratchy wanderings took me past Captain Maldemerde’s cabin. His porthole was also open. The cabin was dark, but standing at the rail, I could hear voices coming from inside. They belonged to Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins.

“It must be an awfully big responsibility,” Zelda was saying, “a boat like this.”

“Ship.” The Captain corrected her. Click-click.

“Ship. . . . I was terrified during that hurricane. Weren’t you scared even a teensy bit?”

“Tornado!” He corrected her again. Click-click. “In a crisis, the master of the vessel doesn’t have time to be scared. He has to keep his head. Everything depends on him.” Somehow Maldemerde managed to get modesty into his voice “Could you help me with this?”

“Is that a corset?” Zelda giggled.

“A ship’s master must stand stiff as a ramrod,” he told her stiffly. Click-click. “It’s a necessary part of my uniform.”

“ ‘Stiff as a ramrod,’ ” Zelda echoed. “Well, not exactly,” she observed. “But let’s see what we can do. . . .”

Click-click.

I ambled itchily—scratchily—back toward my cabin. At the top of the staircase above it, I heard strange sounds coming from one of the luxury suites. It took me a minute to decipher them.

Then I realized that it was a dog whining—or, rather, purring with pleasure. Up till then, I’d never known dogs could purr. But there’s really no other word for the sounds I heard.

A voice merged with the strange noises. “Ahh, Zwing Toy! . . . Yes-yes, my little furry darling! . . . Lick me there! . . . Oh, yes! . . . Let me feel your hot tongue, Zwing Toy! . . . Lick me! . .

Queen Nimmfetah was playing with her Pekingese!

Blaze Buxbocks and Mister Jewish . . . Captain Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins . . . Queen Nimmfetah and even Zwing Toy . . . Everybody, it seemed, was having fun but me. Feeling left out, I continued on down to my cabin and went to bed. I fell asleep scratching . . .

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tahiti!

The three full days that the S.S. Lascivia lay at anchor off the port city of Papeete passed in a sunsplashed haze of euphoria. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written to describe the Polynesian island. None succeed. As much as it is a place, Tahiti is an emotion. It frustrates semantics; description only blurs the feeling; Tahiti can’t be defined; it must be experienced.

The euphoria persisted even after we’d departed Tahiti. The weather remained perfect for the next week. There were no further incidents of sabotage. Only the sight of people constantly scratching intruded on the sense of well-being.

Even the Captain seemed in a better mood than usual. Word had reached him that the Queen William was only fourteen hours ahead of us, hardly an insurmountable lead. We’d picked up time on her during the hurricane, and Maldemerde was hoping to gain even more by shortening the ten days of sailing to our next stop, Bali.

A movie travelogue on Bali was scheduled to be shown a couple of nights before we were due to arrive there. The screening took place in the lavish theater lounge where the latest feature films were presented nightly for the cruise guests. About a hundred-fifty people attended the showing, myself among them.

The theater lounge was an ultra-modern setup designed with bold splashes of color. The ceiling was a blue tropic sky, trickily lit so that it changed subtly from daytime to twilight to star-studded evening as the theater was darkened. The seating consisted of overstuffed divans of various shapes and sizes, most of them ample for two people, a few curved larger ones capable of seating three or four comfortably. They weren’t arranged in rows, but rather staggered casually to create an “at-home” feeling. The draperies were maroon velvet, and the paintings on the mahogany walls ran the gamut from signed-in-the-stone prints by turn-of-the-century impressionists to modern abstract originals. Deep-pile carpeting, dark gold, completed the muted effect. In every way, the theater had been planned for luxurious comfort.

It was already filling up by the time I arrived. I found an empty seat beside Queen Nimmfetah on one of the smaller divans. She returned my greeting haughtily and moved a little away from me as I sat down. From the gauzy material covering her lap, Zwing Toy, her Pekingese, growled low in his throat and eyed me suspiciously. The young ex-Queen soothed him, but her dark eyes were no warmer than the dog’s as they looked out over the top of her face-veil. I lowered my own eyes to avoid her gaze and found them focusing on her small, plump bosom. It was playing an intriguing game of hide-and-seek with the semi-transparent material of her royal Arabian garb.

When Queen Nimmfetah caught me peeking and sneered, I turned away and saw Mister Jewish and Blaze Buxbocks on an adjacent divan. They were sitting very close together, deep in conversation. In front of them Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot, her maid Magda, and Ensign Mayday shared a larger couch. Looking around, I also spotted Captain Maldemerde with Zelda Poppins, Chief Engineer Gorilla and Binny Stanford, Sister Stella and Ogden Stanford, the four bridge Wives, Mario Brandino, and Dr. Quotabusta.

Just about everybody was busily scratching!

The trick ceiling did its thing and night fell. The audience subsided to a murmur and then became quiet. Only the sound of scratching could be heard. The wide screen lit up and the travelogue began:

“INDONESIAN PARADISE”

As the title dissolved from the screen to be replaced by various screen credits, a narrator’s voice was heard. It was one of those deep, rich voices calculated to make the listener feel like a raisin immersed in sugary custard. It rolled off his tongue like an expensive seduction.

“Bali . . . island in the Sun . . . happy, simple natives . . . exotic birds with bright plumage . . . azure lagoons . . . golden beaches . . . lush, vibrant foliage . . .” And so on.

On the screen appeared a series of visions of greenery and native huts and beaches and water sports and outdoor cafés and tribal rites and waterfalls and palm trees, et cetera. The voice droned on, rendering an exciting locale dull with the banal description typical of so many travelogues. Then, suddenly but smoothly, the images on the screen changed.

The narrator was describing how “sure-footed Balinese boys nimbly scale the tall coconut trees.” There was a close-up of bare, brown feet blurring with the speedy movements of the upward climb, and then clearing to present a sharp focus on a pair of large feet clad in high, black socks!

The camera pulled back to show a nude male figure with a domino mask covering the lower part of his face. Endowed like a Spanish bull in the mating season, he was sneaking up on a tall, blonde girl. She was standing with her back to him and pulling her dress off over her head.

“. . . Strange, indeed, to the civilized visitor, are the uninhibited traditions and quaint native customs . . .”

As the dress fell to the floor, the blonde was revealed nude except for black-net stockings, spiked high heels, and a mask similar to the man’s. Her platinum hair was cropped short in some style of yesteryear. Her breasts were large and pendulous.

Still with her back to the unseen intruder, she massaged their tips until the nipples were long and stiff. Eyes closed, her heavy hips moved rhythmically as she rubbed the fleshy thighs of her long legs together. As she strained, her derriere thrust out and rippled suggestively. Using it as a target, the masked man came up behind her and made his presence known.

“Must be some sort of native fertility rite,” a woman in the audience explained to her companion.

Other viewers watched without comment, but reacted in different ways. Beside me, Queen Nimmfetah had stopped scratching and was encouraging Zwing Toy to burrow in her lap. Mister Jewish had both hands inserted in the top of Blaze Buxbocks' low-cut evening gown. Binny Stanford was stroking Chief Engineer Gorilla’s thigh. Her ex-husband, Ogden, was concealed from the waist down by the folds of Sister Stella’s habit. Captain Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins were locked in an embrace with the Captain staring wide-eyed at the screen over her shoulder.

“. . . Here, fertile Nature has created an atmosphere of gentle serenity, of tranquility and peacefulness . . .”

The blonde struggled. The rapist prevailed. The scene dissolved and now she was tied face-up on the bed, her arms and legs secured to the four old-fashioned bedposts. She writhed in terror and there was a close-up of the effect on her twitching, clean-shaven mons veneris. The high mound pushed upwards to reveal a rigid clitoris and creaming, pulsating lips.

“She doesn’t look Polynesian,” someone observed.

Still stroking her Peke, watching the screen intently, Queen Nimmfetah moved a little closer to me on the divan. I pressed my leg against hers. She sighed and made no attempt to break the contact.

In the center of their couch, Mrs. East and Mrs. North, side-by-side, gazed at the movie and scratched. It took me a minute to realize they weren’t scratching themselves, but each other. Mrs. East’s floor-length gown was pushed all the way up over her hips to reveal her sleek, tanned legs and the curly red triangle above them with Mrs. North’s large hand strumming there. Her own hand was battering between Mrs. North’s fleshy thighs which rose and fell visibly as the Amazon responded to the redheads ministrations. As I watched them, Mrs. East unbuttoned the larger girl’s blouse, pushed aside her bra, and ran her tongue around the large, pink aureole she’d uncovered.

Meanwhile, to the right of them on the divan, Mrs. West had bared one of her own small breasts and was strumming the long nipple. Her other hand hung casually over the back of the couch. It rested in Mario Brandino’s lap. A telltale lump belied the impassive look on the aging Mafioso’s face. As I looked, the slender brunette fumbled with his zipper.

At the other end of the sofa, Mrs. South and Dr. Quotabusta were kissing, open-mouthed. Her hands were behind him and on his buttocks, clutching his bare, hard-muscled bottom to hold him steady. The African medico was bending over the petite blonde as they kissed, his hands full of plump, heaving, bared -breasts.

“. . . exotic tropical fruits, succulent to the palate, taste-treats for the gourmet tourist to savor . . .”

Black Socks slid his slavering mouth down the length of the blonde’s tethered body until it was at the hairless, pulsating core. He slung his thighs over her neck, reached behind him to force open her tight-clenched lips and plunged his obscenely swollen, rigid organ in to the hilt. The focus switched back and forth from her wide-stretched, hard-working mouth to his busy tongue probing deep in her glistening, wet, pumping orifice of love.

“That’s the second box of popcorn you’ve gone through, George; why do movies always make you so hungry?” a lady asked her husband in the dark.

Blaze Buxbocks’s gown was down around her waist now. Her magnificent mammaries were swinging free. Mister Jewish dived for one of them with his mouth while her hands reached down deep inside his pants.

Binny Stanford was sitting on Gorilla’s lap, her skirts up, facing him and bouncing. Her bared breasts rested on his shoulders. His shiny, bald head stuck up from between them.

Captain Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins were each struggling with the other’s corset. Sister Stella was on her knees in front of Ogden Stanford. And Magda was surreptitiously fondling Ensign Mayday while Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot stared at the screen for all the world as if it really was an innocuous travelogue she was viewing.

Queen Nimmfetah was beside herself. “Touch me here!” she panted in my ear, grasping my hand and placing it beneath her adolescently flat stomach. Zwing Toy immediately nipped the hand. I removed it quickly and settled for a hold on her breast.

It was a small breast, but warm and very sensitive. Queen Nimmfetah pushed aside the gauzy material covering it so that the bare, butter-soft nipple nuzzled my palm. Her tongue found its way to my ear and she moaned and sighed as it probed.

“. . unforgettable is the spelunking tour, deep into the natural crystal grottoes of the island . . .”

Black Socks reversed his position. Cruelly squeezing the blonde’s breasts, he sprawled over her. His haunches spread wide to show the genital contact between them. Her love-tunnel swallowed him up full-length as they merged. Then his mighty tool was withdrawn, stabbed again, disappeared, re-appeared, disappeared . . . Her hairless, grinding socket rose and fell eagerly to meet his thrusts.

“I forgot to wind my watch,” was the anonymous comment from the audience.

Queen Nimmfetah straddled my lap, facing the screen, her back to me. I held onto her little breasts for support and their red tips burned in my clasp. Zwing Toy was still in her lap. As she raised herself, fumbled beneath her, found what she sought and resettled, I had a momentary panic that the damn mutt would bite me in a far more vulnerable spot than my hand. But he simply continued licking her-—which now meant he was licking me as well. It was one hell of a sensation!

Blaze Buxbocks was stretched out on the divan now. One of her shapely legs was slung over the back of the couch. Her other leg was kicking free in the air. Buried somewhere between them was the head of Mister Jewish.

“No!” Sister Stella was insisting to Ogden Stanford. “We’ll do it my way!”

“But why -?”

“My way!”

“Any way you say,” he panted. He wrapped his legs around her back and shoved his frothing lusting-rod still deeper into the cleft between her breasts.

Binny Stanford crouched on the couch. Gorilla crouched over her, clutching her well-padded, undulating hips for support. His scrotum sac swung back and forth as he labored to penetrate the entrance he’d selected. Like the rest of him, it was hairless.

“Damn!” Click-click. Captain Maldemerde was having problems. “Must have drunk too much champagne!”

“Then all I can say is ‘Bon Voyage!’ ” Zelda Poppins gasped, astride him like a bronco rider.

Mrs. East and Mrs. North were stretched out on the floor in front of the large divan. Panties removed, skirts pushed up, their legs were entwined like two pairs of scissors. As the blades opened and closed rhythmically, they leaned away from each other in opposite directions. Mrs. East’s red hair fanned out, and a sheen of lust-dew made her tawny features glisten as she tossed her head to the tempo. Mrs. North kept time by fondling her own heavy breasts with her hands, squeezing the tensed nipples hard to prolong the thrill each time their hot clittys rubbed together.

Mrs. South was stretched out on the couch above them. The petite blonde took up about three-quarters of the seating area. Dr. Quotabusta was on top of her, his loincloth tossed up around his waist, his sinewy rump a rippling ebony blur as he moved over her. Her widespread legs were curved around his hips, and her feet, still in high heels, danced a demanding tattoo on his haunches, urging him to go faster . . . harder . . . deeper!

At Mrs. South’s head, Mrs. West was kneeling on the divan and leaning over its back. One of the brunette’s sharp little breasts was bared and bouncing. Both her arms were stretched out, both hands encompassing Mario Brandino’s large, leaping, naked Mafia-cannon.

“Down in front!” Mrs. West was blocking the screen, and someone in the row behind Brandino complained.

The brunette complied. She slid over the back of the couch and came to rest on her knees before Brandino. She went down . . . in front . . . The flicker of a smile crossed the older man’s face. His fingers tangled in her short-cropped black hair as he grabbed her by both ears and plunged, slapping her tongue against the roof of her mouth, battering it to reach her throat.

Only Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot seemed impervious to the stimulus of the travelogue. She was also oblivious to the activity on the divan beside her where Magda was manipulating herself with one hand and Ensign Mayday with the other. The old harridan simply stared straight ahead at the screen--blankly.

“. . . any tour of Bali must include a visit to one of the world’s few remaining natural, live volcanoes . . .”

Black Socks and his victim strained on the brink of orgasm. The camera captured them in graphic genital detail. The volcano erupted! The lava overflowed . . .

“Now that’s what I call ‘cinéma vérité’.” an anonymous film buff sighed.

Blaze Buxbocks and Mister Jewish rolled off the couch. A geyser spurted from between Sister Stella’s breasts. Binny Stanford screamed aloud as Gorilla balanced his full weight on her buttocks and delivered the coup de grace. Captain Maldemerde tried again, made a supreme effort, and succeeded, displacing Zelda Poppins in the process. Mario Brandino successfully finessed Mrs. West’s tonsils, Dr. Quotabusta and Mrs. South finished off their rubber without one, and Mrs. East and Mrs. North scored a mutual grand slam, trumping each others’ asses in spades! The two hands being played by Magda achieved a similarly satisfactory climax for Ensign Mayday and herself.

Queen Nimmfetah and I were not left behind. The sprightly teen-age ex-monarch was gripping and releasing me like a lemon-squeezer, riding up and down, digging her nails into the backs of my hands where they clutched her small, pointy breasts. Zwing Toy was licking away. Amidst the welter of sensations, I was fast reaching the point where I would explode.

I reached it! So did Queen Nimmfetah! We exploded! Together! And Zwing Toy yipped a happy yip . . .

“As the sun sinks slowly in the West, and we sail away over the horizon, we cannot help but cast a backward glance of sweet nostalgia at romantic Bali, Utopian island of primitive delights . . .”

There was indeed a sunset on the screen now. It bathed the receding shores as the palm trees swayed in the twilight breeze. Black Socks and the voluptuous blonde faded into memory. A flowered lei floated on the water. The ocean liner was a silhouette against the sunset. . . . And then the screen went black.

Whoever was working the lights took their time about turning them on. Wisely so, since many in the audience had a certain amount of necessary primping to perform before facing their fellow passengers. That didn’t stop people from talking though. The darkness was filled with comments:

“So that’s Bali! The natives certainly are a sensual people . . .”

“I knew the women wore sarongs, but I never knew the men wore black socks . . .”

“This is the first time I was ever truly moved by a travelogue . . .”

“Such artistry! It reminded me of Darling⁹ . . .”

“Such realism! It reminded me of Citizen Kane¹⁰ . . .”

“Such pacing! It reminded me of how it was before I got my vasectomy . . .”

“I don’t remember Margaret Mead mentioning anything about black socks . . .”

“Those natives certainly are uninhibited . . .”

“Damn it! I can’t get this popcorn out of my jock-strap . . .”

“Best movie I’ve seen since The Last Picture Show¹¹ . . .”

“I hope I brought along enough black socks for our stay in Bali . . .”

When the lights were finally turned on, I spotted Captain Maldemerde, Mister Jewish, and Chief Engineer Gorilla conferring together at the back of the theater. I walked over to them. Mister Jewish was talking, but seeing me, he stopped in mid-sentence.

“Go on, Number One,” Captain Maldemerde told him.

“I would prefer not to speak in front of this man, sir.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, mister. Continue with what you were saying.” Click-click. “That’s an order!”

Openly reluctant, Mister Jewish obeyed. “I've checked with the projectionist, sir, and what happened was that someone spliced in the porno film between the beginning and end of the travelogue before it was shown. The original sound track was untouched. The projectionist says someone with technical knowledge could have done the splicing in a matter of twenty minutes or so.”

“Get to the point, mister.” Click-click.

“I am, sir. The film was stored belowdecks under lock and key until it was brought to the projection booth. About a half-hour before he ran it, the projectionist went down to the galley for some coffee. He stayed there until it was time for the screening to begin. While he was gone, the film was in the booth, and the booth was unlocked. It was during this time that the sabotage must have occurred. And that means it had to be someone in the audience who did it!”

“How do you figure that, Mister? Why couldn’t someone else have just walked in there and done it before the film started?”

“They could have, sir. And they could have left the projection booth without being seen, too. But the only exit from the booth leads into this theater. And the only exit out of here is that one.” Mister Jewish pointed. “From about fifteen minutes before the showing until right now, that sailor over there has been stationed at that exit.” He pointed again.

“What for?” Gorilla wondered.

“A very simple reason. That’s a swinging door. There’s a bright running light just outside it. The sailor was assigned to stay there through the screening to be sure the door didn’t open inadvertently and louse up the show by letting the beam from the light hit the screen. The sailor is positive that nobody left while he was at the doors. Which proves that the saboteur had to be a member of the audience.”

“Well, that only narrows it down to a hundred-fifty-odd people, mister,” the Captain said sarcastically. Click-click.

“Anyway,” Gorilla remarked, “it was one helluva movie!”

I agreed with that. Little did I know that for me it was only one half of a double feature. The other half, I’d find out, would be a killer—literally!

But 'I wouldn’t know that until much later. First, I’d be faced with the events of that fateful day exactly one week after we sailed out of Bali. That was the day the luxury liner fell victim to the one act which has always struck terror to the hearts of shipmasters on the high seas:

Mutiny!

CHAPTER TWELVE

The first incident on the day of the mutiny was a minor one. It involved Mario Brandino. I was standing on the sun-splashed foredeck with Captain Maldemerde when the Mafioso came up to us.

“Someone has broken into my stateroom,” Brandino told the Captain.

“Are you sure, Mr. Brandino?”

“Of course I’m sure. It’s my business to be sure about things like that.”

“Was anything taken?”

“No. But certain vandalism was committed.” Brandino held out his hand and opened it palm up. An unrolled contraceptive was revealed. “Pinholes poked in the tip,” he said. “I have a gross of these in my stateroom,” he added. “Every one of them has pinholes.”

“How did you discover the vandalism?” I wondered.

“I’m a cautious man. It insures longevity. Cautious in all my dealings—personal as well as business. I pre-tested this item by pouring water into it before using. When I saw what had been done, I examined the others. Not one was left unpunctured.”

“It must have put a crimp in your love-life,” I remarked.

“I don’t find this amusing, Mr. Victor. Admittedly I have enemies, but I don’t think this sort of thing is their style.” The Italian gangster turned to the Captain. “What do you propose to do about this?” he asked him directly.

Click-click. Intimidated, but unable to come up with an answer, Maldemerde lowered his eyes and scratched his groin. Mario Brandino stared hard at him and also scratched his crotch. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I scratched, too. The three of us stood there in silence -- scratching.

Finally Brandino spoke to the Captain again. “If you can’t provide security, then I shall provide it for myself,” he told him. He produced a large Luger and held it under Maldemerde’s nose. “I’m putting you on notice!” he declared. “I’ll use this and ask questions later if it becomes necessary!” Brandino put the gun back in his pocket, turned on his heel, and walked swiftly away from us.

“He means it,” I decided.

“I know.” Click-click. The Captain wiped his brow. “He’s a violent man.”

There was a sudden crackle from the P.A. system, and then three voices were clearly heard by all those on board the Lascivia. It took me a minute to recognize them as belonging to Mrs. North, Mrs. South, and Dr. Quotabusta.

“Are you sure your husband won’t come back for anything?” Dr. Quotabusta was asking.

“He’s in the middle of his bridge game,” Mrs. North reassured him.

“Neither of our husbands would break up the game for anything,” Mrs. South added. “So take off your loincloth and make yourself at home.”

“You’re both scratching,” Dr. Quotabusta commented.

“So are you,” Mrs. North replied.

“I know.” He sighed with resignation.

“Do you like it when I do this?” Mrs. North wanted to know.

“Quit hogging it!” Mrs. South complained.

“I’b dod hohoggig id.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Mrs. South giggled.

“I wish you Wouldn’t distract her,” Dr. Quotabusta said.

“Look, why don’t we arrange things this way,” Mrs. South suggested. “You stretch out and I’ll sit right here over you, and he can play with my breasts while he’s giving it to you and you’re licking me.”

The Captain and I had been staring at each other. Now we broke the gaze and looked around us. All over the deck people were listening hard to the dialogue coming over the P.A. system. A few of them had their hands cupped to their ears.

“Now you get on the bottom,” Mrs. North suggested. “And I’ll play with you while the doctor takes my temperature.”

“It would break the thermometer!” Dr. Quotabusta panted.

“Not that thermometer!” Mrs. North told him admiringly.

“I always wanted to play ‘Doctor’ with a real doctor,” Mrs. South gasped.

I finally woke up. “That can be heard all over the ship! Including the card lounge!” I realized. I started off at a run and Maldemerde followed me.

“You’re ten times the man Wilbur ever was,” Mrs. North could be heard exulting over the loudspeaker as I entered the card salon.

Captain Maldemerde came in behind me, reluctant and timid, obviously poised to bolt at the first sign of violence. Click-click.

“Wilbur couldn’t even take care of one woman, let alone two!” Mrs. North added.

“Can't that damn thing be turned down?” Wilbur North greeted the Captain. “It’s so distracting, I damn near reneged!”

“Is that too hard for you, Mrs. South?” Dr. Quotabusta inquired.

“No-no-no-no-no! . . . Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes! . . .”

“Hmmmm.” South studied his cards, oblivious.

Mister Jewish appeared in the doorway to the lounge. He’d obviously come on the run, but he cooled it now and came over to the Captain and addressed him in a low voice. “What’s happening, sir?” he asked.

“East-West are playing five diamonds. Looks like they’ll make it.”

“I mean North and South, sir. The loudspeaker-—?”

“So far it doesn’t seem to have made a dent.” Maldemerde shrugged.

“Good. Gorilla will have it cut out in a minute, sir. Somebody planted a mike in the stateroom and plugged it into the P.A.” Mister Jewish looked straight at me. There was no doubt who he thought the culprit was.

“That’s it! Lie on top of each other,” Dr. Quotabusta was saying. “You’ve got the positioning right now. Just follow the rhythm. In and out . . . Now you ...Up and down...And you...pull and push... Her now . . .”

The loudspeaker abruptly went dead.

“Thank goodness!” North said. “Now maybe I can concentrate.”

“Don’t know why they have to broadcast those soap operas anyway,” South grumbled, pulling in a trick.

“Excuse me, sir.” A steward materialized beside Mister Jewish. “I have a package for Mr. West.”

“That’s him over there.” Mister JeWish pointed. “The dummy.”

“Sir?”

“In the bridge game, sailor. The one with the cards spread out in front of him. Just give it to him.”

The sailor did as he was told. West opened the package without taking his eyes off the play. Some photographs spilled out of the wrappings onto the carpeting. The Captain and I both knelt to pick them up.

We bumped heads as we saw them. Click-click. The pictures were of Mrs. West and Mario Brandino. They would have brought twenty bucks a dozen easy under the counter in a Forty-second Street porno shop.

In the one I was holding, the slender brunette with those long nipples and that short-cropped hair was straddling Brandino’s lap with her head thrown back. The Mafioso’s mouth was fastened to one of her bare breasts. Despite the blur of motion where they were joined, their aroused genitals were clearly exposed. It was evident that this old gangster’s shotgun wasn’t sawed off!

The two of them were also nude in the photo the Captain had retrieved. Click-click. In that one, Mrs. West was on her hands and knees with Brandino mounting her from behind. The look on his face was determined, on her, ecstatic.

The other pictures were even more raunchy. West stared at them open-mouthed. Slowly, his face turned very red.

“We made it, partner.” East broke into his concentration. “Five diamonds. We're vulnerable.”

“Do you still have that gun of yours?” West asked North quietly.

“Sure.”

“Can I borrow it?”

“All right.” North produced the gun and handed it to him. “It’s your deal,” he reminded West.

“What are you going to do?” Click-click! The Captain was alarmed.

“Kill the man who cuckolded me!” West said through clenched teeth. “Just as soon as I play out this deal,” he added, shuffling the cards.

Concerned about the possibility of a shootout, I slipped out of the card salon. With all the crazy things that had already happened on board, the last thing the Lascivia needed was a gun duel between a gangster bigwig and a cuckolded bridge nut. I went hunting for Mario Brandino, hoping to persuade him to lie low for awhile until West cooled oft.

I tracked Brandino down in the steam room and explained the situation to him. “The guy is pretty overwrought,” I told him. “So maybe if you could just stay out of his way. . . .”

“Suppose I can’t?”

“I just don’t want to see anybody get killed,” I pleaded. “You or him.”

“I won’t get killed,” Brandino assured me with chilling confidence.

“And him?”

“I’ll try,” he promised. “I don’t want to hurt him. But if he comes after me. . . .”

I followed Brandino out of the steam room. He stretched out on a massage table and nodded to the masseur that he was ready. “Somebody’s out to get me,” Brandino mused. “First the holes in the condoms, and now the pictures. Who the hell took those pictures anyway?”

I didn’t answer him. The masseur had distracted me. He’d started over to give Brandino his rubdown, and then halted halfway to the table. He just stood where he’d stopped for a full minute. He just stood there and scratched his hands.

Not his crotch! His hands! And this obviously wasn’t the first scratching they'd undergone. Both of his hands were raw and red from being scratched!

I thought about that all through the massage he gave Brandino. Every so often he’d stop to scratch his hands again. It wasn’t until the end of the massage that something clicked in my head.

The rnasseur was sprinkling talcum powder ever Brandino’s groin and dusting it with the feathered gismo he used for that purpose. First he’d pour the powder into the palm of his hand, and then he’d let it fall in a cloud onto Brandino’s crotch. By the time he was working it in with the duster, my hunch was firm.

“What is that stuff?” I asked him.

“A special kind of talcum powder. It’s made exclusively for use aboard the Lascivia,” the masseur told me. “To be used only on this most delicate area of the body,” he explained.

“Is it used in the ladies’ massage parlor, too?”

“Oh yes. And it’s in the dispensers in all the passengers’ private lavatories.”

Now that he mentioned it, I remembered. The dispenser in my own john had printed instructions on it that suggested it be used to dust the inside of underwear before the underwear was donned. . . . And the masseur was scratching his hands!

“Excuse me!” I grabbed up a container of the powder, zipped into the locker room, pulled on my clothes, and headed for the infirmary on the double.

I was in luck. Dr. Quotabusta had finished his double-diddling and was back at work. I told him what I suspected. He got busy with various chemicals, test tubes, slides and a microscope.

In less than an hour, he completed his tests. The results bore out my hunch. He looked at me half with relief, and half with vexation at himself for not having guessed what lay behind the epidemic he’d feared was venereal.

“Itching powder!” I couldn’t help laughing.

“I guess you could call it that,” he agreed. “But it’s no simple compound. It’s a very sophisticated type of itching powder. Nothing like what they sell for practical jokes in those novelty stores. It took a top-notch chemist to come up with this formula!” He thought a moment. “The question is, how did it get into such wide use aboard this ship? If it’s in the cabin dispensers as well as being used in the massage parlors, then somebody must have substituted the stuff for the entire shipment of talcum we took on board.”

“Looks like it.”

“Only a crew member could have managed that,” Dr. Quotabusta deduced. “I guess we’d better go see the Captain,” he added.

Captain Maldemerde wasn’t in the wheelhouse. The officer on duty said he'd gone down to the wardroom for some coffee. Dr. Quotabusta and I proceeded to the wardroom.

When we entered, I felt something poke me hard in the back. The door was slammed shut hard behind us. I swiveled around to find myself looking into the business end of a rifle. It was one of the guns from the ship’s arsenal, usually used for skeet shooting by the Lascivia’s passengers.

Dr. Quotabusta was also on the skeet end of the gun. “Benedict!” he demanded of the burly stoker holding it, “what the hell is happening?”

“That Maldemerde prick has gone too far! We’re taking over this tub!”

Click-click. The Captain was flattened out against the wall on the far side of the wardroom. His eyes rolled with terror. Click-click. The second clicking was his teeth chattering. Between him and us, besides the two men with the rifles, were a half-dozen or so sailors armed with makeshift clubs, knives, and a side-arm or two. They were very angry, and he was obviously the target of that anger. Click-click.

“Benedict!” Dr. Quotabusta addressed the gun-wielding stoker again. “What the hell is this all about?”

“Toilet paper.”

“Toilet paper?”

“Toilet paper!” Benedict repeated, backed up by a hostile chorus of agreement from his fellow mutineers.

Click-click. Captain Maldemerde moaned.

“What about toilet paper?” Dr. Quotabusta was mystified.

“Ask him!” Benedict growled, shaking a fist at the Captain.

“The privileges of rank!” Maldemerde babbled hysterically. Click-click.

“What’s toilet paper got to do with it?” Dr. Quotabusta was still perplexed.

“There was a shortage of it in Bali,” Benedict told him.

“It was a humanitarian act!” the Captain sniffled. Click-click. “The natives were toilet paper-less!”

“Natives my ass!” Benedict snarled. “The bastard sold it to a luxury hotel!”

“Sold what?”

“The entire stock of the crew’s toilet paper. That’s what! The little pisspot made the deal and had it unloaded in Bali before we even knew what was happening. All the crew’s toilet paper except what was on the rollers at the time. You can bet he made a pretty penny on it, too!”

“But I was down in the hold just this morning,” Dr. Quotabusta remembered. “There were at least a hundred cartons of toilet paper stacked up there. I saw them. Triple-ply and Grade-A soft, too!”

“That’s for the passengers and officers,” Benedict told him. “The crew’s was Single-ply and Grade-C rough. You oughta know that, Doc. The worst ain’t none too bad for the crew on any ship Maldemerde’s running. But we don’t even get that as of today.”

“What happened today?”

“The last of the paper in the crew’s heads ran out. And you know what this bastard ordered issued to replace it?”

“What?”

“Palm tree leaves, that’s what!”

“With prickles!” one of the other mutineers snarled bitterly.

“Takes the skin right off!” Benedict said. “The little prick had them leaves thrown in with the deal he made for the toilet paper! By tomorrow there won’t be a crewman aboard can sit down. Myself, I got piles, which is why I ain’t even thinking twice about droppin’ Maldemerde over the side!” ”

“I’ve got some Preparation H in the Dispensary, Dr. Quotabusta offered.

“Shove it up your ass!”

The door to the wardroom was Hung open. Mister Jewish and Chief Engineer Gorilla were ushered in by four more armed sailors. Behind the sailors, Ensign Mayday appeared.

It was a new Ensign Mayday. The nervous, bumbling youth was gone. He’d been replaced by a tough, hard cat whose orders were readily obeyed.

“Tie their hands behind their backs,” he told the mutineers authoritatively.

“Mister Jewish, too, sir?” Benedict posed the question with respect.

“Yes. That’s the way he wants it,” Mayday snapped. I stared at Mayday. The truth began to take shape in my mind. Mister Jewish voiced it for me.

“You people are being used, Benedict!” he told the stoker. “You’re being used to scuttle this cruise. That's been Mayday’s motive all along! He doesn’t care about the treatment of the crew. He’s a paid saboteur! And a murderer, too!”

“Serious allegations,” Ensign Mayday said. “But of course you can’t prove any of them.”

“What about this mutiny? You’re the instigator of it! That’s a fact!”

“What mutiny? Do you know anything about any mutiny, Benedict?” Ensign Mayday inquired.

“No, sir. The Cap’n’s gonna have an accident. That’s all I know. A couple of other accidents, too, I guess.”

Benedict turned to Mister Jewish and addressed him respectfully. “Throw in with us, Mister Jewish, sir,” he said in a pleading tone.

“I can’t go along with a mutiny!”

“Let’s get moving,” Ensign Mayday commanded. “We can dump them off the foredeck while the passengers are at dinner. That way nobody will see.”

“You’ll never get away with it!” Mister Jewish protested.

“Yes, we will,” Mayday assured him. “Nobody will even know about it except those involved. The Second Mate will take over command. That will be a break for him, and he won’t ask too many questions. Sure, it will look suspicious, the five of you disappearing, but nobody will be able to prove anything.”

‘Then the civvy goes, too?” Benedict inquired, nodding toward me.

“Sure. He knows too much. We can’t take the chance of his blabbing. He goes into the drink with the others,” Mayday decided.

I’m allergic to salt water. It makes me break out in hives. There was no point in mentioning it, though. I wouldn’t have been heard over the frenzied pleading of Captain Maldemerde.

Click-click. The Captain was sobbing out an offer to throw the race as we were marched out onto the foredeck. Mayday ignored him and had the sailors line us up by the rail.

“Damn!” Mayday noticed. “If we throw them off here, they won’t clear the bow.”

“Hey, look!” one of the mutineers pointed. “Sharks!”

I looked. Squinting in the twilight, I made out half a dozen fins circling ahead of the prow of the Lascivia. I’m allergic to sharks, too!

“Mama!” the Captain shrieked. Click-click.

“Put a gag on him,” Mayday ordered. “And unscrew the cover from that stairwell and bring it over here,”

he instructed two crewmen. “We’ll use it for a plank. It should extend far enough so they’ll clear the ship when they go over. Oh, yes, and blindfold them.”

“What for, sir?” Benedict asked.

“Tradition.”

Benedict shrugged and blindfolded the Captain. I came next. Then there was a flurry that I heard but couldn’t see. It was punctuated by a scream from the Captain and a loud click-click.

“Little shithead bit me!” Benedict cursed. “That’s it, boys. Sit on him. Let the civvy go first,” he added. Blindfolded, hands tied behind my back, I was boosted up to the stairwell planking which had been propped to extend out over the side of the bow. The tip of a knife bit into my rear end and I took a step forward. Another stab and I moved another step. I could feel the spray from the sea beneath me with the next step. Now I was poised over the water with its waiting sharks.

I was one, perhaps two or three, steps away from death. It was a helluva death for the twentieth century. It was a helluva way to go -

Walking the plank!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Walking the plank, the tip of a blade pricking my trembling haunches, prodding me forward until there would be no footing left beneath me, until I would plunge through the empty air to the ocean depths below, into the savage sea with its school of circling, hungry sharks . . . My situation wouldn’t have encouraged Metropolitan Life¹² to issue a policy!

The plank swayed. Someone else had been forced to mount it behind me. Click-click. I heard Captain Maldemerde sobbing. There was a shifting of weight and the sound came closer. Click-click.

Suddenly, from very close by, there was the roar of gunfire. Several shots were fired in such rapid succession that there had to be more than one gun involved. Behind me on the plank, Maldemerde panicked. Click- click. He jumped and bumped smack into me. The two of us, blindfolded, swayed back and forth on the narrow plank.

Somehow I managed to steady both the Captain and myself. I lowered my face until I felt his shoulder against it. By rubbing back and forth, I worked off my blindfold.

The first thing I saw was confusion on the deck behind us. The next thing I realized was that I really was just half a step away from briny oblivion. With Maldemerde shaking like a leaf against me, make that a quarter-step!

First things first. Carefully, I prodded him back along the plank. Not that I was so hipped on rescuing him, understand. It was just that there was no way around him.

Our captors seemed to have pretty much forgotten us. They appeared to be under siege from two directions. Caught in a crossfire with no place to take cover, their position was pretty vulnerable. They’d flattened themselves out on the deck. Shots coming from behind a bulkhead to starboard of them, and from the stairwell on the port side, were zinging over their heads. Two of the mutineers were returning the fire with the skeet guns.

My hands were still tied, but I didn’t let that stop me from taking action. There was no question whose side I was on. My only chance to survive was if the mutiny was quelled.

I pushed Maldemerde ahead of me to the foot of the plank. When we reached it, I gave him a shove that sent him sprawling on top of one of the sailors who was shooting. I jumped the other one myself, kicking the rifle out of his hands and sending it sliding down the deck. .

The other armed sailor flung Maldemerde off him. The Captain careened into Benedict. The burly stoker had been kneeling behind Mister Jewish, using him as a shield, holding a knife at his back. When Maldemerde rolled against Benedict, the knife was diverted and knocked out of his grip. Mister Jewish caught it in the two hands tied behind his back. Before Benedict could untangle himself from the Captain, Mister Jewish had contrived to sever his bonds.

Number One knocked Benedict out with a haymaker punch. He wrenched the rifle away from the sailor and cracked it over the skull of another knife-wielding mutineer who’d been guarding Chief Engineer Gorilla. By this time, I was flat on my back under a bunch of angry tars, having a rough time defending myself since my hands were still tied behind my back. Gorilla sailed into my attackers, using his hambone hands like two clubs. Chopped karate-style at their neck-napes, three of them fell like axed trees. The rest scrambled away.

Struggling up on my elbows, I saw that was the end of it. One last sailor, not as perceptive as I was, fell to the deck howling from a crotch-kick delivered by Gorilla. The rest of them lay flat with their hands over their heads to indicate their surrender to Mister Jewish, who had now taken command with one of the rifles.

He crouched as he covered them, because the cross-fire from behind the bulkhead and from the stairwell was still continuing. That’s when I realized something the jittery mutineers had missed before. The shots hadn’t been aimed at them, and they weren’t being aimed at us now. The two gunmen were shooting at each other! Our group just happened to be caught in the middle!

After a few minutes, abruptly, the shots stopped coming from the stairwell. Then there was silence from the starboard bulkhead as well. The silence lengthened, and finally a figure stepped cautiously from behind the bulkhead, Luger held ready. He seemed unconcerned by the rifle trained on him by Mister Jewish as he approached. He was focused on the stairwell on the other side of us, obviously poised to duck fast at the first sign of movement there.

But there was no movement. His adversary had departed. For the time being, the gun duel was over. Reassured that this was so, Mario Brandino put the Luger back in his shoulder holster as he drew abreast of us. “Why are you pointing that gun at me?” he inquired coolly of Mister Jewish.

“We’ve had trouble. I just want to be sure which side you’re on.”

“I’ve got my own problems.” Brandino smiled ironically. “A jealous husband who wants to kill me; flattering for a man my age, yes? And some unknown enemy who fingers me for the potential triggerman. You see, there are implications beyond this ship. Whose side am I on? I don’t take sides. . . . I only make business decisions.”

“There is only one possible side!” Click-click. Captain Maldemerde, now that the danger was over, puffed himself up to re-establish his authority. “Law and order!” ‘

“Oh, I’m all for law and order,” the Mafioso assured him. “I couldn’t stay in business without it.”

“Hang these mutinous dogs from the yardarm!” the Captain ordered Mister Jewish. Click-click.

“They’re entitled to a Court of Inquiry,” Mister Jewish said evenly. “We’ll hold them in the brig until we reach port.”

“Mister!” Click-click. “Are you questioning my ord-—”

Overconfidence was the Captain’s undoing. Strutting and waving his arms, he’d backed into Ensign Mayday. The saboteur grabbed Maldemerde with a half-nelson around the neck and held him between himself and the rifle Mister Jewish was holding. Mayday scooped up an icepick that had fallen to the-deck during the melee and held it at the Captain’s throat.

‘Tm walking away from this,” Mayday said calmly. “Make one move to stop me and I’ll rip his throat out!”

“He’s a saboteur and a murderer!” Chief Engineer Gorilla reminded Mister Jewish. “Shoot him!”

“I’d have to shoot through the Captain.”

“Mister Jewish!” Maldemerde wailed. Click-click.

“That might solve all our problems,” Gorilla muttered.

“Mister Jewish!” Click-click.

Ensign Mayday pulled the Captain back toward the stairwell. Mister Jewish held his fire. Captor and captive vanished down the stairs.

When they were gone, Mister Jewish, Gorilla, and Dr. Quotabusta hustled the remaining mutineers off to the brig. Agreeing that we could both use a drink, Mario Brandino and I headed for the cocktail lounge. Darkness had fallen, and our way was lit by the deck-lights.

As we rounded the corner of the deck, I spied light rays bouncing off something metallic in the shadows of a doorway leading to one of the inside hallways. I reacted instinctively. I straight-armed Brandino, sending him sprawling backwards, and dived low for the shadows. A gunshot exploded over my head.

My shoulder hit the gunman at the knees and we went down together, sprawling and struggling. I saw the gun swinging downwards in an effort to crack my skull, and I ducked and grabbed for the wrist of the hand holding it. Teeth sank into my arm, but I held onto the wrist doggedly. Our bodies thrashed about, but the focus of the fight was the gun. He kept trying to clobber me with it, and I kept trying to force him to drop it.

But when he did drop the revolver, it wasn’t because of my strength. He dropped it because the muzzle of a Luger was pressing against his temple. Brandino was holding the Luger.

It was incentive enough for the assailant to throw in the towel. I scrambled to my feet and stood over him, alongside Brandino. Now I saw his face. It was West. Brandino still had the Luger pressed against his head. When he recognized West, he took a deep breath and his finger started to tighten on the trigger.

“Don’t!” I exclaimed.

“What else can I do?” Brandino inquired. “He’s been trying to kill me all day. If I let him go, he’ll just go on trying to kill me.”

“No he won’t,” I said. “Look at him. He’s had it.”

West’s face was completely drained of color. His eyes stared blankly. He was in a state of absolute shock induced by the conviction that he was only a split-second away from death. He was obviously in- capable of any protest, of any action of any sort.

“Well, if I’m not going to kill him, what are we going to do with him?” Brandino wanted to know.

“Let’s get him down to the infirmary. Dr. Quotabusta can give him a sedative. That’ll knock him out. When he comes to, he’ll realize what a close escape he’s had. I don’t think he’ll bother you again.”

“I hope you’re right.” Brandino let himself be convinced.

We did as I suggested, and Dr. Quotabusta relieved us of West. Then we went to the cocktail lounge for our drink. Now we needed it more than ever.

“You saved my life,” Brandino said as we sipped our scotches. “I won’t forget that. I owe you. And I’m a man who always pays what he owes. You remember that when you need a friend.”

“I could use a friend right now,” I sighed.

“Tell me.”

“It’s too complicated to go into the whole thing. But it’s imperative that I catch up with Ensign Mayday.”

“To rescue the Captain?” Brandino was surprised.

“That’s only part of it. It’s Mayday himself I have to find. He’s dangerous. I have to locate him and stop him before he does whatever it is he's planning to do.”

I sighed again. “The problem is that this damn ship is so immense and I haven’t the slightest idea of where to look for him.”

“You’re in luck,” Brandino said. “I just might be able to help you. I just might have some idea of where Ensign Mayday would seek temporary refuge.”

“Huh?”

“My cabin is right next to the cabin of a certain lady,” Brandino told me. “I mind my own business, but sometimes you can’t help noticing things. Mayday visited this lady on quite a few occasions—late at night.”

“What lady?”

He told me.

I looked at him disbelievingly. “Ensign Mayday was having an affair with her?”

“I don’t think so,” Brandino said thoughtfully. “She also had another visitor, and rank being what it is— the— umm—sounds of lovemaking could be heard when this second gentleman visited. Quite clearly. But when Ensign Mayday called, I heard no such sounds. I’d guess his business with her was other than amorous.”

“If it was, if she’s Mayday’s confederate, then he might be holing up in her cabin right now,” I realized. My mind was racing. “And it would explain why she sought out the involvement with—”

“-—Captain Maldemerde.” Brandino finished the sentence for me. “Shall we investigate, Mr. Victor?”

Affirmative. We gulped down our drinks and left the cocktail lounge. We went to Brandino’s stateroom, which was right next to the cabin of—

Zelda Poppins!

Brandino directed me to the wall of his cabin alongside the bed. I placed my ear against it and listened. After a few minutes I made out the sounds of two voices—-a man’s and a woman’s. They were too low for me to distinguish the words, but I thought I recognized them as belonging to Zelda Poppins and Ensign Mayday. Then I heard a third sound. Click-click!

“They’re in there all right,” I told Brandino. “All three of them.”

The aging Mafioso rummaged through his suitcase and produced a gun. It was a twin to the Luger he was carrying. “The best thing would be to kick in the door and go in shooting,” he advised. “Believe me. I’ve had experience in similar situations.”

“If we do that, we’re liable to hit the Captain. Even if we don’t, they may kill him,” I pointed out.

“So?” Mario Brandino shrugged.

“I need him alive.”

“All right.” His tone said he didn’t like it, but he accepted it. “What do we do then?”

I thought a minute. “We wait,” I decided. “Sooner or later they’ll have to have food. I don’t think they’ll risk Zelda’s going out for it if they don’t have to. They’ll have a steward bring it to the cabin. When he does, we’ll go in right behind him, and try to take them by surprise without shooting anybody.”

“The scheme violates my professional standards,” Brandino complained. “But if that’s the way you want it.”

It was a long wait. More than two hours passed before we spotted a waiter heading for Zelda Poppins’s cabin with a tray. When he’d identified himself and the door was opened to his knock, Brandino and I muscled in right behind him, just as I’d planned.

But that was just about the only part of my plan which worked!

For one thing, I'd forgotten about the waiter, who somehow got between us and Ensign Mayday as we entered, making it impossible to cover the saboteurs. For another thing, I'd reckoned without the extreme panic which grabbed hold of Captain Maldemerde. When he saw a prospect of being rescued, he blew his cool completely and dived for the doorway, managing to trip me up as he scrambled through it and bolted up the deck. And thirdly, I'd thought we were only going up against two adversaries; I’d never guessed at the presence of the third conspirator who was behind the door, and who bopped Brandino over the head with the butt of a gun as we entered.

It all happened very fast, and when the confusion was over, the waiter had vanished along with Maldemerde, Brandino was out cold on the floor, and I was forced to drop my own weapon because the person who’d decked him had a gun in my back. The Captain had been rescued, but Mayday now had a prisoner to replace him-—me!

“What now?” The voice came from behind me, from the holder of the gun.

I recognized it; Magda! The third conspirator was Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot’s maid! The gun in my back was being wielded by the Breast, the Derriere! Magda!

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Mayday decided, “before Maldemerde puts together some muscle and comes after us.”

“Where to?” Zelda Poppins wanted to know.

“I know a place. Follow me. Bring him along,” he told Magda, jerking a thumb at me.

“What about him?” Magda nodded toward Brandino’s unconscious body.

“Too much trouble. Just leave him where he is.”

“I could shoot him,” Magda offered.

Never trust a naked Derriere! I reminded myself. It may look soft, but -

“The noise would attract attention,” Mayday said. “Just leave him there.”

He led the way down back stairways to the bowels of the ship. Zelda Poppins followed him. Magda brought up the rear, drumming my spine with the gun to insure that I wouldn’t slow them down.

At first I thought Mayday was leading us to the engine room. But once we were well below the waterline, he bypassed it in favor of an area down near the prow of the ship. He guided us to a fair-sized chamber which was filled with electrical circuitry and equipment. There was a dynamo, generators, relay switches, and a lot of other gismos which looked impressive, but which I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to identify.

“We’ll stay here and wait it out,” Mayday said cryptically. “You can bring us food,” he told Magda.

“You haven’t been identified with us yet, so it shouldn’t be too diflicult. As a matter of fact, you can get some right now. I’m starving.”

“What about him?” Magda probed me with her gun.

“Help me tie him up, and then you can leave.” Mayday rummaged around and found some electrical wire. He and Magda tied me to a chair with it. Then she left.

Mayday got busy doing something with the electrical equipment on the other side of the room from me. Zelda Poppins sat in a chair across from me, a revolver in her lap. The gun looked out of character for the school-teacherish looking schoolteacher.

“Are you really a schoolteacher?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“How did you get mixed up in this?"

“Trying to live on a schoolteacher’s salary.”

“Then you didn’t win a lottery like everybody thought you did,” I deduced. “The story was a phoney.”

“That’s right. But if the Queen William wins the race, I’ll win a lottery all right!” She smiled a brittle, cynical smile.

“I don’t want to offend you, but you don’t seem the type for them to have sicced on the Captain.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m precisely the type. Do you think some sexy Mata Hari could have done the job? Some siren? Why, that sort of woman would have scared him off the first time she batted her eyes at him. Maldemerde thrives on seducing timid, middle-aged lady passengers with money. I was picked to fit right into his pattern. He had to think he was taking advantage of me.”

“And all the time it was vice versa?”

“That’s right. Whenever Mayday was up to something, I kept the Captain occupied.”

“You’ve got a big mouth!” Mayday had finished whatever he was doing and strolled over to us.

“What’s the difference?” Zelda Poppins shrugged. “You’re going to kill him anyway, aren’t you?” From the tone of her voice, she might have been patiently explaining the multiplication table to a dull child.

“Not right away,” Mayday told her. “Mr. Victor here is going to be very useful to us,” he added.

“How?”

“He’s going to blow up this ship. That’s how.”

“And myself along with it?” I inquired.

“I’m afraid so.”

“But not you two.”

“No.” Mayday confirmed my reasoning. “Zelda, Magda, and I will leave the Lascivia when she docks at Colombo, Ceylon, approximately two days from now. It will be some hours later that you will detonate the bomb, Mr. Victor.”

“I don’t think I want to do that,” I demurred.

“You won’t have any choice, Mr. Victor. You see, you’re the fuse. Or, more accurately, your genital organ will be the fuse.”

“And just how is my you-know-what going to set off this bomb?” I asked.

“By becoming erect, Mr. Victor,” Mayday told me. “Your erection will blow you to smithereens!”

I remember the anonymous note I’d found pinned to my lampshade that first night at sea. I recalled the prophecy it had contained. The way Mayday was talking, it looked like that prophecy was going to come true:

He who lives by the sword dies by the sword!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ralph Nader¹³ !

He was the reason my tumescent dingus was to be the fuse for the bomb according to Mayday. He could have blamed General Motors, I suppose, but he was more inclined to pass the buck to the well-known consumer product analyst. “Some people spend their whole lives trying to catch other people making a little mistake, and Ralph Nader is one of them!” was how Mayday put it.

With two days of time to pass before we reached Ceylon, and me already a dead man as far as he was concerned, Mayday spoke freely about the situation. He confided that the bomb was really a last resort. It was only supposed to be exploded if the Lascivia gained a substantial lead over the Queen William, or if, as was the case now, the agents were exposed and unable to perform further sabotage.

That figured. If Captain Grabass won the race, it would be to his advantage to have the Lascivia intact. But, from his point of view, it was better to destroy her than to risk losing the race.

Mayday told me that it had been easy to smuggle the bomb aboard. The device was no larger than a pack of matches. But the explosive it contained was a hundred times as powerful as TNT. It hadn’t been necessary to sneak a detonator-timer mechanism past the Monaco Line security people because Mayday was depending on a substitute that was already on board.

In the hold of the Lascivia were three GM cars belonging to passengers scheduled to disembark with them at Cannes, the last stop on the cruise before New York. Mayday had planned to remove the starter-timer from one of these cars and use it to turn his explosive into a time bomb when and if that became necessary. However, around the time we were en route to Trinidad, Ralph Nader, back in Washington, had dropped his own bomb of sorts onto General Motors. Nader had published a report proving that the timing mechanisms in certain recent GM models were defective. General Motors had immediately recalled the parts.

They had been removed from the three cars aboard the Lascivia when we reached Trinidad. The replacements were scheduled to be installed when the ship docked at Cannes. Which meant that Mayday had no detonator for his bomb.

Except me!

Now, his alternate plan for triggering the bomb, which he confided to me, was as follows: The room we were in contained the ship’s generator. The bomb was to be attached to a “ground” plate of the generator through which no electricity ordinarily passed. This plate was stationary and was about two feet in diameter. It was suspended over a second, larger disc about seven feet in diameter. This plate rotated slowly atop the base of the dynamo, about four feet off the floor and a foot and a half below the stationary “ground” plate. It was “live”; electric current flowed through it; but the current was harmless as long as its flow wasn’t broken by contact with the “ground” plate. But such a contact would result in a short-circuit which would set the entire dynamo crackling with live, uncontrolled, high-voltage electricity. And, of course, it would also detonate the bomb.

I was to be strapped naked to the revolving “live” plate. My body would be five to six inches below the smaller plate to which the bomb was attached. I would be safe until I got an erection. If and when I did-—-and the hopeful doubt was mine, not Mayday’s -—I would blow both myself and the Lascivia sky-high.

By that time, according to plan, the three saboteurs would be long gone. The ship was due to drop anchor at Colombo shortly before dawn. Except for those on duty, the crew as well as the passengers would be asleep. Mayday had staked out the lookout he intended to sandbag, and stashed an inflatable rubber life raft for himself and Zelda Poppins to row ashore. Magda would follow later.

At about nine a.m., the passengers would start going ashore. By eleven most of them would be gone. Magda, having performed certain necessary last-minute tasks, would leave on the last boat. When she reached shore, Captain Maldemerde would be notified by radiophone that there was a bomb on board the Lascivia which was set to explode imminently. Mayday figured -- and I saw no reason not to agree -- that the Captain and crew would desert the vessel posthaste. Following which I was supposed to set off the bomb and blow the ship clear out of the harbor!

The night before we reached the Ceylonese port, Mayday ran a test to be sure his plan would work. I was stripped and secured by my wrists, ankles and neck to the large, horizontal, revolving plate. In this position, the “ground” plate to which the bomb was attached was centered directly over my groin.

“Arouse him!” Mayday ordered Magda.

Her long, blue-black hair swirled around her face as she undulated over and stood above me. She was wearing a miniskirt and a see-through blouse. Visible under the blouse, peeping through the tendrils of long hair trailing over her bosom, was a half-dollar sized, blood-red aureole. From its center a long, tapered, rigid nipple protruded brazenly. It was the nose cone of the Breast—or, possibly, its mate. Magda brushed aside the wisps of hair and fingered the nipple through the material of the see-through blouse. It twitched, deep purple between her pink fingertips.

“Won’t the bomb go off?” Zelda Poppins was worried.

“I’ll deflect him before he can make contact,” Mayday assured her. “I just want to make sure the positioning is right.”

Magda unbuttoned her blouse. The Breast came into full view. She bent over me. The long, purple nipple vibrated rhythmically under my nose. It stayed there, tantalizing, as she kept pace with the slowly revolving disc to which I was bound. I tried to bite it, but with my neck pinned down the way it was, I couldn’t reach it.

She danced away, laughing. “Naughty,” she cooed. “That’s a no-no.”

Out of reach, she continued to play with the Breast, squeezing it, caressing it, gauging the effect on me. I tried to concentrate on staying unaffected. She stood back and twirled so that her miniskirt flared above her hips. She wasn’t wearing any panties under it. I tried harder to concentrate on staying unaffected. She turned her back to me and saucily flipped the miniskirt up in the air. The Derriere—that truly fabulous fanny! —plump, wriggling, erotically flushed, appeared. I tried harder than ever to concentrate on staying unaffected.

“He’s a slow turn-on, isn’t he?” Zelda Poppins observed.

“I guess I’ll just have to speed him up.” Magda stood over me and trailed her hands up my naked thighs.

“No.” Mayday stopped her. “Don’t touch him. I want to gauge his reaction to purely visual stimulation.”

“All right.” Magda shrugged and retreated slightly. She cupped the Breast and raised it to her lips. Her sharp red tongue appeared and dueled with the nipple. Then she caught it between her lips, wide pink aureole and all. She sucked it until the pinkness had darkened almost to the purple shade of the nipple. The nipple itself now extended a full three-quarters of an inch.

Her hands dropped to her quivering thighs. Her eyes were closed now, and her breath was coming in gasps. Slowly her fingertips trailed up her thighs. She paused to capture the hem of her short skirt and tuck it into her waistband. Then she stroked the soft black curls over her high, well-rounded Mound of Venus. Her straining clitty appeared in the cleft there and she strummed it with her pinky.

Magda opened her eyes and looked at me boldly. Using both hands, she gently separated the lips at the entrance to her tunnel of love. They were flushed and damp. Rubbing her thighs together, she opened and closed the lips repeatedly so that the entire area seemed to circle sensually around the aroused clitoris.

I was fighting off my reaction, but it was a losing battle. Desire was filling me; tumescence was imminent. I did the only thing I could do to stave it off. I closed my eyes.

“The sonofabitch isn’t looking!” Magda exclaimed, miffed at my means of turning off her performance.

“We’ll fix that.” Mayday came up with a roll of black tape. He tore off two small pieces and pasted my eyelids back so I couldn’t close them. “No way your audience can shut you out now,” he told Magda.

The Breast swayed teasingly before my eyes. The Derriere rippled invitingly. Magda’s hand dipped deep inside her and her clitty moved jerkily back and forth as her passion mounted. Her tongue moved in and out repeatedly. Her whole body started to tremble now. The trembling grew to a hard, spasmodic shaking. ‘Tm coming!” she moaned. “I’m coming!”

It was too much for me. My penis rose uncontrollably. It was like a lightning rod being raised to draw the crackling electricity which would strike it down.

Mayday moved in the nick of time. He stuck his hand with the rubber glove on it between the deadly “ground” plate and the tip of my erection. “That’s enough,” he told Magda.

It took her a minute before she was able to stop. Finally she did. She walked away from me, out of view. Slowly, my erection subsided.

They left me where I was, revolving, through the rest of that night. Toward morning, I heard the clanking of the anchor chain being released. Awhile after that, Mayday and Zelda Poppins departed. Magda stayed.

For the next few hours, she amused herself by teasing me. Naked and spreadeagled, I had no defense. She would deliberately arouse me, and then as soon as I showed signs of reacting tumescently, she would slap me hard until I was reduced to flaccidity again.

I guessed that it must be getting close to eleven a.m. when she stopped playing that game. She walked outside my range of vision and started to fiddle with some kind of equipment there. After a little while a white light beam appeared on the ceiling directly over my head. The focus sharpened and it formed a rectangle with rounded corners. Aside from a slight flickering, it played steadily on the ceiling.

Magda came over to me. She adjusted the strap holding my neck so that my eyes were forced to focus on the rectangle of light above me. She put fresh tape on my eyelids to insure my being unable to close them.

Then the murderous bitch kissed me on the lips. She plunged her tongue deep into my mouth and reached down to tickle my scrotum. When my organ started to rise, she laughed viciously, slapped it down one last time, and left.

“Bon Voyage!” I called after her bitterly.

“Enjoy the show,” she called back. And then Magda was gone.

For perhaps a half-hour, the light-frame over me remained unchanged. During that time, I thought about yelling for help. I rejected the idea because it was obvious that my hollering would be lost in the loud drone of the dynamo. Which was why they hadn’t bothered to gag me in the first place.

Abruptly, a picture filled the oblong of light over my head. If my eyes had been capable of any movement, I would have done a double take. It was Magda, lying horizontally on a bed! In full color!

She was wearing a pale green silk slip which just about made it to her thighs. The outline of her nipples was clear against the material. Her curly, blue-black hair was fanned out on the pillow. There was a 1ascivious smile on her cruel, sensual mouth. Her dark eyes were smoldering and her sharply defined hips were moving very slowly, back and forth on the bed.

Lazily, Magda sat up. The focus changed to show a second female approaching the bed. It was a blonde wearing short-shorts of leather, long leather gloves, net stockings, high-heeled leather boots—and nothing else. In one hand she was carrying a coiled whip!

The blonde looked to be in her mid-twenties, perhaps a year or two older than Magda. Her hair was very light in color, cropped quite short, and almost—- but not quite—frizzy. Her legs were longer than Magda’s and well-tapered, with a light layer of thigh muscles that rippled intriguingly under the net stockings without bulging. Her breasts weren’t as large, but they were rounded nicely and carried high. The cleavage was wide and the nipples were like tiny, miniature bananas arcing upwards; they were a very bright red and the aureoles around them were such a light shade of pink as to be almost invisible. Her eyes were an uncompromising blue.

Licking her lips, the blonde approached Magda on the bed. She deliberately curled the tip of the whip around one of her uptilted nipples. Her thigh muscles quivered.

Magda scrambled on the bed. She assumed a kneeling position, crouching with her head down and her hair tumbling forward. The green slip rode up over the Derriere, and it quivered nakedly, impatiently. One of the straps of the slip had fallen from her shoulder and the Breast hung free. Its purple-stained-berry nipple grazed the sheets. She peeped out from under one of her arms coyly and gasped at the sight of the blonde approaching.

The blonde stopped a couple of feet away from Magda. The whip swung back over her shoulder and then lashed out. Her nipples strained and arced even more with the movement. The tip of the whip snapped across Magda’s shimmering posterior and left a thin red welt. Magda gasped, her breasts filling sharply and then subsiding.

The whipping continued. The blonde’s aim was flawless. First she crisscrossed one blushing cheek, and then the other. After which she concentrated on the area between.

This drove the panting brunette wild. The first time the whip-tip dug into the cleft between her cheeks, she bucked and her upper torso reared up into the air. The green slip tumbled to her waist altogether and she grabbed hard at her bared, perspiring breasts as if to support herself. But she immediately went down again, thrusting out her rear as widely as she could so that the blonde wouldn’t miss the target.

Leather in a lather! The blonde didn’t miss. But after a little while she did adroitly change targets. The whiplash snapped up and under and flicked Magda’s swollen, blood-red clitty. The lips beneath it widened and trembled, dewy with lust. The whip-tip alternated between them and the clitty until the whole area was throbbing.

Magda’s head was buried in the pillow now. Her hands were clutching her breasts, tearing at the softness as if by inflicting pain on them it would somehow relieve the pain of the whip below. Her entire body was vibrating and shiny with perspiration.

The blonde ceased the whipping and re-coiled the lash. She came up behind Magda and smacked her smartly on the rump with her open hand. Magda flung herself over on her back, limbs wide apart to welcome her tormentor.

Tucking the whip into the belt of her leather short-shorts, the blonde knelt on the bed beside Magda. She snapped a fingernail against one of Magda’s erect nipples. Then her face swooped down and she bit it, none too gently. She took the whip out again and rubbed the hilt back and forth roughly between Magda’s breasts. Magda’s hands pressed the breast-flesh around it while her legs thrashed wildly with the thrill. The tough blonde now moved the whip downwards until the hilt was pressed against Magda’s mound. She took about three inches of the tip of the whip between her fingers and trailed it around and over Magda’s hard, red, pulsing clitoris. Magda bounced up and down in a mindless frenzy.

The hilt of the whip was inserted. The brunette’s eyes grew wide with fear as her tender flesh was stretched to accommodate it. But the flesh was resilient, and it swallowed up more of the length of the hilt than I would have thought possible. Magda’s fear turned to ecstasy as the blonde slowly turned the hilt in the overfilled cavity.

Abruptly, the makeshift dildo was removed. The blonde turned Magda over roughly. Now the hilt was aimed for the rear orifice.

Magda seemed to be protesting. The blonde struck her already reddened behind with the butt of the whip. But Magda clenched the cheeks tightly and finally Leather Lady gave up on trying to insert the whip-handle there. Instead, she buried her face there, lips and tongue working busily.

The girls shifted position. Now Magda was on her back again with Whip Woman crouching over her and facing her feet. She forced Magda’s legs up so that she could again burrow with her face in the cleft of the brunette’s posterior. At the same time, Magda undid the other’s belt and pulled down the leather short-shorts. Then she raised up and nibbled and licked and sucked at the wide-open and passion-slicked entrance to the blonde’s quivering vagina.

It was too damn much for me! There was no way that I could avert my eyes. My hard-on was mounting! Mounting toward the ground plate suspended over me! Mounting toward death! I had to do something to get my mind off what my eyes couldn’t help watch- mg.

I recited the multiplication table . . .

A man appeared on the overhead screen. He was large and powerful looking with a satanic face and a cruelly downcurving moustache. Chewing on it, he watched the two girls for a moment. Then he quickly took off his clothes and started for them. His lust preceded him by a good eight inches.

“Four times five is twenty . . . Four times six is twenty-four . . . Four times seven is . . .”

The brutish man grabbed the blonde by her cropped hair, flung her off the bed, and sprawled on top of Magda. The brunette’s legs shot up and locked around his neck. He plunged into her to the hilt—which was damn near as thick and long as the hilt of that Whip had been. Magda’s behind slapped against the sac of his scrotum as she rose and fell with each new lunge.

Behind them, the blonde had picked herself up and uncoiled her whip. One hand busy between her legs, she snapped the lash with the other. It cracked over the man’s hairy haunches, and then the tip curled around the area where he and Magda were joined. Again and again it flicked over that terrain. It was a cruel spur urging the couple to even greater erotic abandon.

“Six sixes are thirty-six . . . Six sevens are forty-two . . . Six eights. . .”

Leather Lady flung the whip aside and dived for the joined cores of the thrashing bodies. Her lips sucked there indiscriminately. Her tongue laved his balls and Magda’s clitty. Her teeth nibbled at the Derriere and the rnan’s bun with equal avidity.

“Eleven elevens are . . . Eleven elevens are . . . Eleven times eleven is . . .”

The hell with it! I couldn’t keep my mind on the multiplication table. Desperately, I switched to trying to name all fifty states of the United States.

“Maine . . . New Hampshire . . . Vermont . . .”

The three of them rolled to the floor and assumed a new position. Crouching over him, Magda stretched her mouth wide to encompass the brute’s outsized organ. Her black hair cascaded over his furry belly. The blonde faced Magda in a sitting position, her flexed thighs clutching the man’s ears, her honeybox puckering around his moustache, her hands reaching around Magda’s protruding rear, squeezing, slapping, probing. Meanwhile, both Magda and the man played with the blonde’s boomerang-shaped nipples, flicking them, tickling them, twanging their bright red-arced erectness.

“North Carolina . . . South Carolina . . . West Carolina . .

West Carolina? No, that wasn’t right.

“West Virginia . . . East Virginia . . .”

Hell!

They shifted again. The Derriere impaled itself on the man with Magda facing forward. The blonde sat on his thighs, breast-to-breast with Magda, and contrived to rub her clitty against that of the dark-haired girl. Their nipples rubbed together as Magda rode up and down.

“Iowa . . . Idaho . . . I dunno...”

I gave up on the states and switched to Presidents;

“George Washington . . . Thomas Jefferson . . . John Adams . . . John Quim Adams . . . Andrew Jackoff . .

Whip Woman got to her feet and bent over an armchair. The man rammed it into her from behind. Magda knelt and licked his scrotum as he pounded away. She played with herself with both hands as her tongue lapped.

“Rutherford B. Lays . . . Ulysses S. Pant . . . William Howard Shaft . . .”

The sweat poured off me as I tried desperately to fight my growing lust. It was less than an inch away from the fatal electrical plate above me now. Rotating slowly, I was forced to view the erotic screen from every angle. And every angle sent a new thrill shooting groin-wards, a thrill that had to be fought off before it killed me.

Magda was on her back in a jackknife position, her ankles parallel to her ears. The blonde was sitting on Magda’s calves, holding the ankles in position, her oscillating cavity grinding down on Magda’s mouth in an efffort to swallow up the length of the brunette’s plunging tongue. The satanic-looking man was balanced on Magda’s cushiony buttocks, stretched horizontally, his clawlike hands holding the blonde’s shoulders for support, his mouth fastened to one of her long, upcurved nipples, his massively erect tool plunging deeper and deeper into Magda as he set up the rhythm for all three of them to follow.

“Warren Hard-on . . . Arthur Garfield Lays . . . Flipa-canoe and Fuck ’er too . . .”

It was no use! My lust had reached the bursting point. I couldn’t hold back the erection. My whang was about to twang the deadly plate over it, and I couldn’t stop the reaction!

A violent tremor seized the three in the movie. The blonde rose up, came down hard on Magda’s mouth, and climaxed. The Derriere pushed up violently against the man’s hairy balls, and Magda went into the throes of orgasm. He strained to the hilt, and his rear end twirled in a screwing motion as he released his passion into Magda. It mingled with her own juices and overflowed as he kept pumping to the last drop.

That did it! I couldn’t stop myself! The only question was whether I’d come first, or my stiff penis would make the contact which would kill me first!

A sudden, sharp pain seized my testicles. It was the most intense agony I had ever known. So this was what it felt like to die by electrocution! That was the split-second thought I had before everything went black.

When I came to, I was no longer revolving on the electric plate. I was stretched out at the floor, staring at the ceiling. There was no movie showing there. My crotch was as sore as a fresh-lanced boil, my testicles swollen to double their normal size.

I focused my eyes on Mario Brandino. “What happened?” I groaned.

“I pistol-whipped your marbles,” he told me.

“And you’re supposed to be my friend!”

“I am. I didn’t have time to think of anything else. I had to turn you off before you electrocuted yourself.”

“If it ever stops hurting, maybe I’ll get around to thanking you.” I struggled to my feet and looked around.

The projector, turned off now, was on a workbench set against one wall. Four large reels of film had been arranged in sequence to feed into it. I examined them. The first one was blank, which explained why there had been no picture during the first half-hour after Magda’s departure. The second one had not quite run out. The third and fourth were still on their original spools.

I appreciated that Mayday hadn’t been taking any chances. Just in case the initial sequence hadn’t turned the trick, there was at least another hour of porno film to prod me to erection. Given my recent experience, even if I’d been able to limpen the immediate danger, I’d never have lasted the distance.

“How did you happen to find me?” I asked Brandino.

“I’ve been looking for you for three days, ever since they grabbed you. I’ve been searching the ship. I owed you one. Remember?”

“I remember. Thanks,” I added sincerely.

“I’d just about given up. If I hadn’t found you in the next ten minutes or so, I would have written you off. Which reminds me, let’s get going. I’ve heard there’s a bomb set to explode on this ship. Just about everybody has already left, including the Captain and the crew. The only ones on board beside us are the First Mate and the Chief Engineer. They’re trying to find the damn thing.”

“I know all about the bomb,” I told him. “It won’t go off now. Let’s go find them and I’ll show them where it is.”

We left then, and returned about twenty minutes later with Mister Jewish and Gorilla in tow. I showed the two officers where the bomb was stashed. Gorilla examined it and heaved a sigh of relief.

“It’s a dud,” he said. “It would never have exploded.

“There’s no connection for the current.”

“That’s what you think!” I explained to him how the connection was supposed to have been made.

After Gorilla took care of the bomb, Mister Jewish went ashore to inform the Captain that the emergency was over. He also consulted with the local Ceylonese authorities. The result of this consultation was that shortly before we sailed out of Colombo, Ensign Mayday, Zelda Poppins, and Magda were all apprehended.

More good news followed. A wireless message was intercepted from the Queen William. One of her engines had conked out. Instead of proceeding to Cape town, South Africa, which was her next port-of-call, she was putting into Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, to make repairs.

With luck, we’d make Mombasa, Kenya, our next destination, before the Queen William could sail again. This meant that we each had roughly the same sailing distance left to cover on our cruises.

We’d caught up with her! The Lascivia was back in the race! And with the saboteurs out of our hair, we stood a damn good chance of winning it!

I was feeling pretty good about that a few days later as the Lascivia started down the African coast toward Kenya. It was a relief not having to worry about where the sex saboteurs might strike again. All I had to do was relax for the next three weeks or so, and leave the driving to Maldemerde. There was nothing to be anxious about now until we arrived back in New York. That’s what I thought.

I stopped thinking it when I went into the bathroom of my cabin that night. There was a message neatly hand-lettered in lipstick on the mirror over the fancy Washbasin:

“SIN WILL SINK THE SODOM OF THE SEAS!”

Nice alliteration.

What the hell?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It damn near did. “Sin,” that is. It damn near sank the Lascivia. With a little help from someone I’d never have guessed in a million leapyears! Someone with a motive I wouldn’t have figured in a weekend-less month of Sundays!

Some time passed, however, before the words of the prophecy were translated into action. Enough time for us to put Kenya behind us, sail south down the African coast and around the horn. Starting up the coastline of South Africa, we caught a glimpse of the Cape town harbor.

The Queen William was lying at anchor there. She’d made her repairs faster than we’d hoped. The Lascivia changed course to west-by-north and proceeded full speed ahead across the open sea to Senegal.

We reached the Senegalese port of Dakar on schedule, and we sailed out promptly when our in-port time was up. The next stop would be Cannes on the French Riviera. Then New York, and the end of the cruise.

One day out of Dakar, heading for the Straits of Madeira through which we must pass en route to Cannes, we sighted the Queen William again. Her next-to-last scheduled stop was also Cannes. The two vessels were in a dead heat now, racing for the stretch.

The “stretch” was the Straits of Madeira. The two giant ocean liners couldn’t pass through the narrow channel at the same time. The second one to reach the Straits would have to line up behind the first to sail through. And the number one position insured reaching Cannes first which, because of the red tape involved in securing a berth in the busy harbor, would put the second ship hours behind before it was officially logged as “Arrived.”

So the Lascivia piled on steam in the race for the Straits. The Queen William did likewise. The two ships stayed neck and neck.

The day was cloudy. A thick fog settled over both vessels. No storm was forecast, but the sea was extremely choppy. The more speed we built up, the more sickeningly the ship rolled from side to side.

The nauseating motion took its toll of the passengers. At first there was a run on the bar, but by lunchtime the cocktail lounge was deserted. Nor had it been forsaken for the dining room. Only a handful of people showed up for the meal, and for all that they were able to force themselves to eat, the kitchen might just as well have shut down. The seasickness spread, and soon the most popular spot on the ship was the rail.

Space was at a premium there. A second row of people backed up the first, hoping someone might faint so that their place could be taken. Like a floating graveyard full of disconsolate ghosts, their groaning filled the fog. It was as if the sea below had been transformed into a vast vomitorium.

There was a run on Dramamine¹⁴ . The dispensary was mobbed. Feeling pretty queasy myself, I, too, sought relief there. But I didn’t have it in me to fight the crowd. I went back outside and settled for a deck chair far back from the rail.

I sat there, fighting my gorge, and tried to ignore the widespread upchucking. I don't know how long I’d been there when I noticed Sister Stella coming up from the dispensary and popping Dramamine pills into her mouth. Her face was the color of over-stewed asparagus.

Somehow she managed to squeeze in at the rail. Doubled over, she stayed there for perhaps ten minutes. Then she turned around, spied me, and started over to where I was sitting. There was a strange gleam in her eye. When she reached me, she grabbed her robe with both hands and pulled it open so that the entire front of her naked body was revealed to me.

“Fuck me!”

“Blu-u-u-uh!” I groaned.

“Screw me!”

‘Tm sick.” I managed to get the words out. I’d never felt less like sex.

“I’ll make you better.” Sister Stella sprawled on top of me, her flowing habit covering us both, her hands tearing at the belt securing my pants.

“Go away,” I told her, my teeth clenched to fight my nausea.

“Lay me!” She was insistent.

“You’re determined to stay a virgin,” I reminded her. “That’s what you said. Remember?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” she panted.

“Why?” The question was automatic. My concentration was still on holding down my gorge.

“I don’t know. It’s an uncontrollable urge. I have to satisfy it! Right now!” She pulled down my pants and jockey shorts and maneuvered to fulfill her desire.

No way! I was limp as wilted seaweed. My stomach, in full rebellion, had taken over control of my body. My libido had been shelved for the duration.

“Fuck me!” Sister Stella tried to force the issue.

I Was too weak to fight her. I was too weak to satisfy her. So I did what any normal, red-blooded, seasick American man would do under the circumstances. I threw up all over her!

“I suppose you think that’s funny!” She was damned indignant.

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Well it’s not funny at all! I’d call it a very sick joke!” Sister Stella flounced away.

I cleaned myself up and switched to another chaise longue further down the deck and downwind from the first. As my stomach subsided, I noticed Buddy Fluker standing on the landing of the stairwell leading up from the dispensary. He was washing down Dramamine pills with a glass of water.

As I watched, he set the glass down on the deck and placed his chess pegboard carefully out of the way beside it. He unzipped his fly. Then he hurtled forward in a flying tackle that caught Binny Stanford behind the knees and sent her sprawling to the deck. “Check!” Buddy Fluker yelled.

Before she could recover, he pulled up her skirt, pulled down her panties, and started to rape her.

“And mate!”

I blinked. The chessmaster was raping her all right. Not that Binny seemed to mind. . . .

Queen Nimmfetah came up the stairs from the infirmary and took Buddy Fluker’s place on the landing. She replaced the cap on a small phial of Dramamine and nicked it into the waistband of her gauzy harem trousers. Her hand slid down her belly under the semitransparent trousers and lodged between her thighs. She leaned against the bulkhead behind her, masturbated, came quickly to orgasm, swallowed another Dramamine, and immediately started to repeat the process over again.

Four men ascended and staggered past the Queen. They were passing seasickness pills among themselves. All four faces were bilious beige in color.

They clustered around a potted palm tree like the four points of a compass and threw up in clockwise sequence. First North, then East, then South, and finally West. The pills were passed around in the same order. Their groans subsided. They started back toward the card salon.

They stopped in their tracks when Blaze Buxbocks crossed their path. They stared at her. They stared at each other. North put the unthinkable into words:

“Let’s not play bridge.”

“In spades!” East agreed.

“Doubled!” South enthused.

“Redoubled!” West made it unanimous.

They fell on Blaze, tore off her clothes, and in no time at all contrived to fill three of her orifices. West was dummy and contented himself with fondling her heaving, succulent breasts. Blaze simply lay there squealing-seemingly more with delight than outrage.

Knute Summerknut came up from the dispensary. For the first time since he’d boarded the ship, the old nudists flesh had betrayed him. He came on like a charging Bengal Lancer, his lance at full tilt.

Sister Stella passed close in front of him. The lance tangled in her habit. Summerknut snorted like a bull with its horns tangled in a toreador’s cape. He ripped the garment from her body, cowl and all, and drove her to the deck.

Which is when I first learned an interesting fact about the Sisters of the Zodiac. They shaved their heads. Sister Stella was bald as a defrocked cue ball!

It added to the unreality of the panorama unfolding before my eyes. The scene was a nautical fantasy of a Roman orgy. It was a phantasmagoria of people throwing up, fondling themselves and each other, popping seasickness pills, sprawling in bizarre, erotic groupings, shoving their fingers down their throats or up whatever was handy, the men wielding erections like clubs, the women spreading themselves like lawns waiting to be seeded, girls playing with girls, men stabbing at men, heterosexuality, homosexuality, oral sexuality, anal sexuality, sexuality of every conceivable variety! It had spread over the ship like wildfire. Seasick sex was everywhere!

What the devil was happening? I wondered if I was hallucinating. Maybe acute seasickness had flipped me out altogether!

I needed help. I forced myself to struggle to my feet and headed for the dispensary. The entrance was blocked by the wives of North, East, South, and West. They’d joined hands to form a small circle.

Inside the circle, Captain Maldemerde was dancing wildly. He was waving a bottle of Dramamine pills over his head. With his other hand, he was pinching nipples as he revolved. Click-click. His uniform lay in a pile at his feet. He was naked.

“Captain,” I groaned. “Who’s minding the store?”

“Who cares?” He ducked his head and bit Mrs. East in the crotch. Click-click.

“The race-—” I reminded him.

“The hell with it! You only live once!” Click-click.

He rolled with the sickening motion of the ship and his face disappeared, between Mrs. North’s giant breasts.

I elbowed my way into the dispensary. Chief Purser Yenta was there, handing out bottles of seasickness pills. “Where’s Dr. Quotabusta?” I asked him.

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Quotabusta was sprawled out on a chair there with two girls. One of them had her face buried under his loincloth. The other one was sitting on his face.

“Have some Dramamine.” Yenta held out a small bottle to me.

I took it gratefully. “How come you’re not in on the bacchanal?” I asked the Chief Purser.

“How come you’re not?”

Good question. “I feel too sick.” I answered it honestly.

“I’m queasy myself,” Yenta countered.

“The pills don’t help you?”

The question seemed to startle the Japanese officer, almost as if it caught him off-guard. His answer, too, seemed strangely abrupt. “No. They don’t help.” He turned away from me toward two more sufferers who had just entered.

I left the dispensary and headed down the inside passageway toward the stairway leading down to my cabin. I hate taking pills, and I wanted to wash these down with some Scotch I had stashed there.

On the stairs, I tripped over somebody. It was Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot. The old lady appeared to be in agony. “I’m ill,” she moaned. “So ill! I want to die!”

“Here. Take one of these.” I cradled her head and held a Dramamine pill to her lips. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“NO!”

Her scream took me by surprise. Hysterical, I decided. I held her nose and forced her to swallow the ill.

She started to retch, but didn’t. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Did you get these pills from the Chief Purser?” she wanted to know.

“Sure. Why?”

“Sin!” She gagged. “Lewdity!” She tore open the front of her dress, pulled aside her sturdy, old-fashioned brassiere, and exposed a withered breast. “Sully me! ” she panted.

Nutty as a pecan pie! I decided.

“Let me help you to your cabin.”

“Deflower me here!” She hoisted up her dress to display varicose thighs. “It’s wrong! It’s evil! Purity is all!” Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot pulled the dress down again. “I’m nauseous!” she declared.

“Everybody is,” I told her. “It’s a rough sea.”

‘Tm nauseous from wanting you! You make me nauseous! Take me! Ruin me!” The dress was raised again.

“I’ve had more complimentary offers.”

“You think I’m too old?”

“Well, there is a certain discrepancy in our ages. I Want you to know that I really respect you, but--”

“Have you ever had a geriatric experience?”

“No. Still -”

“And you’re the man from O.R.G.Y.! How can you claim to be a sex expert with a gap like that in your education?”

“My research doesn’t always require me to be a participant.”

“I’m a virgin,” she offered coyly.

“At your age?” I couldn’t hide my surprise.

“Yes. Dammit! Now what are you going to do about it?” she demanded.

“I don’t really think I should do anything about it. Besides, I'm feeling too sick. That’s the truth,” I assured her.

A cunning look spread over her wrinkled face. “Take a couple of those pills,” she suggested. She giggled sexily.

I stared at her. Rotten as I felt, a suspicion was beginning to take shape in my mind. Something had turned the old biddy on. And what else could it have been but—-

“I WANT TO GET LAID!” Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot screamed suddenly. She dived at me.

I was caught off balance. I felt myself starting to topple down the stairs. Arms flailing, I grabbed at her for support. The two of us rolled down the staircase together.

When I picked myself up at the bottom, she was still lying there. Alarmed, I bent over and felt for her heart. It was still beating. But she was out cold.

Picking her up in my arms, I carried her to her suite. I fished the key to her door out of her handbag and unlocked it. I toted her inside and laid her down on the bed. Then I went over to a bureau, looking for some smelling salts. Miss Amanda seemed the type of old lady who would stock them.

The first drawer I opened brought me up short. It was neatly stacked with identical small bottles of pills. The labels bore the stamp of the Lascivia dispensary and identified the pills as Dramamine!

All four drawers in the bureau were packed with Dramamine. Another cabinet turned up an assortment of birth control pills in boxes and bottles of all shapes and sizes. The prescription labels on them virtually added up to a female passenger list. A suitcase was filled with a variety of contraceptive devices for use by both males and females, everything from simple condoms and diaphragms to French ticklers and intrauterine devices.

In another room of Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot’s luxury suite, I found four reels of film. They were numbered to indicate the sequence. I held the first reel up to the light. The opening frames confirmed what I’d already guessed. The film was a travelogue of Bali.

Stacked in a trunk I found boxes of unopened talcum powder containers. Another compartment held a small jar of Vaseline and a large bottle of glue about one-quarter empty. A flat dish showed the remains of a mixture of the two substances.

A desk drawer contained Xeroxed copies of the hand-printed notes which had circulated among the passengers and crew at the start of the voyage. In the drawer beneath it, I found a thick sheaf of photostats of the dossiers that Yenta had compiled. Various names had been circled with a red crayon, my own among them.

That clinched it! Mayday and his cohorts had committed the major acts of sabotage—-triggering the “Abandon Ship!” alarm, wrecking the fresh water converter, rigging the compass so the Lascivia would sail into a hurricane, booby-trapping the trampoline, even setting the radio operator up to electrocute himself— but they hadn’t been responsible for the anti-sex campaign which had been plaguing the ship. That mischief had been the work of Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot!

I waited until she’d regained consciousness, and then I laid it on her. “The jig,” I told her not too originally, “is up.” I ticked off the evidence.

The aging harridan wilted. There was no way she could deny it. Nor did she bother to deny that Chief Purser Yenta had been in on it with her from the very beginning. “I bribed him handsomely,” she admitted. “Besides supplying the dossiers, he obtained keys for me to get in and out of various cabins, and he made various major substitutions involving the talcum powder and the Dramamine and—”

Which reminded me-— I took time out to call Mr. Jewish on the ship’s intercom. Without going into detail, I told him the gist of the situation. He promised to stop the distribution of the aphrodisiac seasickness pills and put Chief Purser Yenta under guard immediately.

Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot continued her confession. The latest sabotage, she said, had a more far-reaching aim than merely starting a shipboard orgy. Its goal was to fulfill the lipsticked prophecy on my bathroom mirror: “SIN WILL SINK THE SODOM OF THE SEAS!”

Creating the “SODOM” had only been the first step. If her timing had succeeded, there would have been all-out erotic chaos aboard by the time the Lascivia entered the Straits of Madeira. Chief Purser Yenta would have seen to it that Captain Maldemerde was deeply involved in the sexual goings-on by then.

Moments after entering the Straits, a note bearing the forged signature of Captain Maldemerde was to have been delivered to the helmsman by Chief Purser Yenta. It would have ordered a change in course resulting in the Lascivia smashing into the sharp, hidden underwater shoals bordering the tricky channel. Thus the bathroom mirror forecast was to have been fulfilled.

“Why?” I asked her. “Why did you want to sabotage this cruise?”

“To ruin Baron Antoine Duvivier, the owner of the Monaco Line," Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot replied in a low voice. “That was my motive. I wanted to rum him just as he ruined my life over sixty years ago.”

I remembered the very first note the Baron had shown me mentioning that the Lascivia’s owner had committed “unpardonable sins.” I took a guess at what they might have been. “The Baron – umm – deflowered and abandoned you?” I asked delicately.

“No. On the contrary. As a young girl of eighteen, I became deeply enamored of the Baron. I made my feelings known to him and freely offered to surrender my chastity to him. I set up no conditions, made no demands.”

“And he accepted?”

“No. He rejected my offer. Chivalry, he said, would not allow him to take advantage of my infatuation.”

“That’s the sort of thing that gives chivalry a bad name,” I murmured.

“I was deeply hurt. I vowed that if the man I loved spurned my maidenhead, it should remain intact. If he refused to take my virginity, then no other should have it. And I have kept that vow from that day to this.”

“You mean you wanted to punish the Baron because he didn’t take advantage of you?” I looked at Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot in amazement.

“Yes. He ruined my life!”

“How did he ruin your life?”

“How would you like to be an eighty-two-year-old virgin?”

“But that was your decision,” I pointed out to her. “The Baron’s only sin was not making love to you. It was a sin of omission!”

“That,” Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot said haughtily, bringing the discussion to a close, “is the worst sin of all!”

The brig being filled up with mutineers, Miss Amanda Lowell-Cahot and Chief Purser Yenta were confined to their quarters under round-the-clock guard. Within a couple of hours, the effects of the aphrodisiac had tapered off; the sea had smoothed out somewhat; the seasickness had abated. I went up to the wheel-house to thank Mister Jewish for his speedy cooperation and fill him in on some of the details.

Captain Maldemerde was there, screaming into the intercom for the engine room to give him more steam. The fog had lifted slightly and the running lights of the Queen William could be seen on a parallel course about five hundred yards to starboard of the Lascivia. Directly in front of us, off our bow, the narrow en-trance to the Straits of Madeira was coming up fast.

We changed course five degrees, angling towards the bottleneck entrance, and toward the Queen William as well. She, too, altered course. The two vessels were now riding the legs of a V, equally distant from its juncture. Given our equal top speeds, the only result could be collision!

The name of the game was “Chicken”!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Chicken!”

Fortunately, that was Captain Maldemerde’s middle name, too. Click-click. As the distance between the two ships closed perilously, he leaped to the helm, sent the helmsman sprawling, and spun the wheel as far to port as it would go. The Lascivia veered off on a crazy angle while the Queen William smoothly entered the channel.

With the danger past, the Captain got over his panic. He ordered the helmsman to take the wheel again, and we sailed into the Straits about one nautical mile behind the Queen William. Still, the lead she’d taken was more damaging than that.

We found that out when we reached Cannes the following day. The docking situation was as bad as had been anticipated. With one superliner already entering the harbor, the port authorities radioed the Lascivia to stand off and wait for arrangements to be made. The result was that for four hours the Queen William drew credit for “in-port” time while the Lascivia wasted the same four hours sailing around in useless circles.

Because of this, when the rival liner sailed for its final destination, New York, two days later, our ship was forced to remain at Cannes an additional four hours. It was infuriating. Captain Maldemerde fumed. I fumed myself. But there was nothing that could be done. Those were the rules of the race.

When the time finally passed, we left promptly, of course. The Lascivia steamed back through the Straits of Madeira at top speed. And we maintained that speed as we headed out into the open Atlantic bound for New York.

Six days passed without our catching sight of the Queen William again. It seemed hopeless. With her lead and clear sailing, there seemed no possibility of catching her. I became resigned to the Lascivia’s having lost the race—and to my forfeiting my fee as a result.

That was the deal. Baron Duvivier had laid down the terms and I’d agreed to them. If the Lascivia lost, I got to keep the clothes and luggage he’d provided, and that was all.

Then, on the seventh day, after I’d given up on our chances, hope was suddenly rekindled in my hairy breast. The Lascivia had just sighted the Statue of Liberty, with the famous New York City skyline still so far away as to be indistinct behind it, when a message was received from the New York Port Authority. It informed the Captain that a ferryboat and a garbage scow had collided near the port’s channel entrance some hours before and that we’d have to wait alongside the other waiting liner for the debris to be cleared before we could proceed to our berth. The “other waiting liner” was the Queen William!

“Is there any way Captain Grabass could have gotten off the ship and reached the bank?” I asked Captain Maldemerde anxiously. “On the pilot boat or something?”

“The pilot doesn’t come aboard until after we enter the channel,” Maldemerde assured me. “And the terms of the race are that the vessel has to be inside the waters of the port before the destination is officially reached. Grabass can’t leave until the Queen William is in the channel.” Click-click. “And neither can you,” he added.

An hour later the entrance to the channel was clear and both ships were permitted to proceed. Each steamed to its assigned holding position to await the boarding of the pilot. After the pilots came on board, both ships would be officially logged as having arrived. The pilots would take over to steer them to their berths— ours in Staten Island, the Queen Williams at Pier Ninety-two, North River, from which the Lascivia had originally departed. But neither Captain Grabass of the Queen William nor I had to wait for the ships to dock before starting for the bank. We were free to leave just as soon as the pilot made the entry noting our arrival.

I borrowed a pair of binoculars and kept the Queen William under surveillance. About twenty minutes after the pilot arrived, Captain Grabass boarded the small motor boat that had brought him. It was five agonizing minutes later before the putt-putt that had delivered our pilot headed upriver for the midtown docks with me aboard!

I jumped to the pier before the small craft was moored. I raced down the wooden planking to the street beyond. There wasn’t a cab in sight.

Fortunately, Captain Grabass was facing the same problem. He was about a block up the avenue desperately trying to flag down taxis that ignored him because they already had passengers. When he spotted me, he started up a crosstown street at a trot.

There was no choice. It was mid-afternoon and taxis rarely cruised the dock area at this time. I took off after Grabass like I was trying for the four-minute mile.

For a man who looked as unathletic as he did, Captain Grabass was surprisingly swift. It was all I could do to maintain the distance between us. Hard as I pushed myself, I was unable to narrow it.

Then, at the corner of Fifty-second Street and Eighth Avenue, the Captain spotted a cab discharging a passenger and jumped into it. I looked around frantically. There wasn’t another empty in sight.

The taxi with Grabass in it headed east on Fifty-second Street. I trotted after it on foot as fast as I could. Luck was with me. Midtown traffic held the hack up at Broadway. I hadn’t gained on Grabass, but his half-block lead hadn’t been lengthened either.

Then the light changed and the cab shot across both Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and headed down the relatively clear block toward the Avenue of the Americas. Running, I spotted an empty taxi with its “Off Duty” light lit. I rapped on the window and yelled at the driver. “Ten bucks if you’ll take me to Park Avenue!”

He rolled the window down a bare inch. “Make it twenty,” he said calmly. He knew a desperate man when he saw one.

I nodded vigorous agreement and he opened the door. I jumped in, flung the money at him, and begged hirn to hurry. His attitude was infuriatingly calm and laconic, but his driving, by contrast, was fast and professional. He slid the hack in and out of traffic, gaining a car-length here, and another there.

At the corner of Madison Avenue I spotted the cab with Grabass in it about five cars in front of us. Like us, it was waiting for the light to change. When it changed, we both sped toward Park Avenue.

There were only two cars between us when the red light at Park Avenue stopped traffic again. Grabass was about a quarter block from the corner. The entrance to the bank was right around the corner on Park.

Grabass got out of his cab. I left mine on the run. He rounded the corner. A couple of seconds later I turned it.

Too late! He was already at the entrance to the bank! I watched as he led with his shoulder to go through the swinging doors.

He bounced off them! He stood there looking bewildered. The doors were locked!

Of course! I glanced at my watch. Three-ten. The bank was closed for the day!

We stared at each other. I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“You find this amusing, Mr. Victor?”

“How come you know who I am?” I wondered.

“You have been known to me from the moment you left Baron Duvivier’s yacht in Nassau.”

“Oh. . . . What now?” I wanted to know.

Captain Grabass didn’t reply.

Gold-embossed letters on the door to the bank, however, provided an answer of sorts. They spelled out the business hours. The bank would open at nine in the morning.

The Captain had followed my gaze. “It might be very profitable for you to oversleep, dear boy,” he suggested.

“How profitable?”

He mentioned a figure. It was so far below what Duvivier would pay me for getting to the safe-deposit box first that my integrity wasn’t even called into question. I shook my head.

“In that case—-” Captain Grabass pulled a freshly pressed white Italian silk handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it. He waved it at me coyly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Truce, Lovey, truce. We can’t stand here glaring at each other until nine o’clock tomorrow morning, so I’m suggesting a truce. What do you say, Honeybun?”

“Fine with me.” I started down the sidewalk. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Oh no!” He scurried on tiptoe to catch up with me. “I couldn’t possibly let you out of my sight, Stevie baby.”

“Why not?”

“Bank personnel are notoriously underpaid. I wouldn’t want you tempting some poor young teller to let you in five or ten minutes early.”

“How would I even know how to reach anybody Working in that bank?”

“Baron Duvivier just might have the contacts, Sugarpie. I simply can’t afford to take that chance. Sorry.”

“Well what then? What kind of truce do you mean? If you don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you, I guess we are stuck here until morning.”

“No we’re not. As long as we stay together, Stevie, we don’t have to stay here.”

“Well then, where do we go?”

“There’s a lovely hotel not far from here. We could take a room-—-” He fluttered long eyelashes at me.

“Sorry. Not my thing.”

“How do you know until you try, Sweetie?”

“I don’t. But if I ever do get around to trying, it will be with somebody a lot younger and more appealing than you,” I told Grabass frankly.

“Hostile!” He wagged a well-manicured finger in my face. “Very hostile! Where would you suggest we go then?” Grabass threw the question back at me.

“I could use a drink.”

“Excellent!” He clapped his hands. “I know just the place. The Gay Barnacle down near South Street. It’s a darling spot. And the habitués are so chic!”

“I’d rather go to the Three Lions. It’s closer.”

“That pub in the Hotel Tudor? Where all the straights hang out? But Sweetie, Yd be so uncomfortable there.”

“Ditto for me at your gay bar.” I thought a minute. “Let’s compromise,” I suggested. “You know the San Marino in the Village?”

Captain Grabass knew it all right. And he agreed that it was the perfect compromise. The San Marino is one of those rare places that’s sexually integrated. Straights and gay people mingle there in a permissive atmosphere that keeps everybody at their ease.

So the San Marino is where Grabass and I went. We stood at the bar and lingered over a few drinks until it was time for dinner. Then we went into the Marino’s restaurant section and took our time over a lavish Italian meal. After which it was back to the bar for a few more drinks.

It was around eleven p.m. by now, and the place had filled up. A gay young man I knew slightly spotted me and came over to say hello. His sharp eyes sized up Grabass shrewdly and he leaned over to speak directly into my ear so the Captain wouldn’t hear.

“Been cruising the docks, Steve?” he asked.

“It’s platonic,” I assured him.

“Still uptight, hey?”

“Afraid so.”

“Too bad. You’re maybe breaking a lot of hearts. Still, like they say, to each his own.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Stevie?” Grabass was licking his lips with all the subtlety of an aroused bulldog on the scent of a bitch in heat.

“Oh no!” My gay young friend laughed. “I may be queer, but I’m not desperate. No foxy Grandmas for me.” He winked at me and moved away from us down to the far end of the bar.

“Bitchy little thing, isn’t she?” Grabass’s nose was out of joint. “Let’s get some air,” he suggested.

That was fine with me. We walked over to Washington Square Park. Except for a few pairs of lovers clinching in the shadows, the interior of the park was pretty deserted. We strolled toward the Arch at the Fifth Avenue end. Two cops sauntered past us, measured us with their eyes, and kept on walking.

They were about a dozen feet beyond us when Grabass suddenly whirled around and slugged me on the jaw with all his might. It took me by surprise, and I hit the pavement hard. I stayed there, momentarily dazed.

“Keep your goddam paws to yourself, you goddam fag pansy!” Grabass roared loudly.

There was nothing effeminate about him now. He looked the picture of a tough old sea dog who was indignant at having a pass made at him by a homosexual. The two cops swung around and marched back to us fast.

“What’s going on here?” one of them demanded.

“This disgusting queer grabbed for my prick, Officer!”

“I thought you were friends,” the second cop remarked. “You were walking together.”

“I never saw him before.” Grabass overflowed with sincerity. “He came up and asked me for a match. When I gave him one, he started up a conversation and walked along with me. As soon as he thought we were safely past you, he said he wanted to suck me and grabbed for my prick.”

“That’s not true!” I protested.

The first cop held up his hand for me to be quiet. “You want to prefer charges?” he asked Grabass.

“I certainly do! Something has to be done to get these perverts off the street so decent people will be safe.”

The canny old queen! I swore to myself. If he preferred charges, I’d spend the rest of the night in jail and Night Court. He must have known it was too late for me to get a bail bondsman to spring me. I’d never get out before the bank opened!

“He’s lying!” I told the cops. “I’m straight. I’ve never—-”

“You can tell your story to the judge. You’ll get your chance,” the second cop told me. “On your feet,” he ordered.

I stood up.

“Come along.” The first cop took me by the arm. “You too,” he told Grabass. “You can sign a complaint at the precinct house.” He marched me towards Fifth Avenue. Grabass and the other cop followed.

As we approached the Arch, I spied my gay young friend from the bar standing there with half-a-dozen or so other gay people. “What’s up, Steve?” he called to me.

“I’ve been busted.”

“What for?”

“Homosexual soliciting and assault.”

“On that tired old queen?” my friend was derisive.

“It’s a bum rap,” I assured him.

“Entrapment!” One of the other gay people shouted the word angrily.

“The Vice Squad at it again?” Four lesbians, arm-in-arm, strolled up to the group, attracted by the shout. ,

“Police persecution!” Three more husky male homosexuals came running over.

“Let him go!” My friend started the cry.

“Let him go! Let him go!” Others picked it up and it became a chant.

A Gay Liberation banner appeared from somewhere and fluttered in the breeze.

“Don’t interfere!” The first cop tried to push me through the crowd that was gathering. “Let us pass!"

A large man blocked our way deliberately. “Move aside, or I’ll run you in, too, you faggot!” the second cop threatened.

It was the wrong thing to say. The gathering mob reacted strongly. A large rock came flying from somewhere on its fringe. It missed the cop and hit Grabass solidly on the left temple. He went down hard and stayed there, stretched out on the pavement.

The second cop swung his club at the large man blocking our way. From the side, a Lesbian hit the cop’s wrist with a karate chop. The billy went sailing. The first cop struggled to pull his gun. Before he could succeed, he went down under the weight of three or four angry male homosexuals. The second cop and I were separated by the mob.

“Quick, Steve! This way!” My San Marino friend grabbed my arm and led me running back through the park. We circled it, walked a few blocks up University Place, then cut back to Fifth and approached the Arch again from the other direction.

We were preceded by three or four police cars with their sirens blaring. joining the crowd of onlookers on the sidewalk across from the Arch, we watched as the cops dispersed the mob. It was a good hour before it was over.

When it was, Grabass still lay stretched out on the pavement. An ambulance was summoned friend strolled wver casually and eavesdropped as they were loading Grabass into it.

“Concussion,” he told me when he came back. “They’re taking him to Beekman Downtown.”

I thanked him and We parted company. I went uptown to Forty-second Street and killed the time before morning in an all-night movie. Then I had some breakfast and found a phone booth.

The hospital informed me that Captain Grabass’s condition was “satisfactory.” He’d regained consciousness, but the doctor had thought it best to put him under sedation. He was sleeping comfortably now and probably wouldn’t wake up until midmorning.

My luck had held! Grabass was not going to make it to the bank on time! Still, not wanting to take chances, I made sure I was there a full hour early.

Promptly at nine, the bank’s doors were opened. I produced the key Baron Duvivier had given me and was conducted down to the vault. A bank official located the strongbox for me and I opened it. The two sets of papers were there, just as Duvivier had said they would be.

I destroyed the set giving Captain Grabass ownership of the Monaco Line. The second sheaf, turning over the Gaylife Line and the Queen William to the Monaco Line, I put in my inside jacket pocket. Then I left the bank and hailed a cab to take me to the New York offfices of the Monaco Line where Baron Duvivier was supposed to be waiting for me. During the taxi ride I reflected happily on all the various ways in which I planned to spend the whopping fee I’d earned.

I was expected. A trim secretary conducted me directly to Baron Duvivier’s offce. I went through the door and stopped short.

Seated behind the desk was Captain Maldemerde! Click-click.

“Where’s Baron Duvivier?” I exclaimed.

“He was unavoidably detained. Do you have the papers?”

“Yes.”

“May I see them, please?”

I handed them to him. He looked them over, and then slid them into the top drawer of the desk. Then he locked the desk.

“What detained the Baron?” I asked.

“Rigor mortis.” Click-click. “He died two days ago.”

I stared at Maldemerde, trying to absorb what he’d said. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said finally. “I guess I’d better see whoever’s in charge now.”

“I’m in charge.” Click-click.

“I mean of the Monaco Line.”

“So do I. I’m in charge of the Monaco Line.” Click-click.

“Then perhaps I’d better see an officer of the Duvivier Foundation.”

‘Tm in charge of that, too.” Click-click.

“Then I’ll talk to you. About my fee—”

“What fee?” Click-click.

“My fee for the services performed during the voyage.”

“What services? What fee?” Click-click.

“I had a deal with the Baron and—-”

“You have proof of this? You have something in writing?” Click-click.

“Well, no. But—”

All my “Buts” did no good. The conversation heated up to the point where I dived across the desk for Maldemerde’s throat. That did no good either. He pushed a button; and before I could even have the satisfaction of mussing up the little crud, four husky dock-wallopers came through the door, pulled me off him, and threw me off the premises on my keister.

I went back to the Lascivia and got my baggage. I headed for the nearest hock shop. I sold the luggage and the clothing.

Next stop was a lawyer I knew. No help there. I had nothing in writing. I had no witnesses. I was S.O.L.¹⁵ !

With the hock shop money, I bought a one-way air-line ticket to Nassau. When I got there, I hitchhiked over the causeway to Paradise Island. Leila greeted me with the same terms as before.

“You can stay here if you do exactly what I want when I want and how I want!”

Women’s Lib! Still, beggars can’t be choosers. I agreed.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” I noticed two small objects in the palm of her hand. .

“Symbols from the slave days of women, before they freed themselves,” my Arabian mistress told me.

I stared at the pasties.

“On your knees!” Leila commanded.

Click-click!

Notes

[←1 ]

Yar is an expression in ship-speak that means being shipshape. It’s also an expression of attitude that projects quiet, competent seamanship.

[←2 ]

Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century.

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), made her a household name. An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, the book offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women are forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfill male fantasies of what being a woman entails.

Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She has been described as "a seminal influence on second-wave feminism", and is best known for her book Sexual Politics (1970). Journalist Liza Featherstone attributes previously unimaginable "legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes, and a sexual freedom" being made possible partially due to Millett's efforts.

[←3 ]

See Here’s your O.R.G.Y.

[←4 ]

In the Quran, the houris are called "companions", described as being "restraining in their glances" (chaste), with "modest gazes", "wide and beautiful/lovely eyes",^[ "eyes like pearls", and "full-breasted". The word itself occurs always in the plural. A popular misconception (endorsed by Ted Mark) stems from some Quran adjectives associated with the word houri to denote "a girl whose shoulder and chest are becoming prominent" or "are budding", hence, many commentators see in it an allusion to some sort of youthful "female companions' who would entertain the (presumably male) occupants of paradise ...

[←5 ]

Điện Biên, sometimes called Dienbien Phu , is a city in the northwestern region of Vietnam. It is the capital of Điện Biên Province. The city is best known for the important Battle of Điện Biên Phủ which was fought between the Việt Minh (led by General Võ Nguyên Giáp), and the French Union (led by General Henri Navarre, successor to General Raoul Salan). The siege of the French garrison lasted fifty-seven days, from 17:30, 13 March to 17:30, 7 May 1954.

[←6 ]

Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo (June 19, 1902 – November 5, 1977) was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist of Italian descent. He formed the Royal Canadians in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor, and other musicians from his hometown. They billed themselves as creating "the sweetest music this side of Heaven". Even after Lombardo's death, the band's New Year's specials continued for two more years on CBS. The Royal Canadians' recording of the traditional song "Auld Lang Syne" still plays as the first song of the new year in Times Square.

[←7 ]

Probable reference to Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932), an American biologist, best known for his warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became well known for his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb, which asserted that the world's human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued. Among the solutions he suggested in that book was population control, to be used in his opinion if voluntary methods were to fail. He was one of the initiators of the group Zero Population Growth (renamed Population Connection) in 1968. Ehrlich has been heavily criticized for his opinions.

[←8 ]

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (popularly known as Fanny Hill, an anglicisation of the Latin mons veneris, mound of Venus) is an erotic novel by English novelist John Cleland first published in London in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel". It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.

[←9 ]

Possible reference to the movie “Darling”, 1965, by John Schlesinger with Julie Christie and Rock Hudson.

[←10 ]

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American mystery drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star. The picture was Welles's first feature film. Nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles. Considered by many critics, filmmakers, and fans to be the greatest film of all time.

[←11 ]

The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American drama film directed and co-written by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from a semi-autobiographical 1966 novel The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. Largely because of the skinny-dipping party scene, the film was banned in Phoenix, Arizona, when the city attorney notified a drive-in theater manager that the film violated a state obscenity statute. Eventually, a federal court decided that the film was not obscene.^[

[←12 ]

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC) is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, with 90 million customers in over 60 countries. The firm was founded on March 24, 1868.

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Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934)^[ is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney, noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism and government reform causes. He first came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of the bestselling book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers that became known as one of the most important journalistic pieces of the 20th century. Nader led a group of volunteer law students—dubbed "Nader's Raiders"—in a groundbreaking investigation of the Federal Trade Commission, leading directly to that agency's overhaul and reform. In the 1970s, Nader established a number of advocacy and watchdog groups including the Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Auto Safety, and Public Citizen.

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Dimenhydrinate, marketed as Dramamine and Gravol among others, is an over-the-counter medication used to treat motion sickness and nausea.

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Acronym for the words of "Shit Out of Luck."

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