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  A day later, one of the turbaned aides of Magala Khan came to Marcia Chalmers' suite to deliver to her an exquisitely wrapped packet, which, when opened, disclosed a magnificent ruby brooch, a present from his noble master. A note was enclosed, asking that the writer be granted the esteemed privilege of dining alone with the recipient of this gift. Naturally, Marcia Chalmers accepted that invitation.

  She discovered that it was to be in his own suite, and that she was waited upon by the Eurasian, clad in a native costume of pantaloons and jacket, which left her midriff bare, as well as her feet. She wore silver bracelets studded with tiny rubies, and a necklace of rare seed pearls, half black and half white. The appearance of so much wealth made a prodigious impression upon the San Francisco heiress, and it pleased her to treat this intendant as one treats the lowliest of slaves, or, in the twentieth century, a menial who must work for a living and be subject to the despotic whims of his or her betters.

  When the meal was over, and a lavish one it was, Magala Khan dismissed the Eurasian beauty, as well as his two turbaned aides, and began to profess his desire and his love for Marcia Chalmers. He spoke with a poetic beauty, in which not a single phrase could be construed as vulgarity or physical lust, yet the sensual curve of his red lips and the glitter of his dark brooding eyes told the demivierge intuitively what he wished of her. In essence, he proposed to offer her the role of mistress in title, since it was impossible for him to wed. He intimated that affairs of state had temporarily deposed him from the province he ruled in India, and made any permanent alliance, for the time being at least, impossible. Yet, he claimed that she would be esteemed and adored as would a wife, even though their liaison must needs be morganatic. Marcia Chalmers listened, pretending the greatest interest in what he had to say. Magala Khan, believing she was about to acquiesce, with a flowery declaration of love, attempted to kiss her.

  Like an unchained tigress Marcia had disengaged herself from his embrace, struck him viciously across the cheek, and, eyes blazing, exclaimed, "You dare to insult me with such a vile offer? I am wealthy in my own right and I could not be bought, for this is the twentieth century. I am not married, nor do I wish to be, and much less would I consent to give myself to a man born of any race that is not white, who already consorts with girls of easy virtue, like this intendant of yours! I do not wish ever to see you again, Magala Khan! And I will return your present to you. Give it to someone like my maid, Jacqueline, if you please. She is worthy of you, but not I."

  He just stared at her in silence for a long moment, a deadly hatred replacing the flame of desire in his dark eyes. Then, perfectly poised, he bowed and said blandly, "Forgive my impetuosity, Miss Chalmers. I did not mean to give you offense. In my country, the offer I made would be flattering and honorable. But I see that you have your own rules. Perhaps one day you and I shall meet again, and then I shall attempt to learn what game it is you play. I bid you goodnight."

  * * *

  It was a pity, Marcia Chalmers felt, that someone like that Hindu upstart couldn't be aboard the Anastasia. It would make this sea voyage-for that was all there was now between Guam, which they had just left, and Honolulu. And then five more days they would dock in San Francisco. Marcia Chalmers yearned for new conquests before returning to her natal city; once there, it would be the same old round of fawning bachelors, older men whose most polished technique could not hide their callow desire to make her their mistress. Was there nowhere some man who would be worthy of her wit and beauty and talent, who could match her, challenge for challenge, and make the game of offering herself until that final, supreme surrender, the most vital and exciting game of all? Thus far, in this long trip, only Magala Khan had been an opponent worthy of her virgin steel, and yet he had been like all the others, believing that by the magnetic maleness and his position in life and his noble station, he could win her to his bed. But her virginity was a prize destined for no one, at least not in the foreseeable future. And so her only amusement was to charm and to lure, like the siren she knew herself to be. There would be no point in flirting with the ships officers. The stolid, dull Captain Soprovnik was a peasant at best.

  So it was with considerable pique that she turned on Jacqueline and repeated her order, this time with that peevishness so characteristic of her when she was not getting her own way.

  "For heaven's sake, Jacqueline, do I have to tell you twice? Undress me, and get that green housecoat out. I may go back to the bar before it closes at midnight for a champagne cocktail. It's so sultry out, so oppressing hot and sticky that I know I shan't sleep a wink. Hurry, girl! I do declare, one would never have thought you had gone to college. You show yourself so stupid and all thumbs at times."

  Jacqueline crimsoned and lowered her eyes at this unjust reprimand as she hurried to divest her beautiful, pampered mistress of the silver lame gown, and then the elegant lace-trimmed slip beneath.

  In the deshabille of a pair of stepins flounced with white Alencon lace at the hems and at the bodice, Marcia Chalmers was breathtakingly desirable, and it was plain to see why men sought her carnal favors, even at the risk of being insulted and put to rout.

  Her breasts, outlined by the cut of the bodice of this undergarment, were high-perched, narrowly spaced and arrogantly jutting, their aureoles small and of a dainty pink-coral tinting in whose midst appeared two dainty, crinkly little tidbits which were her nipples. The sleek flat belly with its shallow, wide navel it the midst, gave way to the bold dominance of the pelvic basin, where the dark red triangle of pubic curls fleeced the dainty pink lips of her virgin sex. Her thighs were elegantly rounded, not too full, and flawlessly proportioned; they merged into upstanding, tightly set buttocks whose undulatory mobility had more than once caught the enchanted stare of a passerby on the San Francisco streets. Her calves were sinuous, highly set, and her skin was that pale creamy tinting besprinkled with rosy white which is the mark of the true redhead.

  She moved now, the stepins falling from her magnificent nakedness, into the shower, and Jacqueline dutifully followed her mistress, then handed her the housecoat and a pair of sandals.

  "That's much better. I wonder why the ship has stopped. We aren't really moving, I can hardly feel anything," she said with a puzzled look. Then, cocking her head to one side as if listening, she shrugged. "Well, I daresay they know what they're doing. As for me, I wish this miserable trip was over. Not that there's anything back in San Francisco to look forward to. Maybe I'll go to New York." Then frowning at her lovely maid, she said, "But you'd better snap into it, Jacqueline, or I'll leave you behind. You're really a very stupid girl, you know. Just don't irritate me until we dock in San Francisco, or you may have to look for another job."

  "Don't stay up late," she called. "Don't wait up for me. Maybe a good night's sleep will put you back into a more lively disposition tomorrow."

  CHAPTER THREE - THE REEF

  There had, actually, been an indirect warning to the Anastasia.

  Captain Soprovnik had frowned as his first mate gave him the news of the signal just received by the radio operator, young Kenneth Fairway. Fairway, though only twenty-four, was an extremely dependable seaman, having started as a cabin boy when he was only fourteen. He had on more than one occasion managed to transmit and receive faint signals that had actually prevented a disaster to the Anastasia. But this piece of news was extremely puzzling.

  "Fairway says the signal is more or less intermittent. Captain," Jonas Dunway, the lanky, nearly bald first mate remarked.

  The jovial Yugoslavian frowned as he studied the transcription. "It appears to be not much more than electronic signals," he decided. "Are they very strong?"

  "Yes, to the southeast. But the thing that puzzles Fairway is that no matter how we head eastward, they seem to follow us at the same strength."

  Captain Soprovnik glanced at his watch. "We are catching up a little on our schedule, Dunway. I Don't see anything here to indicate alarm. In weather like this, all we have t
o fear is a typhoon, or perhaps some volcanic explosion in the ocean. There are no ships around for hundreds of miles, and the weather reports are favorable. Instruct the engineer full speed ahead. I haven't time to bother about a signal out of nowhere. There is no land on our chart until the Hawaiian Islands, and I am certain the signal does not come from there."

  "Very good. Captain." The first mate smartly saluted and left the bridge.

  It was past midnight now, and the night was oppressively still. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and even the stars in the sky seemed to be dull and lifeless. But then, it did not matter because the passengers were asleep in their staterooms. Only Captain Soprovnik on the bridge, maintaining a later watch than usual because the report from Fairway had stirred some subconscious presentiment, was as alert as ever, puffing at a fine Havana which he allowed himself only at this late shift of duty, where passengers would not be around to see or to censure.

  But not all the passengers were asleep. Ivan Tenkovich, the steward on "A" Deck, could testify to that. And what infuriated him most was that he had just been given an insolent order by the occupants of Cabin D, who were none other than Madame Dorothea Petroff and the Princesses Olga and Tanya Rubutsoff. At midnight, these imperious ladies demanded strawberries and champagne!

  He had been ready for sleep, for his shift actually ended at eleven at night; yet because he sorely needed every tip that so many of these wealthy passengers begrudged him, he had hastily got out of his narrow little bunk, donned his uniform and scurried down the passageway to the cabin. In his haste to serve, he had momentarily forgotten the identity of its occupants. But when he had been admitted, and when the disdainful and haughty Madame Petroff had regarded him through a lorgnette and frowned because his jacket was wrinkled, and remarked that he offended her sensitivities as she had given him the order for the strawberries and champagne, the blood had rushed to his temples and his mouth gaped in stupefaction.

  These damned aristocrats had forgotten the Revolution and the purge of the boyars. They dared think themselves still safe in their smug little world while their serfs starved and were beaten and their wives were raped and tortured by the grand lords of Old Russia. So they wished strawberries and champagne at this late hour. Yes, it would be procured for Madame. He had bowed low. And then he had seen Olga and Tanya standing near the writing table, both in satin peignoirs, elegantly lovely. It had not been so long ago that they had stood in the barn of their father's estate and giggled at him when he had frenziedly pleaded that the Prince spare his wife and mother from the lash of the Cossacks. Six long years had now been telescoped into a terrible, unforgivable moment. But, God, how beautiful they had become now! They had been-what was it?-fourteen and sixteen years of age. Now they were young women, in the full bloom of their beauty. Olga, the older, was blond with hair like spun gold, an oval, insolent face, the aquiline nose and small ripe mouth of a charming young patrician coming into that delicious epoch where she first begins to know her powers over the opposite sex. Tanya, the younger by three years, was lithe, somewhat taller, with dark brown hair tightly drawn away from her forehead and coiffed into a prim bun at the back of her neck. She was aristocratic and insolent of features, with a curling upper lip and snub nose, whose delicate, thin nostrils quivered as her aunt had chided him for responding to their summons in such a slovenly uniform.

  But he would have his vengeance, to pay them all back, yes, even Madame Petroff, because she too had been an acquiescent party to the inhuman crime the Prince, her older brother, had committed against his innocent wife and mother. The day after the savage and merciless flogging in the barn, he had been summoned into the luxuriously ornate salon by the Prince himself, and there harangued with his treason of having spoken out in favor of the Revolution. "I did not punish you yesterday, Tenkovich," the Prince had told him coldly, "because you wife and mother doubtless influenced you to this ingratitude and disloyalty to your Tsar and to me, your master. But I am merciful. I will not have you flogged as you deserve, you wretch. But you will forfeit your post in my household, and you will work in the fields with the rest of the peasants. And there, if you do not work well, you will taste the nagaiga. Now go and report to my overseer Mikhail Simlovich!"

  Madame Dorothea Petroff, then in her early thirties, a buxom, pleasant-faced woman who wore jewels and the latest gown from Paris, had been in the salon and had inquired of her brother what crime this "poor man" had committed. The price had told her, and he had told her how he had punished Tenkovich by having his mother and wife put to the lash. And that preening, smug creature had dared to laugh softly and to say, "Well, perhaps he has learned his lesson, my dear brother." And then, addressing herself to him, with almost a sneer on her handsome face, she had added, "My brother says you are a good worker. Prove it to him and show your gratitude for the mercy he extends you."

  And yet the spawn of that Prince Rubutsoff still lived, still thrived upon this earth, and with them their aunt who had laughed at the misery on his face that day.

  He had gone to the kitchen where one of the under-chefs was drowsing, wakened the man, who berated him for it, and demanded the strawberries and champagne. At last they were procured, were placed upon a fine silver tray, and he moved back along the passageway to that fateful cabin.

  Outside, in the immensity of the ocean, a dense fog had suddenly come up. The ship's engines were moving now at slower speed, and the ship's navigator was hastily verifying his charts as to their latitude and longitude. Having tried to go out of the way of the typhoon near Wake Island, the Anastasia had been going northward, and was now well off course.

  Captain Soprovnik in the bridge lit his pipe and muttered a profane oath at the capriciousness of the weather. If this kept up, they might be late by half a day into Honolulu. And passengers like that Miss Chalmers would make his life miserable with the steamship company that owned the Anastasia. He knew the type only too well. What a tempting piece of femininity she was!

  He stared disbelievingly at the compass. Though he had just given orders half an hour ago to steer northeast to correct the variants of the earlier position, there appeared to be no headway whatsoever. The Anastasia was heading south, despite all the mechanical efforts at its disposal.

  The fog was thick, like a San Francisco evening fog which shrouds the city from the Bay Bridge to Twin Peaks. There was no way to take any kind of soundings and no land was visible, even through the strongest glasses. He fumed and pondered the possibility of sending a radiogram to the nearest ship to indicate that all was not well.

  And at that moment the Anastasia shuddered from bow to stern and the powerful engines churned uselessly. "My God!" Captain Soprovnik gasped, "we've struck something! But it's impossible-we're in the mid-Pacific!"

  It was not impossible at all. The Anastasia had been directed onto a magnetic reef. A reef cleverly fabricated by the as-yet-unknown genius who had made a barren little atoll into a forbidden and unknown Paradise on which reincarnated virtually all the delights and sensations of a civilization dedicated to sexual enslavement. The Anastasia had come upon the magnetic reef of . Now it was foundering, a great hole torn below the water-line. The clanging of the bells, and cries, and chaos would follow. And after that.. .the island would claim new victims, as it had so often in the past.

  CHAPTER FOUR - LIFEBOATS

  Most of the passengers of the Anastasia were sleeping when the steamship foundered on the magnetic reef. All the same, there were shrieks of terror and a feverish clamor as in many of the staterooms the lights went out, for the power generator had been temporarily put out of commission.

  On the bridge of his ship. Captain Soprovnik could not believe what had happened to his vessel. Nevertheless he did not lose his poise and summoned his first mate, Jonas Dunway. "Go down to the engine room at once, Dunway, and ascertain the damage. Have the second mate sound general alarm and fire drill. Those bells will wake the passengers who are still asleep. How many boats do we have to cast
off in the event this ship goes down?"

  "You believe it is that serious, Captain?" the first mate gasped.

  "It is always wise to be prepared for any contingency, Dunway. How many boats?"

  "A dozen, sir. And of course all of the passengers have their life jackets in their staterooms."

  "Very good. Get to work. I still for the life of me cannot understand what we have struck. I will contact the radio operator."

  But young Kenneth Fairway, the radio operator, could report only intermittent signals which continued and which seemed as faint as when he had first reported them to the first mate.

  In her stateroom, Marcia Chalmers had not been asleep at the time of the ship's foundering. She had gone to bed about eleven, exasperated by her frustrating experiences on the cruise.

  She had been thinking about the swarthy, satanically handsome and dynamic Magala Khan. Her powers as a teaser had triumphed everywhere except with him.. . yet contemptuously she had felt that given time with him, she could reduce him to the helplessness that had taken hold of all the other would-be suitors. It was quite clear that he wanted to go to bed with her and to fuck her, just like any other man. The only thing was, he was more sophisticated, enormously rich, from all she heard, and extremely able to control his emotions and his thoughts. That was why he had made such an interesting challenge to her, one she had been sorry to neglect because of the schedule of sailing.