Slave Island Page 4

  Ivan Tenkovich kept looking up at the dark sky, in which even the moon no longer shone because of the terrible fog, and his lips were moving in grateful prayer. It was all he could do to retain the polite and deferential mask he made of his face during his service aboard ship to these pampered and wealthy wretches. He well remembered how the peasants in the village bordering the lordly estate of the noble Prince Rubutsoff went starving for want of a few potatoes or a loaf of black bread. And these dogs would drink a quarter of a bottle of champagne and let it go flat, or nibble at a pate or a tasty filet of beef and leave most of it uneaten. It was sinful waste, and one day God would punish these malefactors. Yet now, in this terrible hour, the Jehovah of vengeance, as was known in the Old Testament, had delivered these three women into his hands!

  So he acted masterfully with them, quieting their fears, assuring them that he was a good seaman as well as a steward, that he could row, that land was not far off, and that they should trust themselves to his care. He thus managed to quiet their mounting hysteria, for he had led them towards a hiding place under a stairway leading from the top deck to the second to get them out of the way not only of the frantic and screaming passengers who fought for survival, but also to make certain that no senior officer of the doomed ship might decide to take them under his wing and so deprive him, Ivan Tenkovich, of his rightful vengeance.

  At last, when the ship had been listing dangerously, he saw that the forward side of the second deck was virtually deserted, and he led the women hastily to the concealed little lifeboat, adjusted the tackle and bade them get into it while he lowered them into the water. When they protested that they were afraid and asked how he could get them clear of the sinking vessel, his eyes narrowed and for once he betrayed the savage feelings uppermost in his bosom. "While you stand prattling here, ladies, you're going to die, sucked down into the propellers and torn to pieces! Get into that lifeboat this instant. I'm going to lower you into the water, and then I'm going to dive in and join you. It wouldn't be possible any other way. Hurry!"

  So Dorothea Petroff and Olga and Tanya Rubutsoff, numb with terror, but recognizing a superior force, obeyed him. He lowered the boat into the water, released the grips by turning a lever, and then poised himself on the rail and dove straight down. A moment later, he had reached the little boat and the women helped pull him up.

  Ah, what irony of fate! If they had known who he was and what he intended, they would have shoved him down into the water, taken the oar and caved in his skull.. .

  Some of the men who could not find a place in lifeboats, bribe and threaten however much they did, leaped into the water, but were not so fortunate. The sinister black dorsal fins of sharks approached, and there were gurgling screams and then the ghastly splashing as the victim was dragged beneath the surface of the black water.

  Ivan Tenkovich concentrated on his rowing. For the time being, he scarcely looked at his three captives for such they were. He was intent on making for the dim outline of what appeared to be a little atoll to the east. As the oars dipped deeply into the water and the little boat drew ever closer to the shore, he could see that it was actually land, and was more sizable than any known navigational charts had shown. He estimated it to be about a mile long and half a mile across. And some presentiment made him steer towards the western side.

  For over an hour he rowed, till his hands were nearly blistered from the unaccustomed exercise. And at last the keel of the lifeboat scraped on the sand of what seemed to be a little beach cove, shrouded by huge towering palm trees which cut it off from the rest of the little island. There was a kind of little forest there, an excellent place to hide or to make camp for the night. He would be alone with Madame Petroff and with the two lovely princesses, who had looked on and giggled while his wife and mother shrieked and jerked helplessly under the lash of the Cossacks.

  Near his feet, he saw a coil of thin but sturdy rope, and he pocketed it inside of his steward's jacket. Slowly, gradually, a plan of action was fomenting in his mind. He had not fucked a woman in over six months, and then he had to resort to a cheap whore in a crib in Sydney. She had been annoyingly boisterous, built like a huge Amazon of a woman, with a thick mane of long dark brown hair that fell to her hips. The power of her big, closely spaced breasts and her juttingly ripe haunches had whetted the fever in his long-denied prick. Yet she had mocked him as being a "little man with a little cock, and you Don't even penetrate the surface enough to work me up. Come on, little fellow, you will have to work harder at it to make Mona juice down!" Now he had hated her for so humiliating him!

  But tonight, delivered into his hands were three tempting females who would be his prisoners. Behind those line of great palm trees, there in the hedges of tropical growth, he would show them whether or not he was a little man or whether his cock was too little to satisfy them. His lips began to tremble and to drool with anticipation as he quickened his rowing. The three woman huddled round him, commiserating with one another in their ordeal. It had not yet even begun!

  "Alright, let's get out of the boat," he commanded roughly, "and help me tow it in onto the beach. We don't want it washing away with the tide. Get a move on!"

  Now that they were safe, their attitude had changed a little from the frightened and cowering creatures they had been while he had saved them from the sinking Anastasia. Madame Petroff drew herself up to her imposing height and coldly remarked, "We are not used to menial labor, my man. Please remember your station."

  "Oh, Madame, I do, I do," he grinned with feigned deference. "But we are on a desert island that isn't even on the mariner's charts, and we've got to save this boat just in case there's a chance that a rescue steamer answers the S.O.S. Now let's all work together so we can survive!"

  "The man is right," Olga Rubutsoff observed in a high-pitched, clear voice. She was the older sister, now in her twenty-second year. She had golden hair that was shaped in a coronet braid around the top of her head to emphasize her aristocratic status as a princess of the blood. Her face was an insolent oval, with high-set cheekbones, a small disdainful mouth, intensely large, widely spaced dark blue eyes, and an aquiline nose whose delicately thin wings flared imperiously. It was evident that she was pampered and used to having her own way, and that her father had clearly doted upon her. Her sister Tanya was nineteen, perhaps an inch taller and thus about five feet, five inches in stature. Tanya had thick, luxurious, glossy dark-brown hair which was set in an imposing pile with a topknot at the back of her head to make her seem older. Yet her face was rounded, with a sweetness of expression that was belied only by the petulant curve of her ripe upper lip. Her mouth was generous and full, her nose was daintily snub, and her eyes were lustrous dark brown. Her voice was soft and husky. And her body, though she was younger than Olga, possessed even more appetizing features; for one thing, her hips were more spacious, and her thighs were more womanly in their fullness.

  "Thank you, Your Highness," he replied, forcing back his latent sarcasm. "Now if all of you will take hold of the little boat with both your hands, I shall be at the head and tug the hardest, we shall easily do it. There, you see, it was nothing at all."

  The lifeboat was now beached, and Ivan Tenkovich slid his right hand inside his steward's coat to make sure that the coil of rope was still there. He permitted himself a sudden little smile which gave his ferret-like face a particularly cruel and guileful expression. He was not taller than Olga, and Madame Petroff topped both sisters by a full inch and a half, and was far more buxom. She was a handsome woman, with a cynical expression that had replaced the pleasant and indolent look he had remembered from six years past. She would now be about thirty-eight, if he remembered correctly. She was black-haired, her hair styled in an elaborate pompadour. Her breasts were big and full, and they still looked firm through that scanty covering of hers which had been soaked by the lapping waves through which he had rowed. But her flesh was appetizing, and her skin, what he could see of it, was mouth-wateringly w
hite. Oh, these aristocrats bathed in milk and then champagne, he well knew, while their serfs starved for want of a crust of bread! They slept on fine eiderdown mattresses while he was lucky to have a pallet of straw in the barn. And she had told his master that perhaps he had learned his lesson-a lesson that had cost him his beloved wife and mother. Well, he had not forgotten that lesson nor its cost. And Madame Dorothea Petroff would find that one before dawn broke. He would take her first, he would fuck her and strip her and shame and humble her before the two princesses, as a foretaste of their own fate.

  "Now we had better make a kind of shelter for the night," he glibly suggested. "Let's go into that kind of forest and see what we can find. Perhaps there'll be a cave where we can put together some sort of shelter. From where we are, I do not think we have much to worry about the climate, except for severe windstorms and a great deal of rain."

  "I'm exhausted," Madame Petroff sighed. "Can't we simply lie down here in the sand and go to sleep till the morning? Then there will be time enough to look for a place, and daylight enough to see it."

  "We don't know who else may be on this island, Madame Petroff," he said unctuously. "There may be savages, even cannibals."

  "Good heavens!" Olga haughtily exclaimed, "are you trying to frighten us, steward?"

  "No, Your Highness. But it's always wise to expect the unexpected. It's a motto that has kept me alive these past six years. Come now, we can't stay here on the beach." He spoke now with such a final tone of authority that the three women were impressed. They followed him as he led the way.

  The undergrowth was tropical, with plants, flowers of all descriptions, bushes and clinging liana through which he had to tear and push his way. About ten minutes later, however, he called out with joy, "I've found exactly what we want!"

  It was a little clearing, a sandy hollow set at a lower level than the beach from which they had come. It was sheltered from prying eyes by the thick trunks of the lofty palm trees and by the hedges of lycopersica and many-petaled flowering anthurium.

  "Oh, this is very nice," Tanya exclaimed. "It's a miracle that we're saved. And we really are grateful to you, steward. When we are rescued, I shall see that my father rewards you."

  Ivan Tenkovich started, his eyes widening. "Your father, Your Highness?"

  "Why, of course. The Prince Nicolai Rubutsoff."

  "Is he still in Russia, Your Highness?" he innocently inquired.

  "No, alas," Madame Petroff broke in with a great sigh of annoyance. "After that accursed revolution, we found it necessary to settle in Hong Kong. Fortunately, the Prince had been wise enough to convert some of his land and some of his possessions, so that we did not starve. But unfortunately, he has been reduced to becoming a tradesman, a far cry from his rightful estate."

  The handsome matron sighed and shook her head. Ivan Tenkovich stared at her and it was as well that she could not read the savage emotion which he was able to mask on his deferentially attentive face.

  "Well," he said at last, "that is the fortune of life and everything is in a state of flux. For example an hour or two ago, I was a steward on a vessel which was not too efficiently run and whose purser was a thief. You, Madame, and you, Highnesses," here he turned to smile at the two lovely sisters, "were honored passengers and no effort could be too much to assure your well being. Here, however, it is a different story. We are on a little island where, for all we know, no human being may have ever set foot before. There is probably food, like coconuts and certain edible fruits, but we have nothing to hunt with except a knife and there are no matches with which to make a fire. So it will be up to our own ingenuity and stamina to survive."

  "Don't you think a rescue ship has heard of the disaster and may even now be coming to find us?" beautiful Tanya Rubutsoff anxiously queried.

  "Who knows? One of the other stewards told me that the signal bands were jammed so that our message might not have got through at all. In that case, we shall have to put up with the fact that we shall have to remain here indefinitely. But now I think it would be better if we prepared to get some rest."

  "See here, my man," Madame Petroff arrogantly ordered, "I must say that even if we all happen to share a common misfortune, there is still a difference in rank between us. I do not take kindly to being ordered about by a servant. It was not that way in the days of the Tsar."

  "There is no Tsar in Russia today, Madame. And there are no servants anymore, if you will remember," he said with brutal candor.

  "And now you are becoming offensive! I would like it much better. Steward, if you would make an attempt to go find whether there are actually people on this island and perhaps, if there is no one, to find us some food. The sea air has given me an appetite."

  His lips curled with scorn. That bitch had just been eating strawberries and sipping champagne a little while ago, and now her belly was empty. Well, he would fill it for her.. .with nourishing spunk! Yes, the spunk of a serf whose wife and mother had been whipped to death, an event which had brought from this fat, pampered bitch only the complacent remark that "perhaps the man has learned his lesson."

  "I differ with Madame," he coldly retorted, "it would be dangerous in the dark to be separated. And it is my opinion that there is no one else on this island. We had best stay here and get what rest we can. Tomorrow morning we can see where we are and then perhaps plan what to do."

  "I am not given to issuing orders twice, Steward," Madame Petroff sneered, drawing herself up to her full height, not at all aware of how ludicrous it was for her to act like a wealthy aristocrat when she was on a tiny desert atoll clad only in a water-soaked slip and bathrobe.

  "I understand how difficult it must be for you, Madame," he said ironically as he took out the clasp knife, then the coil of rope which he had concealed inside his coat, and calmly began to measure off a length. He cut it, then measured out another and cut that one, too. Then he dropped the remaining coil at his feet, picked up one of the cut lengths and advanced on the bewildered Princesses. "But with your permission or without it, Madame, I have pressing business that comes first."

  With this, pocketing his knife, he seized Olga, and, before she could realize what he was doing, had bound her wrists tightly behind her back.

  "How dare you touch me? You are tying me! You are a brute, a villain! Are you going to rob us?" Olga angrily cried.

  "The man has gone insane," Madame Petroff cried with alarm as she moved towards him. "We must stop him before he kills us all!"

  "Oh, I don't mean to kill any of you, so you needn't worry about that. Now for you, Princess Tanya!" He seized the younger girl and flung her down on the ground, rolling her over on her face, dragging her arms behind her back and swiftly knotted the other length of cord around her wrists, knotting it cruelly tight. This done, he took up the coil of rope and cut two shorter lengths, with which he fettered the ankles of each of his royal captives.

  Madame Dorothea Petroff stood staring at him, her mouth gaping, suddenly paralyzed by fear. He inclined his head: "Are you beginning to recognize me, perhaps, Madame? Don't you remember about six years ago, you and your illustrious brother, the Prince Nicolai Rubutsoff, were sitting in an elegant salon and he told you of the crimes that a certain serf on his estate had committed?"

  "My God-no, it's not possible-it cannot be!" she hoarsely ejaculated.

  "It is I, Ivan Tenkovich. I will refresh your memory further. But I am sure that the charming Princesses could do that for you as well. They found it very amusing to watch two helpless, naked women bound to the rafters of the barn and whipped by Cossacks."

  "Merciful God, help us all!" the matron gasped, her face pale with terror.

  "Yes, Madame, He is merciful for He has delivered all of you into my hands. You who thought that I had learned such a good lesson and who urged me to justify your brother's mercy in sparing my life by working harder as his slave." He turned to confront the sobbing Tanya and the speechless, fuming Olga. "And you, you pamp
ered, inhuman spawn of a merciless tyrant, you dared to laugh while my wife and mother were cringing under the whip! For six long years I have dreamed of my revenge, and now I have it. Yes indeed, He has been merciful-to me."

  He took off his stewards' uniform, and then his undergarments and was naked in his shoes and socks. He glanced down at himself, and he saw that his prick was stiff and hard. Perhaps, as that whore in Sydney had said, he was a little man, but his cock was going to taste three blue-blooded cunts tonight and they would not mock him, not when he had become their lord of life or death on this forsaken atoll.

  "Wait, Tenkovich," Madame Petroff was babbling, her lips trembling and sweat oozing from her forehead as she backed away, "Don't do anything you'll regret. I swear to you on the holy icon that I had nothing to do with your wife and mother. I was not even there when it happened. I have money and jewels-not the jewels on the ship, for most of them were paste. But back in Hong Kong, my brother and I will pay you well if you wont harm us and will help us get back to civilization."