“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.