But the natural attraction of the sexes is something that arises automatically in us, nor have I ever been notably proof against it. There came a night when I looked upon her and felt the strong pull of it. It was as I came from my watch and disrobed for sleep, and stood above her as she slept, lying on her back with her legs apart a little and not a stitch covering her, and I did think, Why not? She would not refuse me. I was without a woman. Dona Teresa was likely dead—how that panged me!—and Anne Katherine might as well be dwelling on the moon— that panged me, too, but not in any immediate close way, not after so many years—and I had my lusts like anyone else, and did I mean to live like a monk all the rest of my days in Africa? Here was a woman. She was handsome, after the fashion of her kind. Nigra sum, sed formosa. She was Christian, more or less. At least she was something more than a savage. And she was close at hand. Why not? Why not, indeed? Yet I did not. Some nicety of compunction held me from it, she being a slave and a blackamoor.
So I entered my sheets and lay awake a time, somewhat sore with need, debating these matters endlessly with myself, telling myself that I had only to reach down beside me and draw her to me, or lower myself to her and ease myself into her and that would be that. But I did not, and though sleep was slow in coming to me, it must at last have come, for I fell into troubled dreams full of teeth and claws and dark waters bubbling with hidden monstrosities.
And in the night came a spear of lightning that turned darkness to day, and a roll of thunder that was like the heavy crack of doomsday falling upon us, and such a lashing of rain as to make the sea boil and go white in its frenzy. At once I woke, and thought to go out on the deck and look to the masts and sails, although it was Oliveira’s watch and I knew him to be capable in such matters. But as I sat up, blinking in the darkness and kneading my eyes, there was a sudden flutter and mutter in the cabin and Matamba did hurl herself into my bed, whispering, “I am afraid! I am afraid!”
Again the lightning. Again the thunder, more terrible.
She trembled like unto one who was on the threshold of a seizure, and did thrash and kick and leap about, so that I had to take her in my arms to protect us both from injury. And I said soothing things, and stroked her back, which was moist from the fear-sweat that had burst from her every pore. The pinnace meanwhile rocked and wallowed and slapped its sides against the great waves, and I heard men running about on deck, and knew that it was my place to be there with them. God forgive me, but I could not go. For as I gave comfort to poor frightened Matamba, gently holding and shielding her, the bareness of her body against mine became a fiery provocation to me, the twin solid masses of her breasts announced themselves irresistibly to my chest, my stroking hands did slip downward from her back to her rump, and to the hot place between her thighs. My member stood out in urgent want, pressing so hard against her belly that there was no room for it between us except if we were to insert it where nature had meant it to go. She made little panting sounds as an animal might when in heat, and scrambled about, all legs and arms, and suddenly there she was clasped tight astraddle me with my yard sunk deep in her body. It was for the mere taking of comfort, I think, a kind of primordial linking of flesh in an alliance against the great fright of dying. But, God’s death! it felt good to me, that soft wet secret woman-mouth of her belly grasping and containing me and sliding back and forth over me. And she had another trick, too, that Dona Teresa also had known, that I think is general among these African women, a trick of an internal quivering of the female channel, a tightening and loosing, tightening and loosing, that gave me the most extremest pleasure.
How could I have broken away from her to go on deck, at such a time? Master of the ship I might be, but in good sooth I am a mortal man and no angel, and a male of hearty lust, and I could no more have flung Matamba from me and gone about my duties than I could have stepped outside of mine own skin. So we did the little love-wrestling on that cramped couch, lying on our sides, she half atop me, my hands clutching her buttocks and my fingers digging deep, she moving with the strange fury of one in whom terror has been transformed into desire with scarce a perceptible boundary twixt one and the other. And then from her did come a high-pitched wailing sound like the lament of some spirit of the dark misty fens, so piercing that it must have carried from one end of the ship to the other, and which affrighted me at first until I comprehended that it was only the outcry of her ecstasy, and into it I spent myself with hard hammering strokes that left me weak and whimpering. Thus drained we clung to one another in the dark, and gradually I perceived that the storm had abated, the sea had grown quiet.
She was sobbing softly.
God’s bones! What does one say, when a woman sobs at you after the act of coupling? Does she weep from joy or shame or fear, or what? How can one know these things, and how can one speak without being clumsy?
Well, and sometimes it is best not to speak. I merely held her, as I had before, and she grew calm. My body slipped out of hers and she drew back a bit, but not far. I took her hand between mine to give her reassurance.
“Please,” she said. “Forgive—”
“Forgive? And forgive what? There’s naught to forgive.”
Tears still did gleam by her cheeks. “D’ye understand my words?”
“Frightened—”
“Yea, the storm was a scary thing. It’s over now.”
“Frightened—now. Not storm.”
“Frightened of what we did? Nay, girl! It is the kindest thing a man and a woman can do for one another! D’ye understand my words? Do you?” She made no reply, and I had no way of knowing how much she followed my speech. But then I said, “I must go on deck, and see if there is damage,” and she understood that well enough, for she asked me in a whisper not to leave her. I told her it was my duty; and the leaving of her was ever so much easier now, with the magnetical pull of fleshly desire no longer holding me in its unshakeable grip. I drew on my cloak and patted her to show I meant no coldness by this withdrawal, and went without.
The sea was still high and water was sluicing over the deck, and the men were busy under Oliveira’s command doing their tasks of battening and belaying. But all was well enough, the rain nothing more than a fine warm spray, the lightning having moved off to the east where we could see it marching through the dark humps of the coastal hills, and the thunder a mere distant reverberance. To me Oliveira said, “I’ve an hour more of my watch, Piloto! No need of you on deck now!” And he grinned his toothy grin, as if to say, Go back to thy doxy, lad, have yourself another merry roll with her. I did think of him most kindly for that carnal but well-meant grin.
Yet did I make my rounds all the same, and only when I was certain that everything was secure did I return to my cabin. Matamba had not left my bed, but now she was tranquil. I lay down beside her and would have kissed her, which I had not done in that sudden and wild conjoining of ours; but she turned her head away, saying, “Nay, the mouth is for eating.”
At that I laughed. For who would find aught to object to in a sweet kiss? But I saw the great gulf that lay between us, that were two people out of different worlds.
We came close together and soon we were coupling again. And this time we did enact the rites of love no longer merely because we had been flung close together by the suddenness and violence of the storm— which I think was only the pretense we both had used, anyway—but now for sheer desirousness of it. And afterward of nights in my cabin on the homeward voyage we were unhesitating in our joinings, and did send the high wail of her pleasure and the answering rumble of my own through the ship again and yet again.