"Ads a bit of spice," Mike suggested equably. "If you make it to the shore you’ll find yourself in one of those wog spots, ain’t quite sure where."
"Handcuffed and naked?"
"Well, ain’t got it in for you girls all that bad. And I don’t like the idea of them wogs looking at them pretty little quims first off. So, as a special concession mind you, I’m going to give you these." He displayed two swimming trunks.
"You know we can’t put them on, the way we’re fixed." Dorinda felt ridiculous gratitude, even though she blushed furiously as her captor tugged the stretchy material into place.
"No halter?" Terry asked wanly.
"Don’t push, sugarpot. You’re fifty percent ahead of where you were. Now just to give you both a good send 0ff, young Cuth has got one of Alfred’s big pots and he will give you a drum roll as you walk out on that plank. Sort of make a real occasion out of it." He surveyed his captives benignly.
Dorinda’s mind was working furiously. They could face death. Mike obviously did not think so – or did he? She was thankful for the swimming instructor who had made a span up and down the pool with hands tied as hers now were an essential part of the tests. But the pool was one thing. This wide enough stretch of see was something else. Even after they survived they would be on an inhospitable shore, sand and rocks and scrub. No sign of life.
"Well, little ladies. The time has come," Mike announced grandly.
Cuth appeared with his pot and a pair of wooden spoons. At a sign from his employer he produced a quite surprising response from the metal and the wood. Despite the absurdity and the fear Dorinda’s pulse quickened. The rat-tat-tat of the spoons gave an incredible validity to what they must do. Resolutely, she strode towards the plank.
Her first step upon the narrow width was easy. The second brought a sense of isolation. At the third she knew panic. She was a girl alone, naked, her steps set upon a brief and insecure path from which she might easily slip and which came to an abrupt end. Beneath her was the enigmatic sea, a deep pit in which eyes might watch and jaws and tentacles lay in wait. Another step. Now she felt her arms tense and strain, her wrists rebelling against the steel that held them close. The handcuffs were the most frightening facet of her plight, they made her a prey to evil chance or hostile intent.
Before the last fatal stride, Dorinda did the thing she had promised herself not to do at all. She caught Mike’s absorbed gaze. "Please don’t do this," she asked simply.
He did not speak. He did nothing but drink in the loveliness and the fear of the girl who must now plunge to an unknown fate. Myron made a menacing gesture with the pole and advanced one foot on the plank. Cuth beat his improvised drum into a fierce tattoo. Dorinda turned and dived.
As time is measured it was short. A black awfulness of pumping legs and twisting torso, great gulps of air thankfully but briefly achieved. Dorinda knew that without the training the handcuffs would have knelled her death. When her feet found the sand her first thought was of Terry.
But the younger girl was superb. Evading startled hands she had leaped after the falling figure of her love and, ignoring the plank, plunged directly from the rail. She might have been a dolphin or a seal so adeptly did she slice the water and defeat it with her slender nudity. The two girls waded to the shore together.
"Piece of cake," Terry said.
"Thank god you are safe." It was all Dorinda could think of to say. They could not embrace. She herself felt a great thankfulness.
"When we get out of site of those rotten kooks I’m going to chew one of these keys loose," Terry promised.
Without a backward glance they trudged up the slope of a dune, their bodies quickly drying in the sun.
It lay before them in a hollow. A shining new Land Rover. An incongruous intrusion of civilisation in the wilderness. It stood alone, welcoming strangers as a spray of flowers might have done. There was no one in sight.
"Think we might snatch it?" Terry was ecstatic.
Dorinda had the sensation of too much happening too fast. She turned and looked back. The Quest’s anchor was being hauled aboard. A careless arm was waved in desultory salute of farewell. Even had she been able she would not have returned the raised arm. She transferred her attention to the inland instead.
CHAPTER 4
"I knew what was to happen to me the next day. Had I not written it in the letter? I stood with my arms tied high and wide. They took great care that the bands of cord round my wrists were very tight. They even took close ups to show how securely my hands were held." Thalia chuckled. "I have learnt since that such pictures are sold at good prices all over the world. No doubt my kidnappers saw this as a small extra perquisite of their operation."
"They did not raise my feet from the floor. Just made me stand well stretched. Then they got down to business: on the second day I was to be whipped. It was the second day! My whipping called for much care with the camera and the lights. They desired a sequence. First my nice back and bottom. Click – click! Then I screamed and leaped into wild and foolish motion as my little round bottom received a truly awful cut with a cane given me with all the force of a man’s arm. Such pain could not be! I knew I would die. But a girl does not die. I stood and quivered while my tormentors watched and waited for the stripe across my bottom to ‘ripen’. They wanted the weal to stand up well and become as scarlet as my blood could make it. Then, once mere, click – click -click."
"Actually I was lucky that they were so concerned with excellence. It gave me time to gather up my courage and avoid hysteria. They wanted good close pictures in glorious technicolor of each wound they placed upon my skin. They contrived a cumulative series with little Thalia’s marked rear view showing her first one, then two, then three, and so on… Lovely scarlet stripes on golden flesh. Some had started to go purple before they were finished with the last of them. The camera faithfully recorded my martyrdom. Those awful lights made me cringe. I felt five times naked they sought out every curve and crevice."
"By now, of course, I was very much one qui vive. Looking back over one shoulder I saw the whip. The cane for my bottom, a whip for the rest of me. They explained they could get better camera effects if I bore two kinds of wounds. I also saw that whip raised and swung in a truly terrible slashing swipe. I turned away at the very last moment and bit my lip and tensed against the blow. When I came back from the pain they were admiring my wound very technically, even tracing it with a rough finger so that I cried out again. Click – click."
"These men were former competitors who were jealous of my superior business acumen," Mr. Rabin explained helpfully.
"They click-clicked away until they had me beautifully latticed with a total of ten wounds. Had my flesh not been so young, I would have borne them for years, perhaps for life. They had spaced the bars across my skin with neat effect so that each stood out to be counted. The rest of my day was a repetition of the first:"
"The agenda for day number three had me set wondering. Whilst never having experienced one of the two, they were of a nature so frequently dealt with in fiction and history that I had an awareness of such things. Number three was different. First, my hands we tied behind my back: this way, by the way. I thought they never would get through with all the trails and errors and experiments. The click-clicking became frantic. The method they finally settled on was the worst of the lot. My hands palm to palm, wrists tightly corded together and a leather strip round my elbows drawing them together so they touched. It hurt horribly. It also stuck my chest out front. Next they made me spread my legs and tied my ankles down to rings in the floor. Tight, tight! Click, click… It was the most shaming posture yet. What they did then shamed me even more. Each man sucked at one of my nipples."