Mistress and Commander Ch. 02

Margarethe reached into her wet suit pocket. By some unimaginable grace she had the remains of a three-eighth inch bit of stuff. Now to hold on and splice blindly. The pitching and rolling were more than she had ever faced. Blindly knotting the stuff to the quarter-inch garbage, she groped for the padeye.

Another wave almost washed her away. She couldn't breathe or think, then her hand found the padeye. She rove the stuff through, hauled hard, praying her lubberly knotting (no seafarer would dignify the thing by calling it a splice) would hold, and tied it down. The Whaler stopped fucking her deck; that was something anyway.

Then came the wave.

It roared up, driven by the insane fury that ruled their world, near kin to the wave that almost killed Barton and O'Riordan so many years before in Vertue XXXV, sibling to the Hell-born bastards that killed many a little ship. The wind was like all the devils in Hell let loose in all the Bedlams that ever were, screaming, sobbing, crying, gibbering, tearing, strangling till one could bear it no longer and surrendered, body and soul, to the Hell that was the South Atlantic in storm.

Remembering a childhood long gone, as the wave swept her to the rail, Margarethe whispered, "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritu meam...." A hand grabbed her arm, a pull too weak to stop her fall yet strong enough for her to seize the lifeline. "Robin!" Together they groped blindly along the lifeline, she on her knees, he crawling too. They reached the wheelhouse door.

Jenny was still at the wheel. She had pleaded with Robin not to leave her. Alone at the wheel, she shook with the terror that they were both gone, Robin and Mistress, and she, all alone, was doomed, damned, to take the ghost ship to the harbor in Hell that awaited her. When the door opened and Robin and Mistress collapsed on the deck, Jenny's hands almost fell from the wheel as she screamed.

"Darling Jenny Wren, it's all right, all hands safe, see to the Sovereign," Margarethe was near hysteria. Her tears ran down her face, mingling with the salt of the waves. "See to my beautiful Dread Sovereign, dear Jenny Wren, keep my ship safe."

Jenny turned back to the wheel. She could not take her hands from the wheel to wipe her eyes. Robin was still gasping as he lay on the deck.

"I abused you, gave you Hell, treated you like shit, but you came back for me," said Margarethe.

"You are my Mistress," said Robin.

"Robin, rest a while. Jenny Wren, I can relieve you in five minutes."

The watch changed. Margarethe took the wheel. Jenny and Robin lay on the deck, flung by the ship's wallowing like rag dolls thrown away by a careless child. The Wren and the Robin, thought Margarethe, my little nestlings, and I am Mother Bird.

By morning the rain had come, the wind had backed round to the east by northeast, and the swell was rocking Dread Sovereign was hard but not brutal. Fair weather coming, or as fair as winter South Atlantic could make it, thought Margarethe. Picnic weather for penguins.

It took two days to clean up Dread Sovereign, another day to restore her Mistress and crew to a semblance of humanity, washed, fed, dressed and groomed. And one more day to see them all well fucked and orgasmed, thought Margarethe. Robin could have Jenny Wren--de Laborde's words came back to her: "Amour à la plus belle, Honneur au plus vaillant."

Robin made the most of it. Jenny's thin little cunt was licked, sucked, worshiped; her clitoris was bathed in Robin's mouth. He fucked her gently, like a virgin, like a lover. Her response was as gentle as the nestling Margarethe called her.

Margarethe did them both, fellating Robin, sucking Jenny. Indeed, "Amour à la plus belle, Honneur au plus vaillant."

At last, the Love Boat Dread Sovereign, Queen of the Storms, made her landfall at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Going ashore to clear, saluting HMS York as she rode to anchor nearby, Margarethe Maria Ehrenreich von Schuldig, loyal subject of her Dread Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth II, broke into smiling tears as she stood again on British soil. "Mistress and Commander," she thought, "Mistress and Commander. I earned that--and Robin gifted it to me. To the end of the world.