Chapter 7

After dinner they danced. The Bensons' house was shaped like a ship, an old windjammer sailing nowhere under the stars, in the middle of the barren. Joanna thought it somewhat absurd when the Lagonda first drew up on front of the place, but it was certainly luxuriously set out, and most comfortable. It was explained to her that Roy Benson was a retired skipper of the merchant marine, a real salt with an honest-to-goodness peg leg ("And not there only," Cynthia had counseled Joanna, as they'd gone in.).

Already there were several present she knew-mostly from the tennis club, but also Mavis (now unchained), Margot Morrison and her husband, and others. At dinner she found herself next to some delightful people called the Danforths, who played polo. And after dinner a band struck up, just beneath the prow.

The "powder" place was Sally Benson's cabin down below, and Joanna was coming out of its commodious and elegant bathroom when the redheaded Club Treasurer actually bumped into her. Bumped into her bumps, as Joanna put it to herself, recoiling with a hand on her rear and a blushing, "Oh!"

"Darling. I'm so sorry." Sally Benson's amused eyes held hers a moment. "I didn't know."

Joanna pinkened further. But she knew it to be a blush of pride. With a smile she nodded, "Yes, actually I caught it rather badly this afternoon."

"Truly? You? I ... didn't know. I mean that you'd joined us that far." She rested two fingers on Joanna's right cheek and felt through the thin material of her short black cocktail dress. "Um. Alec?"

"Yes. Six." She added brightly, "Quite tight."

"The brute." She slapped her backside eloquently. "Of course, we get the rope's end here."

"I wondered what that was," Joanna stammered. "I mean, hanging up in there."

"In the bathroom? Oh, that's only a small one. Usually they're worse than that, and the thoughtful fellow soaks it in water first, to add to the weight, and the end is bound with twine and toughened with tar. We never get less than a dozen." Her face changed. "For my daughter Do it's one thing. But I'm past the age when I find it a joke."

A slender brunette was doing her eyes at a mirror. Joanna recognized Peggy Walker, an excellent tennis player. The girl threw back a laugh. "Honest, Sal, I don't know how you manage it."

"Alas, there's not much choice. A 'rump and dozen,' as Roy calls it, may be all right for the girl. Youngsters need thorough frightening at least once a month, we find, but although I don't get it as often as some, the very sight of that length of cord is positively petrifying."

"I thought I saw...." Joanna mumbled.

"At the tennis club? That was long after."

"What you saw," said Peggy Walker, working in her eye shadow, "was one of the best beaten bottoms in The Territory. Sally is right. Roy doesn't spare her. I've seen one. She's spliced to the rigging or whatever and then he lams into her with this wet rope till her sit-upon looks like cooked beef, really. Ugh."

"How's your average, Peg?" the hostess asked.

"Miserable, as usual. And I'm due for six after breakfast tomorrow with the switch. You don't happen to have a tube of Nupercaine handy, do you?"

"Outlawed in The Territory," laughed Sally Benson.

"On pain of ... pain," came back Peggy Walker crisply.

"Seriously," Joanna put in, "I thought we had a singles date, at the club at ten."

"Oh that's all right," said the other, standing up and running a hand over her lame pants, "I always play better after a beating."

Pam had said that....

She added, "You may see some decoration 'verso' in the changing room, after, but exercise helps take the pain away."

"What's being figged?" Joanna asked on an impulse.

They both looked at her.

"So you know about that already," said Sally Benson with a smile. "You've really come a long way in the time, Jo. Figging is inserting a ginger suppository up the anus."

"It can be ginger or some other compulsive substance," put in tiny Peggy Walker, still ruminatively rubbing her perfectly shaped posteriors. "They do it to show horses."

"And women," said Sally Benson. With horses it makes them keep their tails up. For us, it has the effect of making you want to spread your cheeks. The damn thing melts, and burns, and makes you push out, as if you were going to ... well ... go. Used on a tight ass."

Used, thought Joanna with a throb of affinity, on Mavis Smith-Peters' closely cheeked ass.

"Used on 'clenchers', " said Peggy Walker primly. "It doesn't do to clench."

"You'd be good to beat, Jo," Sally said solemnly, as the three of them passed out towards the steps. Band music could be heard upstairs.

Joanna paused. "What do you mean by that?"

But Peggy nodded, too. "One knows. It's a fact. Sal's right. I'd love to see you caned, Jo, and you can bet your bottom dollar with no pun intended that every man here would, too."

"Goodness!"

But she mounted the steps with a curious smile, glowing with pleasure. She had indeed come a long way from that airport at Shaftesbury, let alone New Hampshire.

Cynthia brushed past her on the arm of a bronzed young man. "Alec was looking for you, darling. On the upper poop or forward fo'casle or something." She appeared to have had a bit to drink and after what she'd been through in the day, Joanna didn't blame her. She walked out to a deck slung under the stars, suddenly exultant.

Alec wasn't there, but a voice said at once, "Care to dance?"

She turned and saw the tall, almost sad-looking man with the full dark hair brushed wavily back off a lined, teak-tanned forehead who had been staring at her all evening.

"I'm Edward Arborough," he said.

He was quite the best-looking man she had ever seen.

He danced perfectly, threading her through the couples with consummate skill. He was a man-she instinctively sensed-who looked after a woman. He seemed in his mid-forties, evidently single, but with almost a foreign or Latin look. They exchanged small talk awhile, then they danced in silence. Joanna felt her whole body respond, as it never had with Tom.

"I hear you're thinking of staying on in The Territory, Mrs. Swanne. Immigrating, I mean."

"Who told you that?" she laughed.

"Oh, Alec. Said that when your divorce was through, you'd be ... wanting to join us. Personally I don't believe it."

"You don't?"

He shook his head. "Immigrations here are virtually non-existent. Perhaps two or three a year, and those mostly coloreds. It's really ... far too tough."

Her chin came up. "Meaning-you don't think I could take it, Mr. Arborough?"

He looked down at her in a strange way, casually compelling, affectionately-like someone indulging a child, though with a contemptuous curl of his lower lip at the same time. "I don't think you could," he said.

"Oh!" she said, offended. She remembered how his eyes had flickered over her, tawnily, when she had asked for a cushion at her seat in the dining room. She was about to retort hotly when there was a tap on her partner's shoulder.

"Sorry, but you can't monopolize her all night, y'know."

The man's handsome face receded, rather saturnine, and Joanna found herself led off in the arms of the one who, a few hours previously, had bent her over and caned her naked rear. It was strange sensation, piquantly thrilling. Alec Reddick danced cheek to cheek in silence for a while.

She said in his ear. "Thank you for not giving me those extra two for being ... impudent. I don't think I could have taken any more."

"Eight hurts far more than six, and twelve more than four extra to eight. You'd be surprised."

"Not now I wouldn't. Bryyh!" She gave a shudder in his arms, realizing, as she did so, how very close he was holding her. "Those last two really stung."

He shook his head. "Long."

"Long? What do you mean, Alec?"

"I cut long both times. Ideally you should use the tip to maximum effect. When the tip falls too far over it's called 'long'. It hurts the hip on the right, but would hurt more on the great old gluteus maximus. To cut short is the reverse; the tip falls on the center of the right cheek and is deprived of that little extra bit of whip, so important, imparted by the natural curve of the flesh."

"How very scientific!" She remembered now. Just what Cynthia had said.

"One day I must introduce you to 'Benjy'. "

"What on earth's that?"

"Benjy is thrashing an individual cheek-the left if you're a right-hander, like me. The tip whips inside the chosen side."

"Ouch!"

"Yes it can be quite effective, but you know, if you want to see a really thorough caning you should go to the Punishment Shed at six o'clock. Mr. Johns takes care of that. It's punishment worthy of the name."

A small rank of, mostly, coloreds lined up in their field clothes outside one of the barns-all women, all frightened, as a swarthy overseer grinned and took practice swings with his cane nearby. Joanna had seen it once, riding back to the main house.

"Can ... anyone go and watch?" she asked hotly.

"Absolutely," he said with a sympathetic squeeze. "Mr. Johns would be delighted to have you. And I thing you'd realize that what I gave you and Cynth today is child's play in comparison. They use a penal cane."

A tall girl glided by, dancing. She had on a sailor's blouse and tight white sailor's pants.

"That's their daughter Dorothy," said Alec Reddick in her ear. "He makes her wear naval rig all the time. Just been raised to the rank of midshipman or something Perhaps I should say midshipwoman. I'll ask Roy to let you watch one some day. Never less than twelve with a rope."

"I've heard," Joanna said dryly.

"Poor old Do doesn't take her eyes off the ground for two days after one of those." Chuckled in her hair. "Jo, you really are a luscious body. Tom was a damn fool to lose you. Divorces are unknown here."

She laughed shortly.

He went on, "No, but you are good at beating."

"What does that mean? Good at," she asked him. It was a strange kind of desirability this new-found lure of hers.

"It's just that you have a perfect Sitzplatz to whip into. I can't explain it. It's purely esthetic. You probably know it yourself. You have a good solid bottom in the prime of condition...."

She laughed awkwardly. "A little too much of it, I fear."

He corrected her with a well nigh academic precision. "Size is not an issue. You spread well, your thighs are broad and strong, your cunt is well recessed, you show much less cunt than Cynthia, for example."

I'm glad to hear it, she thought inwardly.

Aloud she said, not without a trace of indignation in her tone, "Well, you certainly didn't spare Cynth. You wealed her well and truly."

"I have a feeling Cynth is working up to a big let-down shortly. That remark about God, for instance. Every now and then, as with our young, we have to administer what we call a 'straightener'. Brings 'em to their senses. Clears the air and clears theirs heads, too."

"Highly therapeutic," she sneered.

But he answered earnestly, "I mean it. A good beating stimulates the circulation, and the peristalsis, too."

"I'll let you know about that, Tomorrow," she answered, blushing. "It's not my favorite topic."

"Anyway," she heard, "Cynthia's now been drinking too much and she knows I don't like that. Drunkenness is actually a crime in The Territory."

"Mr. Arborough doesn't think I have the guts to make it," she retorted. "He thinks I'm just going through a gesture."

Alec Reddick thrust her away and looked down at her.

"Quite seriously, Jo, you really want to stay here with us? You really want to put your application forms in?"

"Tomorrow," she answered at once.

He shook his head. "I admire you, but I wouldn't want to be in your place. If you're accepted for absorption by the authorities, it'll mean a special program. You have to go to a Gladiator camp. Complete degradation and vilification, as well as mere punishment. You have to lose your whole previous personality, in toto. You become a thing, an it. Are you really willing?"

"With all my heart," she said. Alec Reddick squeezed her again. There were tears in her eyes as she spoke.

The dance was ending. Alec said, "There's one thing. If you want to go through with this, I mean."

"What? Tell me."

"Should Roy invite you...."

"To dance?" She laughed. "You mean, he can dance with that peg-leg?"

"He can even thrash you with it, too," Alec said, still staring at her solemnly. "But what I meant was ... we have a custom ... droit de seigneur, kind of...."

"I think I'm getting you," she said. "Eskimo hospitality in reverse."

He smiled as he led her to the side. "Sort of. It's a host's tradition. Only one woman a night, however."

"Lucky host," she said, and-with all the other women, she noticed-she waited for Alec to sit down first, then did so herself, albeit a little gingerly.

The evening proceeded, as such evenings did, pleasantly and convivially. Joanna drank more and more. It seemed to have little effect. She was high enough inside. The band redoubled its efforts. Occasional cabin doors could be found locked, from time to time, and couples were missing, only to emerge later looking very satisfied. She herself was standing on the bridge, by the immense, polished and utterly useless wheel there, when a woman said, "What's that?" '

A maid in black satin was walking along the deck beneath them carrying in her hands a jar of water and what seemed to be a child's coloring set, of paints.

Dorothy Benson leant to look, in her sailor outfit, Without expression she said, "They asked Daddy if they could play darts. It's in the playroom, I think. They drew lots for who it was to be."

"Oh, mother," said the woman who had asked the question, "who's the lucky loser?"

"Mrs. Danforth, I think," said the girl.

"Poor Tess. You feel that for a week."

"There's four of them. I think it's a Calcutta."

"Oh, mother and oh, brother," moaned the woman.

"What, what?" said Joanna to the woman nearest to her.

This was demure Mavis Smith-Peters, now released from "Restraint". She beamed, blushing

"Would you like to watch?"

"What, darts?" asked Joanna.

"I'm keeping out of harm's way, thanks," said the other woman.

"The target, or board," Mavis Smith-Peters explained sweetly, "is human."

"Human female," said the woman dryly, "in case you hadn't guessed."

"My husband is taking part, actually," said Mavis, "let me show you, darling."

Following her willowy spine down the gangway Joanna found her eyes caught by the manner in which the pale silk moved over the softly sumptuous posterior. The other turned with a smile.

"I hear you got it for being with me. I am so sorry."

"Oh that's all right," Joanna said, a little awkwardly. "It was unpleasant for a minute or so, but that's all."

"I hear you took it terribly well."

"Who said?"

"I heard. Well, if it's any comfort to you I got another six myself when Simon came home." She drew Joanna down yet another flight of steps into the bowels of the ship, or "hold". She smiled up sweetly again. "However, I'd rather have both punishments over again rather than what Tessa's going to get in here."

She opened a door onto what indeed resembled some happy "rumpus" room. There were some men and women taking drinks at a table one side, and four of the former had, Joanna saw, removed their smoking jackets. But Mavis drew her forward to a low dais one end.

Tessa Danforth was already in position when

Joanna entered. The mulatto maid, a switch clipped to her broad black belt, was putting a last few finishing touches to her "target" from the paints tray.

On the dais had been fixed a board like a door. It was, Joanna learnt, a door. To this thick board Tessa had been fixed. Facing it, her feet-slightly parted-went through apertures made in the base. Her arms went through holes higher up, being secured the other side. Her chin rested on the top. She had dark liquid eyes, boy's-cut thin blonde hair, and, rather like Mavis, an ordinary sloping back which widened to surprisingly heavy, tender-looking buttocks. She was naked but for high-heeled shoes and long, self-supporting black nylons. And she was crying. On closer inspection, Joanna found her to be quivering all over. For at first all she could look at was the woman's lurid behind. Each bottom-cheek had been painted to resemble a target, complete with bull's-eye in its center. Holding the fatty flesh still, the maid was perfecting an outer ring. The cheeks were firmly divided by a narrow, yet strong, leather strap which buckled to the waist belt in back. This latter was especially broad. "Protects the kidneys, you see," Mavis explained, reading Joanna's mind. "But take a look at the darts before they begin."

Before moving away Joanna approached the woman. She felt she had to "see" her. Tears were rolling down Tessa Danforth's anxious, attentive face as Joanna said, "I think we met at dinner."

"Please get them to loosen this saddle strap," came the begging whisper back. "It's cutting me in two."

The darts were at the side. They were not shafted with wood, but gold, heavy feathered things soaking in an antiseptic solution. Joanna took another rapid drink.

"Everybody ready? Have you placed your bets? Anyone bid me another hundred more for Peter? He's got an eye like a hawk."

In the absence of her husband, Roy, Sally Benson was merrily conducting the proceedings. The four participants had all been bought, one of them indeed being Steve Danforth, the "target's" spouse. They drew forward to a line three yards before the dais, preparing their gleaming weapons. The other spectators grouped themselves about, laughing and drinking. Mavis led Joanna to the side for a better view. It had been decided that Steve, as husband, should throw first.

"Four players, three darts each, that's twelve each side," Mavis murmured to her. "Poor Tessa. But it's exciting all the same, isn't it."

"Terribly," admitted Joanna. "I hope it doesn't show." She looked around for Edward Arborough, but he wasn't there. Mavis Smith-Peters giggled.

"I'm afraid my underwear is in a most unseemly state."

"She looks so beautifully frightened."

"She is. Those darts hurt. You watch."

"Get her tight," snapped Steve Danforth, preparing to throw his first.

The maid put a nyloned knee in the middle of the naked back and heaved the saddle strap a notch tighter. Tessa Danforth gasped, "Please!" The straps were tautened on her legs and arms and waist, in particular one thin one just under the buttocks. These were held out helplessly resplendent, a perfect pair bisected by the strap and unamenable to much control, it was evident, thanks to the stricture of the belt around the upper hips and waist. She turned her tear-streaked face, seemed to try to turn into the board, and then the thrower made a feathering motion, there was a whirring of air, completed by a cry.

"Damn!" said Steve Danforth.

The dart had struck true but bounced back and fallen on the floor, leaving a strident scratch.

"They have to stick in to count," Mavis explained contentedly.

He made no mistake the next time, throwing so hard that the spike buried itself in the upper flesh with an eloquent thukk! Tessa screamed. But he hadn't scored. The dart stood out above the target's ring.

The third, however, whistled home and buried itself like a bird's beak on the inside of the cheek close to the bull's eye. Tessa screamed again. There was applause. Steve Danforth went forward to inspect his handiwork, while the maid wrote his score on a slate.

"One inner," he pronounced disgustedly. "She moved."

When he withdrew the two barbs blood oozed. The maid wiped it off solicitously.

The next to throw was Ben Morrison, husband of Alec Reddick's secretary. He thumped three darts home accurately, and was awarded two "in-ners" and an "outer". The third player was a man Joanna did not know. Again his first bounced off, to the accompaniment of a scream.

"She's clenching," said Steve Danforth angrily, to the maid, "give her a couple, please."

"On the thighs, sir?"

"Yes, low down."

"Please," came the begging cry, "I didn't mean to ... I won't do it again ... I can't help it when I hear ... auuu!"

The switch sliced her twice mid-thigh.

"Give her a couple more," said her husband, "she scarcely felt those."

"Noooo-auuueee!"

"That's better," he said, when his order had been effected. "Now let them hang, light of my life. If you stiffen up again while a throw's in the air, I'll ask Roy to baste you with that rope of his. Okay, Pete."

The fourth and last participant was a Tennis Club enthusiast, Peter Salmon. He readied with an underhand action.

"Wildly inaccurate," said Mavis' voice in her ear, "but horribly hard."

Indeed, the first dart whunked into the woodwork wide of the painted hips altogether, but it did so with such velocity it produced a startled hush. Tessa gave an anguished wail, and seemed to try to climb up the board to which she was fastened.

Whukkkk!

The second buried itself to the hilt in her right thigh. She didn't scream. She squealed.

"Sights up, old chap. Trajectory excellent."

He cupped and swung his arm. This time she seemed to know the barb was going to skewer her truly for she fought in her bonds, squirming and wailing, "No, no, no!"

The dart flashed home full in the center of her bottom, scoring a bull's-eye with such force the metal appeared to impale her against the board for a moment.

"Aaauurrrghh!"

There was prolonged clapping. This time the dart was pulled out with difficulty

"Bravo, Pete. You have first throw t'other side."

"Noooo ... nooo!"

"I find these cries distracting. They put me off," said Peter Salmon, readying his darts.

"I agree," said the woman's husband at once, commiseratingly. "They're entirely unnecessary. Next time we'll have a single target of the pair, with her bunghole as bull's-eye. Sally, do you have a brank's?"

"I think so," said Sally Benson, like some society hostess asked for a copy of Who's Who?

"What's that?" inquired Joanna.

"Scold's bridle. Roy has some museum pieces. There." The maid was already advancing with a steel contraption, which she fastened over Tessa Danforth's pleading face. "The beer-can opener device beneath the chin," Mavis continued comfortably, "is, well, a beer-can opener. Modern addition. It scratches awfully if you open your mouth, either to cry out or relieve the pressure of that nice steel hit that's going in now."

"Good gracious," said Joanna. She had been aware of someone pushing up at her behind, from the door, and turned. Roy Benson, grinning and red-faced, was there. She felt a flicker of fear. "I hope I'm not responsible for obstructing your view, Captain Benson."

He put an arm round her waist. In the chunky curve of her right cheek she felt his stony erection. It was immense; it seemed to go on forever.

"I'm afraid you're responsible for that," he muttered, nudging into her. "Frankly, I wasn't watching the spectacle. I've been looking all evening atthese." So saying he handled her buttocks in his gnarled hands. He was terrifically, absurdly strong, for when Joanna tried to turn she found herself gripped, literally, from behind. "Ouch, that hurts."

"I suppose you couldn't do anything about this ... object."

Excitement rippled up her spine. "I might," she said noncommittally. He led her out, tapping away with his wooden leg, on down the passage to a door, which he shut behind her on a half-lit room. He had his clothes off in seconds, while she watched. He was possibly fifty, but in first-class shape, his belly on his backbone, and hard as nails. And between the harness of his artificial limb and the other stood a cock which caught her breath. His sky-high prick bobbed before her startled eyes, plum-colored at its crest and salivating semen in a first anticipatory wink. At that moment she thought she had never seen anything so ... so gluttonous in her life. Her fingers trembled with her under things.

"Pardon the pud," said the old salt, rubbing one grizzled temple, "but frankly I've been dying to get this into you since I first set eyes on you, Mrs. Swanne. Two minutes ago Alec told me you're now his ward, and so are joining The Territory."

'That's right."

"I could ask for Cynthia, if you know what I mean, an' ... "

"I'm perfectly familiar with the droit de Territory, Captain Benson," she said, staring at the monster in some respect. She raised the hem of her skirt reverentially.

He limped forward a pace and his swinging piston clubbed her face. She felt its solid weight.

"Would you like to be buggered, Mrs. Swanne?"

"Not with that," she said decidedly.

"Think you could melt it down in your mouth?"

"At the moment it doesn't much look as if anything could melt down that." She gave it a testing, and only half-playful, slap. It swung back at her angrily.

"In The Territory it's all or nothing, Ma'am."

"It's not all that, not in my throat, sir. I'm no sword swallower, thanks."

Captain Benson scratched his chin. "Of course, if Cynthia refused, I'd recommend to Alec a nice thrashing."

Joanna sat up straight on the bed. "I'd rather you didn't do that," she said. She began taking off her clothes. "Shove it into me from in front, and I'll do my best to take it."

She lay on her back with her knees drawn up and let him ease the prodigy into her. It sank in, inch by thudding inch. The prick seemed to lift her, physically, as he rammed.

"Please, I'm dry," she gasped, staring at the straining ceiling.

"All passionate women reckon to be," he said, "but you won't be soon."

She squirmed away as he impaled her. "Good God, there can't be any more ... please ... you're splitting me ... I can't uhh! Oh! Unh-oh! For Christ's sake, Captain, please, spit it out ... cream ... come ... I can't stand another centimeter ... I swear you're ... AAAAAHHH!"

When it was over she seemed to lie in a molten mass at his feet. He had dressed and was unhooking something from the wall.

"Thank you, Ma'am. I'd like to go through you again."

"The expression is apposite," she panted.

"Only next time it'll be up the butt. Unless," and he tapped her to his knees with his peg-leg, "you'd prefer this up there, instead."

"At least it wouldn't go off like a fire hydrant inside me."

"And now, if you don't mind, I'll just give ye a couple of swats to remember me by."

She darted at the words. But he seized her hair and seized her hands. His hands were fantastically strong. It was painful the mere way he held her, kneeling, her legs apart. She whimpered in anticipation, bracing on her knees, trying to tuck her cunt in under her. Then the hard rope welted her buttocks. She gave a bucking grunt and her head went back with a speechless exhalation, "Haaahh!"

It was a lightning flash of unspeakable pain that unleashed a blaze beneath her. He cut her again and this time she gave a gulping yelp, half-jumping from his grasp. She was squirming like a stranded fish on the floor when his peg-leg tip-tapped out the door, leaving it lightly ajar. It seemed to be minutes before she could bring this monstrous fire under control, and her spasmic squirms seemed to pump his gism from her depths. It clammied on her thigh.

She looked up. Someone was staring at her disorder through the crack of the door. She saw a man's form and the amber eyes of Edward Ar-borough.