Amazon Airship Pirates

Charles Dartington and the Amazon Airship Pirates (part II)

4. Miss Elphinstone's Dilemma

The next morning, Charles awoke with, he realised, a foolish smile on his face, to discover that he was alone in his bed. Then he noted that the upper bunk above him seemed occupied, and he realised that both the women must be there. As quietly as he could manage, he moved his feet to the floor and began to extract a fresh day's clothes from his luggage, but after a few seconds he looked up and realised that two naked women were watching him with bleary-eyed amusement.

"Good morning, Mr. Dartington," Moira said.

"So - have you two won some form of wager?" he asked them.

"You've nothing for which to be bitter," Moira replied. "Few young men have such a first time, unless they pay a deal of cash for it. And then it'd likely be done with less show of enthusiasm."

"Hope we have not spoiled him for other women," said Sui Pai. Moira shrugged, and Charles returned to his hasty dressing.

A few moments later, there was a tap on the door, and Sui Pai dismounted from the top bunk in an acrobatic movement. She gave what was evidently a password, and the door was unlatched, and a simple breakfast of bread, cheese, fruit, and water was passed in. Despite himself, Charles found himself enjoying a sense of camaraderie with the two women.

"Can you tell me when we will reach wherever we are bound?" he asked them.

Moira shrugged. "Depends on the winds and on luck," she said, "but sometime today, I'm sure. Probably late in the day, though."

"And then I discover why you went to so much trouble to abduct me?"

"Prob'ly not." Sui Pai chewed on a hunk of bread. "This is the Captain's plan, an' she'll still be off leaving the crew an' passengers o' that ship somewhere safe, and moving it an' the cargo - somewhere profitable. Then, she must sail home... All takes a while."

Charles decided that he had to believe that the pirates were as ethical about their prisoners as they claimed, rather than behaving as the news-sheets implied. They had little reason to lie to him, and it seemed consistent with their other behaviour. He supposed that he should reassure Emma Elphinstone that Mrs. George would likely be safe and well - although he had not formed the impression that Miss Elphinstone was especially close to her chaperone.

"Cheer up, young Charles," Moira interrupted his train of thought. "You'll get a chance to see a real den o' pirates. Who knows - you may even get another shag." She gave him a lecherous leer.

Charles could not deny that she was right in the general principle. He attempted to tell himself that he should not be too enthused about those specific details.

All of which left him feeling that he should speak with Emma. However, he saw no sign of her for some time, and he was obliged to spend an hour or so exploring such parts of the airship as he was permitted to see - which he found worryingly interesting. He knew a little about aviation, and these pirates were clearly advanced and sometimes daringly innovative in that science. They were not only dangerous criminals, it seemed, but highly sophisticated in their villainy. The difficulties which the Company faced in suppressing them became more explicable at every moment.

Late in the morning, however, Charles found Emma Elphinstone in the wardroom, sitting on a stool and staring out of one of the large portholes there. The three amazons assigned to guard the pair of them seated themselves at the other end of the room, granting them privacy to talk and evidently unconcerned about the risk of their conspiring. Charles drew up a stool and sat next to Emma, respectfully not too close, and gazed for a moment at the ocean and islands far below. He wondered if he should try to memorise the shapes of the larger islands, so as to be able to retrace the airship's course at a later date, but they were too many and too often obscured by haze.

Glancing at Emma, Charles saw that her hairstyle, which kept her dark-blonde hair up in a neat but intricate shape, was looking sadly untidy and imperfect, with many stray strands hanging loose. He realised that she would of course have been obliged to attend to her own hair this morning - not an easy task, as he imagined it. He also realised that she looked thoughtfully unhappy, biting her lip and seeming almost on the verge of weeping.

"Be brave," he murmured to her. "We will escape eventually... Or perhaps just be ransomed. This adventure will soon be over. In the meantime, perhaps we should make the best of it."

Emma shot him a hard glance. "And what when we do

return to civilisation

?" she demanded quietly. "You may return happily to your old life, but what of me?"

Charles frowned. "Do you... Do you believe what

they

say about your fiancé?" he asked.

Emma shrugged. "Perhaps," she said. "It may be true. It is... not inconsistent with what little I know of him, or with the way I think I have seen him look at me, and at other women. I feared that I might have to

make the best of

my marriage. But that is not the point at hand."

"I do not understand," Charles confessed.

"Don't be a fool. You, a man can return to civilisation after this

adventure

as if little had happened. But do you truly believe that a lady can do the same? I will have been in the hands of rogues and pirates for days or weeks. People will

talk.

" Emma sneered. "Good people will be

sorry

for me. I will be the subject of their condescension and pity forevermore. Everyone else will enjoy gossiping about me from behind their fans and newspapers. They will amuse themselves hinting at what befell me, or what I

did

."

Charles was horrified. "I... I will vouch for your behaviour," he tried to reassure her.

"I doubt that will help," Emma muttered. "Especially once you have told people about your own adventures."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you have surely

made the best of

this adventure. You will surely enjoy yourself hinting about your fornications with a pair of pirate wenches."

Charles gasped, and for a moment, his instinct was to deny the accusation. But Emma's cold gaze told him that would be futile and undignified. "How do you know what I have done?" he asked instead.

"For the son of the finest engineer in the East, you can be a very great fool," Emma told him. "This vessel floats in the air, does it not? It is

light.

Everything about it must be made as carefully as possible. So of course, the walls between the cabins are thin as paper. I have heard ... a great deal."

"Oh." Charles was unsure what else to say. "I am very sorry," he added.

Emma shrugged again. "I suppose it hardly matters," she muttered. "I have just one question, though." Charles looked at her, uncertain what to expect. "What does 'fuck' mean?" she asked.

Charles gasped, and stared into her face, but her expression showed nothing but open interest. "It's... It's a vulgar term for fornication," he stammered.

"Ah, yes, I thought it must be," Emma said with a nod. "A verb, is it?" Charles nodded in turn. "Transitive or intransitive?" Emma demanded.

"Tr... transitive," Charles managed. "But please, if...

when

we return to civilisation, please don't tell anyone that I told you such things."

Emma smiled coldly. "Do not worry," she said after a moment. "I understand your fears. When we return to

civilisation

, you in triumph and me in shame, I will allow you to choose for yourself how you boast of

fucking

your pirate wenches."

"That is... It really is not what I meant," Charles said hastily.

Emma bit her lip again. "Perhaps not," she said. "But it is the effect of the matter." She rose to her feet, and Charles hastily stood too. "Now, if you will excuse me, Mr. Dartington, I find that I am tired, and this view has lost its charm. I think that I need to rest."

And with that, she departed to her cabin. Charles sat for a few more minutes, contemplating the view, but soon found that he had genuinely grown bored with it himself. He returned to his cabin and extracted a book from his luggage - a traveller's guide to the East. He was beginning to feel that he had much to learn.

5. The Airship Arrives

Although Charles took lunch in the wardroom - another meal of cold meats and fruit - and Mr. Sharma took time off from his duties to eat with Charles and to answer some of his questions in general terms, Emma did not join them, but was sent food in her cabin. Charles could not regret this, given her mutually embarrassing revelation, but felt left at even more of a loose end for the afternoon that followed.

So he returned to his cabin after he had finished eating. Once there, he sat on the bed and looked at Moira and Sui Pai, who had followed him. "You are still not permitted to trust me?" he asked.

"We should trust you because we've let you between our legs?" Moira replied.

"We've fucked too many men for that," Sui Pai added.

"Well..." Charles scowled for a moment, but then found himself smiling wryly. "Ah, that does not follow, does it? Though some would say that you should not have done what you did with a man you did not trust."

"You complaining?" Sui Pai demanded.

Charles took a deep breath. "No. After all, I have no right to do so unless I can say that I trust

you

entirely."

The two women looked at each other. "More honest than most men," Sui Pai said.

"What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," Moira said. "Not a rule enough men live by."

"But anyway," said Charles, "if you do

not

trust me not to attempt escape, should you not be more careful of me? After all, I am a man, and I think that I am stronger than either of you."

"But not stronger than the two of us together," Moira said. "And believe me, even before we took to this life, we learned to fight worse than you could imagine. The docks can be a cruel place."

Charles shivered. Moira's expression had grown serious and feral as she spoke. He realised that he could

fear

these two, which had not truly occurred to him before.

"Anyway, is not the real reason," Sui Pai added. "You seem quite nice. We learn to tell that. More important, you seem not stupid. Maybe you could hurt us, but then - airship full of our friends."

"But those friends have been ordered to keep me safe," Charles pointed out.

"The Captain isn't stupid," Moira told him. "We're supposed to keep you safe an' well, but if you hurt anyone bad, or put us in real danger - we'd be forgiven for doing what was needful t'stop you."

"Oh." Charles took a breath at that, and reminded himself that he was indeed still the prisoner of an infamous, dangerous criminal band.

"Oh, don't look so sad." Moira's expression abruptly switched to a cheerful grin. "We'll not hurt you so long as you're not an utter fool. An' we'll do what we can to take your mind off ideas that might make trouble for all of us." She stepped forward, reached out, and ruffled his hair. "As we showed you. As we might show you again, I suppose."

"Thank you," said Charles carefully and quietly. "But I may have lost my taste for that idea. Did you realise that Miss Elphinstone, next door, can hear much of what takes place in here?"

"Ah," said Moira quietly.

"Thin walls an' ventilation," muttered Sui Pai with the air of somebody who was recalling trivia. "Should've thought. We get used to that on these ships." She shrugged.

"There's a shame," said Moira. "That's why she don't look too happy with you?" Charles nodded. "An' you don't just feel like saying, to Hell, she needs to get used to a world where grown folk shag?"

Charles scowled at that, and Moira raised her hands. "Well, we'll all live, y'know? You read your book, an' we'll leave you be."

With which, she sat on a chair and removed her boots, showing vastly immodest amounts of well-shaped lower leg in the process, then clambered methodically into the upper bunk. Sui Pai followed with a brusque nod to Charles, who obeyed the suggestion to lie in his own bunk with the book.

After a few minutes, though, he became aware of repeated movement in the mattress above him, and of a very soft but persistent sound of deep breathing from one or both of the women. He lay still for a moment, half-puzzled and half-guessing. He had barely heard rumours of woman-and-woman love before this adventure, but Moira and Sui Pai had shown him enough by now. And so, despising himself for the impertinence but unable to resist his curiosity, he lifted himself from the bed, half-rose, and peered into the upper bunk.

Both Moira and Sui Pai had shed their drawers, which now lay in a heap at the foot of the bed, and had drawn their skirts high up at the front, exposing their private parts. Moira was lying flat, and Sui Pai had placed a hand on that secret place on her, probing and caressing. Moira's head was thrown back, her eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply through her mouth; her expression was one of detached concentration.

After a moment, Charles became aware that Sui Pai had noticed him but was choosing to ignore him as she worked diligently on her friend. After a few more moments, Moira gave a deep, soft gasp, and then opened her eyes. She immediately noticed Charles.

"Don't worry," she said very quietly. "We've learned how to be quiet about this. Your nice lady friend won't hear a thing."

Blushing furiously, Charles ducked back into the lower bunk as Sui Pai lay flat and Moira turned to her. After a few more minutes, when the women had finished, he gathered up his book and bolted to the wardroom, followed by the two amused amazons.

And so he spent his time alternating between his book and the view, eventually allowing the sight of tropical islands and the porcelain-blue China Seas to mesmerise him into placidity. He was quite startled when Mr. Sharma tapped him on the shoulder and informed him, almost in the manner of a steward, that the airship was now descending toward its home.

Craning his neck as the craft turned in its approach, he saw that their destination was an island of modest size, rising from white beaches to a palm-forested central hill, with nothing of note but what appeared to be a small native village on its coast. As the dirigible came closer, though, he saw that what had at first seemed to be a cluster of unremarkable huts was actually a set of moderately substantial buildings, with a well-built jetty projecting out to sea, and - over a low ridge, concealed from the seaward - a fair-sized airship yard, with other craft

in situ.

A crowd had emerged to watch the new arrival, and a competent-looking crew in workmanlike garb appeared to assist with the landing.

Charles was so absorbed by this view of pirate discipline that he was startled when a polite cough caused him to notice that Emma Elphinstone had emerged from her own cabin, in a fresh tropical day-dress, and that she was now watching the same view.

"Mr. Dartington," she said suddenly, "before we discover what these rogues intend for us, I feel that I owe you an apology."

"Not at all," Charles said. "my behaviour was utterly unforgivable."

"And yet, I choose to forgive it," Emma said. "You simply failed to realise that your privacy was so compromised. And beyond that, you were, one must say,

led astray

by our captors, in a way that, I suspect, few men could resist."

"Better men than I would have resisted," Charles muttered.

"Really?" Emma said, and Charles realised that she was examining his expression with care. "I cannot know, but my mother has tried to warn me, on occasion, that men are frequently, ah,

slaves to their impulses in matters of passion

." The last phrase was pitched to indicate that it was an exact quotation. Emma sighed. "In retrospect, I think she may have heard just some of those rumours about my fiancé - assuming that he is indeed spoken of as our captors claim. Though I would like to think that she has not heard as badly of him as they have. She also gave me similar advice to that which you offered me."

"What do you mean?" Charles asked.

"Oh, she said something to the effect that one should make the best of the circumstances in which one finds oneself, in marriage as elsewhere."

Charles found that he was blushing deeply, and unable to think what to say in reply. So Emma simply smiled. "In any event," she said, "I do not wish us to enter the lair of the monster on unpleasant terms..."

But then, a series of thumps and bumps gave a sign that the airship was landed and fastened, and Mr. Sharma and the three amazon guards asked them, with firm politeness, to disembark. They did so, and after a moment of conversation between Mr. Sharma and what appeared to be governors of these pirate docks, Charles and Emma were led off by new guards - burly fellows with the look of sailors for him, a new pair of amazons for her. Charles noticed Moira and Sui Pai departing in another direction with a whole gang of pirates of both sexes, glass bottles of some kind of drink already in hand, and realised that he had almost come to see them as friends in the last day. It seemed that being locked in a small cabin with persons one should feel obliged to despise might confuse one's judgement.

And then it occurred to him that fornication might also affect one's judgement.

He was guided, firmly but politely, to a cabin in the village, and to a room there, sparsely but adequately furnished. "The good Miss Elphinstone" was given a room in a different building, and Charles's guards remarked on a distinction between ladies' and gentlemen's quarters. He recalled that the pirates occasionally took hostages for ransom, and supposed that if that was his and Emma's fate, they would at least be treated as valuable booty, to be kept safe.

After which, he had bare moments to survey the room and facilities before a messenger arrived with a polite invitation to come to another part of the village for dinner. This proved to be a communal matter, with many pirates of evidently varying ranks, sharing a rich stew of chicken and spices. Charles was pleased to see Emma Elphinstone also there, but she was sitting some way from him, treated courteously but largely ignored by all but her guards, whereas his time was entirely occupied with various pirates - mostly but not all male - who asked, first for confirmation that he was indeed the son of Oswald Dartington, and second for what he knew of his father's work and current inventions. It was clear that the mechanics in this community were entirely as interested in such topics as the sophistication of the airship had implied, and they were disappointed when Charles told them that he had not seen his father for almost ten years, and that he knew little more than he had been able to acquire by keen attention to various journals - although his father's letters to him had mentioned the occasional interesting detail.

All this distracted Charles considerably, and at some point late in the meal, when he looked toward Emma's chair, he was disappointed to note that she had evidently retired. Shortly after that, however, the combination of a full meal with some locally-made beer accompanying it, tiredness from the excitements of the previous few days, and the relief his body felt at standing on firm ground after days aboard two different rocking, engine-driven vehicles, finally told on him, and he pleaded to be permitted to retire. Then, once he was abed, sleep descended on him as soon as his head had descended on the pillow.

6. Miss Elphinstone's Choice

The next morning, Charles awoke considerably refreshed. Another new pair of guards had been assigned to him, and led him to a communal mess hall, where a breakfast of embellished rice in the Asian manner and adequate coffee further refreshed him, so that he began to wonder once again about methods of escape from this predicament. He decided that assuaging his curiosity about the pirate community would also assist with any such scheme, and so he asked his guards if he could walk around the place. They seemed amused that he had even felt it necessary to ask, and simply followed him ten paces behind while he walked wherever he wished