Chapter 4

July 9, 17--

Diarie My Dear,

So much has transpired since last I had the opportunity to commit my thoughts to your Pages, dear Diarie, that I scarce know where to begin. Rather than relay each event in the order of its occurrence, I shall begin with the Peril in which we now find ourselves, and explain how we have come to this point.

Late last night Amelia and I escaped aboard a small rowboat and made our way toward the lights of the small fortification on the island of St. Roger. Only constant activity prevented us from complaining of the cold and damp; but it was necessary to make our escape by night.

At last we reached the rock-strewn shore and hid our boat in some bushes so that our place of landing would not be detectable in the morn. We made our way quickly to the small village near the encampment and found that, as is the way of military men, drunken revelry was taking place at a rough-framed publican's house called The Salty Cock. As we had neither money, nor a place to stay, nor food to eat, we shuddered to one another but accepted that this Cock offered our best hope for success, if we could but determine how to grab hold of it.

Inside, a few dozen soldiers and sailors were watching a toothless slattern cavort on stage, singing a desultory ballad while occasionally offering a flash of her skirts revealing her veinous calves. (I daresay the odor from her waved skirts would have extinguished any lustful thoughts prompted by the display.) Her animations seemed to be drawing little interest, even from so female-hungry a crowd as these soldiers.

"Hello hello hello," said a fellow at the bar, with pomaded hair and eyeglasses tinted a dark shade, his shirt open to his chest. "What can The Salty Cock do for a couple of fine, fine ladies like yourselves?"

"This is a place of entertainment?" Amelia asked, tentatively.

"Hey, what's it look like?" said the barman.

"It looks like the wake for a scrofulous wetnurse," said I. "Is that the best dancing to be had on this island?"

He gave me a look of amusement. "I suppose you pretty ladies think you could do better?"

I rolled my eyes to indicate that the question was beneath my answering. "What's to be had when we do?" I asked, as the harridan on stage stopped her rickety maneuverings, and glared at us hatefully.

"Girls, it is your lucky night," said the barman. "We're having a dancing contest, and the one who most enjoys the audience's favor wins a guinea, plus whatever other tips are to be had by performing dances at table, upon laps, and wherever else a customer might request that you, uh, perform."

"Then sweep that palsied hag off the stage and get your audience ready for something worth seeing," said I, and he shrugged and exited his bar for the stage.

"Gentlemen, put your hands together for lovely Consuela," he bellowed to the crowd, as the unfortunate wretch picked up her few pathetic winnings and scampered off the stage. "And remember, Consuela will be coming by offering a table or a lap dance, you're sure to want to take advantage of that." I suspected a certain sarcastic tone to this last.

There was mild applause, and then a murmur of excitement as they saw that we were not the lice-ridden whores they were used to seeing on this stage. Though we were hardly at our most presentable, having just labored two hours at rowing, nevertheless our youthful beauty, our simple white attire, unbuttoned suggestively, and our flowing locks were pleasing in their aspect.

I looked at the superannuated doctor of Musick squeezing tunes out of a grimy accordion in the pit. "Do you know any quadrilles by Handel or Couperin?" I asked.

"Oi know Lady of Spain," he wheezed.

"It'll have to do," I said, and he started playing something whose name and tune can have been but a mystery to anyone but himself. Amelia and I prepared to mount the stage when I found a constable pressing his stick against my chest.

"What goes on in the gallery is not for me to worry about," he said. "But on stage, you're governed by the laws of the Lord Chamberlain, same as Shakespeare 'imself. And if there's any open display of your womanly parts--" and here he tapped at my breasts, and then at my sex, to make it clear what he meant-- "I'll arrest you, sure as Guy Fawkes." And he sat down at, I noticed, the best seat in the house.

Well, to tell the truth, that did rather put a Crimp in our plan to win over the audience by simply baring ourselves and proceeding directly to a lewd display of Sapphic ardor. We would have to come up with something more artful.

"Gentlemen, get ready for a special attraction, making their debut on this stage, show your appreciation for Esme and Amelia!" bellowed the barman, by way of urging us up unto the stage.

As the aged musician played, we began to dance a quadrille. With each pass we made sure to stroke one another's breasts suggestively for the audience-- Amelia tweaking my small buds, I hoisting her fat tit and then dropping it, letting it jiggle. Then we turned and rubbed our bottoms against one another, my narrow hips nearly separating her ample cheeks. We turned around and came face to face, planting a kiss on each other while rubbing my small flat belly against her rounded one.

Unfortunately, just as we were beginning to simulate the noises of passion, the slattern who had held the stage before us was given a copper by one of the sailors, and she happily ripped open her bodice in the crowd, allowing her dangling mams to flop out like mongeese being let loose after prey. Despite the vulgarity of this display, a good part of the audience turned their eyes toward it-- and away from us.

"What are we going to do if we can't undress?" Amelia whispered to me as I slid a leg in between her skirts and she began to ride her big bottom and sex on my willowy thigh.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking," I muttered back at her, then turned to the audience. "Well, gentlemen," I said, "d'ye like to go gallopin' on a mount thin and rangy," and I stretched an arm out and tried to raise my breast to the very edge of my open shirt without breaching the censor's rule, "or d'ye like to ride o'er round and soft hills," and now I grabbed Amelia's buttocks and pressed her hard against my leg, and she let her head fall back in simulation of the Tingle, and moaned with each gallop she took upon my "steed."

"Oi like 'em face down and with old Brown-Eye lookin' back at me," responded one of the sailors, and there was coarse laughter at this vulgarity.

"Then return to your ship, Jack Tar," I said. "Your cabin boy is lonely." At this there was more laughter, and though the object of my Jape glowered, I saw that the others seemed ready to pay us more credit than they had shown the previous dancers on this stage.

I motioned for one of the soldiers up front to pass me a wooden chair, which I set up on the stage and motioned to Amelia for her to sit upon it. I straddled her and we kissed, drawing it out so our tongues were visible as our mouths separated. I climbed off of her and now buried my face between her breasts, mashing the giant globes and doing my best to draw the fabric tight so as to reveal their shape. At the same time I threw her skirt up as high upon her thigh as I could, showing as much of her leg and the beginning of her buttock as I dared.

Unfortunately the harridan in the gallery noticed that attention had returned to us, for she whispered something to one of the sailors, he nodded wide-eyed and enthusiastically, and she pulled up her skirts. Then, grabbing a wine bottle she seemed (or so it appeared from our vantage point) to thrust it into her poxy swamp of a cunny, and to make moaning sounds like a wounded vole as she swooned up and down, befouling the bottle with her excrescences.

I looked at the constable to see if he intended to do anything about this lewd and medically dangerous display, but he simply shrugged and tapped the edge of the stage, to remind us (as if we needed any such reminder) that similar acts were forbidden to us. Somehow, despite the censor's Ban, we needed a way to bare ourselves, and thus draw the attention back in our direction through the frank display of our far more attractive bodies.

Suddenly the very solution occurred to me. At the back of the stage sat a bucket for extinguishing fires. I grabbed it and to Amelia's shock and dismay, I poured the cold and far from clean water over both our clothes. In an instant our full forms were revealed as our thin cotton garments clung tightly to our breasts and thighs. My slender body, small breasts, and erect nipples were clearly discernable; so too were Amelia's large, dangling breasts, her fat, drooping nipples, and her broad and rounded buttocks. I forced my mouth upon hers and we rubbed our plainly visible bodies against one another to the whoops and cheers of the crowd. "Gentlemen, do we have a winner?" the barman asked, and the crowd offered near-unanimous assent.

As we stepped off the stage the barman said, "I have a feeling the wet-bodice contest may become a tradition in these islands. By the way, do you see that handsome lieutenant at the back of the room?"

"Aye," I said.

"He wishes you to dance for him privately," the barman said.

"Is he the highest-ranking officer in the room?" I asked.

"He is," the barman said.

"Tell him we'd be happy to," I said, grabbing our winnings and wringing my skirts out.

We moved over to his table and--

Oh! I hear the key in the door of our cell, dearest Diarie-- more anon

July 11, 17--

Dearest Friend Diarie,

That last was indeed, as you may have gathered, written whilst we were kept in a jail-- or so they called it, though it was scarcely more than a filthy hole with an iron door. At first Amelia and I thought all our troubles were over when the lieutenant beckoned us to his table. We made ourselves friendly with him, and he seemed to respond well to our flirtations.

But once I leaned over to his ear and told him the real message I had hoped to communicate, that we were escapees from the ship of the Sapphic Pirate Miranda, with knowledge of Miranda's planned raid upon the island, he turned white as a sheet and with the aid of a couple of his fellows, hustled us out of the tavern and to the fort.

We were made to wait an eternity while arguing went on over our presence and purpose. I must admit that I grew increasingly apprehensive as I caught snippets of their heated conversation-- it seemed that there was an idea that we might be spies of Miranda's, sent on a reconnaisance mission. It was apparently taken as evidence for this view the fact that we had so readily shewn ourselves lewdly at the tavern-- "Only a member of Miranda's depraved crew would have taken to such behavior at the first instant," I heard someone say. Well! Put yourself in our position, landing on an island full of soldiers late at night, and finding a tavern where the entertainment was of that nature-- what's a girl to do?

In any case, the argument eventually ended and over our tremendous protests we were forced into the brig and the door closed upon us. Amelia and I could do little but hold one another and wait for sleep to take our cares away until the morning.

In the morning we were given some foul swill to eat, which we ate nevertheless, but our attempts to demand release or at least a chance to plead our case were ignored, and we were left there for some further hours.

At last our door opened and we were ushered out of the cell and to a small chamber. A finely-dressed lady, of perhaps 50 years, on the plump side, but well kept and most kindly of face, sat at a small table. We were directed to the other side and ordered to sit down. The guard stood at attention along the wall but the lady said, "Sergeant, I'm sure these girls pose no threat. Please step outside."

"Orders, ma'am, were to watch 'em closely," the sergeant said.

"The other side of that door will serve just as well," she said firmly, and the sergeant, bested, stepped out and pulled the door to.

She looked at us kindly and took the hand of each of us. "My dear children," she said. "How you must have suffered!"

"Indeed, m'lady, we have been most cruelly treated when all we wished to do was warn the soldiers of a peril facing this island," I said.

"You're not a servant girl, are you," she said to me.

"No, my lady," I said. "I am Miss Esme Winterblossom, and I was traveling to the West Indies to live with my mother's brother when our ship was most savagely attacked by the pirate Miranda and I was taken prisoner."

"How very dreadful," the lady said. "And you..."