Chapter 7

Friday morning was a cloudy day, and the ship rolled about as the waves picked up. Word was circulated that this was not a major storm, but the decks would be closed to passengers as a safety measure. That mostly pissed off the women, but the men took the change in stride. However, boredom did begin to exert itself among the men, and I was asked to reopen our poker game right after lunch. It did not take long for all of the players to get the word, and Beau was making the first deal before 2:00 PM.

We settled in and played until supper. Nobody wanted to quit for supper because we could be served at our playing table. We ate some excellent roast beef and chicken sandwiches for supper with a superb Mexican beer. We did pause for baked Alaska for dessert. Except for occasional pauses for trips to the gentlemen’s room, we played straight through until 3:00 AM. At this point, we shut down, but the consensus was that we would resume playing at 1:45 PM tomorrow, no matter what the weather was like. My God! My share of the take that day was $34,890. Dammit, this place really was a gold mine! The pots just kept getting bigger and bigger, and I could see no end in sight.

We were late getting into Charleston, SC, because of the storm, but none of the card players complained. None of us were getting off in Charleston, so we just kept playing through the time the ship was in port. This time, when we quit playing, my share of the winnings were up to $41,020. I was beginning to wonder if there was any point in trying to break into play at Heaven’s Gate. Well, yes, there was: Beau still had his heart set on it.

By the time we got to London, I was ahead by over half a million dollars. Of course, the purser, the captain, and the few others in on the 11% take from my winnings were ecstatic. I had no idea that there was so much disposable income available on one ship. Beau was as stunned as I was when he got a good look at his share of my winnings. We now had over a million dollars between us, and that was what we had hoped to get as a result of playing poker at Heaven’s Gate.

Hell, now that I had my sea-legs, I would have been happy to spend most of my time aboard ship if I could be sure of encountering this kind of poker money on every voyage. As far as I was concerned, I now had all of the money that I could ever want. From now on, it was not money—it was just counters to show how good I was at my chosen profession.

One last conversation with the purser pointed us toward a London bank that we could use for the European end of our business. It turned out that many of the men who had come over to escort their families home were returning on this ship, and they asked if I would be here. They found that my poker game went a long way toward keeping them sane on what they considered a very boring trip. I thanked them and promised to consider it, but I did not make any promises at that time.

Beau and I checked into a very posh London hotel and did all of the tourist things. That was fine for the first few days and nights, but we soon asked the concierge about gambling houses. We explained what we were looking for, and he recommended a couple of places that we might find interesting. Neither one were big on poker, but they did have a few games at each house. The prospects looked good enough to check out, so we went out that night to see what we could see.

The fog that night was right up there with all of the stories about it. The fog was so thick that visibility was limited to around 30 feet, and the fog had a strong smell of coal smoke. It did not take long for us to tire of the smell, so we caught a cab to the nearer of the two gambling establishments. We had been warned that our finances would be inspected as we entered the house because we were foreigners, and there had been some recent trouble over some of those people not being able to pay their debts. We had our bankbooks with us from our recent bank deposits, and that was enough to get us through the door with a welcoming smile as we paid our entry fee.

We wandered around a little bit to size the place up. There were multiple roulette wheels and crap tables that were jammed with patrons. We saw a few card tables, and two were devoted to draw poker. They were full at the moment, so we kept circulating. That was when we wandered into a kind of theater room where there was a stage performance going on. Judging from the laughs from the audience, it must of been a comedy, but Beau and I were completely baffled at what was supposed to be funny.

This room was set up like a restaurant, and people were eating as they watched the show. I did a double-take when I saw what the waitresses were wearing, or not wearing might be a better description. They were wearing some sort of high-heeled shoes and a little cap—nothing else. As nearly as I could tell, all of their body hair was removed, and their pussies were easy to see every time they bent over the table. They did that a lot, and they let their tits and nipples hang down into the patrons’ drink glasses. Of course, the patrons had to lick the nipples clean of whatever drink had been picked up, and there was a lot of laughing that went along with this.

Another thing that surprised me was that a lot of the customers were women who were dressed in the height of fashion. Could these women be prostitutes, or were they the wives of the men they were with? There was no way for me to know, but these women seemed to be having a great time. I didn’t care, I was just curious.

We sat down at a table and a waitress came up as undressed as all of the others. I spent a lot of time staring at the woman, and she seemed to find that amusing, but Beau had to do the ordering. He ordered a light meal of something or other for each of us. I had no idea what I ate because I was so taken with the scenery.

We were sitting so that we both faced the stage, but the curtain was closed, so there was really nothing to see. However, a few minutes later, the curtain opened to thunderous applause. The stage was lined with women who were dressed in less than the waitresses: the women on stage were not wearing hats. The women began to dance and to kick their legs very high in unison. Even if you didn’t care for the dancing, the kicks were high enough that a lot of pussy was put on display.

I was amazed at how long the dance number lasted. Those women had to be in excellent physical condition to last as long as they did. The dance was very educational for me because there were 20 women in the dance troupe, and I think that every pussy was different. I had no idea that there was so much variety in pussies.

I thought that it was strange, but every woman in the audience whom I could see was staring intently at the dancers. What were they looking at or for? Were they going to try to perform the same way later for their men?

I never did know what I had eaten, but I thought that it was tasty, so I was not disappointed. We sat there for over an hour watching a variety of song and dance acts, but we left when the stage play started again. There did not seem to be much point in staying there when we did not understand what was going on.

We wandered back to the poker tables and took seats as they became open. Yes, this was close enough to the American style of 5-card-draw that we had no problem with playing. We played for about 90 minutes, and Beau made about 10 pounds. I made 27 pounds, and that was well enough to pay for our evening’s entertainment, but I did wonder what that “pound” meant. Pound of what I wondered.

The fog was still pretty bad, and there were no cabs in sight. The doorman told us that we would probably have to wait for at least an hour unless we wanted to hunt for one along the street. The temperature was reasonably comfortable, and the smoke odor had moderated, so we decided to look for a cab. Somehow, we wound up getting lost, but that was probably not surprising, considering the fog and that we were in a strange city.

We walked for about half an hour without spotting anything, including other pedestrians. Suddenly, out of the fog, three men appeared. The looked closely at us, and one said, “Well, well, looky here. Providence done made our day. Hey there, Govs, you look like you are just the ones to brighten our dismal night. Give us what you got on you, and you can walk away free and clear.”