Chapter 7

The trip to the Black Sea was so uneventful that it was boring as hell! I began to wish for a pirate or something else to break the monotony of the sail through the gentle swell of the Mediterranean Sea. The first part of the trip was interesting, since I had never spent much time in deep water, but day after day of the same thing can get pretty dull, even with something as beautiful and willing and accommodating as an avatar of Venus. With nothing else to do, my cock got pretty damn sore, and I was even tired of sex by the time we reached the Dardanelles.

We followed the strait into the Sea of Marmara and started searching for the strait I knew as the Bosporus. We never did find the damned thing, and Alice searched her data file for a reason. According to her data, the Bosporus did not form until about this time. It was speculated that there was a catastrophic failure of a land blockage between the Sea of Marmara, salt water, and the Black Sea, fresh water, which may well have been the source of the flood stories in the Gilgamesh epic and the Bible.

We were sailing around the Sea of Marmara, looking for something interesting to investigate, when there was a sudden noise behind us and the lake, itself, began to tremble. A monster current grabbed us and began to drag us in a generally northeasterly direction. No matter how hard our captains and crews fought, there was no way to escape the current. Inexorably, we were dragged toward the land and the source of the terrible noise.

As we got closer to the land, we could see a great gouge being torn from the land as water rushed out of the Sea of Marmara. The water level didn't seem to fall as water rushed in through the Dardanelles strait. There was no way we could escape back to the Mediterranean Sea; our only hope was to keep from being drawn into the maelstrom which would eventually become the Bosporus.

Our only hope was that our anchors would hold as they were thrown into the sea in an effort to stem our progress toward sure destruction. Thank God! Our progress was slowed enough so that the worst of the current had dissipated by the time we were dragged into the channel being worn through by the water rushing toward the Black Sea. We could not stop our motion toward the channel, but we did slow down enough so that the bottom of each of the boats was not torn out by the impact with the ground. The channel was not yet deep enough for us to float through, but it was getting deeper by the minute.

Fortunately, our ships were sturdy vessels and able to resist the effects of the rushing water, even though they had never been designed for such stress. The current was still much too fast for us to escape, even if the channel had been deep enough to release us. The ground through here was relatively soft, so that it was rapidly wearing away, and we were being forced farther and farther into the channel as the channel became deeper under our keel. We seemed to advance about a foot along the channel for every inch of depth created by the rushing water.

Another worry occurred to Alice: what if we went over a waterfall when we finally reached the Black Sea. This much water flowing through the channel suggested that there was nothing impeding the flow of water into the Black Sea, and the level of that sea might well be enough below us that the ships would break up when they finally reached end of the current channel and fell over the edge. We had no way of knowing how fast the water level was rising in the Black Sea, but it couldn't be very fast. We could only hope that the water would wear away the land barrier quickly enough to do us some good.

We had progressed about a mile into the channel before our progress appeared to stop, at least for a while. The current was still too strong for us to escape, but, at least, we were no longer being swept along at a dizzying rate. The Venus' Orgasm was actually close enough to shore for a man to jump from the ship to dry land. Several ropes were used to tie the ship to large trees in an effort to keep the ship from being swept any farther down the channel. They then used their ballistas to throw ropes to us and to The Venus' Nipple and to tie us to sturdy trees. It now looked like we all had a chance to survive our strange adventure. The anchors were pulled aboard and Alice used her great strength to pull The Venus' Joy to shore and tie us off. She jumped on shore and pulled The Venus' Nipple to shore, also.

Once the three ships appeared to be safe, the three captains, Alice, and I had a meeting aboard The Venus' Joy. We decided to hold our current position overnight and to see what the morrow would bring. If the current moderated, which Alice said was unlikely, we would sail back to the Mediterranean Sea and wait until next year before attempting to enter the Black Sea.

If the current remained strong, which Alice expected, Alice and I would take a small party and explore the channel north of our present location to see if it was safe to follow the channel into the Black Sea. We would decide what to do based on the results of that investigation.

To nobody's surprise, the current had grown stronger during the night and the channel was widening. The three ships were safe for now, so we decided to go on our exploratory expedition. Alice and I, along with one man and one woman from each ship, set out to see what the channel looked like at the other end. We took some provisions along, as well as weapons, but we planned to live off the land if we were gone for more than 3 days. The people remaining on the ship were told not to be concerned about us unless we were gone more than 2 weeks. The way might be blocked by landslides or other problems might arise to slow down our progress, but, with a god along, we should not meet anything to halt our progress.

Progress was easy at times and very difficult at other times. We stayed close enough to the channel to recognize any hazards to the ships as we went, because we didn't want any nasty surprises if we wound up sailing in this direction. Everybody was carrying a pack, as well as a rifle and a pistol, so we didn't make very good time and it took us 5 days to reach the Black Sea. When we got there, we could easily see that we were not going to sail on that body of water any time soon without some problems getting there. There was, indeed, a waterfall from the channel to the sea. It was only about 10 feet high, but that was too much to expect the ships to survive if they went over the waterfall unaided. There was the further problem of getting back once they had made the trip down. Alice estimated that it was going to take 6-9 months for the water levels to equalize, and that would have to happen before ships could sail back and forth.

We spent a day surveying the situation before turning back to our ships. We made it back in 3 days because we cut overland, instead of following the winding channel. There were some very rugged places that we had to go around, but there were valleys, too, that we were able to follow. All-in-all, it was a very pleasant trip after all of the time we had been cooped up on the ships.

It was obvious that the channel was deepening rapidly, yet the current did not seem to increase all that much. Alice estimated that we could travel safely in the channel if we waited a couple of more weeks. She figured that by then the waterfall would probably be reduced to about 5 feet and the ships could survive the passage with a lot of help from her. We decided to spend two weeks camping where we were, and then making another trip to the waterfall to see if her guess had been correct.

At the end of the two weeks, we were all ready to move, so Alice made the trip alone to inspect the waterfall. By traveling by herself, she was not delayed by the limitations of measly humans and was able to get to the waterfall, make a detailed examination, and get back to us in less than 36 hours. Ah, the advantages of super strength and agility, night vision, and not needing to sleep!