Shores of Tripoli

Uncle Charles proved to be as dense about identifying men who wanted men in choosing a vessel captain to entrust with his recalcitrant nephew, not to mention one of his precious merchant ships, as he had been about Billy's behavior—and, more pointedly about the Reverend Andrew Apsley he fawned over. Billy's uncle never did seem to latch on to what the good clergymen had done to his nephew for months. Billy had shown his uncle the healing stripes on his body, claiming out of spite, that Hammond had done them rather than Apsley. And all Rawley had said was, "Good, you deserve that and more."

In the event, from what his uncle was ranting to him about the circumstance, Billy gathered that Charles Rawley was more upset about the lost opportunity of linking his family to that of another wealthy planter through the marriage of Billy than he was that Billy preferred rough-fucking men.

Billy could tell that the captain of the company vessel that he was to sail on to the Mediterranean, a different man from the one who had captained the ship on the Boston-to-Charleston run the previous year, was as queer as could be just from the way he watched the young man board his ship. And queer in a way that Billy couldn't quite place. In all the men Billy had been involved with, none acted quite like this one did. Of course he had heard of Billy's proclivities. By the way he leaned way over the rail and licked his lips and flashed his eyes—fluttered his eyelashes—as Billy walked up the gangway and into his clutches for the long voyage across the ocean, the younger man knew what he was in for. All he could think of was the hope that the captain was a cruel lover, although the almost coquettish way the captain looked at him seemed to put that possibility into question.

Billy didn't know all that he would be in for, however.

It was not the sexual opportunities and burdens that Billy first thought of in the experience of going to sea before the mast, which is where Rawley told the captain to put him—with the other common sailors—as a punishment that the man would have no appreciation that Billy would enjoy. The experience of learning the ropes and watches as a three-masted barque sailor was one of the best of Billy's life. He took to the work immediately. It was nowhere near as hard as growing rice, and he'd only been in on one weeding and the harvesting of that. Billy wasn't sure he'd claim that he could have survived the complete growing season, and he could well understand that the only ones who would survive those conditions were slaves who had little other choice. Of course, he was as much a slave to other men as Spear and his companions were.

The chores on board were varied, however, and they left Billy muscle tired beyond exhaustion for the first two weeks of the voyage. He would come to his hammock in the forecastle totally spent but also totally satisfied with what he had learned and experienced that day—and how free he felt climbing the rigging, watching the unending sea open to the plowing of the ship, and feeling the breeze cool his body. Although it was September, the ship was taking a southern route, and the sailors wore next to nothing to keep as cool as possible.

Billy was in good shape from the hard work he'd done on the rice plantation, but most of the other men were even more heavily muscled than he was. Most of them were larger than he was too, even though some were gaunt from age and the hard demands of a sailor's life. Billy was often still taken for a boy rather than a young man of nearly nineteen years. In terms of sexual desire, though, being taken for a boy was no protection from men such as these—it was rather the opposite.

They were a rough and ugly lot, on the whole, and other than a couple of cabin boys, Billy stood out as the most desirable morsel for any sniffing about for that. Having adapted to versatility by the nature of their life of long spans of time without access to women, something like Billy was exactly what the sailors were looking for. In port, they fucked women mostly; on ship they were forced to fuck other men exclusively.

They fucked because they were compelled to—there were few other pleasures available to them on the sea. The pickings usually were so marginally acceptable that any young, good-looking man who came their way did not, under any circumstances, remain a virgin to the cock for long—whether or not he liked it, and, interesting enough, men on the high seas relegated to the "receiver" role in man-on-man sex tended to adapt to it. As a "receiver" aged and became hardened as a sailor, he could turn into topping others, as he liked. Until then, however, his ass was claimed by any man—or combination of men—who could physically master him. If he couldn't adapt, he tended to be lost at sea.

During the first week, Billy, berthed in the forecastle with the common sailors, was fucked at least twice every night after his second night. The second night aboard, he was fucked continuously through the night and was unable to work the next day. After that, the first mate proclaimed that Billy was off limits for more than three visits a night and that he was to be accorded at least four hours straight for sleep. "He is aboard to work in the rigging, not on his back," the first mate said. "Any day the lad is unable to turn out for his duty is the day his jobs are added to the duties of them who fucked him the previous night." That effectively put Billy's ass on a less-taxing schedule, and the other men made up a primitive chart on whose turn it would be with him on a given night.

It remained, however, that Billy was the most desirable—and smallest of stature—piece in the forecastle, so first mate, or no, as long as he was berthed there, he would be fucked nightly. The first mate understood this and only put limits on the activity; he made no attempt to stop it. And Billy, who reveled in the need to be "punished" like this, made no complaint. Most of the men were ugly, certainly, but they also were rough, which Billy liked, and in the dark, one hard body is pretty much like any other.

The young apprentice sailor wasn't assaulted the first night. He worked little that day because it required more experienced hands than his to put the ship to sea, and this was not time to be giving lessons. That night, with the sailors having worked especially hard themselves that day, Billy was able to cajole his way free of attention and to remain awake and vigilant through much of the night. After the first full day of working on deck and in the rigging, though, he was able to do nothing but crawl into his hammock and drift off into a dead sleep. The first brave man, one of the dominating forces in the forecastle, just climbed into the hammock with Billy, split his legs, and sent the hammock to rocking even more than the moving ship did by plowing his hole. Billy just lay there, exhausted, as the sailor knew he would be, his arms dangling over the side of the hammock, and languidly watching the other sailors take notice and begin to circle around them like sharks.

Although this was at sea rather than on land, other than in the relative size of the cocks and vigor of the fuck, this was little different from what Billy had recently been experiencing in the men's slave hut at the plantation. He was long past objecting to opening his legs and receiving any man's cock.

When the sailor was finished, he lifted Billy out of the hammock and gave him up into the arms of two sailors who were so anxious to get at him that they were willing to share his channel. Billy did none of the screaming of violation that the sailors expected of such a double assault, but just lay, arms dangling and legs wrapped around the thighs of the man facing him, his head resting in the hollow of the shoulder of the sailor behind. He ejaculated during the fucking, so the sailors decided he was having a pleasant enough time—which he was other than, for a change, desiring sleep more than rough sex.

After that, it was a night of just passing Billy from one erect cock to the other. So randy did the sailors become that one of them went out on deck and intercepted one of the cabin boys, barely younger than Billy and not any larger, and brought him into the forecastle to share around as well. In the morning the cabin boy was laying on his back, his knees wagging open because he couldn't close them, and moaning softly to himself, which raised the occasion of the visit by the first mate to parcel out his daily duties across the forecastle—except to Billy—and the warning of what would happen if Billy couldn't appear to take up his position in the rigging on the next day.

Even though Billy was in a haze throughout the experience—if not particularly upset by it, as it was not the first such group taking he had been the object of in the last month, the black slaves on the plantation capable of doing it with bigger and longer cocks and more vigorously and with greater stamina. He was able to notice that one sailor, a black man of musculature, if not height, to equal any of the slaves at Rawley Place, save Spear himself, was sitting off in the shadows. He was watching, but he wasn't participating. Billy assumed that he was a rare sailor whose cock wouldn't seek any port. He obviously was the most respected—or feared, or both—man in the forecastle, however, as indicated by the deference everyone gave him and the wide path they accorded him as they moved about. Billy was to be told later that he was Black Ned, a Nubian from the deserts of northern Africa. That he knew all there was to know about sailing the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and that he took whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to take it.

Indeed, belying Billy's first impression, after the first mate departed the forecastle, Black Ned came down from his perch on a top bunk at the rear of the forecastle, came over and toed the inert body of the cabin boy, being rewarded with a low moan. He thereupon scooped the cabin boy's body up from the deck and carried him back to the bunk. He laid him down on the edge of the bottom bunk, wishboned the lad's legs, unbuttoned his own fly, and began fucking the cabin boy with long, hard strokes that had the young man whimpering, writhing anew, and weakly begging for mercy.

Some would have seen that as a delayed building of desire. But Billy recognized it for the challenge it was. Black Ned didn't desire the cabin boy's well-used ass. He was making a statement of defiance of the first mate's dictum.

The act of defiance didn't stop there. Although Billy didn't have to work that day, he did have to piss. After the sun had been up a couple of hours, need forced Billy to stumble out onto the deck. He lurched to the side of the ship, unbuttoned his cut-off trousers, and started pissing a great arc into the sea. He felt a man covering him close from behind, and looked down to see a brown hand encase his cock, He was still pissing when the hand started to jerk him off. The man's other hand was pushing his trousers down around his knees. Two fingers and then three were invading his channel.

The voice at his ear was deep and menacing. "You are going to come for me while I get this whole fist up in you and then I'm going to fuck you as a man should be fucked."

Billy moaned, knowing that it was Black Ned at his back. This was happening out on deck. The men around them stopped their work to watch. Billy could even see that the first mate, standing at watch on the upper deck, could see what Black Ned was doing. He called out nothing to Black Ned, however. All that he did was to yell at the other men to see to their work. Those that were able saw to what Black Ned was doing with Billy in addition to seeing to their work.

The sailor apprentice was moaning and his eyes were watering as Black Ned stroked his cock and stuffed another finger inside him. Billy's feet were nearly lifted off the deck—he was standing on his tiptoes—and he ejaculated as he felt the knuckles of Black Ned's hand inside his rim.

"You want this. You love this," Black Ned muttered.

"Yes. Don't stop. But fuck me now. The cock; give me the cock," Billy begged. He was being fucked, but it was with Black Ned's half-buried fist.

"From now on, I am first," Black Ned growled.

"Yes," Billy acceded.

"And you come to me."

"Yes. Oh god, oh god. Your cock. Give me the cock," Billy cried out.

He had been gripping roping overhead to keep his balance until that point, but Black Ned slapped his hands off the ropes, and Billy's body pitched forward, his eyes now looking at the churning wake of the waves that the ship was slicing through. Only Black Ned's strong grip on Billy's waist kept him from falling into the sea.

That's when Black Ned showed Billy that he had the thickest cock on the ship.

On ensuing nights, Billy climbed up to Black Ned's upper bunk at the back of the forecastle first and rode the Nubian's cock before he came down to find out what other sailors' names had come up on the evening's chart. Billy had found the satisfying Alpha dog that he had been searching for on the ship.

However, after two weeks, the first mate put an immediate stop to Billy's nightly takings, Billy having become wildly popular by insisting that each man do his worst with him, simply by letting the men know that Billy was the nephew of the ship's owner, that his hard work only extended to his job as an apprentice sailor, and that he would be sleeping with the officers from henceforth.

Sleeping with the officers, of course, meant even more demanding sex from more educated and sophisticated men with more positions and imaginative ways to tax a bottom.

The third week, as the ship was approaching the Azores, the captain at last revealed his own desire. Billy didn't know why he had held off so long, but perhaps it had to do with the perverse nature of his fetish and with the possibility that Billy would report it to his uncle. Apparently, however, the officers had become so open and detailed in their discussions and boasts of what Billy would allow them to do to him and how he would beg for even rougher sex—and how good a lay Billy was—that the captain couldn't resist.

When Billy entered the cabin, he did a double take, as he hadn't realized that there were any women aboard. But there, sitting on a bench seat below the fantail window in the captain's cabin was the visage of a woman, dressed in formal costume.

It was only as Billy was beckoned closer that he discovered it was the captain, dressed as a woman—and quite expertly made up and coiffured as a woman. Even his chest was pushed up and sheathed to give the impression of breasts.

Billy faltered.

"Do not be afraid, Billy," the captain whispered in a voice set falsely high. "I do have a cock, and I will use it with you. And, trust me, I know how to use it. Come, sit beside me."

Billy looked around, hoping there was someone else present he could reason with or seek explanation from. But he had been delivered here by an officer of the ship, and he very much suspected the officer was standing just on the other side of the door. Billy had heard a lock click from the other side of the door when he had entered and it closed behind him.

"Captain, sir . . ." Billy started to say, but then he realized there was nothing he could say. They were out on the Atlantic. This man was god and king of his vessel out here. And Billy was neither naïve nor a virgin.

"Come, please, sit beside me. I don't bite—unless, of course, during our lovemaking you would wish me to. You do know that you are here to be fucked, I assume. I understand there is no trouble in getting you to open your legs. Have you never been fucked by a man dressed as a woman before?"

"No . . . sir, I haven't."

"So, you don't know whether you would be aroused by it or not, do you?"

"No, sir, I don't."

"All you need to do is to treat me like a woman. I know that that might be distasteful to you, but all of the time you do so, you can remember that I have a cock, and that it will please you and make you come."

Billy sat down on the bench beside the "woman," who reached out and caressed his face lightly with the fingers of "her" hand. The captain leaned into Billy and they kissed, which felt no different to Billy than the kiss of any other man save for the taste of the lip rouge.

When the "woman" pulled away from Billy, "she" leaned back in the bench, jutted "her" chest out, and commanded, "Free my breasts and make love to them."

Billy slowly unlaced the "woman's" bodice. The captain wasn't young and wasn't in the best of shape, so the breasts actually were slightly pendulous. The nipples were prominent and had been rouged. The "woman" cupped the back of Billy's head and brought his lips to a nipple. As instructed, he sucked and teethed it and then moved to the other one and back, as the captain sighed and moaned.

Billy's cut-off sailor's trousers were being unbuttoned, and the captain extracted and stroked his cock.

"Put your hand up under my skirt and feel what I have for you."

The captain was naked under the skirt, His cock was erect and thick and his balls were gargantuan.

"I assure you I can fuck with the best," the captain murmured. "I can punish."

The key word had been spoken, the images of being taken roughly had emerged, and Billy's own cock began to harden.

"Sit on it now."

His trousers off, making Billy naked, the front of the captain's skirt was raised, and Billy sat in his lap, facing him, and slid his channel on the cock.

"Crouch on the bench on your heels and keep yourself raised off me. I'll do the fucking."

Billy did so and arched his back away from the captain, and now it was the captain kissing, sucking, and chewing on Billy's nipples as he fucked up into his channel in long, deep thrusts.

Billy was feeling the power of the captain's driving cock when all hell broke loose on the deck above them. It was clear that the ship was being boarded in the twilight, and, from the sound of it, it seemed equally clear that the ship's men had been utterly surprised and were outnumbered and outclassed.

Billy, rose quickly off the captain's cock. The captain, nearly lost in arousal, was slower to respond. Billy had no time to do more than grab up a short sword from a nearby table and turn to the door, when that same door burst open and Black Ned spun into the room. Billy could see the first mate beyond him, laying lifeless in the corridor outside the door. The Nubian was being closely engaged in hand-to-hand sword combat by a swarthy pirate. Spinning in behind Black Ned's assailant was one for Billy too, a muscle-bound Scandinavian giant twice the size of Black Ned's opponent, stripped to the waist and covered in tattoos. A black giant of a man tried to swarm in behind him but was stopped in the doorway because the cabin was hardly big enough to hold the combatants and petrified "lady" already in attendance and still trying to recover from the indignity of his ship being attacked while he was in costume.

Black Ned ran his opponent through the gut with his sword, leaving no doubt that the man had been dispatched. At the same time, Billy's sword tip found a soft spot near the abdomen of the Scandinavian. As both men fell, the black giant found room to enter and pierced Black Ned's side with his sword. Billy pulled his own sword out of the Scandinavian and sliced at the black giant's sword arm just as he was preparing to finish Black Ned. This assailant turned to Billy with a look of surprise and malevolence in his eyes, and Billy was about to run him through when the doorway was filled with yet another figure.

The others now were joined by the apparent pirate crew leader, a magnificent figure of a man, dressed fancier and with more ruffles than his compatriots, and honored with the benefit of two flintlock pistols rather than cutlery. Billy heard a loud noise and saw a puff of smoke enveloping the visage of this late-arriving figure, and all went black.