The gentlemen, the three principles of the expedition, Peter Cushing, Daniel Hobart, and Addis Shern, were conversing at the rail when Captain Lynch sidled up to them from out of the darkness. He always felt so inferior—and, he thought, was treated as such—when he approached their counsel. But he was the captain of this vessel, not any one of the three of them, and that meant something, even if they did not act as if they countenanced it. They were not in command until they reached land. Out here on the sea he was in command.
The men grew silent as he approached, and Lynch heard a seaman sing out from the rigging a melodious "Land ho." He'd been doing so periodically all evening and into the night more as a warning that they may be moving into shallow waters than as a first sighting of terra firma after the forty-eight days they'd been on the waters from England to this new world.
They had first landed at Plymouth, to the south, and were now sailing north, working on identifying and putting in at the land grant Charles I had given to the lords Cushing, Hobart, and Shern.
That must be the young sailor, Thomas Cole, singing from the mainmast, Lynch thought. And he couldn't keep himself from licking his lips in arousal. Nice fresh piece that, he thought. He'd intended to get to that on this voyage—and sooner than now, when they were close to their destination. Clear tenor singing voice. Almost angelic. It would be—no, will be—a pleasure, he thought. He couldn't think of any better pastime than debauching angels.
As the three principals came to realize that Lynch was not going to leave his position at their elbows—and decorum required that they not snub him noticeably, at least in the presence of the deck crew—they picked up their conversation again, albeit an entirely different discussion than the one they had been conducting. Now it was focused on the cry of land that they'd heard from the rigging. All three leaned forward and looked intensely into the dusk as the form of twin bluffs, one of which was a curved spit out into the ocean, began to take shape to port of the vessel as it cut through the waves headed north along the North American continent.
"That may be it," said Shern.
"Yea, it is described as that appears," agreed Hobart. "A natural harbor, nearly circular, abutted by two sharp-cliffed headlands, one of which is likened to an arm curving out into the ocean. That do look like our land grant."
"And not too soon," chimed in Cushing. "It be positioned between Plymouth to the south and Boston to the north and we left Plymouth not long after sunrise. I afear that if this be it not, we have overshot and will be in Boston by tomorrow's dawn."
"Captain," Hobart said, turning toward the hunch-backed, rat-faced Irishman nosing in at their elbows at the rails. "Heave to here, if you please. In the morning's light we'll send out a party to determine if this be our destination." He was doing what he could to hold back his distaste for the ship's captain, who looked the part of a highwayman and who he and his fellow noblemen highly suspected of unclean and un-Christian practices.
"As you please, M'Lord," Captain Lynch said in a deferential manner, lowering his eyes and bowing slightly. He would be pleased if this were the proper spot and he could be rid of these fopperies forthwith. But his mind wasn't on them. If this was the spot and they all made land, he no longer would be in command—at least until he could get back to his ship.
This meant that the intentions he'd long had for the seaman Cole should be brought to fruition tonight, for he had heard Addis Shern sweet talking the lad and was afraid he would pirate Cole away to the land once they had arrived. Lynch wanted the first taking, the deflowering, to be highly entertaining—and to be his to enjoy. He thought Shern would lose interest once Cole was debauched by another, and then he himself could savor the conquest with follow-on fuckings of the lad on the sail back to England.
Calling out to the master of the watch, the captain set into motion the anchoring of the ship. Then he called up into the rigging, "You, sailor Thomas Cole. Shinny down here and fetch a bottle of rum from the stores and bring it to my cabin."
Then, with almost a celebratory leer of having outfoxed them at the three land grant gentlemen at the rails, which made all three of them wince, he turned and strode to his cabin.
Although technically innocent—at least of the ultimate sin—the young, blond sailor, Thomas Cole, was not stupid. As he was descending slowly from the rigging, much more slowly than if it had been a rations call, his mind was racing. He had known other young sailors who were told to deliver rum to the captain's quarters and who came back to the forecastle bowlegged, sniveling, and half out of their minds. And he had known he had had the captain's eye for most of the voyage already.
He was afraid. Not so much afraid of the act, which he had seen and heard the sailors performing with each other in the darkness of the night in the far corners of the forecastle, but more of the captain, who was a cruel and gnarled monster. In whisperings when other sailors had come back from the captain's cabin and sat alone and unresponding in the shadows, rocking back and forth and whimpering until the necessities of life before the mast enveloped them once more in the daily chores and challenges of a sailor, he had heard tales of the captain and of his cruelty. But mostly, he had heard tails of a cock that could split a man in two.
This brought fear into young Thomas Cole's mind. But it brought arousal and curiosity, as well.
Thomas had always been too curious for his own good—and too angelic of face and willowy of body. Back in his village in Dorset, although he had done nothing to earn the reputation, he came to be known as a tease to a certain type of older man. These rumors had reached the ears of his parents, who, in consternation, had seen him shipped off to sea—as much to save the family reputation as to protect his virtue.
His first voyage was this one, on the ship captained by Mortimer Lynch.
Truth be known, Thomas hadn't minded the attentions of the older men of his village—the tentative touchings and special attentions in the rectory by the cleric of his church had been particularly interesting to him. But there was nothing definite that Thomas could identify as being the reason. Just being himself—an angelic-looking, lithe-figured young man with a mop of golden hair and fair of face—seemed to be all that would explain why he had to be so secretly and quickly whisked to the nearest seaport.
He had begun to understand what it was all about when he was warned upon embarking on Lynch's ship to pick a hammock near the door into the forecastle, which was, he was told, perhaps the least private and noisiest spot, but also the safest for him.
It wasn't long before he learned why, as the noises of the night in the forecastle slowly informed him of happenings in the shadowy corners—and the types of low guttural moans and sighs that were mildly similar to what he remembered hearing in the rectory when the cleric was helping him put on his alb before services.
There was another young man on the voyage, though, who had caught young Cole's interest. Edward Geer. He wasn't a sailor. A brawny, dark-haired, hirsute young man with brooding good looks, Geer was a carpenter's apprentice in the entourage of the gentleman, Peter Cushing. He didn't bunk in the forecastle, which was reserved for the ship's sailors. But there were other, remote, dark places in the ship. Places where, after Thomas and Edward had taken up a friendship in bantering and shared mirth on the deck, the two could repair to more quiet—and, eventually, more intimate discussions.
The ship was no more than a week out of Weymouth before Edward and Thomas were exploring each other's bodies with trembling hands, eventually each, while lips found lips, finding the other's cock with their hands and providing mutual relief—and, somewhat to their surprise, mutual pleasure.
Thomas might have gone farther with Edward, but a week out of Plymouth Landing in the New World, he was taken with affright at the danger that might be putting Edward in. The longer the voyage, the randier the sailors got—and the braver and more demanding.
A bruiser of a muscle man they all called the Greek and who, rumor had it, was determined to debauch his way through all of the "taker" sailors ere the ship reached land, grabbed Thomas from his hammock one night and was forcibly carrying him to the rear of the forecastle, telling a trembling Thomas in no uncertain terms what he was going to do with him. But before the Greek could carry through with his plan, the coxswain, summoned by another sailor, had come down into the forecastle with a belaying pin in his hand and commanded that the Greek not manhandle Thomas, with the statement, "Captain Lynch has declared this one not be touched."
The effect on the Greek was frightening in and of itself. He immediately let Thomas slip to the floor and slunk away.
Thomas thanked the coxswain, only to be told that there was no real thanks to be giving—that the captain was making such a declaration because he intended to have Thomas himself. From the look that accompanied this declaration, Thomas understood that he was being pitied—but more than that, that the coxswain was trying to save his own ass.
"Ye still be a virgin to the cock of man, be ye not?" the coxswain had bluntly asked.
"Yes," Thomas answered, being truthfully able to answer that, as his fondlings with Edward had not yet gone that far—if he caught the coxswain's meaning well enough—even though he had hopes of it.
"Then keep it that way. I have put the word out. If another man takes what the captain wants from you, you must tell me. The captain should not find this out for his own. It would be worth the hide of all of us. And, for that man's sake, give him fair warning of the captain's privilege before he do touch you—if you have any mercy in you. Because if he do touch you, he is a dead man."
It was after this scene in the forecastle that Thomas paid increased attention to the sailors staggering back from their rum delivery to the captain's quarters and whisperings were made to him of the captain's cruelty and the fearsomeness of his manhood.
Upon arrival in Plymouth Landing, when Edward Geer sought Thomas out to go to an aft storage locker with him, sighing of his need for Thomas before they must be parted, Thomas told him that he could not. He said that Geer would be arriving at his own destination on land soon and Thomas would be sailing away with the ship—and that he had enjoyed his private moments with Geer, but that it should get no more serious than it had. What he didn't tell Edward was that he was afraid of what the captain would do to both of them if he heard they were being intimate.
