My name is Emma. I was born and grew up just outside of Buffalo New York. My father worked very hard in a plant thirteen hours a day that smelted iron ore that was brought in off of the great lakes. My mother had her hands full with my seven siblings and me. I was the eldest and had just turned eighteen in 1877 when the widowed butcher of our town that was in his late thirties asked for my hand in marriage. As his eldest son was older than me I was mortified and spurned his proposal. My father was very angry. My mother was sympathetic but explained that I had reached an age where I needed to take stock of my options and make a decision of what I was going to do with my life. I helped her take care of the little ones and assisted my mother with the laundry that she took in to generate a little extra income, but I knew that I was a drain on the family resources.
I am no beauty but I am not ugly either just sort of plain I would guess you would say. I am tall for a girl at five foot six. I wear my brown hair long down to my waist. I have a full bust and fuller round hips that my mother's friends said were perfect for birthing babies. I also am very smart and read every spare moment that I have in the day. I have read the bible eighteen times and made a pledge to myself to read it every year of my life anew. My girl friend Sarah says that I intimidated boys of my age. Older men on the other hand had been attracted to me for a few years because of my maturing rounded figure. I had gone to the minister of our church who after hearing of my thoughts and concerns had introduced me to the bishop who had suggested that I think about becoming a missionary. I found it an exciting prospect. I could have an adventure much like those that I read about in some of my books. The problem was that the missionary service only accepted married couples, single women were forbidden. Nonetheless I was taken into the program and then introduced to a young unmarried man in his mid twenties named Tom, who was also spouseless. Our introduction took place two weeks before I was due to leave. Tom was very religious and extremely plain to put it mildly. He had few social skills and could hardly mutter a sentence that was not somehow scripture oriented. If I wanted to go to my assigned posting in China I had no choice but to marry the young man. The bishop in a joint ceremony with five other couples married us on February 3rd 1878.
The first night of our betrothal under the covers of our bed Tom pulled up my nightdress mounted me and took my virginity with no foreplay or passion. It did not last very long, he hurt me and I bled. When he pulled out of me he knelt down by the bed and said a prayer thanking the Lord God for his blessings and begging his forgiveness for the sin that he had just committed. It was not an act that I hoped to repeat anytime soon.
A few days later our tallmasted ship left Boston Harbor. We traveled around the southern tip of South America through horrific seas that left everyone on board seasick. After more than a month and a half we reached the warm southern Pacific Ocean, which was very lovely, and our passage became an absolute pleasure. One fateful morning, however, the skies suddenly began to darken, the winds increased in intensity and the waves took on a menacing froth.
For four days our vessel, floundered in the middle of a terrible extremely strong typhoon. All of our lifeboats were swept away and our masts cracked, were broken and then lost overboard. There were more than two hundred frightened souls on board. Everyone, the crew, the families in transit to overseas postings and the single men on assignments or seeking their fortunes prayed constantly for the storm to abate and for salvation. On the second day of the storm Tom was lost overboard while trying to valiantly assist the crew in salvaging the last remaining mast. I was proud of him and I said a prayer for him. I felt badly because I did not feel like I had lost my husband. We had hardly known each other. Despite the valiant efforts of the crew the ship began taking on water and slowly sinking. After a desperate but gallant fight the ship finally sank.
I found myself clinging to a brace of the ship's side in the water with a young man who was on a diplomatic posting to Siam. The young man's name was Stephen and he was twenty-five years old. He had graduated from Harvard and after serving a short stint in Washington was headed for his first overseas assignment. I had seen him on the foredeck a number of times during the journey but the missionary couples on board did not interact with the other passengers, especially the single men, so we had not ever spoken before we were coupled together on the makeshift raft.
For two days we drifted in the ocean current and prayed for rescue. There was nothing we could do but talk. I got to know all about him and told him everything about myself. The weather calmed and the waves gradually became much gentler. Mercifully the cloud cover remained so that we were not subjected to the hot burning sun. On the morning of the third day we saw an island on the near horizon and began kicking to propel our flotsam toward the beach. As we got nearer we saw it was a small island with a single mountain and a beautiful white sand beach that disappeared into a forest of palms and pines. We also saw smoke coming from the island. We talked about it and convinced ourselves that the inhabitants would most certainly be our deliverance and rescue.
As we grew nearer we saw five men on the beach. Three of the men came into the surf and assisted us up onto the sand. As we recovered we learned that the three who had helped us were also survivors from the ship that we had been on. The other two men had been shipwrecked on the island for more than two years. I looked at the two men who had been on the island for so long and saw them looking at me with a raw hunger. My dress had been ravaged by the water and waves. I suddenly realized that my legs and feet were bare from my thighs down and that the tops of my breasts were also visible. I stood and moved closer to Stephen. The other men had no way of knowing my connection to Stephen and were certain to trek carefully while they calculated the synergy of the situation. Stephen had noticed the other men's keen interest in me and put his arm around my shoulder in a possessive and comforting act.
We followed the five men off the beach and up a trail to where the two shipwrecked men had established there home over the months. They had built a rather large cabin and a couple of adjacent storage lean-tos in a clearing in the woods near a stream. All in all it was quite nice. The majestic palms and warm gentle breezes made for an ideal setting. They offered us food and fresh water. While we ate I grew very increasingly uncomfortable as every time I looked up I found the men's smoldering eyes on me. Their names were Jake and Chad. The other three men from our ship were Chris, Adam and Samuel. Chris and Adam were sailors and Samuel was an older merchant who had been traveling to India.
During the rest of the day Jake and Chad told us about the island. There were no other inhabitants and they had had no ships come near during their lonely isolated months. I had a chance to observe the six men. They were all healthy, normal sized men in good shape. Chad was the exception as he was a huge man of more than six feet and weighing over two hundred pounds. He seemed to have the attitude and ability to kill any of the other men with his huge bare hands if he should so choose. Every few hours a couple of the men would go down onto the beach to search for other survivors or debris that may have washed ashore. Stephen stayed with me the entire time. I was extremely afraid to be left alone with Jake and Chad and he sensed that. No one else was found and we all knew that as time passed the chances for people living through the ocean ordeal was slim.
When the sun began to set Jack and Chad brought out distilled spirits that they had learned to make from the fruit that grew on the island. As the men drank their looks at me became more and more open and their talk began to focus on women and their hunger and need for female flesh. Things were getting out of control and Stephen took me into the cabin and had me make a bed a corner. Somewhere during the day he had acquired a knife and he promised to sit up and protect me as I slept. I felt that he was being very noble but I realized that at some point he was going to have to sleep and then I would be on my own and at the mercy of the other men. Inebriated, the men gradually came in and feel asleep in the cabin. When Jake and Chad came in they approached where I was trying to sleep. They saw the knife in Stephen's hand and retired without a confrontation to their beds. There would be many days ahead and there was plenty of time. They knew that their opportunity to get me alone would be coming.
When morning came Stephen summoned everyone to the clearing. A daybreak search had revealed no other survivors. We knew that the seven of us were marooned on the island for the foreseeable future.
"It is obvious we have a problem here," said Stephen as he took leadership of the meeting. "There appears to be enough food and water for us to survive forever. I suspect that someday that a ship will come this way and we will all be saved. It could be tomorrow or maybe in a dozen years or more." He looked at the other five men and then at me before he spoke again. "What we do not have enough of are women." The men mumbled and muttered in agreement. "There is no doubt in my mind that all six of us would like to have Emma in our beds at night and that every one of us is scheming of ways to make it happen."
