by Mark Andrews
The judges made their assessments then and walked away to judge another crew coming down to the pier while Zanda checked both us and the ship. The lines connecting her to the pier were singled up in readiness for the final slipping so we could get into position for the start.
There were six galleys racing this time and soon enough we were all in line and the starting cannon fired. We were off! Ali threw both telegraphs to the full ahead position and we put our backs into the oars. Remember now there were no collars and connecting rods to keep us together. The oars themselves would not allow us to get out of basic time but a lot of effort could be wasted if we weren’t in perfect time with one another.
Andy and I worked well as a team. We both put everything into the task, commensurate with conserving energy and our boat took a lead from the beginning. Ali’s study of how best to use his human engines to best advantage paid off now for although this was no twenty-four hour race, he still couldn’t work us at full speed for too long at a time. Accordingly, once he had a fair lead, he slowed us down to normal speed and then at fifteen minute intervals, let us almost idle at slow speed, actually stopping on the hour for a couple of minutes. Each of the legs was under an hour and he therefore had to carefully plan ahead so our breaks didn’t coincide with a turn around a marker buoy.
He also had to watch his competition for the judges, following the race in a speedboat, would instantly disqualify a galley that broke the rules. Our part was easy. All we had to do was pull the oars. Our master had to be strategist and conserver and boat hander all in one while Zanda stood at his side, offering advice but very definitely number two now.
Ali was good. No doubt about that! He worked us as hard as he dared but was also very aware that if he overdid it, we would drop from exhaustion. If that happened at the moment we docked, good and well, he would be congratulated on his skill at using our energies to the fullest; but if we faltered, say right at the end of the race and thereby lost it, his opponents would grin and nod and say he thought he was too smart. The aim was to use us up but leave the smallest possible reserve at the end.
It didn’t really matter if we were totally exhausted at the end of a race for we were so fit that we would be ready within the next few days to race again if a race was scheduled that we were to compete in.
We listened carefully for our distinctive drum note and the changes that were occurring fairly regularly in it, responding with our muscles to slow down or speed up as required. Mostly, the rowers on the other side were kept at the same pace, Ali using the rudder to steer the boat but when we were to round a buoy, he would back the oars on the inboard side and accelerate the outer bank so as to turn us around it in the least time and distance.
We had practised this manoeuvre over and over again, turning the galley almost on its nose and we had become very good at it. That isn’t to say the other teams, each led by a man like Zanda, weren’t also good. They were. The competition between owners was intense even though they were good friends after the race.
We were all rowing strongly. Even in a race we weren’t allowed to look anywhere but at the head of the rower in front of us but I let my eyes swivel around to glance at the galleys either side of us and as far as I could see, all were behind us. Beside me, the other twenty-three girls and young men strained at their oars, their fine bodies now gilded by the sun on their sweat-streaked skin, the boys each with a massive erection still and we girls’ vaginas pulsing lightly as he heaved back on the oar handle, our bodies now stretched out flat, every muscle in our thighs, bellies, shoulders and arms straining, rippling and writhing as the oar mechanism released them and we were able to heave down on the handle, then push it forward until it clicked, our bodies now bent forward over our thighs and we could drop the oar back into the water and heave backwards once more.
Time after time, cycle after cycle, we repeated this action, our naked, lightly tanned bodies looking utterly superb, accentuated by the erections each boy sported and by the naked, pulsing vaginas on we girls.
The rest periods were skilfully managed by Ali so we never lost our lead and in fact actually lengthened it as the hours passed. When we came to the first turn we were the clear leader and Ali got us around the buoy with only inches to spare from the blade tips to the buoy. If we had touched it, we would have been disqualified so it was good management on his part. Then it was full ahead together once more and we sped off, making nearly six knots as we heaved on the oars at the fastest rate for a few minutes.
We won that race by a good margin and then idled back to the wharf. The master had a celebration in the club they had near the pier; Zanda allowed us a special meal - actually it was roast beef - a real treat for us ...
Other races followed. If we weren’t in them, Ali allowed us to stand on the cliff and watch the other galleys perform. This was good of him for few of the others permitted such leniency, their crews going back to their normal training. Ali was a master psychologist though. He judged that a little relaxation of the rules here and there, if carefully monitored, would not only give us a break from our routine but also make us grateful to him and in this he was right.
At last the day arrived for the big race. It was to start at noon and would go until about the same time the following day. As always, we pranced down to the pier while the judges assessed our bodies and our demeanour.
I sat at our oar in a fever of excitement. This was the day we had worked so hard for. We were leading the points score for this season’s races but if another master won the big race which carried fifty points for a win, we could be overturned as leader and if we didn’t win a place at all, lose out entirely.
The drum roll began and we thrust our bellies up in the ritual salute to our master then, a few minutes later, dropped our buttocks back onto the hard bench. The preparations were almost complete. And then the order came to cast off. We turned, gathered way and began to edge up to the starting position, holding water there until the other qualified entries joined us.
The cannon boomed and this time, Ali set the speed at normal. Others used full ahead and I thought how foolish of them. Ali, I knew, would only use this speed when necessary for we were going to be rowing for the best part of twenty-four hours. It would be very easy to tire us early and then, shame of shames, actually have to retire from the race entirely.
But even at normal speed, we cracked on a good pace - around four knots or four and a half miles per hour. It sounds slow perhaps but this is human-power we’re talking about - and only twenty-four of us, not a hundred horsepower diesel engine. This time, there were no buoys to round. We had to watch the coral reefs of course and there were a couple of rocky outcrops on two headlands, but apart from that, Ali could steer us where he wished. He had been out in his speedboat though and had found some currents his competitors didn’t know about and so we steered some strange-looing courses at times.
That and his skilful management of our physical resources stood him in good stead. We might have appeared to be steering an erratic course but when we got into one of those currents, we leapt forward, gaining a number of advantages over the other five boats, each of which was hugging the shore as the shortest route around the island. Shortest perhaps, but not the quickest and Ali had done his sums very well. He had studied the effects of drag as well as the current and knew, down to the last knot, how well the currents would aid us.
Accordingly, by the end of the first circuit, at about midnight on the first day, we were well clear of the nearest galley. Of course we carried navigation lights and indeed the very latest in navigation equipment such as GPS (Global Positioning System) and radar and although he couldn’t see the other ships, they were very apparent on his radar screen, a long way behind us now.
Once more he manoeuvred us to take advantage of the currents and our lead lengthened some more.
And how did I feel? Good. Surprising really. I had been rowing for t
welve hours with only short rests on the hour but Ali had varied the pace from time to time and this had allowed our muscles to work at different paces throughout the day and so continue to perform. I wasn’t even tired. Of course, Zanda’s efforts to train and condition our bodies had been aimed at this one thing - to race his master’s galley for an extended period and in that he had been eminently successful.
We were indeed as fit and strong as any group of human beings had ever been and our stamina was also second to none. Not only were our muscles able to continue working the oars but our hearts and lungs were also capable of delivering the oxygen and food they needed to continue to work.
We were fed pure glucose in sips all day and the water intake was also monitored carefully. The glucose would provide us energy and the water was necessary to keep our bodies going at full pace. If we needed to pass water, the small boys who tended to our watering brought cans along for us to do it in.
Beside me, I sensed Andy was as exhilarated by the race as I was and the pair of us, like all the others in the crew, listened for the drum-beats carefully. We could see Ali, of course, and if his hand strayed to one or both of the telegraph handles that controlled not only the drums but also the hydraulic mechanisms that controlled our oars and kept them in sync with one another, then we listened even more carefully for the change of beat.
I delighted in having Andy next to me. His body was now as good as it was possible to get it (and he said mine was, too) and I continually stole glances to watch as his beautiful belly muscles stood out as he laid his body back at the end of each stroke. His cock was still erect of course. Even for that twenty-four race all the boys had to keep them hard. He told me it was second nature now and required no real effort. I was glad for although I delighted in looking down at it as it quivered while his torso moved up and down over it, I would have hated it if he had been under a strain to keep it that way.
On we went and as the dawn broke around us I was pleased to note I couldn’t even see any of our competition behind us. Ali had announced our relative positions from time to time and now he told us they were miles back and that we could have an extended rest if we wished.
Andy called out that we didn’t need it and the others (apart from the Thai boy and a couple of others who were also lazy-bones) all concurred. Our master grinned and agreed, but gave us a little longer than usual at the slow speed anyway.
Needless to say, we won that race and clinched the trophy for the season.
Ali was very pleased and gave each of the crew members a three day leave pass.
But he also gave me some news. “In nine months, we have the major season for the year, Christine. I have decided to have you mated with Sadiki, who, as you may know is the giant Nubian boy over there ... The mating will take place tomorrow since Zanda tells me you are now fertile.”
“Yes, master,” I said but my mind was racing and I glanced across at Andy, wondering how he would take the news. He just winked and smiled at me, however and I felt relieved.
Of course I didn’t want to carry another man’s child. If I had to have a baby, I wanted it to be Andy’s, but I was a slave and so was he. Slaves were things, not people. We had no say in what we did, even to when we would be permitted to carry an infant and who its father would be ...
Then I began to wonder at the mating. I knew it was done with some ceremony and I cringed as I thought of being forced to lie with another man while others watched. But then I wondered again. Would it be lying on a bed, even? Perhaps it would be done in some other manner.
I didn’t sleep much than night and stared across at Andy sleeping like a baby across the stall, his splendid, stark naked body lying peacefully while I agonised over what was coming ...
Chapter 6
They had already used his seed for their inhuman breeding program and I had been forced to watch as he impregnated one of the other girls. I had had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand I loved watching his body performing at anything. He was just so beautiful I could never get enough of looking at him. On the other hand of course, he was now making love to another woman even if he had no say in it.
There were no mixed feelings about my own coming mating or the gestation of the infant, however. The very thought was anathema and as I had watched other girls forced to carry unwanted babies, the sires of which were always of a different race (to create better blood lines, they said) I had known they hated it as much as I was going to.
Not that they ever tried to cause a miscarriage, however. The threat was always there: do anything to damage the growing infant and you will be further modified - a full hysterectomy followed by a total and complete closure of the vagina. You will henceforth be a female eunuch without a woman’s proper frontal orifice at all!
We took the threat seriously. We had to. There was a girl there who hadn’t and she was now quite smooth down there. She looked quite weird, actually. Her lower belly was quite flat and since they had afterwards fed her male hormones and exercised her with heavy weights, she was now a real muscle girl. She was no longer eligible to take part as a female crew member but Ali kept her on at the house as a sort of labourer to do the heavy work around the place but I think it was more as an example to us that he was serious in his intentions.
She was a Swedish girl named Ingrid and every time I saw her I shuddered as I realised what had been done to her. Her face was now quite masculine and her body even looked more male than female, the breasts had shrunk and her hips seemed to be smaller too, while her muscles were really impressive in size and tone.
Oh no, I would not be trying to tamper with my child, unwanted or not; not if this was the result ...
The event was awful, however. It really was the most shameful of anything that had happened to me since my kidnapping. I reflected back on all of it: the kidnapping itself; the transport in the plane with the canvas bags over my upper body; the discovery of what we now were; the initial examination and conditioning, the operation and then the discovery we were now galley slaves followed by our ritual branding ... all of it was bad, but now to be forced to carry a stranger’s child in my belly and then, immediately after birth, have it taken from me was the absolute pits.
Worst of all this was the mating itself.
If I had thought I was going to be allowed to lie down on a mattress and have Sadiki cover me in the normal way I was much mistaken but even that wasn’t all of it. First I was to be displayed to Ali’s friends.
I was carefully bathed, scrubbed, oiled and then the oil rubbed deep into my flesh. This part was pleasant enough although the final rubbing with the coarse towels to make my skin glow and remove dead skin was not at all nice.
Then they came and took Andy away, to be secured so he could watch the humiliation of my mating, I supposed, just as they had taken me first when he was being used as a stallion.
They put a diaphanous robe over my shoulders and then led me to the mating room. This was not in the cellars but was part of Ali’s entertainment area and boasted a ring of very comfortable chairs around a recessed circular turntable on which stood the mating frame itself. As I had watched Andy fertilising the girl, I had been appalled at the lewdness of it; the sheer animality of the act. That one human being could treat others as nothing more than animals - as breeding stock - and have the females fertilised in this so humiliating manner was beyond my comprehension.
But then slavery was outside my comprehension too. As a free Australian, in a country that had never known slavery in any form, I couldn’t appreciate what it really meant. But as I stayed longer and longer on that island and began to comprehend it in all aspects of its ancient form, I began to understand that slaves were not considered as human at all. We were definitely lesser beings upon whom the worst atrocities could be committed with impunity but also quite within the bounds of normality. Using us as galley slaves was, to our owners, perfectly nor
mal. So was forcing us females to carry babies to strangers.
Of course there was the power thing too. Men and women delight in having power over others and in the institution of slavery, this can be carried to its ultimate. The power of life and death over one’s slaves - and everything up to that point. I think this is what Andy and I realised very early in our lives there which is why we escaped the worst of the punishments Zanda perpetrated on his charges.
I am wandering. I’m sorry.
Andy was locked to a short stake beside Ali’s chair. His wrists were manacled behind his back to the top of the stout post and he has to stand there and watch the whole proceeding of my mating to the huge black boy, Sadiki.
He too was there, standing on the turntable, stark naked of course and with his cock already fully erect, no doubt in anticipation of his coming pleasure. He really was a magnificent specimen. Much taller than Andy and built like an ancient god with broad, well muscled shoulders and arms, splendid chest, rippling belly muscles, powerful, very shapely thighs and very pronounced, curving buttocks that I ached to feel (male buttocks are a fetish of mine and this boy’s were the best) and a weapon between his thighs that had me gaping in awe.
He was also a very handsome devil with a wide grin almost always on his face; a grin that showed off two rows of even white teeth, eyes that were pure black inside perfectly white surrounds capped with fine eyebrows that showed of a nobility I could only guess at.
I suppose if I had to be mated with a man who was not Andy, I couldn’t have chosen a better one but that wasn’t the point. Sadiki wasn’t my man and he wasn’t my choice!
His wife was also there, locked to a matching stake on Ali’s other side so both our partners would be forced to watch as we were forcibly conjoined in the act of human mating.