Somewhere Beyond the Lighthouse

As soon as he was outside, his aggrieved mate locked the door and turned to the helmsman. "Turn back south, now!" he ordered. "That's our only chance of survival. I mean it."

"Orders are orders, sir," the helmsman replied.

"You fool, don't you know what happens to whalers who try to sail to Sauraquid?!"

"I know the stories, but you hear a lot of stories, don't you?" the helmsman replied.

"Here's a story," said one of the other sailors who had been assisting the helmsman. "I see what they're all looking at! You've got to see this!"

"I already know what it is," the mate said, recalling the stories he'd heard from his old friend Jamison, who never had forgiven his captain nor learned to mind his tongue.

"No you don't!" insisted the young sailor. "Three naked women dancing on a beach!"

"What?" exclaimed the helmsman, and in a moment of weakness he let go of the wheel to go take a quick look. Sensing his opportunity, the mate seized the moment, and the wheel. He turned it as hard to port as he could, getting it a few turns before the helmsman realized his mistake and returned to his post, shoving the mate out of the way. "You idiot!" he snapped. "Just you wait until Shapp hears about this!"

"Shapp is going to drown like the rest of us if we don't head south!"

"With you pulling stuff like that, of course we are!" the helmsman said. When the mate tried to take over the wheel again, he was met with a swift punch in the mouth and fell sprawling on the damp floor. Outside, the boy who had made the unlikely claim about the girlie show could see Shapp struggling to make it back up the stairs as the ship wobbled about, a look of absolute rage on his face, while the other sailors looked relieved and searched in vain for the vision they had lost sight of in the commotion. Their dire situation was either forgotten for the moment or looked so inevitable as to make them cease caring.

"Let me in there this second!" Shapp roared, banging on the locked wheelhouse door. "Unless you want to be thrown overboard!"

"That's probably the safest thing!" called back the mate, who by then had picked himself up off the floor and was rubbing his rapidly swelling jaw. Seeing that one of the younger sailors was on his way to the door to unlock it, he leapt across and blocked the way. "You'll thank me later on!" he insisted, shoving the younger sailor back. At that moment a particularly intense wave hit the boat, and the younger sailor fell backwards and also knocked the helmsman off balance, sending the wheel off to starboard.

"What on earth are they doing?" wondered Josephine as she pranced up and down the beach, hands on hips, showing off her body to the ship. "I've never seen anything like that before!"

"Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!" called Peggy from the lookout. "They're at each other's throats already. At this rate they'll kill each other before the squall even gets there!"

Gwendolyn, already smiling through her consternation as she followed Josephine and Annie's lead, told herself it wasn't really who she thought it was on board. And if it was, surely he'd know how to swim to safety...right?

"I'm convinced," Peggy said. "No need for me to spy on them; they're gone. I'm joining you!" Emerging from the thicket, she added, "I want a front row seat to watch that ship go down!"

Gwendolyn could stand it no longer. "I'll keep watch, then," she said. "I feel one of us should, just in case."

"Suit yourself," Peggy said, taking her place in the line of dancers. "But I see no reason to."

It took Gwendolyn a minute or two to train the telescope on the wheelhouse, as the ship was being tossed about like a cork by then. But at last, she got a decent look at the two young men again, one of them now locked out of the wheelhouse and the other apparently doing his best to keep it that way for some reason. How bizarre, she thought...but there was no time to wonder why, for that one fleeting look confirmed exactly what she had tried so hard to believe she hadn't seen.

"Charlie!"

Gwendolyn didn't realize she had screamed his name out loud until the others called back to her from the beach. "Someone you know, Gwendolyn?!" Annie exclaimed in disbelief.

"Yes, the dearest friend I ever had before I came here!" Gwendolyn explained as she rushed back down the path to the beach. "The only friend I had for a long time, really! I haven't seen him since we were kids and he got kidnapped and sent to sea. He's not evil like the others, I just know it! Please, we've got to do something!"

But at that moment, the sound they all four knew so well, of a ship running aground, rang through the air. They all looked to see the whaler rolling onto its side, clearly in desperate trouble.

"Charlie!" Gwendolyn called out in futility. Turning to the others, she said, "I've got to try to save him at least! I hope you understand!" Without another word she ran into the surf until it was deep enough to swim, and then dove in and stroked like a demon for the wreck.

"Gwendolyn! Don't be a fool!" Josephine called after her.

She made to give chase, but Peggy held her back. "Let her go," Peggy said. "She'll be too late and she's probably wrong about him besides, but at least she'll know she tried."

Gwendolyn swam as fiercely as she ever had in her life, even on that first day she had swum to Martin's Isle, but she didn't tire. She was aware of nothing but her goal of reaching the ship in time, scarcely even wondering how she could save only Charlie when she got there. There was never any question of getting there; it was only a question of whether he would still be alive by then. Gwendolyn knew exactly when she crossed from the Martin's Isle sunshine into the stormy sea, as the water grew rather colder and stayed that way; but it only strengthened her resolve and she swam even faster. As she approached the ship, she was aware of several crew members who had been out on deck now swimming for their lives up on the surface. She'd have liked to help them despite everything, but there was no time and no means for that.

The ship was sinking rapidly when Gwendolyn reached it, but Charlie was still in the wheelhouse and, to her immense relief, he was still alive. The room had begun filling with water that seeped in through the floor and probably several other sources, and Charlie and the others were flailing at the door in an as-yet vain attempt to open it before their air pocket disappeared.

Gwendolyn reached the door and tried her hand at it, but the jammed lock held just as tightly from outside as inside. From inside, Charlie, who made no sign of recognizing her, pointed desperately to his left and her right, and Gwendolyn turned to find a hose with a brass nozzle still bound in its coil just beside the door. She made fast work of freeing the nozzle and swung it with all her might at the wheelhouse window. She was prepared to bang it against the glass again and again until her breath ran out, but the window gave with a beautiful shattering sound on the very first try.

Charlie and the other trapped sailors emerged and paddled desperately for the surface. Gwendolyn followed suit, and gratefully gulped in the rainy air once she had reached the top. Overhearing some silly question about where the mermaid came from, she grabbed at Charlie's collar and began towing him while swimming as best she could with only one free hand. Charlie, perhaps not surprisingly, did not question the naked woman who had just saved his life, but he also didn't show any sign of knowing who she was. Indeed he said nothing, and Gwendolyn could only hope he hadn't lost consciousness.

Knowing they would not be welcome on Martin's Isle, she swam for Sauraquid. Some of the other sailors followed in her wake, but none could swim half as briskly as she and soon they had lost all track of her, although Gwendolyn didn't know as much until she had reached the lee of the lighthouse and had the luxury of pausing to look over her shoulder. The rain was pelting the water in every direction she could see and visibility couldn't have been more than ten feet or so. But Charlie was still breathing, and there was no sign that any of the others knew where they were.

The rest of the journey was, relatively speaking, easy. When at last she latched onto the pub's cellar door, Gwendolyn was tired and sore, but she had never felt more alive. "Can you stand?" she asked Charlie as she set him on damp but solid ground at last, just inside the door.

"Yes," he croaked, grabbing onto the handrail.

Gwendolyn could hear that the pub was doing a booming business, much as she'd have guessed in light of the nasty weather; but getting Charlie upstairs to the tiny bedroom they kept for nights when it was too rough to swim home would not require going out front. They could get there from the kitchen. For that reason, she decided against pulling out her dress from the cubbyhole to put on; it would only get soaked and she'd be taking it off for the hot, hot bath they would soon be sharing. The only problem was getting through the kitchen without the bartenders currently on duty being any the wiser. Gwendolyn figured they would be too busy up front for that to be a problem.

She was wrong, for as she helped Charlie to the top of the cellar steps, she looked up to find James looking in disbelief at his naked co-worker guiding a half-drowned sailor up the steps. His mouth was agape and he looked as though he was struggling to look away from Gwendolyn's body, but he couldn't will himself to do so.

"James," Gwendolyn said matter-of-factly, "I will give you my entire next shift's worth of tips if you breathe a word of this to no one. If you do speak up, think of how it will look for you."

"Ummm, Okay, Gwen," he said. "My lips are sealed."

"We'll be upstairs, and I don't want anyone disturbing us, not even Peggy."

"Peggy isn't here," James said. "I don't even know where she is."

Gwendolyn suspected he was probably telling the truth. But that didn't really matter. Nothing mattered but getting Charlie out of his stupor and out of his sodden clothes.

The little attic room had a featherbed at one end and a bathtub at the other. As soon as she had the door shut and locked, Gwendolyn went to the bathtub and lit the water heater, and then went to the bed and lit the oil lamp on the table beside it. She found a couple of towels in the cupboard in the corner, and handed one to Charlie. "Can you undress yourself?" she asked, and she began patting herself dry.

"In your presence?" he asked in a raspy voice.

"Well, you've seen every inch of me, haven't you?" Gwendolyn demanded. "This is no time for modesty!" Having finished drying herself, she set the towel on the table by the lamp and stood looking him in the eye. "You do know who I am, don't you, Charlie?"

He took a long look, mostly in her eyes despite the difficulty of focusing there given her nudity, and at once she could see it had come to him. "Wendy? Good heavens, it is you, isn't it?! Wendy!"

"No one has called me that in years," she said, "But yes, it's me. Now, surely you're not going to be shy with me of all people, especially after I saved your life?"

"I thought you were..." Charlie groped for the right word. "I don't know what I thought happened to you!" His senses returning in full at last, he did finally start undressing. "Listen," he said once he'd peeled his coat off and set about unbuttoning his shirt. "I have always wanted to apologize for the way I abandoned you that day, when we got caught. I was trying to think of a way to rescue you when they caught me too."

"I know," Gwendolyn said, turning on the tap for the bathtub. "Charlie, I never thought you had abandoned me. Besides, we were thieves, and thieves get caught sooner or later. I heard what had become of you and, well, I missed you horribly, but I was happy for you. I knew how you had always longed to go to sea. I was jealous, of course! But I'm not jealous anymore, I can tell you that."

"You're a...lady of the Isle?" Charlie asked, even surprised himself to find himself asking such a question, as he got to his feet and unbuttoned his pants.

"I am," Gwendolyn said, turning to admire the show as he undressed. "Can you believe how life turned out for us both?!"

"Better than I can believe I'm getting naked with you," he said, smiling for the first time since they had emerged from the water. "Last time I saw you, girls were icky. Except for you of course."

"And so were boys including you!" Gwendolyn retorted. "But my, how you've grown, Charlie!" His years at sea had kept him in wonderful condition, sinewy and muscular, and his chest and belly were sprinkled with lush hair as dark as that on his head, while Gwendolyn's naked presence had rendered him firm as a plank. "You certainly have grown," she repeated, taking his hard cock in both hands and stroking it appreciatively.

"So my apology is accepted," he quipped, reaching up to return the favour with her breasts.

"If I had any hard feelings, do you think I'd have risked my life to save yours?" she asked. "Now, let's get you warmed up in the bath, shall we?"

There was only so much opportunity to stroke one another while seated facing each other in the steamy water. But they made do with rubbing one another's legs and occasionally holding hands as he told her of the dozens of ports he had enjoyed over the years and the adventures he'd been through at sea, and she told him of her years in Lowell and the joy of escaping that life and all the many erotic escapades she and the others had been through on Martin's Isle. "I'd be lying to say it hasn't been a lot of fun," she said. "Some of the men I end up with are none too desirable, but the good ones are worth the bad. I imagine you can say the same about the fun you've had in port, Charlie?"

"I can," he admitted. "Not half as noble as what you've done, I know, but..."

"Oh, don't be silly, it's life and it ought to be celebrated," Gwendolyn said. "I learned a long time ago not to judge. After all, we know too well what some folks would say of the life I live."

"Oh, they do," Charlie admitted. "Martin's Isle is known to sailors all over the world, even though most of us aren't sure if it's really there at all, and they do all have opinions of what is rumoured to happen there."

"Jealousy, no doubt," Gwendolyn mused.

"Exactly," Charlie said. "I knew this chap Jamison, who said --"

"I know what Jamison would say about the place," Gwendolyn interrupted.

"Then he really was there?!"

"And talked himself right out of a night with the most sensuous woman you can imagine," Gwendolyn confirmed.

Charlie's eyebrows flew up. "You mean --"

Gwendolyn laughed. "No, not me. But yes, it's true he was there. I don't know what he said about us and I don't want to; all I know for sure is that he deserved everything he got that night."

"I believe that," Charlie said, looking out the room's lone window at the raging storm outside. "He always was a bit of a loudmouth, to put it mildly." He took both of Gwendolyn's hands in his under the hot water and turned his gaze back to his old friend. "Now, how do I thank you for saving my life when I was on that whaler?"

"You can explain what you were doing there," Gwendolyn said. "That's all I need to know. Or I suppose I don't need to know, but I certainly would like to."

"I've been a profligate spender, Wendy," he said. "Part of the trouble with life at sea is you're never in one place long enough for such luxuries as putting your money away in the bank. So I've carried it with me everywhere I've travelled, and it is ever so easy to spend it all when you've got it under your pillow or in your pocket at all times! I was broke in New York and hard up for a new job after my last ship put in to stay, and Shapp, well, he's a brash young captain whom no one trusts or respects very much, and he was paying well because it was the only way he could get a crew together. I certainly have learned my lesson, I'll tell you that."

"I do hope you'll take a bit more care now that you're safe at home," Gwendolyn told him. "What do you plan to do now?"

"Why, go back to sea, of course! There'll be a more reputable ship looking for crew soon enough."

"Charlie, how can you do that?!" Gwendolyn was aghast. "After what you've been through?"

"My home is the sea, Wendy. Could you give up on your life on Martin's Isle?"

Wendy nodded sadly. "I see your point," she said. "I could never walk away from it, or swim away as the case may be." Gripping his hands tighter, she continued, "I wonder, then, will we ever be together again?"

"I don't know," he said. "But think of how improbable it is that we are together now! Let's be grateful for that, shall we?"

Gwendolyn looked at the bed and smiled. "I know just how we can celebrate our gratitude, don't you?"

She stood up to step out of the tub and dry off, and Charlie looked shamelessly upon his childhood friend in her full-grown woman's body. "I don't know what to make of this moment," he said finally.

"Nor do I," Gwendolyn admitted. "But Charlie, I have no doubt we'll both regret it if we don't make love tonight. Think of it as bringing our friendship full circle. Our one and only chance to do that."

Charlie stood up, and his body betrayed its willingness in the sweetest way.

Gwendolyn patted him dry with a fresh towel, taking her time with his hard cock. "We certainly want this nice and clean and ready to go, don't we?" she teased.

"Oh, it's ready to go, all right!" he said.

When she had gotten him as dry as could be hoped in the stormy summer humidity, she tossed the towel in the now-empty tub and slid her arms around him. "Look at us, all grown up!" she said, and she kissed him deeply before he could make any reply. His hands lost no time in finding her breasts, and she was not at all surprised to discover her old friend was well-versed in caressing them just right. She didn't care to think of how much experience he'd gained in that pastime over the years; but then, sex was a part of her job and he showed no signs of judging her for that. So she put any such concerns from her mind and enjoyed the natural progression of his first gentle strokes to firmer tweaks on her nipples while she ran her fingers all over his hairy torso.

It seemed for a time that neither of them wanted to move the touching downward; perhaps neither of them wanted to go first. At last, Charlie did. Gwendolyn felt a pleasant tickle of anticipation even before his fingers found her vulva. Strange, she thought, that it should still be such a thrill after her entire body had been on display for him all this time; but it was. Unlike so many of the sailors she'd been with, he had a gentle way with teasing her lips; and since he'd done so well with her breasts, she was moist and ready to receive him.

"Lovely touch," she murmured as he probed her with one finger. "Worth waiting for!"

"Oh good," Charlie said. "I haven't had as much practice with this as I should."

"I have, and you're doing a lovely job," she sighed. "Now no more self-doubt!" She wrapped one hand firmly around his hard cock and gave it a gentle but firm pull that clearly delighted him. Her grip on him grew firmer as his rubbing drove her further into a wonderful lather. Two years of hearing Peggy's operatic moans had taught her a lot about letting herself go vocally, and she put those lessons to great use now. Charlie was impressed, but also glad the window faced out over the sea; otherwise he'd have been concerned about the bar patrons downstairs hearing every note of Gwendolyn's pleasure.

She came with a satisfied yelp, and then clamped down on him with her hand. "Now come to bed," she told him in no uncertain terms. She led him to the narrow bed and pushed him gently down, and marvelled at the spectacle of Charlie -- worldly wise Charlie, who had bedded women all over the world! -- gazing up adoringly at her. After climbing atop him, she took both his hands and placed them back on her breasts. "I don't believe you were done with these," she said, and was rewarded with him once again rubbing them in his own pleasant way as she took him in both hands and guided him inside her.