The first thing she noticed as she emerged from the cabin was Mills, who had been lashed to a grating fastened to the mainmast. He was breathing hard and grimacing, and blood seeped from a cut over one ear. Clearly he had put up a considerable fight, though, as many of the airmen gathered around him sported injuries of their own.
“Look here, lads,” Binion called, and the heads of the men on the storm-lashed deck swiveled to face him. “We’ve caught our last missing fish!”
A rough cheer greeted this news.
Binion turned to Arabella. Putting a solicitous expression on his face, he shook his head and tut-tutted.
“I’m terribly disappointed in you, Ashby,” he said. His words were directed to Arabella, but his voice was pitched to be heard above the storm by every mutineer. “You gave your solemn word to join and support us in our endeavor, and yet, as soon as we took rightful possession of our ship, when we went looking for you … you were nowhere to be found! And as though that weren’t bad enough, when we did find you, you were attempting to free our darkie former captain from the shackles in which, after a fair trial, we had placed him!”
Arabella did not dignify this tirade with any response. She merely glared at the man, blinking the rain from her eyes. But the mutineers on deck, looking to be less than a third of the original crew, laughed and jeered, the thunder seeming to laugh along with them. Arabella wondered where the rest of the crew might be.
“But we are magnanimous, are we not?” Binion called to the men. “And despite Ashby’s violation of his solemn oath, we would happily accept him into our number.” The men’s reaction to this news was mixed—as many grumbled as cheered. “Now, now, lads, do keep in mind that Ashby is quite conversant in the usage of the clockwork navigator, a skill which, in the absence of our dear departed Kerrigan, we lack.” The grumbles stilled.
“And yet…” Binion grabbed Arabella’s shirt-front and pushed his spotty face into hers, though he still spoke loudly to the assembled mutineers. “And yet, Ashby has shown we cannot put our trust in his oath.” He turned and faced the men, still gripping Arabella’s shirt. “How then shall we ensure his cooperation?”
“The lash!” chorused the men. “The lash! The lash!”
At this, Binion laughed. “Just so, lads.” He turned again to Arabella, putting on a contemplative expression. His hair whipped in the wind. “Ten lashes for now, just to show we mean business. If you don’t follow orders after that, twenty lashes for the first offense, thirty for the next, and so on.”
Though Arabella’s heart raced, she set her jaw and raised her chin. “Lash me if you wish, but I’ll never aid you,” she declared, though her quavering voice belied her brave words. All she could do was hope that her resolve would prove firmer than her elocution.
Binion stroked his beardless chin. “Very well … twenty for you, and forty for your precious captain.” Arabella growled inarticulately and tried to struggle free, but the two men who held her arms kept her firmly pinioned. “Then thirty and sixty. Then forty and eighty, and so on, until you either acquiesce or succumb.”
Arabella, straining against the hands that held her fast, spat in Binion’s face. But the flying glob of spittle was lost in the driving rain.
“I see I’ve touched a nerve. But we’ll start with just ten for you.” Binion pulled the precious key from his pocket, unlocked Arabella’s shackles, then gestured with his pistol to the grating where Mills was already bound. “Seize him up.”
The two airmen pushed off from the bulkhead behind them, carrying the struggling Arabella unwillingly across the deck, and brought themselves to a halt just above the grating. “Hold his legs,” said Gowse, and then, without ceremony, yanked Arabella’s sodden shirt from beneath her rope belt.
Panicked, Arabella crossed her arms tightly across her chest before the shirt could come off any further. “I’ll k-keep the shirt,” she stuttered through chattering teeth. “G-grant me that much d-dignity.”
Gowse leaned in close, his broken and still swollen nose just inches from Arabella’s ear. “It’s for yer own good, lad,” he whispered, not unkindly. “Bits of shirt in the wound can fester and kill ye.”
And then, in one smooth move, he broke Arabella’s grip on her chest and stripped her shirt off her body. The hard, chill rain struck her exposed skin like a slap.
For a moment she managed to shield her breasts with her arms. But then, with the same great strength that had removed her shirt with barely any notice of her resistance, Gowse pulled her hands apart. “Don’t struggle, lad, ye’ll just make it wor … what the h—l?”
Arabella squirmed in the man’s inexorable grip like a trapped rat, squealing incoherently, trying valiantly not to cry. But though she did her best to extricate herself, or even to cover her nakedness with elbows or knees, the wind and the rain and the men’s eyes still penetrated to her soft unprotected flesh.
“Yer a girl!” cried Gowse.
*