George Bacchus - Pleasure Bound: Ashore

John Tucker, ex-MD, Edinburgh, sat on the great flower-bedecked balcony of his summer palace on the island of Fleur de la Chair.

Before him, steps cut in the turf led down to a glistening white stone jetty. A few little yachts, a half-dozen motor launches, and a score or so of small boats rocked lazily on the gentle waters of the bay. The sky was a vault of pure turquoise, the sea a little deeper blue, and the undulating hills which fringed the bay made a verdant carpet studded with radiant flowers.

A soft sweet breeze from the sea lulled the fierce rays of the sun, and the regular swing of the punkah above him made John Tucker very comfortable.

John Tucker was a square-jowled man of stocky build, with determination writ large all over him. As he sat in his brilliant silk pyjamas, smoking a pipe, he looked a little out of place in this lazy lotus land.

John Tucker did not look a sensualist, but after leaving Edinburgh for an unmentionable offence in Princes Street Gardens, he had still further disgraced himself in Newfoundland, and on his departure a wag had written:

There was a young man of Cape Cod,

Who put his best girl into pod.

His name was John Tucker

The bugger, the fucker,

The bleeder, the blighter, the sod.

John Tucker had been led to the island of Fleur de la Chair by 'a set of devious chances'. Having shipped on a tramp steamer, he had blocked his Captain's wife, and then murdered the captain. Seeing retribution on board certain, and land being in sight, he had risked the sharks and jumped for it. The pursuing boat had been held off by the 'young man' who was out fishing, and who did not want any strangers messing about the island. He took, however, a strange fancy to the villainous visage of Tucker swimming for his life, and rescued him.

In due course John Tucker's powerful personality and unscrupulous business instincts brought him to the directorship of the island.

In direct contradiction to John Tucker's glowering appearance were his delightful human surroundings.

By his side, behind an up-to-date Remington-carrying typewriter desk, sat the sweetest little divinity of a flapper secretary who ever sat down to her work in the open air, dressed only in her drawers and chemise.

She was a blonde, and her hair hung rich and luxuriant over her bared and dimpled shoulders. Her eyes were as turquoise blue as the sky above, and lips as red as the strange scarlet flowers which hung in curiously wrought pots round the verandah.

She had no corsets on but her lithe little figure was caught in tight at the waist by a scarlet sash.

Her drawers were frankly open; a little golden growth showed as she sat with legs rather wide apart, and her drawers were also very short Their lace fringes finished well above the knee, and the rest of her exquisitely moulded legs was quite bare. She had no shoes or stockings. Her legs were tanned a pretty russet brown by the tropical sun, as were her bare arms. Both her fingernails and toenails were elaborately manicured. She wore for ornament a few bracelets and rings of barbaric design, and she was lazily smoking a cigarette from a richly jewelled holder. A golden snake from which hung tiny gold tassels, each bearing a different jewel at the end, clasped her left leg just below the knee, and she wore a ring bearing an immense emerald on the third toe of her left foot.

Her name was Helena McQuoid: she was half Scots, half Danish. She was only sixteen and she ruled the man who ruled the island of Fleur de la Chair. John Tucker made no attempt to be true to her; fidelity was almost a crime in the island, and she didn't mind, but he took his other carnal pleasures as he took his drinks, principally from curiosity or from lack of something to do, and he worshipped Helena.

This lovely young woman had come to the island in the same way as our captive friends of the last volume. The New Decameron had held up a small steam yacht Unfortunately the owner and friends were out on a slight filibustering excursion connected with gun-running themselves, and had shown fight. All were killed but Helena. John Tucker, in noting the girl's wondrous beauty, had thrown her into the sea to escape a chance shot and jumped after her, and with her on his arm swam to the New Decameron. It was not long before she exercised her power over this rough buccaneer of a former north-country doctor. He was not without rivals, and he killed four in fair fight before she admittedly became his own.

These two were the only white folk on the verandah. The boy who pulled the punkah was very brown, with great lazy appealing eyes. He was naked save for a loincloth, and his figure had the perfect contour of the native who can swim like a fish. His movements were full of idle grace.

Between John Tucker's legs, her shapely black-haired head resting directly on his staff of life, reclined a pretty native girl, quite naked. Her arms embraced his legs, and his fingers toyed in lazy affection with her hair.

Other native women lay about on mats, all naked, or very nearly so, and all very heavily bejewelled.

It is necessary to explain here that the island of Fleur de la Chair was immensely rich in mineral products, and especially in precious stones. John Tucker had discovered this, and the native women would clothe their lithe naked limbs and bodies with jewels that would have made a London or Paris or New York ballroom frantic with jealousy.

There were some native men, obviously above ordinary native class; their appearances were distinguished, their manners graceful and aristocratic. They all wore pyjamas of vivid hue, and lay about smoking, sipping coffee and eating the luscious tropical fruit which two Chinese boys bore from group to group. The typewriting machinery and the telephone apparatus made an odd business contrast to this scene of love and lazy laughter-for the naked girls were not left alone. No actual fornication took place, but the couples lay in soft lascivious embrace and lips met in languid tenderness.

John Tucker refused a plate of fruit, and called for a peg. The Chinese boy brought a pint of champagne and some liqueur brandy: he mixed it half and half, and drank it straight off. Then he raised the coloured beauty from between his legs, and said to her in the vernacular, 'Tanaie linga,' which means, vulgarly translated,' 'Op it'.

She kissed him softly on the cheek, patted him roguishly on me spot where one supposes his John Thomas was, and did 'op it, into the arms of a native young blood who promptly took her for a walk into the palm grove at the side of the great house.

John Tucker stood up, a grim contrast to the suave, brown-skinned love-makers.

'Helena, write this,' he said. 'Everyone to be ready for any possibility, houses and vessels to be decorated. Have that printed and circularised. You know, little one,' he continued, 'I've a funny feeling that the ship'll turn up today, it's about the time they said, and the young man's always punctual.'

Helena clicked out the message, then-

'Let's walk down to the wireless station.'

They strolled off, an odd enough couple, straight out of the pages of a naughty French picture paper.

As they traversed the glade, they came upon the couple who had just left, in violent embrace; the youth had discarded all clothing, and lay mother-naked on his back with the pretty girl in his arms, his rampant prick thrusting in and out of her ruby-lipped cunt.

Two little naked children were squatting watching, but with no apparent astonishment. They were used to this sort of thing in Fleur de la Chair.

John Tucker threw his cigar and hit the girl fair on the arse.

'Horda mirama tempe' (Here's to a good fuck), said John.