Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

  Smack!

  I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong, if indeed I’d done anything at all. I didn’t care. The sting on my ass, the warmth around my scrotum, the feel of his other hand gripping my hip, it was too much pleasure to take in.

  My wet testicle slid from his mouth. His tongue circled that sagging pouch, then rose to the base of my cock. Gradually, up my length. Surely he would stop. Surely he wouldn’t want his mouth near my foreskin.

  But he didn’t stop. His tongue continued its glorious journey. It reached the apex of my cock and circled, prodding under my foreskin. I cried out at the intensity of the sensation.

  Around and around his tongue went until I thought I’d go mad. Even that ecstasy, though, was nothing to how it felt when he wrapped his lips around my cock and sucked my length into his mouth. His fingers dug into my hips as he swallowed me down to my root. It stole my breath from me. My excitement choked the air from my lungs and I came dangerously close to expending myself then and there.

  The warmth of his mouth slid off my cock, leaving the flesh cold and wet, and me gasping.

  “Professor, you taste as good as you look.” He moved one hand down between my legs.

  He slid his fingers back towards my well-greased hole. “Which do you like better?” he asked.

  “That? Or this?”

  Two thick fingers entered me. My hips bucked. My cock bounced off his chin.

  The fingers withdrew.

  Smack!

  “Or maybe that’s the part you like best.”

  I could not speak. My buttock stung, my ass longed for his fingers, my cock ached for his mouth.

  Smack!

  But then that sweet, wet warmth wrapped around my erection. I couldn’t stop myself. I thrust forward into his mouth.

  Smack!

  I moaned again, but I didn’t stop. It was too much to deny myself, pushing into the heaven between his lips.

  Smack!

  A punishment even more glorious than the crime.

  Smack!

  I wanted to thrust again, but as I pulled back, his fingers found me. At last I was still, not even breathing, so rigid and tense I thought I might snap in two. His thick, calloused fingers pushed into me

  Smack! with his other hand.

  No, I hadn’t moved. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was how good it all felt—the globes of my backside stinging, the ecstasy of his fingers plunging in and out of me, and his mouth, bobbing up and down on the length of my cock. How I remained standing I will never know. The pleasure was so great, so mind shatteringly intense! I tried to concentrate on one thing—on one sensation. His fingers fucking me. His mouth sucking me.

  Then, smack! His hand on my ass, making me writhe and cry out. But each time, as I’d focus on one thing, the pleasure someplace else would pull at my mind. I was reeling. Surely I was dying. How could any man endure so much?

  “Ned!” I screamed at last.

  No sooner had the word left my mouth than he was on his feet, grabbing me by the arms. He half pushed and half carried me to the bed. He threw me down onto my back, my bound wrists pinned beneath me. He pushed my knees to my ears and thrust his hard cock deep into my ass.

  I lost any semblance of control. I may have screamed, or I may have cried. I can’t say for sure. The sudden intensity of his cock pounding into me was nothing compared to the all-over euphoria I’d felt only moments before, but the power of him! The intensity of his gaze!

  The strength of his arms! The savagery! The primal roar that erupted from him as he finally came!

  He collapsed down onto me. I struggled to breathe. My wrists burned from where I’d pulled against the rope.

  “Now, dear Professor,” he gasped, “I truly am exhausted.”

  * * * *

  The next day, January 6: nothing new on board. Not a sound inside, not a sign of life.

  The skiff stayed alongside in the same place we had left it. We decided to return to Gueboroa Island. Ned Land hoped for better luck in his hunting than on the day before, and he wanted to visit a different part of the forest. He had also vowed to fuck me at least once on dry land.

  In truth, I was still elated from the night before.

  By sunrise we were off. Carried by an inbound current, the longboat reached the island in a matter of moments.

  We disembarked, and thinking it best to abide by the Canadian’s instincts, we followed Ned Land, whose long legs threatened to outpace us.

  Ned Land went westward up the coast, then fording some stream beds, he reached open plains that were bordered by wonderful forests. Some kingfishers lurked along the watercourses, but they didn’t let us approach. Their cautious behaviour proved to me that these winged creatures knew where they stood on bipeds of our species, and I concluded that if this island wasn’t inhabited, at least human beings paid it frequent visits.

  After crossing a pretty lush prairie, we arrived on the outskirts of a small wood, enlivened by the singing and soaring of a large number of birds.

  “Still, they’re merely birds,” Conseil said.

  “But some are edible,” the harpooner replied.

  “Wrong, Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “because I see only ordinary parrots here.”

  “Conseil my friend,” Ned replied in all seriousness, “parrots are like pheasant to people with nothing else on their plates.”

  “And I might add,” I said, “that when these birds are properly cooked, they’re at least worth a stab of the fork.”

  Indeed, under the dense foliage of this wood, a whole host of parrots fluttered from branch to branch, needing only the proper upbringing to speak human dialects. At present they were cackling in chorus with parakeets of every colour, with solemn cockatoos that seemed to be pondering some philosophical problem, while bright red lories passed by like pieces of bunting borne on the breeze, in the midst of kalao parrots raucously on the wing, Papuan lories painted the subtlest shades of azure, and a whole variety of delightful winged creatures, none terribly edible.

  However, one bird unique to these shores, which never passes beyond the boundaries of the Aru and Papuan Islands, was missing from this collection. But I was given a chance to marvel at it soon enough.

  After crossing through a moderately dense thicket, we again found some plains obstructed by bushes. There I saw some magnificent birds soaring aloft, the arrangement of their long feathers causing them to head into the wind. Their undulating flight, the grace of their aerial curves, and the play of their colours allured and delighted the eye. I had no trouble identifying them.

  “Birds of paradise,” I exclaimed.

  “Order Passeriforma, division Clystomora,” Conseil replied.

  “Partridge family?” Ned Land asked.

  “I doubt it, Mr Land. Nevertheless, I’m counting on your dexterity to catch me one of these delightful representatives of tropical nature.”

  “I’ll give it a try, Professor, though I’m handier with a harpoon than a rifle.”

  Malaysians, who do a booming business in these birds with the Chinese, have various methods for catching them that we couldn’t use. Sometimes they set snares on the tops of the tall trees that the bird of paradise prefers to inhabit. At other times they capture it with a tenacious glue that paralyses its movements. They will even go so far as to poison the springs where these fowl habitually drink. But in our case, all we could do was fire at them on the wing, which left us little chance of getting one. And in truth, we used up a good part of our ammunition in vain.

  Near eleven o’clock in the morning, we cleared the lower slopes of the mountains that form the island’s centre, and we still hadn’t bagged a thing. Hunger spurred us on. The hunters had counted on consuming the proceeds of their hunting, and they had miscalculated. Luckily, and much to his surprise, Conseil pulled off a right-and-left shot and insured our breakfast. He brought down a white pigeon and a ringdove, which were briskly plucked, hung from a spit, and roasted over a blazing fire of deadwood.
While these fascinating animals were cooking, Ned prepared some bread from the artocarpus. Then the pigeon and ringdove were devoured to the bones and declared excellent. Nutmeg, on which these birds habitually gorge themselves, sweetens their flesh and makes it delicious eating.

  “They taste like chicken stuffed with truffles,” Conseil said.

  “All right, Ned,” I asked the Canadian, “now what do you need?” He winked wickedly at me, and I was reminded of his vow. I laughed. “Besides that, I mean.”

  “In that case, game with four paws, Professor Aronnax,” Ned Land replied. “All these pigeons are only appetisers, snacks. So till I’ve bagged an animal with cutlets, I won’t be happy.”

  “Nor I, Ned, until I’ve caught a bird of paradise.”

  “Then let’s keep hunting,” Conseil replied, “but while heading back to the sea. We’ve arrived at the foothills of these mountains, and I think we’ll do better if we return to the forest regions.”

  It was good advice and we took it. After an hour’s walk we reached a genuine sago palm forest. A few harmless snakes fled underfoot. Birds of paradise stole off at our approach, and I was in real despair of catching one when Conseil, walking in the lead, stooped suddenly, gave a triumphant shout, and came back to me, carrying a magnificent bird of paradise.

  “Oh bravo, Conseil,” I exclaimed.

  “Master is too kind,” Conseil replied.

  “Not at all, my boy. That was a stroke of genius, catching one of these live birds with your bare hands.”

  “If master will examine it closely, he’ll see that I deserve no great praise.”

  “And why not, Conseil?”

  “Because this bird is as drunk as a lord.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Yes, master, drunk from the nutmegs it was devouring under that nutmeg tree where I caught it. See, Ned my friend, see the monstrous results of intemperance.”

  “Damnation,” the Canadian shot back. “Considering the amount of gin I’ve had these past two months, you’ve got nothing to complain about.”

  Meanwhile I was examining this unusual bird. Conseil was not mistaken. Tipsy from that potent juice, our bird of paradise had been reduced to helplessness. It was unable to fly.

  It was barely able to walk. But this didn’t alarm me, and I just let it sleep off its nutmeg.

  This bird belonged to the finest of the eight species credited to Papua and its neighbouring islands. It was a ‘great emerald’, one of the rarest birds of paradise. It measured three decimetres long. Its head was comparatively small, and its eyes, placed near the opening of its beak, were also small. But it offered a wonderful mixture of hues—a yellow beak, brown feet and claws, hazel wings with purple tips, pale yellow head and scruff of the neck, emerald throat, the belly and chest maroon to brown. Two strands, made of a horn substance covered with down, rose over its tail, which was lengthened by long, very light feathers of wonderful fineness, and they completed the costume of this marvellous bird that the islanders have poetically named ‘the sun bird’.

  How I wished I could take this superb bird of paradise back to Paris, to make a gift of it to the zoo at the Botanical Gardens, which doesn’t own a single live specimen.

  “So it must be a rarity or something?” the Canadian asked, in the tone of a hunter who, from the viewpoint of his art, gives the game a pretty low rating.

  “A great rarity, my gallant comrade, and above all very hard to capture alive. And even after they’re dead, there’s still a major market for these birds. So the natives have figured out how to create fake ones, like people create fake pearls or diamonds.”

  “What?” Conseil exclaimed. “They make counterfeit birds of paradise?”

  “Yes, Conseil.”

  “And is master familiar with how the islanders go about it?”

  “Perfectly familiar. During the easterly monsoon season, birds of paradise lose the magnificent feathers around their tails that naturalists call ‘below-the-wing’ feathers. These feathers are gathered by the fowl forgers and skilfully fitted onto some poor previously mutilated parakeet. Then they paint over the suture, varnish the bird, and ship the fruits of their unique labours to museums and collectors in Europe.”

  “Good enough,” Ned Land put in. “If it isn’t the right bird, it’s still the right feathers, and so long as the merchandise isn’t meant to be eaten, I see no great harm.”

  But if my desires were fulfilled by the capture of this bird of paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o’clock Ned Land brought down a magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call ‘bari-outang’. This animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig dropped dead on the spot.

  The Canadian properly skinned and cleaned it, after removing half a dozen cutlets destined to serve as the grilled meat course of our evening meal. Then the hunt was on again, and once more would be marked by the exploits of Ned and Conseil.

  In essence, beating the bushes, the two friends flushed a herd of kangaroos that fled by bounding away on their elastic paws. But these animals didn’t flee so swiftly that our electric capsules couldn’t catch up with them.

  “Oh, Professor!” shouted Ned Land, whose hunting fever had gone to his brain. “What excellent game, especially in a stew. What a supply for the Nautilus. Two, three, five down.

  And just think how we’ll devour all this meat ourselves, while those numbskulls on board won’t get a shred!”

  In his uncontrollable glee, I think the Canadian might have slaughtered the whole horde, if he hadn’t been so busy talking. But he was content with a dozen of these fascinating marsupials, which make up the first order of aplacental mammals, as Conseil just had to tell us.

  These animals were small in stature. They were a species of those ‘rabbit kangaroos’

  that usually dwell in the hollows of trees and are tremendously fast, but although of moderate dimensions, they at least furnish a meat that’s highly prized.

  We were thoroughly satisfied with the results of our hunting. A gleeful Ned proposed that we return the next day to this magic island, which he planned to depopulate of its every edible quadruped. But he was reckoning without events.

  By six o’clock in the evening, we were back on the beach. The skiff was aground in its usual place. The Nautilus, looking like a long reef, emerged from the waves two miles offshore.

  Without further ado, Ned Land got down to the important business of dinner. He came wonderfully to terms with its entire cooking. Grilling over the coals, those cutlets from the

  ‘bari-outang’ soon gave off a succulent aroma that perfumed the air.

  But I catch myself following in the Canadian’s footsteps. Look at me—in ecstasy over freshly grilled pork. Please grant me a pardon as I’ve already granted one to Mr Land, and on the same grounds.

  In short, dinner was excellent. Two ringdoves rounded out this extraordinary menu.

  Sago pasta, bread from the artocarpus, mangoes, half a dozen pineapples, and the fermented liquor from certain coconuts heightened our glee. I suspect that my two fine companions weren’t quite as clearheaded as one could wish.

  “What if we don’t return to the Nautilus this evening?” Conseil said.

  “What if we never return to it?” Ned Land added. “Besides,” he said, reaching for me,

  “I still have one conquest on this island to attain.”

  I was debating whether to go along with his game or to tell him no, for Conseil’s sake, when a stone suddenly whizzed towards us, landed at our feet, and cut short the harpooner’s proposition.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo

  Without standing up, we stared in the direction of the forest, my hand stopping halfway to my mouth, Ned Land’s completing its assignment.

  “Stones don’t fall from the sky,” Conseil said
, “or else they deserve to be called meteorites.”

  A second well-polished stone removed a tasty ringdove leg from Conseil’s hand, giving still greater relevance to his observation.

  We all three stood up, rifles to our shoulders, ready to answer any attack.

  “Apes maybe?” Ned Land exclaimed.

  “Nearly,” Conseil replied. “Savages.”

  “Head for the skiff,” I said, moving towards the sea.

  Indeed, it was essential to beat a retreat because some twenty natives, armed with bows and slings, appeared barely a hundred paces off, on the outskirts of a thicket that masked the horizon to our right.

  The skiff was aground ten fathoms away from us.

  The savages approached without running, but they favoured us with a show of the greatest hostility. It was raining stones and arrows.

  Ned Land was unwilling to leave his provisions behind, and despite the impending danger, he clutched his pig on one side, his kangaroos on the other, and scampered off with respectable speed.

  In two minutes we were on the strand. Loading provisions and weapons into the skiff, pushing it to sea, and positioning its two oars were the work of an instant. We hadn’t gone two cable lengths when a hundred savages, howling and gesticulating, entered the water up to their waists. I looked to see if their appearance might draw some of the Nautilus’s men onto the platform. But no. Lying well out, that enormous machine still seemed completely deserted.

  Twenty minutes later we boarded ship. The hatches were open. After mooring the skiff, we re-entered the Nautilus’s interior.

  I went below to the lounge, from which some chords were wafting. Captain Nemo was there, leaning over the organ, deep in a musical trance.

  “Captain,” I said to him.

  He didn’t hear me.

  “Captain,” I went on, touching him with my hand.

  He trembled, and turning around, “Ah, it’s you, Professor,” he said to me. “Well, did you have a happy hunt? Was your herb gathering a success?”

  “Yes, captain,” I replied, “but unfortunately we’ve brought back a horde of bipeds whose proximity worries me.”