
Message-ID: <53251asstr$1141665003@assm.asstr.org>
From: DavidShaw <david@f-e-mail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} RP:   "THE SNAKE PIT" (M+/F+: Reluc: Historical) By David Shaw
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===================


"THE SNAKE PIT" (M+/F+: Reluc: Historical)

By

David Shaw
david@f-e-mail.com

www.f-e-mail.com

THIS STORY IS INTENDED FOR ADULT READING ONLY

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

A group of garrison wives are escaping from the Indian heat in the only
cool place in Gazepore. Their menfolk are away fighting the wily
Pathans on the Afganistan border and they're bored. But what the ladies
don't know is that the even more wily Prince Ravi has decided that this
is a good time to break in some new remounts for his cavalry officers .
. .

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"This weather is getting unbearable. Are we never to go up to the
hills?" Carol Carnac-Smythe drawled.

The other five women lying in the shallow pool of water were all of the
same opinion. The searing Punjabi sun beating down on the wooden roof
above their heads was far too hot for comfort, especially when the
baking summer winds blew in from the arid plains which surrounded
Gazepore. There were many delightful places in colonial India in which
wives of British officers might live their lives. Gazepore was not one
of them. A small and isolated garrison town, its only amenities for
Europeans were a social club and a cinema with walls and roof of
corrugated iron. And, perhaps best of all, the railhead station, which
at least promised some chance of eventually leaving the dismal place.
It had been an unlucky day for the 17th Sikh Rifles when they were
assigned the barracks in unlovely and unhealthy Gazepore as their
regimental home.

In fact the officers' wives should have left the town already for their
yearly migration at the start of the hot weather, a longed for trip up
to the hill stations on the lower ranges of the Himalayas, where it was
always cool and green below the eternal snow line. Unfortunately the
arrangements for their departure had been disrupted when the regiment
had been ordered post haste to the North West Frontier, where the
Pathans had begun raiding out of the hills again.

The Pathans and their Afghan cousins lived for fighting and plundering,
being experts at both. They traversed rough terrain like mountain
goats, they shot as accurately as trained snipers, they waited in
ambush positions for days without a cough or a whisper, then struck
with total ferocity in a whirl of knife blades. They also dyed their
hair with henna, frequently made love to young boys and used handfuls
of sharp stones in lieu of toilet paper. The British Army had fought
everywhere and everybody in its time and, man for man, the Pathans were
the toughest opponents it had ever encountered. So it was never any
great surprise for any of the border regiments when they were called
out to repel yet another round of raids from the tribal areas.

In truth the Sikh enlisted men and their white officers rather enjoyed
the challenge of pitting their professional skills against the Pathans.
The wives of the Sikh soldiers were at least left living in their own
country and their own territory. It was the British wives abandoned to
the heat and dust of Gazepore who found time hanging heavily on their
hands. Especially  with the advancing summer weather bearing down on
them ever more oppressively. In faraway cities like Calcutta and Bombay
there was electricity, and fans and refrigerators -- but no such modern
comforts were available in Gazepore. The old ways were still the only
ways, and an old remedy against the heat was still the only remedy.

Many years before a Colonel's wife had discovered a small spring on the
outskirts of the Regiment's cantonment, a spring which provided a
trickle of wonderfully cool water from some subterranean source, even
when the rocks around it were too hot to touch with a bare hand. Being
a lady of enterprise and determination, the Mem-sahib had arranged for
a wooden hut to be erected at the spring and a bathing pool to be made
inside it. A small pool to retain the freshness of the spring water,
round, twelve feet across, with a two foot high retaining wall. The
spring rose in the center and an overflow pipe took away the excess
water, the pool thus staying cool enough to provide a wonderful refuge
from the otherwise inescapable heat.

The Colonel's lady had provided pots of ferns, tables for magazines and
newspapers, even a spring driven gramophone, and then laid unmistakable
claim to the hut by calling it the Moorghi-Khana, the Hen's Room. And
so it had remained, a place used only by the British wives and their
attendant ayahs, their maids. The ayahs were presently sitting cross
legged on mats against the wall of the hut, watching the white women
relaxing in the pool and ready to attend when called. One of the odd
things about the Moorghi-Khana was that both types of women were
wearing Indian saris wrapped about them. Normal dress for the Indian
women, naturally, but only worn by the European wives when bathing in
the pool. It would, of course, be unthinkable for native girls to be
allowed to see white women naked -- just as offensive as it would be
for the British wives to see each other unclothed. Queen Victoria had
been dead for a long time but her spirit still lived on in Gazepore.

Jean Ellington shook her head in disbelief at the picture in a copy of
the "Tatler" she was carefully holding above the water. The magazine
was the most recent copy available, having arrived on the dawn mail
train only two months after being published in London.

"Have you seen these pictures from Germany? Von Hindenburg with that
upstart Adolph Hitler. A Field Marshal shaking hands with a scruffy
ex-corporal! It's beyond belief. Surely the Germans are never going to
give any real power to a raving lunatic with a silly little mustache?"

"Don't be so naive, Jean," Camilla Hartley-Dexter said. "Hindenburg is
just using Hitler's gang to get rid of the communists. As soon as that
dirty job is done the Germany Army will toss Herr Hitler back into jail
and throw away the key."

"Maybe," Mrs Ellington said, rather doubtfully. "But one can never tell
with the Germans, can one? And the little corporal seems awfully
bellicose. There couldn't be another war, could there?"

All the other women shook their heads, some a little wistfully. A war
with Germany would mean a huge expansion of the Army, rapid promotion
for their husbands and all the advantages which went with it -- such as
saying goodbye to Gazepore for ever. But there was never going to be
another big war, and certainly not one in Europe.

"Never mind, darlings," Amanda Priller said lightly. "If the worst
comes to the worst, we've always got the Maharajah's Own to protect
us." There was an outburst of giggles around the pool.

The Maharajah that Amanda was talking about was the Maharajah of
Kultoon. Kultoon was one of the small semi-independent states which
were dotted about India, most of them ruled as an absolute monarchy by
a hereditary maharajah. None of these petty kingdoms were important
enough to be a threat to British rule over the sub-continent, so the
rulers were allowed to do pretty well what they liked inside their own
territory. The Marajah of Kultoon's principal occupation, despite his
age, was fornication. Both in legal wedlock and out of it no ruler had
more right to be called the father of his nation.

His Highness was also a strict observer of his faith. He absolutely
refused to consider having a railway built across his state less some
infidel should consume pork in the dining car of a train whilst
traveling through Kultooni territory. The Maharajah always had
excellent reasons for resisting anything which might change his country
in any way. A position strongly buttressed by the fact that the royal
family of Kultoon happened to be incredibly wealthy because of several
very productive diamond mines inside their small country.

Not that these matters would normally have been a matter of any
interest in distant Gazepore, far from Kultoon's borders. It was one of
the Maharajah's increasingly erratic whims of his old age which had
made the difference. For the Maharajah of Kultoon had his own army --
or, to be precise, a regiment of cavalry. Outfitted in expensive
uniforms, riding the best horseflesh money could buy, and well drilled
in all kinds of parade ground maneuvers. The regiment was also a
standing joke throughout all of India because of its title: "The
Maharajah of Kultoon's Own Irregular Lancers".

To begin to understand the joke it was only necessary to take a look at
its officers. Every single one of them had been fathered by the
Maharajah -- and they were just the legitimate tip of the iceberg. A
further glance along the enlisted ranks of the Maharajah's Own
Irregulars showed a further number of facial similarities clearly
conceived by the Maharajah's own irregular liaisons: an astonishing
number of them. The Kultooni cavalry was indeed a band of brothers --
or half brothers, at any rate. And most of them had inherited in full
the Maharajah's handsome good looks and strapping vitality. Which he in
turn was reputed to have acquired from his own mother's indiscretion
with a unscrupulous English  cavalry officer called Flashman.

So perhaps it was an inherited love of fine horses which had inspired
the creation of the Irregular Lancers. Nobody had cared one way or
another, until the Maharajah had summoned the Vice Regal Diplomatic
Representative accredited to his court and announced his desire to send
his regiment to the North West Frontier to assist his good friends, the
British, in defending the imperial borders of India. Well, for a few
months anyway, as the Kultooni military would obviously have to abandon
any thoughts of warfare once the polo season started.

The British representative was startled, appreciative and deeply
unhappy at the idea. He knew very well that the Maharajah's Irregulars
fired their carbines about once a year and had never shown the
slightest interest in any kind of soldiering which didn't involve shiny
buttons and admiring watchers -- especially female ones. Putting the
Kultooni cavalry up against the Pathans would be like sending the
Boston Missionary Society to drive the Apache tribes out of Arizona.
The holy warriors from Afghanistan would chew the Irregulars up like
betel nuts and spit them out in bright red splashes across the mountain
rocks.

On the other hand, the British hadn't ruled India for a hundred and
fifty years by needlessly insulting rich and useful Indian rulers,
especially ones who were genuinely friendly towards the Empire. So the
Irregulars would at least have to be sent to some garrison post up in
the border areas and the Maharajah assured that they were performing
honorable service. Thus would the ruler's good will be kept -- a good
will which would quickly evaporate if some of his favorite sons'
testicles ended up as kebabs on Pathan daggers.

On the third hand -- not left, nor right, but underhand -- was the
British diplomat's concern for one royal son in particular, the
commanding officer of the Kultooni Regiment, His Royal Highness the
Colonel Prince Ravi of Kultoon. The Vice Regal Diplomat knew all about
young Prince Ravi, late of Eton College and Oxford University, and heir
to the throne of Kultoon. He knew that Ravi was probably the most
dashing and good looking of all the Maharajah's sons. The diplomat also
knew that the Prince was clever, cowardly, unscrupulous and totally
determined to maintain his life of privilege and wealthy indolence at
all costs.

In other words he was just the sort of reliable chap the British wanted
to replace the Maharajah when the old ruler finally made one trip too
many to his harem and went to Allah with a smile on his face. But there
was a very good chance that Prince Ravi would not be available to be
weighed in diamonds at his coronation if Colonel Ravi was allowed
anywhere near the frontier passes, where every open space was swept by
eagle sharp eyes behind carefully adjusted rifle sights. The Pathans
might not be great scholars or mathematicians but they could all read
ground like Napoleon and judge the range to a target with incredible
accuracy. Neither did they care in the slightest whether their targets
had white, brown, black or yellow skin. The Pathans were a totally fair
minded people; they didn't care whom they shot, raped, looted or
tortured.

Urgent messages were exchanged between Kultoon and New Delhi. The
decision was unanimous: a place where Gurkha, Sikh and British infantry
battalions needed all their professional skills to stay alive was no
place for the Kultooni irregulars and their polo sticks. But since the
17th Rifles were being called out of barracks to defend Warzistan then
Prince Ravi and his men could be sent to Gazepore to defend the
garrison town against any threat which might emerge in the 17th's
absence. Of course there was no real threat to Gazepore, only a few
dacoits, loose-wallahs, and barely active bandits easily controlled by
the local police. But the Maharajah didn't know that and his cavalry
could mount impressive patrols around the town with spurs jingling and
lance-pennants fluttering, all of which could be represented to the
Maharajah as valuable frontier duty. And when the old boy finally got
tired of having his regiment away from home it could be returned to him
as shiny and complete as a box of lead soldiers newly purchased from
Harrods.

It was a neat solution, except that the Commander-in-Chief, Army of
India, was concerned that Colonel Ravi would complain to his father
that the Kultooni cavalry wasn't being allowed to gallop into a place
of honor on the firing line. Fortunately, the Vice Regal Representative
in Kultoon was able to assure the C-in-C that it was extremely unlikely
that Prince Ravi or any of his fellow officers would choose to complain
to anybody about not being shot at. And so the arrangements were made
and the Maharajah's Own Irregular Cavalry came to Gazepore by troop
trains, as opposed to any tedious riding.

The effect was rather like a Hollywood film company complete with stars
arriving in a remote Newfoundland fishing village. Mutual
incomprehension and dislike on all sides. The Kultooni cavalry loathed
Gazepore from the beginning -- horses, men and officers. The horses
fought for scraps of shade under the few shriveled trees: the men
sought consolation for their exile in the Sikh soldiers' married
quarters. But Gazepore had many turban wearing veterans who resented
the would be wooers. And in India resentment is never an intangible
emotion. Several Kultooni soldiers opted to spend their nights out of
barracks -- but two of them failed to return before dawn reveille.
Their remains on both occasions were soon located by watchers observing
where the vultures were gathering to break their fasts. And it was also
noted that whatever the carrion eaters had done to the bodies, it was
impossible to blame them for the fact that the Kultooni enlisted men
were found with their severed genitals sewn into their mouths. From
then on most of the lancers decided to opt for prudent celibacy until
they could return to the safety of their own territory.

But most frustrated of all were the rich and dashing young officers of
the Maharajah's Own Irregulars. With no local woman worth their caste
the only recreational pursuits left open to them were hunting the local
pigs and the British wives. And though the local pig sticking wasn't
too bad it soon transpired that there were far more black boars
available in Gazepore than white whores. In fact all the British women
treated the Kultooni officers' advances with amused contempt.

The majority of the officers had never been outside Kultoon before and
had little to do with feringi women -- they took their rebuffs with
rueful grace. Prince Ravi and others like him who had been educated in
England did not, for they had never had the slightest difficulty in
seducing any number of British women in Oxford or London, whether
married or not, and no matter what their social status. The color of
their Kultooni skins had been no drawback at all, not when weighed
against their royal birth and the weight of their purses.

But this wasn't London, it was Gazepore, and the women here belonged to
a colonial society where a Mem-sahib would be far more likely to commit
suicide than adultery with an Indian man. A grass widow having a casual
affair in a hill station with a young British officer was certainly not
unknown, nor likely to be denounced, not if done with discretion. But
for a British army wife to get into bed with a Indian of any kind was
as completely unthinkable as for her to make love with a goat or a
British enlisted soldier. Not only was it not done, it couldn't even be
imagined being done. Which was why Amanda's little joke about the
Maharajah's irregulars was guaranteed to raise some laughs.

What none of the women in the pool had the slightest inkling of was
that Prince Ravi had laid careful plans to give each and every one of
them a lesson in Kultooni cavalry rough riding techniques: plans which
were only seconds away from being implemented.

Jean rustled the magazine as a signal to her ayah to come and replace
it on the table.

"Koi-hai, Lalun."

The young ayah leapt up far more quickly than usual, padding silently
forward on her bare feet, eyes rolling white under masses of black and
oily Madrassi hair. As she took the periodical she looked up twice at
the white muslin sheets which served as a ceiling, as if expecting the
wooden roof beams out of sight above them to come crashing down.

"What on earth is the matter with your girl, Jean?" Deborah Boxwood
asked. "She seems as nervous as a cat on hot bricks."

"I daresay she's noticed the punkah-wallah as gone to sleep again and
she's afraid she'll get the blame for it."

Jean was right. The long panel of bamboo framed fabric which hung just
below the ceiling sheets wasn't moving, as it should have been to keep
the air circulating in the room. Which meant in turn that the old man
sitting cross legged on the verandah had fallen asleep in the afternoon
heat instead of attending to his duty of continually pulling on the
rope which kept the punkah swinging.

"I'll send Manga to deal with him," Carol said and clicked her fingers.
The ayah who rose from her mat was by far the oldest of the servants,
almost forty and only kept on because of her savage bad temper when
dealing with other native servants failing in their duties. "Punka,
juldi, Manga."

Manga bobbed her head and turned towards the door.

"There's no cord on it," Camilla observed.

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's no cord attached to the punkah -- no wonder it's not moving."

All of the women looked up at the punkah. Camilla was right. There
should have been a cord attached to one end of the punkah flap, a cord
ascending up past the muslin sheets to the roof space, and to pulleys
which led it sideways, through a gap in the upper wall and then down to
the verandah.

Carol shook her head in disbelief at Indian inefficiency: "How
tiresome. Now we'll . . . "

Her mouth stopped moving, lips agape in her tilted back head as the
sound of tearing cloth came from above the pool. A knife blade had
appeared in the muslin ceiling sheet directly overhead, slashing a gap
a yard long in the fabric. The cut spread, both longways and across, as
if the sheet was being pulled on at the edges, opening up like a split
sail in a gale. Each of the watchers was astonished to see, revealed in
the gap, a young Indian boy lying on one of the roof beams, his legs
wrapped around it with all the unthinking agility of a monkey, the
shiny new knife in his hand matching the vivid white teeth displayed in
a wide grin.

None of the woman had the faintest notion of what could be going on;
puzzlement compounded by the sight of the punkah cord being held steady
in the boy's hand, with a large round glass-like object hanging from
the end of it.

The boy shouted, the cord began to run through his fingers, the object
dropped, within eight feet of the surface of the pool before stopping
again -- and Camilla Hartley-Dexter screamed in fear.

What was hanging from four securing loops at the bottom of the cord was
a large transparent glass bowl, open topped and with steeply curved
sides, like the ones used to keep goldfish in. But there was no water
inside this bowl and the mass of wriggling bodies trying to climb the
smooth sides were not gold in color but green. Small green snakes, each
about six inches long and instantly recognizable as green kraits -- the
deadliest snakes on the entire subcontinent. All that was needed was
for the bowl to continue its fall into the water and the whole mass of
deadly reptiles would be tipped out of their small prison into the
larger confines of the pool. A fall and a release which could only mean
a quick and agonizing death for anyone still inside the pool.

Jean Ellington was the first to recover at least part of her wits. She
wriggled like one of the snakes herself as she tried to slide on her
back over the pool's retaining wall while still keeping her eyes on the
bowl hanging over them all like the sword of Damocles.

"Stop it, you fool -- stop it!" Camilla screeched. "Look at him!"

Jean looked up, straight into the glistening eyes of the boy and those
shiny white teeth -- and the glittering steel of the knife blade now
pressed against the cord hanging from the pulley below the beam he was
lying on. The gesture, the meaning and the threat were all as clear and
unmistakable as an aimed gun and far more terrifying. Amanda instantly
stopped trying to get over the wall: furthermore, as the boy pointed a
finger at her and then at the pool, she slipped back into the water
without hesitation.

Normally, she might have been astonished and disgusted in obeying a
native urchin. But nothing was normal with that tangle of writhing
bodies and evil little heads pressing against the glass directly above
her. Many terrible and fearsome things she could have borne calmly and
courageously but an intertwined mass of venomous snakes were not among
them. She was petrified with fear.

"Hallo, ladies. Another warm afternoon, isn't it?"

The wives gaped at the hut door and at Manga holding it open with a
deep bow for His Royal Highness the Colonel Prince Ravi of Kultoon. He
passed her a small leather purse which sent the ayah down on her knees
in obeisance. But even that action was nowhere as astonishing as the
fact that Prince Ravi was wearing nothing but a pyjamy tunic of pure
silk around his muscular body, a tunic secured only by a loosely
knotted sash at the waist. He strolled into the hut with all the casual
assurance of a born aristocrat -- and behind him came a crowd of men,
the other officers of the Kultooni Irregulars, all dressed in the same
half naked style as their Colonel. And all of them grinning in the same
way at a shared joke. Some of them also had purses in their hands,
which they threw down in front of the eye rolling ayahs.

The clinking and chinking noises as the purses hit the floor sent the
Indian women into scrabbling seizures which were rapidly followed by
worshipping gratitude, the servants all on their knees like Manga, arms
outstretched and foreheads dipping down and down again in thanksgiving.
The cavalrymen scarcely noticed the servants' reactions as they
gathered in a line behind their Colonel, like spectators on the touch
line of a polo field. And even the bowl of angry snakes could not keep
the women's eyes away from the riding crops several of the brown
skinned men were either holding or had dangling from straps around
their wrists.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Your Royal Highness?" Carol
Carnac-Smythe yelped.

The Prince reached out his hand and one of the younger officers put
into it the heavy and ungainly shape of a Webley .45 pistol. Ravi
pulled back the hammer with his thumb, lifted the barrel up and pointed
it directly at the glass bowl. Then he moved it slightly to one side:
there was a huge bang, the pistol recoiled in a chorus of screams and
the smell of cordite spread around the room. Camilla Hartley-Dexter for
one felt a sudden warmth in the water between her legs in reaction to
the shot as she pissed herself in fear. The bullet must have passed
within an few inches of the bowl and if it had hit it . . .

"Well, ladies," the Prince said calmly, "To answer the question, I
thought we might have a really jolly jig-jig party. That is to say,
you're the ones who get jig-jigged by all these fine fellows here --
otherwise I might try a little more target practice. Think about it
before you come to any rash decisions."

He handed the smoking pistol back to the junior officer then clicked
his fingers. Things happened: unexpected things. A shower of silver
coins fluttered down from above to land and float on top of the pool.
No, not silver coins: the same size, round as coins, silver in color
but far too light to be metallic.

Jean Ellington picked one up and stared at the familiar words on it --
the very same words she had first seen at school when one of the girls
had shown the exact same kind of silverfoil packet to her friends in
fits of giggles. What were being scattered into the pool were rubber
contraceptive sheaths in their sealed packets, each one guaranteed free
of defects by the manufacturers, The Imperial and Britannic Rubber
Company, Adam and Eve Street, Market Harborough, Great Britain. Jean
looked up again, past the coiling snakes and saw the boy on the rafter
reach into a haversack at his waist and pull out another handful of
condoms to scatter like confetti over the women. Confetti might be a
suitable metaphor Jean realized with total disbelief: unless this was
all a incredible joke there was nothing at all to stop the Prince from
treating all the white women as if they were his wives, taking them as
he wished for his pleasure -- and giving them to his friends as well
for their gratification.

Zan-zar-zamin, land, gold and women, the traditional objects of crime
on the frontier. The Prince already had land and gold in plenty: now he
seemed set on completing the trilogy. But no Indian had dared to molest
a European woman since the great mutiny of eighty years before. The
British suppression of the mutiny had been so ruthless that since then
a unprotected English virgin with a sack of gold on her back could have
walked from the mountains to the sea without fear of being molested.

"You wouldn't dare," Jean said, her voice croaking like a frog's.

Prince Ravi smiled. "You know, Mrs Ellington, I had a feeling one of
you might say that. So let me introduce you to Mr Manji and his
assistant."

Mr Manji was a fat little babu in a cheap copy of a European suit, his
assistant a thin little babu in an even cheaper copy of a European
suit. But there was nothing very cheap about the tripod they carried in
or the big American made Speedmaster camera on top of it. It was the
sort of camera that only a professional photographer would use and the
Prince waved his hand towards it as though introducing it as well.

"Ladies, whether you want to take advantage of the contraceptives I
have supplied is up to you. But you are going to have no choice at all
about being photographed in every detail as you behave like a chorus
line of French whores. Afterwards you may certainly tell your husbands
all about it if you wish, but I doubt that New Delhi and London will
begin a war of suppression against Kultoon on your behalf. Dear me, no,
not with Mr Gandi already making so many political problems. But if
that should happen, and trouble is caused, you can be certain that I
will make sure that every peddler of filthy pictures from Suez to
Shanghai will soon be supplied with ample stocks of highly detailed
photographs of each one of you being broken in as remounts for the
Kultooni cavalry. And dear me, won't they sell like hot cakes in the
local bazaars? Not above half, I shouldn't wonder. So my advice is not
to tell any tales out of school unless you want to become very famous."

The Prince clapped his hands lightly together with glee. "But don't
think I'm not prepared to deal fairly with you. If any one of you
wishes it so, I will have the snake bowl lowered a little so that you
may put your hand inside it and thus die without being dishonored. I'm
quite certain that none of you will be so foolish, but the offer is
always there, should any of you wish to emulate the fate of the good
Queen Cleopatra. And as for those of you whom may be suffering overmuch
from maidenly shyness, we've brought the riding crops. Red cheeks at
both ends is too much of a good thing, hey?"

'He's mad, stark staring mad,' Deborah Boxwood thought.

It was Carol Carnac-Smythe who spoke up though: "And what happens if
you make a stupid mistake with those snakes which results in us all
getting killed? Do you think the Viceroy will overlook that?"

The Prince shrugged and spread his hands like a bazaar carpet seller
showing his astonishment at an unreasonable offer: "If such a sad thing
should happen one could only presume the snakes were dropped into your
bathing pool by those snakes in the grass in the Congress Party. No
doubt some of the troublemakers that Mr Gandi is always organizing to
shout in the streets for the British to quit India. Your deaths might
give New Delhi the courage to deal with those scum in the way they
should be dealt with."

Carol's mind raced and the conclusions she reached were not comforting:
the truth was that there were very good reasons why Prince Ravi would
probably be quite content to kill the British women. Kultoon and the
other independent states like it were happy to be part of a British run
India, for they knew that if India ever did become independent their
lands would quickly be seized by the new government and subsumed into
the newly born nation. Prompted by such fears for their future the
native princes were fretting because they thought the British should
have hung Gandi and his fellow nationalist leaders long ago. And they
knew from their grandfather's tales that when the future of British
India had trembled in the balance once before it had been the massacres
of British women and children which had sent the tiny British army of
India into a berserker rage. A rage which had burnt and blasted all
hopes of Indian independence for generations. A rage which had lasted
so long that many British soldiers in India still had 'CAWNPORE WELL'
tattooed on their bodies as part of the rites of passage from raw
recruit to seasoned veteran. Prince Ravi and his father might well want
to see some new tattoos on brawny British arms as a reminder of new
atrocities: 'GAZEPORE SNAKE PIT' would probably serve their turn quite
well. And when Carol looked around at the other faces around the pool
she felt that most of the women understood Indian politics well enough
to take Ravi's threat very seriously.

Yes, and already Ravi come within a hand's span of shattering the bowl
and dropping the kraits in amongst the women. That was how little he
cared about their lives; Hamlet wasn't in it compared to this mad
prince. Carol could imagine the tangle of writhing green bodies falling
into the water, bursting apart and spreading out in a maddened fury,
and then the screams of the women trying to get out of the pool with
snakes hanging from arms and legs, already fated to die in choking
agony like pi-dogs with rabies, swollen tongues protruding from foam
dewed lips. And because every detail of her fate was already clear in
her mind she dared say nothing in rebuttal to Ravi.

The Prince looked at all the women, all apparently as speechless as
Carol herself was. He grinned, lifted a languid hand and clicked his
fingers: "Bring along the party requisites, please, gentlemen."

There was a bustle of activity as two officers came into the
Moorghi-Khana carrying a wickerwork picnic basket between them. They
lifted it up and set it down carefully on top of the table. Damp
patches began to form on the magazines underneath the basket. One of
the men undid the lid of the basket and lifted it up. But none of the
British women even noticed that action: what they were gaping at was
what four more officers were bringing into the room. It was a sight
beyond belief.

The four men made their way through the onlookers, to the edge of the
pool. Then they set down their burden in front of the Prince. It was a
rocking horse. Made of wood, skillfully painted a realistic shade of
dappled gray, a tail made of what looked like real horse hairs, and
with bright blue dolls' eyes painted on the head. It was far larger
than any normal toy and in fact looked as if it might have come from a
fairground ride. But the strangest thing of all about it was the saddle
on top of the wooden horse, a fat well padded red silk pillow of a
saddle which ran all the way from mane to tail. In addition there were
reins on the well shaped head, fine leather reins, and thick leather
stirrups on each side of the horse with wide wooden foot rests.

Ravi patted the horse on the head: "Patience, ladies, all will soon be
clear. But first a peace offering."

The officer who had lifted the lid of the basket held up chunks of
white between his fingers and called out: "Come on, Kirpa, old boy,
hurry up."

Another officer passed him an ice bucket. In the summer heat it seemed
almost as an incongruous sight as the rocking horse, but the clatter of
the white shards as the officer dropped them into the container and the
way he rubbed his numbed fingers afterwards confirmed that the bucket
was being used for its intended purpose. Confirmation made doubly sure
as a champagne bottle was lifted carefully out of the ice filled wicker
basket. The audience in the pool gaped again as the officer holding the
bottle opened it with a few twists of his finger and sent the cork
flying high in the air. It was obvious that he'd been trying to land it
inside the bowl of snakes and missed by only a few feet. Another of the
Kultooni cavalrymen had a tray ready and took out glasses from the
basket, champagne glasses cold enough to be instantly covered in
condensation as they were set out on the tray and each one instantly
filled with foaming liquid.

"Bollinger, the 1913 vintage," Prince Ravi boasted. "I hope you ladies
appreciate it. You certainly should since I had to have a private box
car entirely filled with ice at a freezing works in Calcutta in order
to have some small portion of it still intact by the time it got here.
I wish I could share some of the champagne with you but unfortunately
my religion forbids it."

He smiled again and pointed at the rocking horse: "Champagne and a
jolly fine wooden horse, hey? No doubt you are wondering what old Ravi
is playing at. I already have you at my mercy, isn't it, so why the
French champagne and the toy? Well, ladies, these props are for a
little game we are going to be playing. The Kultooni Irregulars are
inviting you all to take part in a Saumur steeplechase. Perhaps many of
you know that Saumur is the town in France where French cavalry
officers are trained, and I'm sure that some of you know the
traditional test undertaken by an officer graduating from Samaur to
prove he is a worthy successor to Marshal Ney."

The Prince smiled, held up one of the glasses above his eyes and
watched the tiny streams of bubbles in it rising to the top of the
champagne: "This is part of the test, proving that the aspiring
candidate can hold his drink. Champagne of course, since it is in
France. Each officer is given three hours to complete the test. During
that time he must drink three bottles of champagne, ride thirty miles
across open country and seduce three women. The order in which he
carries out these tasks is left to his own judgement."

Ravi carefully put down the glass and folded his arms: "Ladies, today
we are privileged to offer you the chance to show your mettle in a
Saumur steeplechase. Five of you and fifteen bottles of champagne to be
consumed in the next three hours. Unfortunately we can't let you go
riding out into the country so we've bought you a horse in here. It may
only be a rocking horse but whilst each one of you is on it I think I
can guarantee there'll be some very fast galloping, my word, yes. But
to make up for the lack of outdoor exercise we've increased your indoor
exercise -- three bottles each and four men each in three hours. Not
very difficult, hey!"

He slapped his palms together and one of the ayahs came scuttling
forward, to pick up the tray. "Please accept a glass each as the tray
is taken around. The first lady to refuse will immediately be placed on
the horse's back in exactly the same condition as Lady Godiva was when
she made her famous ride through Coventry."

The woman in the pool gaped at him, except for Amanda, her eyes being
fastened on the tray as the ayah knelt down to present it to her. She
was totally confused as to what to do, until the Prince took a step
towards her. Without any more delay she immediately decided that he was
perfectly capable of making good his threat and picked up one of the
cold glasses and sipped from it -- the iced Bollinger as delicious a
drink as anything she could ever remember tasting in her entire life.

"No heel taps, young Amanda," the Prince said genially. "All down the
hatch, chin, chin. There's a lot to drink yet."

She obeyed and swallowed the rest of the glass in one gulp, and went to
put it back on the tray, only to find it already carried away.

"Keep the glass, Amanda, a refill is already coming."

Three of the native officers, slim and smiling, came towards her. One
of them was carrying an ice bucket with the long neck of a champagne
bottle protruding from the top. More officers were breaking up into
small groups, each group with a bucket and a bottle, and each group
walking around the pool and stopping at the back of one of the women.
It was as if each of the wives had been assigned her own escorts.
Amanda realized with a shock that was probably the truth, the selection
already made of which man -- which men -- would have each woman. She
looked around and saw the same knowledge dawning on her friends' faces.
Amanda also noticed that none of the women were refusing to drink. Jean
Ellington had been the most obviously reluctant to pick up a glass but
Carol Carnac-Smythe had snapped something to her which had made Jean
comply. And that was no surprise, what with those damned snakes hanging
overhead.

"Now, who's the senior lady present today?" The Prince demanded.

He was smiling, rubbing his extended thumbs against the silk sleeves of
his jacket as he grinned at his prisoners. It was a joke, a sly joke
about the Indian caste system as adapted and practiced by the British.
Every civil servant's desk had a warrant of precedence on it, a book
which showed the relative status of every servant of the King-Emperor.
Without the warrant nobody would have known how to arrange the seating
at a dinner party, and whether an Inspector of Smoke Nuisances and his
wife should be further up the table than a Junior Settlement Officer
and his spouse. But in the Army the whole system was much simpler. The
Colonel of the 17th was a bachelor, so the senior major's wife was the
senior lady. Which meant, amongst other things, that she was the wife
who gave the signal for the women to withdraw after a meal and leave
the men to drink their port in peace. But not today: no segregation of
the sexes today.

"I'm the senior lady," Carol Carnac-Smythe admitted.

The Prince nodded: "Oh yes, so you are, Carol. Now, will you come out
here or shall I try my marksmanship again? And I should warn you that
I'm a very poor shot. The bullet may go anywhere."

Carol didn't exactly stand up, for she didn't get the chance, not with
eager brown hands at each elbow to help her up, then to take her wrists
and arms. The Kultooni men standing behind her almost lifted her out of
the pool and then provided a close quarter escort as she was walked
around the pool towards the Prince. All the eyes in the room were
fastened on the sight of Carol's lean and shapely figure clearly
displayed under the thin wet sari. Especially where the fabric clung to
the slowly swinging shapes of her breasts. One of the officers spun the
rocking horse around on its rockers so that the big simpering blue eyes
were looking directly towards the pool. Carol was made to stand behind
the wooden model, each of her arms still being lightly held.

"Well, Carol, you seem to have plenty of prisoner's friends eager to
help you along" Ravi chuckled. "Let's get her ready for mounting."

There were answering laughter from the men around Carol as two of them
kept their hands on her wrists while Ravi stood closer behind her. He
reached around her body with one hand and used it to gently cup her
left breast, then to tweak the fold in her cleavage which kept the
sides of the sari together. The women in the pool and the men standing
around it all saw the spasm of anger which showed in Carol's face,
though she made no effort to break away from the men holding her,
clearly realizing the futility of any such attempt.

"Come on, more champagne all round before we unveil the senior lady in
all her beauty," Ravi sneered. "Drink up, ladies, for the clock is
already running. Failure to comply would be jolly bad news all round
for all of you."

Each of the four women left in the pool found themselves being touched
on the head and shoulders by different hands as they were given
refilled glasses. Amanda Priller accepted hers as numbly as if she was
at some party instead of involved in this madness. Even when the hands
which had touched her began to gently rub the lobes of her ears she
still sipped from the glass as if her entire universe hadn't suddenly
turned inside out. She ignored the fingers gently rolling her flesh
between them, but gaped at the sight of both of Ravi's brown hands
stroking Carol's breasts again, the woman's blonde hair hanging down as
she lowered her head from the watchers. Or perhaps it was in
anticipation of the popping flashbulb which suddenly went off above Mr
Manji's camera. Yet even Carol's humiliation at the Prince's hands
wasn't enough to stop all the women's eyes turning towards a large
blackboard being set up on an easel beside the table.

Finely lettered words had been meticulously painted in white on the
board. The top line read: "RUNNERS AND RIDERS FOR THE GAZEPORE FILLIES'
FORNICATION STAKES". Underneath those words was a grid of painted white
lines. On top of the left column was the single word, "MOUNTS":
underneath it one of the officers had already begun chalking in Carol's
name in full: "Mrs Carol Carnac-Smythe". To the right of that column
were more columns, four of them, each column with the word "RIDERS"
above it. Columns still blank but waiting to be filled in. It was past
comprehension that these Indians thought they could do such a thing to
white women. Yet they seemed quite without qualms as they continued
their preparations. Ravi was laughing, now cupping Carol's breasts in
the palms of his hands and whispering something in her ear which made
her lift her flushed face up for all the audience to see.

"Every glass empty now?" The prince asked. "OK, gentleman, please do
the honors."

The men on either side of Carol reached out and tugged at the top of
her sari, loosening the knot between the pale skinned white mounds that
Ravi was fondling so avidly. The material wrapped around her body came
loose and slipped down as another flashbulb popped. Amanda Priller
heard the men stroking her arms and shoulders gasp with excitement: the
fingers rubbing her ears squeezed harder. Up above there was a jabber
of excitement like a monkey taunting an enemy from the treetops as the
boy on the rafter saw Carol's naked figure -- a figure well worthy of
the attention it was getting.

Like her friends, Carol rode miles every day, swam in the club pool
most days and played tennis or hockey at least three times a week. It
was an article of faith in Anglo-Indian society that the surest way to
stay healthy in the tropics was through sport, and in a society where
all menial work was done by servants the opportunities for sport were
many. So, though in her early thirties and a mother, she still had an
excellent figure. Rather taller than the average, wide hipped, and well
breasted, but with only a few extra pounds to show for her age, and
those distributed to good advantage.

She was by any standards a good looking if not a beautiful woman, with
a body which any man would want to possess, and all the lustful male
eyes in the Moorghi-Khana were taking in her large red nipples and the
wet curls of the patch of straw colored hair visible between her legs.

"By Jove, that Carnac-Smythe woman is looking like a jolly good
jig-jig, Musad, old boy," Amanda Priller heard one of the Kultooni
officers standing behind her say with glee in his voice. Then a hand
patted her on the head as if she was a dog and another officer
answered.

"Not to worry, Yasir, I think our mare here will give us all even
better rides once we get the whip out to her on the straight."

Everything that was happening was clearly impossible in the real world.
Amanda decided this had to be a drug induced dream and very soon
reality must break through. She saw Carol putting a foot in one of the
stirrups and swinging a graceful leg over the rocking horse. But
instead of sitting on top of the plump red pillow, Carol had to bend
forward over the horse as though she were a jockey, her lower belly on
the pillow, her hands clutching on the reins and her bottom directly
above the toy's tail.

An officer stood on either side of the front of the horse and pushed
down on the rockers with their feet, tipping it forward and lifting
Carol's bare backside higher up for Ravi's inspection. He clapped his
hands, took the riding crop off his wrist and called behind him. The
ayahs giggled into the hands they were covering their faces with and
formed a line behind the horse. Whether by accident or by her own
efforts Manga was at the head of the queue and eagerly accepted the
riding crop the Prince offered her.

"More drinks, girls, more drinks," he called out genially. "You must
enjoy yourselves for we've gone to no end of trouble to arrange this
entertainment for you." The Prince sounded to Amanda like the Garrison
Padre introducing a magic lantern show about English cathedrals.

The glasses were refilled, the woman accepted them with shaking hands
and sipped from the dew beaded glasses. As Camilla reached up for hers
one of the Kultooni officers put his fingers around her hand and rubbed
the back of it against the hard projection under his pyjamy jacket.
She'd never felt a man's stiffened cock through silk before and she
thought it a very erotic feeling. Then again, everything was becoming
erotic, with the continual stroking and now a tongue flickering into
one of her ears as she sipped from her glass. She'd now firmly decided
that ice cold '13 vintage Bollinger was the finest thing ever invented
for a parched throat. Whatever else might be mind shrivelling lunacy,
the champagne had to be real because no dream had ever tasted so
delicious.

"What's your name?" she asked, sotto voce. So quietly that only the
Indian nuzzling her could hear.

"I am called Osama, Pearl of the East, and you are to be the flower of
my life," her lover whispered mockingly. "Incidentally, I was watching
you play hockey the other morning, and I must say you have very
attractive legs, old girl. Well worth the trouble of getting up early
to come and admire."

Camilla almost giggled herself at the incongruity of the words, but now
she remembered seeing Osama at the hockey pitch. He'd been the only
Kultooni there because the match at been held at dawn, in the coolest
hour of the day, when most of the Irregular's Officers were still abed.
A tall, slim man -- no, boy -- with a broad smile who'd clapped loudly
at every goal by both teams.

"Thank you," she said, and then felt totally stupid as Carol called out
in pain.

Both the officers beside her had each taken a handful of womanly flesh
and removed their feet from the horse's rockers. Now it was only their
hold on Carol's breasts which was stopping the horse from tipping back
again. And as Carol whimpered one of the Kultooni men was winding up
the gramophone on the table. As soon as the spring was tight he put a
record on and lifted up the stylus to place it in the groove. Prince
Ravi stood aside and nodded to Manga. She drew back the riding crop and
lashed it down with the full strength of her arm on the creamy white
buttocks offered up to her. Carol twitched and yelped in painful
response. The hiss of the stylus became a jaunty tune.

"A more humane Mikado
Never did in Japan exist,
To nobody second,
I'm certainly reckoned
A true philanthropist."

The men around the pool laughed and joined in the song in high good
humor as the old Ayah continued to spread a criss cross of red weals
onto her target. Years of servitude repaid with interest. And certainly
with plenty of interest from the spectators. Then the Prince held
Manga's arm as she reached back for another swing. She was pushed aside
and he stood close to the rocking horse's tail with his hand underneath
Carol's quivering buttocks. She squealed again, as she had done for
each stroke of the crop. But this time, instead of having her eyes
tightly closed, they were wider than the painted eyes on the wooden
horse.

"It is my very humane endeavor
To make, to some extent,
Each evil liver a running river
Of harmless merriment."

The cavalry officers roared out the words with glee as their Prince
dipped his fingers into Carol's fully displayed and proffered sex.
Carol was sobbing loudly and trying to ease the pain on her breasts by
clutching at the sleeves of the two officers kneading her nipples.
Laughing himself, the Prince offered the officer beside him a turn at
feeling the white woman's most intimate parts. And as Carol cried out
again in disbelief he took the crop from Manga and gave it to the next
ayah in the queue.

"My object all sublime I shall achieve in time--
To let the punishment fit the crime--
The punishment fit the crime."

The ayah also laid on with all her strength, strength enough to have
Carol's cries audible over the sound of the gramophone and the swelling
chorus. Camilla Hartley-Dexter found herself being hauled up to her
feet, almost uncaring of the brown hands holding her captive as the
Mikado's song continued. She was staring at Prince Ravi with awe. It
took some special gift for devilry to mass rape a group of British
women with a musical selection from Gilbert and Sullivan as an
accompaniment, as though they were at a garden party instead of an
enforced orgy. And an orgy was certainly what it was developing into.
Camilla had a chance to see Jean Ellington already on her feet and
having her tits squeezed by her escorts from behind before the same
fate befell her own breasts. And as several different hands fondled her
she could look around the pool and see all her other friends being
compelled to their feet, then having their arms and elbows lifted high
for easier encirclement from behind.

"And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!"

The prince pushed the ayah aside, opened the front of his silk tunic
and stood close to Carol. The ayah put one hand down in front of him,
giggled and seemingly positioned him for his onslaught. He spoke one
word, the arms that Carol was clinging to like a shipwrecked survivor
lifted slightly to tilt her bottom down to the required position, and
then Prince Ravi caught hold of Carol's hips and plunged his manhood
deep into her body.

She yelped and arched her back as he began his task of thoroughly
ravishing her. Some of the other Kultani men came closer to the horse,
slapping her buttocks and tickling at the soles of her bare feet as she
was bounced about as if she was a rider in the Grand National. Carol's
face was protruding from the knot of bodies around her, eyes rolling
back like a terrified mare's and sounds coming out of her throat which
might have escaped from a steam boiler about to blow up. A popping
flashlight went off inside the shadowed hut like summer lightning.
Carol was now officially a hunt trophy, with the picture taken to prove
it.

"My object all sublime I shall achieve in time--
To let the punishment fit the crime--
The punishment fit the crime."

Camilla was gasping as if she was under the sea in a diving suit with a
blocked air tube. A tongue in each ear, a hand on each breast, a hand
on each buttock and every other woman in the room being treated just as
lewdly, Carol excepted, who was being treated about as lewdly as woman
could be and looking to get her comeuppance at any second from the
royal penis. Then she yelped out like a vixen caught by a pack of
hounds and the Prince shouted out in triumph. The music from the
gramophone ceased as the stylus was lifted from the disk. Already one
of the men was filling in the Prince's name in one of the boxes
alongside Carol Carnac-Smythe's name on the blackboard.

Ravi threw aside his pyjamy jacket and called out orders in his own
language. The officers grinned, though they were taking their hands
away from the women, even Carol. She was panting as heavily as a hunted
deer and clutching the neck of the wooden horse as if it was stopping
her from drowning. An officer was, for some reason, pouring a whole
bottle of champagne straight into an ice bucket. One of the ayahs, the
youngest and prettiest one, knelt down in front of the Prince,
struggling desperately to control her giggles as she slipped off the
contraceptive sheath he'd been wearing. She stood up again, holding it
by the open end as if it might fly away like a tiny balloon it was.
When she received another order from Ravi her giggles almost overcame
her even as she hurried to obey him. Looking at all the white woman in
the pool with delight, she dropped the used condom into the ice bucket.

"A toast, ladies, a toast. To be drunk in turn."

The Prince took the bucket by the handles and walked around the pool.
Towards Camilla first, and her escorts turned around to face him. "Here
you are, my dear," he chuckled. "Take it and drink deep."

The condom was floating on top of the Bollinger like a dead fish.
Camilla considered very briefly about whether to try to avoid the
humiliation, even though the choice didn't exist. Not for her, at
least. Joan Of Arc would no doubt have spat in Ravi's face. Camilla
Hartley-Dexter didn't: she put her own fingers on top of Ravi's hand as
he kept hold of the handles and she prepared to drink from the bucket.
On one side she could see the horse being swivelled around to face the
camera. Carol was sitting up with a disrobed Kultooni officer close on
each side. She was smiling in a slack jawed sort of way and holding a
brown skinned erection in each hand. Another flashbulb popped to record
the scene. Then Camilla lifted up the bucket and swallowed a mouthful
of the champagne, the used contraceptive floating in it brushing
against her lips.

"Well done, Camilla," the Prince said. "Looking forward to your own
fucking?"

His eyes seemed to be holding hers like a snake charmer's: "Yes, your
Royal Highness." There was no choice but to answer meekly.

"Then we won't disappoint you. Put her across the horse."

Whether or not the champagne was responsible, Camilla was sure she
would have fallen in stepping over the pool wall if so many hands
hadn't been holding her up. As she was taken towards the rocking horse
she heard applause from around it. A Kultooni officer was on the back
of the model, facing the tail, his feet pressed up against the rockers.
Astride him, her feet in the stirrups, was Carol. Her hands were
holding tightly onto the man's bared shoulders and she was jerking
herself up and down on his cock like a performing animal. The hands
holding her nipples had drawn her breasts out from her body as an
obvious threat of what would happen if her performance wasn't good
enough. Further encouragement was coming from two other men swatting at
her already chastised buttocks with riding crops. A counterpoint to the
clapping sounds of wet flesh slapping together between the two bodies

One of the men holding Camilla spoke to the man impaling Carol: "Having
a good fuck, Suhail?"

"An excellent one, thank you. I'm not having to move a muscle now we've
got Mrs Carnac-Smythe so well trained."

It was true, Suhail was being used by the wild eyed, snorting English
woman as a medium to act out her own humiliation on. Carol was staring
down at the man's face as though it belonged to some God whom she was
gladly worshipping with her cunt as she frantically galloped herself on
his manhood.

A voice spoke to Camilla. It was Osama's: "Oh, Pearl of the East, take
this and use it well."

Into her hand he put a riding crop. The men who had been whipping Carol
stood back to make room for Camilla. But then their crops slashed down
against the sides of Camilla's legs, so powerfully that one of the
blows cut right through her thin sari. No word was spoken, none was
needed. Camilla began to beat Carol's bottom as though it was a piece
of dusty carpet hanging up for cleaning. Carol screeched and the
quivering buttocks Camilla was lashing jerked up and down Suhail's
glistening shaft like a shuttle on a loom. The top of Camilla's sari
came undone as she swung the crop, then fell free, and her breasts hung
naked and swinging in front of Suhail's admiring eyes

Suhail laughed, grabbed Carol's hips and held her down tightly against
him as he finally jerked upwards against her, his passion exploding in
the ultimate satisfaction. After he'd finished with her Carol was
lifted off the horse and set down on her hands and knees on top of a
coffee table by the two officers who'd been spanking her. One tapped
the end of his crop against her bottom as if reminding her of his
presence. The other one took hold of her hair and lifted up her head to
show her his upcurved cock nudging against her lips.

Camilla gaped at the sight of the Gazepore garrison's senior lady
opening her mouth for an Indian's prick. Yet, though it was a sight she
was sure she'd never see, it now seemed to becoming normal because Jean
Ellington and Deborah Boxwood were both on their knees in the pool,
both kneeling down in front of the Prince and licking on his reviving
cock as though they were attending some religious service. Beside them
Amanda Priller was standing upright, kissing and being kissed with open
mouthed passion by three cavalrymen. And her hands were darting around,
along and over their hardened flesh as if she was at a market stall
trying to choose which one to buy.

"Time for your first gallop, old girl," Osama said loudly. "I think
we'll have you on your back to start with."

Without any further ado Camilla was prepared for the men's pleasure.
The crop was taken from her hand, her sari thrown aside, half a dozen
brown hands pushing her down until her spine was along the silk pillow
and the rocking horse's tail between her legs. But that was only for a
second, until more hands took hold of her strongly muscled calves and
lifted them backwards over her body. Somewhere nearby she could hear
feminine laughter from one of the ayahs. The officers holding her onto
the horse were looking down at their captive and smiling as if this was
only some kind of horseplay, some kind of a party trick. And then
Camilla screeched out with pain as riding crops slashed across the
soles of her feet.

Lifting her head up, she saw that the blows had been delivered by two
of the ayahs. It was no surprise that one of the women standing near
her was Manga. What did astonish Camilla was that the girl brandishing
the other riding crop was her own ayah, Jumila. The girl's teeth were
clenched in a savage grimace as she punished her mistress, showing no
signs of hesitation at all. In fact both of the women seemed to be
acting under restraint from the men not to hit Camilla too hard. Even
so, the pain was incredible and the pinioned woman begged at the top of
her voice for mercy. A sight and sound which distracted Mr Manji away
from the photos he was taking of two officers standing on either side
of the coffee table and both enjoying Carol's hospitality, front and
back. Reluctantly, the cameraman moved the tripod away from the brown
bodies straining against the submissive white one and let off a
flashbulb to record Camilla's torture. Then there was a babble of
voices and people moved into fresh positions, as if staging a rehearsed
play.

Jumila and Manga stepped away, both as unwilling to be pulled away from
their prey as blooded hounds. Camilla looked up through watering eyes
to see Osama laughing at her with a bottle in his hand. He dribbled
some of the chilled champagne over her breasts and immediately two
mouths settled down on them as lightly as falling leaves and began
gently biting her nipples. More cold liquid dripping onto her belly
button, and another tongue lapping at it. On her feet, and the blessed
coolness splashing onto her raw soles before her toes began to be
nibbled.

Another flashbulb popped and Camilla's lungs expelled air as though she
was trying to blow out an enormous mass of birthday candles in one
breath. Then the draining of more liquid down and around her patch of
pubic hair, until the champagne was running down the cleft of her cunt
like a strickling mountain stream. To be immediately swallowed up by
yet another mouth, another tongue, with fingers moving up between her
widely stretched legs to hold her wide open. Camilla arched her back,
shaking like a fever victim underneath all the hands holding her,
smelling the spicy native smell of the brown flesh surrounding her.
Overhead the boy was now sitting on the rafter, masturbating his
exposed organ in delight as he stared down at Camilla's treatment. She
screamed again, so loudly that it must surely have been heard all over
the cantonment, but caring for nothing except the physical satisfaction
being given her, a totality of bodily pleasure enhanced behind belief
by the pain she had just endured.

An officer's face appeared above her, laughing as he poured the dregs
of the bottle onto Camilla's lips. She licked them with her tongue,
then held her mouth open in invitation. He bent over her as if he was
about to kiss a sleeping beauty awake, though Camilla had never been
less asleep in her life. She was aroused beyond belief, tits and toes
and cunt mastered by tongue and teeth, gentle fingers stroking her
inflamed soles, and now a finger playing with her clitoris. She
wondered whether it was Osama, and screeched out his name. The man
bending over her put his lips against hers, their tongues slapped
together like mating snakes and entwined in uncontrolled passion. And,
second later, Camilla's cunt was opened by a cock that seemed
supernaturally thick and of an unbelievable length.

It was what she was lusting for now, body and soul, to be fucked as no
respectable woman could ever dream of being fucked, without any
restraint or decencies at all. And, incredibly, as she was used by a
gang of natives in front of her friends, she heard the gramophone start
playing again. Only music this time, with the Maharajah's Own
Irregulars singing their own words to another G and S favorite, words
laced with obvious sarcasm.

She is an Englishwoman!
She is an Englishwoman!
For she herself has said it,
And it's greatly to her credit,
That she is an Englishwoman!
That she is an Englishwoman!

Camilla climaxed before the man, and again, and then a third time,
snorting out against the mocking words. Her hands were directed to
stiffened ramrods of flesh that she jerked on frantically as the man
beasting her withdrew. But it was only a mere changing of the guard,
for another lusty soldier quickly came to attention in her steaming
sentry box. The tongue in her mouth was withdrawn and Camilla blinked
up at the brown faces looking down on her. The thing she noticed most
was the flashes of white teeth as the Kultooni officers bellowed out
their teasing words. An act of humiliation they reinforced by turning
Camilla's head to one side towards a cock curved like a scimitar with a
top like a ripe plum. She took as much as she could of it within her
mouth and sucked on it.

For she might have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an!
Or perhaps Itali-an!
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
She remains an Englishwoman!

After she'd been taken twice and filled her mouth once with sticky
sperm, Camilla was pulled up to her feet and given another glass of
champagne. Staggering, she was pushed aside as Deborah Boxwood was
seated on the horse, in a rider's position as Lucy had been, and
Camilla was forced down on her knees to lick Deborah's clitoris from
behind. She hardly knew what she was doing, nor cared, but felt some
vestige of relief when her mouth was required again for another male's
pleasure, a waiting cock which seemed ready to plunge into Deborah.
Looking up, Camilla saw that the brown baton she was giving suck to
belonged to the Prince, renewed again by Jean's and Deborah's harem
tricks and eager to put his name on the rider's board again. He was
laughing and drinking from a bottle, then threw it aside.

"Put me into your friend's cunt," he roared. "Come on, Camilla, put me
in."

Still on her knees, Camilla aimed the tip of the royal prick with her
fingers in between Deborah's puffed out cunt lips. Deborah called out,
perhaps in encouragement, and louder again as the Prince filled her
void. The Indians crowded around the horse again as Camilla was taken
back to the pool.

There seemed to be some kind of a game going on in the middle of it. A
kind of daredevil game for the Kultooni officers. A table had been set
down in the middle of the pool, underneath the bowl of kraits. An
officer was sitting at each end, risking his life from a possibility of
the bowl falling in return for the pleasure of spurting his seed into
the mouth of one of the British wives. At one end of the table Jean
Ellington was bobbing her head up and down in an Indian's lap as Amanda
crouched on her knees in the water to lick the same man's ball sack.
The Kultooni at the other end of the table was holding Carol's hair in
one hand as he apparently did his best to suffocate her by ramming her
lips right down the length of his cock again and again, like a terrier
shaking a rat to death in its jaws. Carol was snorting and snuffling
through her nose and feverishly stroking the native's thighs with her
fingertips in a kind of mute plea for mercy, until she was suddenly
released to fall down on her knees, face tilted back and dribbles of
spunk running down her chin.

Then another rampant native took his place at the vacated end of the
table. Camilla was pushed towards him and quickly joined Carol in
providing the same duality of pleasure that Jean and Amanda were
providing for their own master. Once again, Mr Manji and his assistant
turned the camera around to let off more flash bulbs at the scene of
the garrison wives' degradation. The pair of them must have already
used up about a year's supply of bulbs Camilla thought; she wondered
how long the orgy had lasted already but had no clear idea of the time
that had passed since the cavalrymen had entered the hut.

One of the ayahs came to the edge of the pool holding a tray with newly
filled glasses. As each pair of white woman succeeded in bringing an
officer to satisfaction they were ordered to come and drink more
champagne before their services were demanded again. As Jean and Amanda
were draining their glasses and having their tits and cunts felt,
Deborah began screaming on top of the wooden horse in an uncontrollable
fit of passion. Both of the women's heads turned towards the scene,
each knowing full well that what was happening now to them was only a
pale dawn compared to the full heat and fury of the mob awaiting them.
Yet Camilla felt she would have gladly taken their places if she could.
For in the depths of her own degradation she had found a depth of
pleasure beyond belief. Perhaps she'd been driven as mad as Deborah
sounded to think such evil,  but when Camilla saw Carol's eyes also
flickering towards the horse she would have sworn she saw the same
wildness in them as in her own, the same desire to be sacrificed once
again on the alter of male lust.

If so, neither Camilla or Carol had any reason to complain. For a new
game soon began, with all four women bent over the table at the same
time in a tangle of jammed together bodies as men circled them, each
giving the woman of their choice a few swift strokes between their
opened legs before moving onto the next offering. Whenever one of the
prowlers finally lost control in one of the captive bodies, another
name was included in the list of successful riders. Amanda was taken
away for her ride on the fairground horse, and then Jean. Both of them
staggered back, neither quite sure how many more men had taken them as
lovers in the gallops, and past caring.

For a few moments there was a kind of interval, when they were allowed
to stand around smoking and drinking, as if they were at some kind of
lunatic asylum cocktail party. The only exception was Amanda, still on
top of the table as Mr Manji undid his flies and made the beast of two
backs with her, grinning all the time as his assistant photographed the
coupling. Camilla found herself surrounded by a group of men as naked
as herself, also smoking and drinking champagne, and apparently all of
them having known her in the biblical sense.

"Good God, you haven't all fucked me, have you? No wonder I'm so sore."

"Awfully sorry, old girl," Osama had said, not sounding at all
apologetic. "I'm afraid we've all got terribly big cocks in our
regiment -- it's a condition of entry, ha, ha.  And it is so much fun
diddling a girl with such nice legs as yours. I thought so since I saw
you playing hockey. I say, chaps how about we dress Camilla up in her
hockey gear the next time and tie her ankles to her hockey stick?
Wouldn't that be great fun?"

The suggestion was greeted with a round of approval even as Camilla
opened her mouth to say there wasn't going to be a next time, a
statement which would have been incredibly stupid: with the photographs
the Kultooni officers had they could make her do whatever they wanted
to, anything at all. If she doubted that there was proof enough at the
next table where Deborah was bent over a table while Manji's assistant
fingered her bum with what seemed like a pot of ghee, the cooking oil
used in every Indian kitchen. The officers were also turning their
heads to look at this new diversion. What Camilla hadn't expected was
for the babu to take his place behind the camera again.

The Prince was shaking with laughter. Two of the ayahs moved the coffee
table behind Deborah's legs, laughing and looking upwards. Then the
Prince also looked up and spoke to the boy on the cross beam. He smiled
in delight and swung down to hang from the rafter by his arms, the
knife now clamped between his teeth. The boy had obviously seen an
Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks motion picture and was acting out his
Hollywood fantasies. But it was a fantasy with a sequel which few boys
are granted.

For as soon as he'd dropped down neatly onto a table he jumped off
again, and onto the coffee table positioned behind Deborah. She looked
back and gaped at the sight of his erection, and then at the touch of
his hands on her bottom. But although she was under no restraint she
stayed where she was as the urchin began to bugger her like a coupling
monkey, yelping his delight as the officers and the ayahs applauded the
performance. Another flash bulb popped as though the doorway to hell
had suddenly swung open again for a second.

Later, not much later, the gee was used again. Two tables, end to end,
the five women all bent over them, and facing the camera, each with
their anal holes well greased with the cooking fat. Then the eager
natives queued up to get their pictures taken above the row of white
women's faces and the expressions on them as they got repeated
experiences of having Indian pricks rammed up their bottoms. There was
no doubt about it, Prince Ravi would have some interesting snapshots to
show his father and his father's harem when he went home again.

Then he obtained some even more interesting pictures as he walked down
the table, Manga beside him holding an opened jar of curry for the
Prince to dip his finger into before he applied it to each of the white
women, in the same orifices so recently and so sorely contested by his
officers. The frantic dash for the pool afterwards when the white women
were finally released had the onlookers in tears of laughter. Then the
serious business of the day began . . . more iced champagne, applied
liberally at both ends of the ladies before they were invited to begin
selecting page numbers at random from a very liberally illustrated copy
of the Karma Sutra. By the time they left Gazepore the Maharajah of
Kultoon's cavalry officers were going to have the best trained mounts
in India.

THE END

-- 
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reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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