Wrecked Chapters 5-6

Wrecked Chapters 5-6
By Pueros

This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY

For Heredia

These are chapters five and six of a long saga about the adventures in 19th century Africa of twin English boys.

Chapter Five - Chieftain

(Northern Mozambique, summer 1850)

James and John did not query their situation, as they stood tremulously in front of the elevated basketwork chair. The boys were intelligent enough to appreciate that they were about to have an audience with someone important, presumably the leader of the people who had found them. However, the twins, now dressed in shrunken and dishevelled attire and still exhausted after their forced march through the jungle, were beginning to wilt during their wait, not least because they were again exposed to the unrelentingly fiercely hot rays of the overhead sun in the cloudless sky above.

The season would, of course, be winter in their English homeland. However, this part of Africa was south of the equator and so James and John were experiencing the summer sun in this section of the world.

Fortunately for James and John, the delay until something of significance next happened to them proved mercifully short. The tribal chieftain often kept people seeking audiences waiting because he liked to remind them of his own importance and their relevant insignificance. However, he was as keen to view the mysterious and apparently highly attractive white boys as they were to stop standing under the remorseless sun.

Consequently, the usual ceremonial parade for such occasions began to emerge from the large hut before James and John succumbed to the heat and fainted. A black boy, with similar iron adornments to his neck and limbs, and presumably genitals, and bodily markings to those displayed on the slightly younger child bound naked between the two wooden stakes, first exited the chieftain's residence of mud, thatch and human skulls. However, confirmation of whether the sexual organs of this 13 year-old were also ringed was difficult to determine because he was not nude.

This black boy sported a minuscule loincloth of dark hide, which was much smaller than those worn by the other villagers and consequently only just covered his genitals. Unlike the attire of the other inhabitants of this settlement, whom James and John had so far seen, the 13 year-old's sparse garment also possessed no underlying thong or rear flap.

The boy's sexual organs could therefore be readily viewed when he moved if an observer was at the right angle at the side or if the 13 year-old's motion was sufficiently energetic to cause his loincloth's front flap temporarily to rise upwards. The latter embarrassing phenomenon could, of course, also occur in windy weather.

The boy carried in his hands a pole on which was affixed a large wooden silhouette of the leaping cheetah, which James and John had now recognised, despite not knowing the animal's precise species, must be the emblem of either these people or their leader. The identity of the latter now became evident to the twins because the chieftain next emerged from the hut, several paces behind his young almost naked standard-bearer.

The tall chieftain was over 70 years old, although he looked remarkably fit for his age. The hair on his head was white, in stark contrast to the deep blackness of his skin, but fulsome, although most was covered by a round colourful cloth cap. There was a similar hirsute covering to his broad chest, which was also adorned by a golden medallion depicting the leaping cheetah, and potbelly. Multiple tight- fitting strings of little cylindrical beads of many hues decorated his muscular neck, upper arms, wrists and ankles.

Apart from the naked boy bound between the wooden stakes, the chieftain was the first villager seen by James and John not wearing a loincloth. He was instead dressed in a skirt of brown material, which extended down to his knees and which the twins were later to discover was the hide from a ferocious lion that he had personally hunted down and killed.

Whilst clearly giving much careful visual attention to James and John, which the white boys were reciprocating, the chieftain slowly advance forward, eventually to sit in pomp on his basketwork throne. The 13 year-old black boy had already implanted his standard into a ready-made hole in the ground behind the chair.

Meanwhile, several younger men and boys, similarly dressed and adorned to the chieftain, took up standing positions on both sides of the tribal leader. The resemblance between them all was clear to James and John, who therefore correctly assumed that the male group represented four masculine generations of the same family, from great grandsons upwards.

The 13 year-old black boy now emerged from behind the chieftain's basketwork throne. He then mounted the low pedestal, upon which the chair was situated, in order to stand next to his seated master.

The black boy had briefly turned his back to James and John in order to mount the pedestal. The twins were therefore momentarily able to confirm that the nicely rotund mounds of the 13 year-old's bottom also displayed the little emblem of the leaping cheetah in the centre of each pleasantly curvaceous buttock.

Other small strange markings were also present on the black boy's lower back, just above the beginnings of his bumcrack. The twins immediately correctly thought that, what they considered to be nothing more than peculiar squiggles, were of a different nature to the cheetah emblems.

Unlike the currently unknown, to James and John, way in which the cheetah emblems had been applied, the squiggles definitely appeared to have been painted or stamped onto the black boy's young flesh. The twins would soon discover that their assessment was correct. They would also find out that the curly marks were not just peculiar decoration but instead Arabic writing.

Interestingly to James and John, the almost naked black boy now spoke first and in what appeared to be a European language, which the twins alas still did not understand. The 13 year-old had asked "Você fala português?"

On receiving only puzzled silence from James and John, the black boy went on to enquire "Habla usted Español?" and then "Parlez vous Français?" The latter question finally drew a response from one of the twins, who had learned a little of the French language at boarding school.

James answered "Un petit peu, mais je suis Anglais!" "Then you speak English," the now smiling black boy replied, after proudly discovering that the twins could not converse at all in Portuguese and Spanish or much in French.

As James and John were later to discover, the young black had been the slave of a Portuguese ship's captain, who traded regularly with the Spanish, French and English. The boy discovered that he had a natural ability quickly to pick up, understand and use, albeit only verbally because he remained illiterate, at least some aspects of the relevant foreign languages. For this reason, the chieftain was using him to communicate with the twins.

Although the chieftain might never have seen white people previously, he knew of their existence both from the tales told by the 13 year-old former slave of a Portuguese ship's captain and the Arab trader who visited him annually to barter goods, whose arrival this year was due. Consequently, the tribal leader appreciated that the twins were likely to speak one of the languages known by the black boy.

The black boy had originated from western Africa and was, of course, now one of the chieftain's own slaves, as was indicated by the iron and brandmarks decorating his body and the minuscule nature of his only covering. The 13 year-old had a year previously escaped from the abusive Portuguese ship's captain by jumping overboard when the man's vessel had been sailing up the then calm waters of the northern Mozambique Channel, close to the coast, on a moonlit night.

The black boy was far from home but felt that he had to accept the rare opportunity to try to escape unnoticed. He was a strong swimmer and had believed that he could reach the coast, after which he would seek a better life somewhere.

Unfortunately, the young black had barely reached the shore alive. He had subsequently been, like James and John, discovered unconscious on the beach by warriors from the chieftain's tribe. Such men regularly foraged the golden sands whilst out hunting in the skirting jungle, as many valuable objects were regularly washed up, even evidently very pretty boys.

"My name Gambo and I the personal slaveboy of mighty chieftain here," the young black then announced in his broken but understandable accented English, "just as you two probably be soon!"

Chapter Six – Destiny

(Northern Mozambique, summer 1850)

James and John naturally did not welcome the implication in the young black's last comment. As a result of the remark, the clever twins had immediately finally appreciated the significance of the iron and markings decorating the boy's body, and his barely existent attire, for they obviously denoted his status as a slave.

James and John naturally did not want to be slaves, or suffer the immense humiliation of spending their days virtually naked and sporting iron rings to their necks, wrists, ankles and genitals and markings on their bare flesh. As a result of their upbringing in 19th century middle-class England, and despite their general pleasantness of character, the twins also sadly possessed the mistaken attitude of most of their kind towards other peoples. Foreigners, especially those of different colours and apparently cruder civilisations, were supposedly inferior. The white boys could therefore not help but especially abhor the idea of being enslaved by black Africans in such a third-world setting.

Consequently, James and John now begged the chieftain, through his young interpreter, to be somehow returned to so- called white civilisation. However, the tribal leader's first response to the efficiently translated pleas was to laugh. His second action was to issue an order to one of his grandsons.

The chieftain's grandson was about 30 years of age and was particularly tall and strongly muscular. In reaction to the order, he unhitched a leather crop that had been attached to the belt of his skirt and advanced towards the naked black boy who was still spreadeagled between the two wooden stakes.

James and John turned to see what the grandson was about to do, although, from the sinister implement the man was now holding, they already had an idea as to what might now happen. The twins were proved right when the leather crop was soon raining blows on the now screaming black boy's back.

The attention of the alarmed James and John was then diverted back to the young translator, who began again to address them. "Master says no more begging but instead you do as told," the black boy advised, "or you too be stripped and beaten!"

The jaws of James and John dropped in shocked consternation. However, they were not allowed to dwell on their appalling predicament for too long because the black boy next instructed, whilst the sound of leather striking young flesh and accompanying shrieks still reverberated from behind the twins, "Now, you both come with me. You to be prepared for ceremony of enslavement, while mighty chieftain rewards warriors for your capture!"

(To be continued)

[Comments to the author can be sent to pueros@hotmail.com]