Free Guardsman of Gor by John Norman

past me, falling to her knees at the side of a great sea chest. She flung up its lid and, frantically, with two hands, rummaged in the chest.

I slipped my knife in my belt. I removed an object from the cabin wall.
    Then she had leaped to her feet, wildly, clutching, holding over head, what appeared to he two, flat, rectangular sheets of lead, bound together. She ran to the windows of the cabin, those between and above the rudders, through which I, breaking the frames and glass inward; had entered. She drew back her arms, holding the bound lead sheets over her head, to hurl them into the Vosk.
    The whip cracked forth, lashing, snapping, whipping about her startled wrists, binding them together, causing her, crying out with pain, to drop the leaden sheets. By her wrists, temporarily caught in the coils of the whip, I jerked her back and to the side, and she fell, stumbling, among the glass and wood, to my right. With my foot I spurned her to the side of the berth, on the cabin floor. The coil of the whip was then freed.
    She whimpered.
    I had gathered from the fact that the chest had not been locked, that it had been open to her, and that she had acted with such alacrity, that a charge had been placed upon her in the matter with which I was concerned. That charge, of course, could only have been to see to the immediate destruction of the documents in the event of an emergency. On shipboard, of course, it would be possible to immediately dispose of the documents only by casting them overboard. The lead weighting, of course, would carry them to the mud at the bottom of the Vosk. In a short time, then, the inks would run, and the papers held between the sheets, would disintegrate. My surmises in these matters had been correct. The girl had proved useful.
    Whimpering, she was now on her hands and knees at the side of the berth. She extended her hand toward the leaden sheets. The whip clacked savagely and, quickly, she drew back her hand.
    "I do not wish to become impatient with you," I told her.
    "You do not own me," she said.
    I smiled. I lifted the whip before her. "You are mistaken," I told her.
    She eyed the leaden sheets. "Who are you?" she asked.
    "Jason," I said, "of Victoria, your master."
    "I am the woman of Reginald, captain of the Tamira," she said.
    "No longer," I said.
    She looked at me, angrily. "I am a captain's woman," she said.
    "You are a mere slave," I said, "who must crawl to any man."
    "No!" she said.
    "Are you haughty?" I asked.
    "If you like," she said.
    I turned from her, to search for oiled cloth and wax, something, anything, with which to make a sealed packet.
    I heard wood and glass suddenly move, as she scrambled across the cabin floor, on her hands and knees, toward the leaden sheets.
    With a cry of rage I spun about and smote down with the whip. The stroke caught her across the back and buttocks and struck her to her stomach on the floor, amidst the wood and glass. Her extended hand was a foot from the leaden sheets. It had not occurred to me that she would attempt to reach the leaden sheets. Apparently she did not yet know who owned her.
    I looked down upon her.

She lay there on her stomach, in the wood and glass, absolutely quietly. She did not move a muscle. She had felt the whip.
    "I am not pleased," I told her.
    "No," she cried. "No!"
    I then, displeased, her Gorean master, savagely lashed the slave. She tried to crawl from the whip, but could not do so. Then she tried to crawl no more, but knelt, her head down, her head in her hands, weeping, at the side of the berth, a whipped slave.
    "Forgive a slave for having been displeasing, my Masterl" she begged.
    She looked up, and I held the whip before her. Eagerly, crying, she took it in her hands and kissed it, fervently.
    "Fetch oiled cloth, a lantern, sealing wax, a candle, such things," I said.
    She hurried to obey, and I replaced the whip on the wall. In Gorean domiciles, wherein serve female slaves, it is common to find a whip prominently