Free Casca 15: The Pirate by Barry Sadler Page B

her out on deck and having her bathe under the ship's pump. He knew exactly why the captain did it and the son of a bitch had succeeded. Well... He would have been horny enough anyway.
    Jenkins was past fifty and that made a difference in the execution but not in the anticipation. As a matter of fact, he admitted to himself, maybe there was more anticipation now than when he was young. After a long voyage he dreamed of women, thought of women, even imagined sometimes that he saw their phantom images, like the mirages on the desert that time the Tripoli pirates had held him captive.
    So now, in the noonday tropical sun, only partially protected by the wide brimmed hat he wore the sun no reasonable white man would ever go out in , he half expected to see the images of naked women in the dancing air over the hot beach. He didn't, though, so his attention came back to the second pleasure in his life, the possibility of killing one of these damned slaves. They were like children. Now that they were ashore they were probably dreaming of making a dash for the underbrush. Which was really the reason Jenkins was still sitting out here in the stern of the longboat broiling his brains in the sun. He wanted them to think they had a chance. Then he would get the first one who tried to run away. In Jenkins' experience, there was always at least one who tried it. He looked forward to shooting slaves or anything else for that matter. Jenkins did not particularly like using a blade. He was pretty good with a cutlass if he had to be, but he never liked it. Truth was, he wanted to stay just a little distance away from whatever he killed, and a blade meant too close contact.
    Now a woman, though... Close contact was fine there. Yeah... Real fine...
    Jenkins sighed and stood up unsteadily in the longboat. It was pulled up far enough on the beach not to be washed out, but it still swayed a little as he stood upright. Hell! he thought. I got too much going through my mind. His nerves were on edge and he suddenly felt like something was going to happen but he didn't know what. But he thought it was going to be something good, something to look forward to. That was the trouble about getting old. There wasn't all that much to look forward to. Jenkins spat into the water and got out of the longboat.
    He had spotted a smooth rock in the shade of a tree and headed for it. The rock would make a good place to sit and watch that little bastard mulatto boatswain struggle with his slaves to get the hawsers around the trees and the tackle set up. It was a nice flat rock with an open space behind it and underbrush coming up on both sides. In a way it was kinda like a stage. After he got his fill of women in New Orleans, maybe he'd go to a theater, watch a play. Wouldn't be as much fun as bedding a whore, but it would be something to do. Now if only–
    Damn!
    He had seen one! An image of a woman! Right behind the rock on which he was going to sit.
    Just for a moment, but real as you please. And damned if she wasn't a white woman! Naked from the waist up. Big boobs. Damn! but they were big! And round! Biggest, whitest boobs he had seen on a woman real, dream, or fantasy in years. Young face or at least that was the way he remembered it. Even had a big flower in her hair.
    By damn, if these were the kind of daydreams he was going to have on this island, why, hell, this was going to be a nice time. Jenkins made for the rock.
    When he sat on it, it occurred to him he'd better take another look at the slaves. But they were hard at work, and he saw that, even if the image he had seen had been no more than his own private fantasy none of the slaves nor the boatswain could have seen it because of the underbrush beside the rock. That was the trouble with a daydream that vivid. Seemed so real you always felt somebody else could see it .
    What the hell?
    Jenkins would have sworn he could smell the flower that had been in the woman's hair. There it was again. Strong. Must