Venus in India or Love Adventures in Hindustan

‘CAPTAIN CHARLES DEVEREAUX’

H A R P E R P E R E N N I A L London, New York, Toronto, Sydney and New Delhi

…at the same time I slipped my hand into her bosom and for the first time took possession of the two most beautiful globes which adorned it. Louie did not draw back. She in no way tried to prevent my caressing her there. I was more than tempted to let my hand stray much lower…

Contents

Cover

Title Page

1 A Call to Arms

2 A Position of Trust

3 Captain Devereaux Bows to the Inevitable

4 Forbidden Fruit

5 Sibling Rivalry

6 Epilogue: Mabel Has Her Way With Me

Harper Perennial Forbidden Classics

Copyright

About the Publisher

1 A Call to Arms

The war in Afghanistan appeared to be coming to a close when I received sudden orders to proceed, at once, from England to join the first battalion of my regiment, which was then serving there. I had just been promoted captain and had been married about eighteen months. It pained me more than I care to express to part with my wife and baby girl, but it was agreed that it would be better for all of us if their coming to India were deferred until it was certain where my regiment would be quartered on its return to the fertile plains of Hindustan from the stones and rocks of barren Afghanistan. Besides, it was very hot, being the height of the hot weather, when only those who were absolutely forced to do so went to India, and it was a time of year particularly unsuitable for a delicate woman and a babe to travel in so burning a climate. It was also not quite certain whether my wife would join me in India, as I had the promise of a staff appointment at home, but before I could enter upon that I had of necessity to join my own battalion, because it was at the seat of war. But it was annoying to have to go, all the same, as it was clear that the war was over, and that I should be much too late to participate in any of its rewards or glories, though it was quite possible I might come in for much of the hardship and inconvenience of the sojourn, for a wild, and not to say rough and inhospitable country is Afghanistan; besides which it was quite possible that an Afghan knife would put an end to me, or that I might fall a victim to a common murder instead of dying a glorious death on the battlefield.

Altogether my prospects seemed by no means of a rosy colour, but there was nothing for it but to submit and go, which I did with the best grace possible but with a very heavy heart.

I will spare the readers the sad details of parting with my wife. I made no promise of fidelity, the idea seemed never to occur to her or to myself of there being any need for it, for although I had always been of that temperament so dear to Venus, and had enjoyed the pleasure of love with great good fortune before I married, yet I had, as I thought, quite steadied down into a proper married man, whose desires never wandered outside his own bed; for my passionate and loving spouse was ever ready to respond to my ardent caresses with caresses as ardent; and her charms, in their youthful beauty and freshness, had not only not palled upon me, but seemed to grow more and more powerfully attractive the more I revelled in their possession. For my dearest wife, gentle reader, was the life of passion; she was not one of those who coldly submit to their husband’s caresses because it is their duty to do so, a duty, however, not to be done with pleasure or joyfully, but more as a species of penance! No! With her it was not, ‘Ah! no, let me sleep tonight, dear. I did it twice last night, and I really don’t think you can want it again. You should be more chaste, and not try me as if I were your toy and plaything. No! Take your hand away! Do leave my nightdress alone! I declare it is quite indecent the way you are behaving!’ and so forth, until, worn out with her husband’s persistence, she thinks the shortest way after all will be to let him have his way, and so grudgingly allows her cold cunt to be uncovered, unwillingly opens her ungracious thighs, and lies a passionless log, insensible to her husband’s endeavours to strike a spark of pleasure from her icy charms. Ah! no! With my sweet Louie it was far different; caress replied to caress, embrace to embrace. Each sweet sacrifice became sweeter than the one before, because she fully appreciated all the joy and delight of it! It is almost impossible to have too much of such a woman, and Louie seemed to think it quite impossible to have too much of me. It was, ‘Once more, my darling! Just one little more! I am sure it will do you good! and I should like it!’ and it would be strange if the manly charm which filled her loving hand were not once more raised in response to her caresses, ready once again to carry rapturous delight to the deepest, richest depths of the trembling voluptuous charm for the special benefit of which it was formed, a charm which was indeed the very temple of love.

Having ascertained from the adjutant general, that my destination was Cherat, a small camping ground, as I heard, on top of a range of mountains forming the southern limit of the valley of the Peshawar, and having received railroad warrants, via Allahabad, for the temporary station of Jhelum, and dak warrants from that spot to Cherat itself, I made my preparations for the long journey which still lay before me; amongst the necessaries for mind and body I purchased were some French novels which included that masterpiece of drawing-room erotic literature Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier.

The route from Bombay via Allahabad to Peshawar runs almost entirely through a country as flat as a table. Only once on this journey, about which I fear I may become tedious, did the tempter accost me, and then so clumsily as quite to frustrate his well-meant intentions. I had to make a few hours’ stay in Allahabad and to pass that away pleasantly I wandered about, examining the tombs of the kings and princes who reigned in past times over the banks of the Ganges and the Jumna, and in seeing such sights as I could find to amuse and interest me. As I was returning to my hotel a native accosted me in very good English.

‘Like to have woman, sahib? I got one very pretty little half-caste in my house, if master like to come and see!’

Oh! dear Mademoiselle de Maupin!

I felt no desire to see the pretty little half-caste! I put this self-abnegation down to virtue, and actually laughed, in my folly, at the idea that there existed, or could exist, a woman in India who could raise even a ghost of desire in me!

The station beyond Jhelum is reached, I having but one mighty river to pass before I leave the bounds of India proper and tread the outskirts of central Asia, in the valley of the Peshawar. But it took some two or three days and nights of continuous travel in a dak gharry [carriage], before I reached Attock. The dak gharry is a fairly comfortable mode of conveyance, but one becomes tired of the eternal horizontal position in which it accommodates the weary traveller. Crossing the Indus in a boat rowed over a frightful torrent with the roar of the waters breaking on the rocks below, was a very exciting experience, especially as it happened at night, and the dark gloom added a magnifying effect to the roar of the suspected danger. Another dak gharry waited, into which I got, lay down and went to sleep, not to waken until I reached Nowshera.

Ah! Mademoiselle de Maupin! What a lovely girl! Who can she be? She must, I fancy, be the daughter of the colonel commanding here, out for her morning walk, and perhaps, judging from the keen expectant glance shot in at me through the half-open sliding door of the gharry, expecting somebody, perhaps her fiancé; perhaps that is why she looked so eager and yet so disappointed!

Oh, dear reader! just as I opened my eyes I saw, through the half-open door, this perfect figure of feminine beauty! A girl clothed in a close-fitting grey-coloured dress with a Teria hat archly sloped on her lovely and well-shaped head! That beautiful face! How perfect the oval of it! What glorious, yet rather stern eyes! What a delicately formed nose! Truly she must have aristocratic blood in her veins to be so daintily formed! What a rosebud of a mouth! What cherry lips! God! Jupiter! Venus! What a form! See those exquisite rounded shoulders, those full and beautiful arms, the shape of each so plainly visible so close does her dress fit her; and how pure, how virgin-like is that undulating bosom! See how proudly each swelling breast fills out her modest, but still desire-provoking, bodice! Ah! The little shell-like ears, fitting so close to the head. How I would like to have the privilege of gently pressing those tiny lobes! What a lovely creature she looks! How refined! How pure! How virginal.

And all these impressions flashed through my mind from a glimpse, a very vivid glimpse it is true, and she seemed so absolutely and completely removed from ordinary mankind that I never dreamt I should ever see her cunt; according to plan I was going to change horses at Nowshera and proceed immediately to Cherat.

But on arriving at the post office, which was also the place for changing horses, the postmaster, a civil-spoken Baboo, told me that he could give me horses only as far as Publi, a village about halfway between Nowshera and Peshawar, and that from that place I must make the best of my way to Cherat, for there was no road along which dak gharries could be driven, and my good Baboo added that the said interval between Publi and Cherat was dangerous for travellers, there being many lawless robbers about. Moreover, he added, the distance was a good fifteen miles. He advised me to put up at the public bungalow at Nowshera until the brigade major could put me in the way of completing my journey.

This information was a great surprise and a great damper to me! How on earth was I to get up to Cherat with my baggage if there was no road? How could I do fifteen miles under such circumstances? To think I had come so many thousands of miles, since I had left England, to be balked by a miserable little fifteen. However, for the present there seemed nothing to be done but to take the excellent Baboo’s advice, put up at the public bungalow and see the brigade major.

The public bungalow stood in its own compound, a little distance from the high road, and to get to it I had to drive back part of the road I had travelled. I dismissed my driver, and called for the khansama [house-steward], who informed me that the bungalow was full, and that there was no room for me! Here was a pretty state of affairs! but whilst I was speaking to the khansama, a pleasant-looking young officer, lifting the chick [bamboo blind] which hung over the entrance to his room, came out on to the verandah, and told me that he had heard what I was saying, that he was only waiting for a gharry to proceed on his journey down country, and that my coming was as opportune for him as his going would be for me. He had, he said, sent at once to secure my dak gharry, and if he could get it, he would give up his room to me but anyhow, I should, if I did not dislike the idea, share his room which contained two bedsteads. Needless to say I was delighted to accept his kind offer, and I soon had my goods inside the room, and was enjoying that most essential and refreshing thing in India, a nice cool bath. My new friend had taken upon himself to order breakfast for me, and when I had completed my ablutions and toilet, we sat down together. Officers meeting in this manner very quickly become like old friends. My new acquaintance told me all about himself, where he had been, where he was going to, and I reciprocated. Needless to say the war, which was now practically over, formed the great topic of our general conversation. Getting more intimate, we of course fell, as young men do — or old, too, for the matter of that — to discussing love and women, and my young friend told me that the entire British Army was just simply raging for women! That none were to be got in Afghanistan, and that, taking it as a general rule, neither officers nor men had had a woman for at least two years.

‘George!’ he cried, as he laughed, ‘the Peshawar polls are reaping a rich harvest! As fast as a regiment arrives from Afghanistan, the whole boiling lot rush off to the bazaars, and you can see the Tommy Atkinses waiting outside the knocking shops, holding their pricks in their hands and roaring out to those having women to look sharp!’

This was of course an exaggeration, but not to so great an extent as my gentle reader may suppose.

We had just finished our cheroots after breakfast, when the young officer’s servant drove up in the same dak gharry which had brought me from Attock, and in a few minutes my cheerful host was shaking hands with me.

‘There’s somebody in there,’ said he, pointing to the next room, ‘to whom I must say goodbye, and then I’m off.’

He was not long absent, again shook my hand, and in another minute a sea of dust hid him and the gharry from my sight.

I felt quite lonely and sad when he was gone, for, although the bungalow was full, I was left in a small portion of it walled off from the rest, so that I didn’t see any of its other occupants — though I might occasionally hear them. I had forgotten to ask who my next-door neighbour was, and indeed I did not much care as I was so bothered, wondering how I should get up to Cherat. It was now nearly ten o’clock, the sun was pouring sheets of killing rays of light on the parched plain in which Nowshera is situated, and the hot wind was beginning to blow, parching one up, and making lips and eyes quite sore as well as dry. I did not know what to do with myself. It was much too hot to think of going to the brigade major’s, so I got another cheroot, and taking my delightful Mademoiselle de Maupin out of my bag, I went and sat behind a pillar on the verandah, to shelter myself from the full force of the blast and try to read; but even this most charming damsel failed to charm, and I sank back in my chair and smoked listlessly whilst my eyes wandered over the range of lofty mountains which I could just distinguish quivering through hot, yellow-looking air. I did not know at the time that I was looking at Cherat and had I had any prescience of what was waiting for me there, I should certainly have gazed upon those hills with far greater interest than I did.

Reader dear, do you know what it is to feel that somebody is looking at you, though you may not be able to see him, to be aware for a fact that somebody is looking at you? I am extremely susceptible to this influence. Whilst sitting thus idly looking at the most distant thing my eyes could find to rest upon, I began to feel that someone was near, and looking intently at me. At first I resisted the temptation to look around to see who it was. I felt so irritable, that I resented, as an insult, the looking at me which I felt certain was going on; but at last this strange sensation added to my unrest and I half turned my head to see whether it was reality or feverish fancy.

My surprise was unbounded when I saw the same lovely face which I had caught a glimpse of that morning peering at me from behind the slightly opened chick of the room next to mine. I was so startled that instead of taking a good look at the lady I instantly gazed on the hills again, as if turning my head to look in her direction had been a breach of good manners on my part; but I felt she was still keeping her eyes fixed on me, and it amazed me that anyone in the position which I imagined she held (for I was firmly convinced that I was right as to my surmise that my unknown beauty was a lady, and a colonel’s daughter) should be guilty of such bad manners as to stare at a perfect stranger in this manner. I turned my head once more, and this time I looked at this lovely but strange girl a little more fixedly. Her eyes, large, lustrous, most beautiful, seemed to pierce mine, as though trying to read my thoughts. For a moment I fancied she must be a little off her head, but just then, apparently satisfied with her reconnaissance, the fair creature disappeared from sight. From that moment my curiosity was greatly aroused. Who was she? Was she alone? Or was she with the unknown colonel in that room? Why was she staring at me so hard? By Jove! There she was at it again! I could stand it no longer. I jumped up and went into my own room and called the khansama.

‘Khansama, who is in the room next to mine?’ and I pointed to the door which communicated with the room the lady was in, which was closed.

‘A memsahib, sahib.’

A memsahib! Now I had been in India before, this was my second tour of service in the country, and I knew that a memsahib meant a married lady. I was surprised, for had anyone asked me, I should have said that this lovely girl had never known a man, had never been had, and never would be had, unless she met the man of men who pleased her. It was extraordinary how this idea had taken root in my mind.

‘Is the sahib with her?’

‘No, sahib!’

‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know, sahib.’

‘When did the memsahib come here, khansama?’

‘A week or ten days ago, sahib!’

It was plain I could get no information from this man, only one more question and I was done.

‘Is the memsahib quite alone, khansama?’

‘Yes, sahib: she has no one with her, not even an ayah [maid].’

Well! this is wonderful! How often did my young friend who had only gone away this morning, know her? You, gentle reader, with experience, no doubt have your suspicions that all was not right, but for the life of me I could not shake off the firm notion that this woman was not only a lady, but one exceptionally pure and highly connected.

I went back to my seat on the verandah, waiting to be looked at again, and I did not wait long. A slight rustle caught my ear. I looked around and there was my lovely girl showing more of herself. She still looked with the same eager gaze without the sign of a smile on her face. She appeared to be in her petticoats only, and her legs and feet, such lovely, tiny, beautiful feet, and such exquisitely turned ankles, were bare; she had not even a pair of slippers on. A light shawl covered her shoulders and bosom, but did not hide either her full, well-shaped, white arms, her taper waist or her splendid and broad hips. These naked feet and legs inspired me with a sudden flow of desire, in spite of the fact that her lovely face and its wonderful calm yet severe expression had hitherto driven all such thoughts from my mind.

Giacomo Casanova, who certainly is a perfect authority on all that concerns women, declares that curiosity is the foundation on which desire is built, that, but for that, a man would be perfectly contented with one woman, since in the main all women are alike; yet from mere curiosity a man is impelled to approach a woman, and to wish for her possession. Something akin to this certainly influenced me. A devouring curiosity took possession of me. This exquisite girl’s face inspired me to know how she could possibly be all alone here at Nowshera, in a public bungalow, and her lovely naked feet and legs made me wonder whether her knees and thighs corresponded with them in perfect beauty, and my imagination painted in my mind a voluptuous motte and delicious cunt, shaded by dark locks corresponding to the colour of the lovely eyebrows, which arched over those expressive orbs. I rose from my chair and moved towards her. She instantly withdrew and as instantly again opened the chick. For the first time I saw a smile wreathe her face. What a wonderfully different expression that smile gave it! Two lovely dimples appeared in her rounded cheeks, her rosy lips parted and displayed two rows of small perfectly even teeth, and those eyes which had looked so stern and almost forbidding, now looked all tenderness and softness.

‘You must find it very hot out there on the verandah!’ said she, in a low, musical voice, but with a rather vulgar, common accent which at first grated on my ear, ‘and I know you are all alone! Won’t you come into my room and sit down and chat? You will if you are a good fellow!’

‘Thank you!’ said I, smiling and bowing as I threw away my cheroot and entered whilst she held the chick so as to make room for me to pass. I caught the chick in my hand but she still kept her arm raised, and extended; her shawl fell a little off her bosom which was almost entirely bare, and I saw not only two most exquisitely round, full and polished globes of ivory, but even the rosy coral marble which adorned the peak of one of them. I could see that she caught the direction of my glance, but she was in no hurry to lower her arm, and I judged, and rightly, that this liberal display of her charms was by no means unintentional.

‘I have got two chairs in here,’ said she, laughing such a sweet-sounding laugh, ‘but we can sit together on my bed, if you don’t mind!’

‘I shall be delighted,’ said I, ‘if sitting without a back to support you won’t tire you!’

‘Oh!’ said she, in the most innocent manner, ‘you just put your arm round my waist, and then I won’t feel tired.’

Had it not been for the extraordinary innocent tone with which she said this, I think I should at once have lain her back and got on top of her, but a new idea struck me: could she be quite sane? And would not such an action be the very height of blackguardism?

However, I sat down, as she bade me do, and I slipped my left arm around her slender waist and gave her a little hug towards me.

‘Ah!’ she said, ‘that’s right! Hold me tight! I love being held tight!’

I found that she had no stays on at all. There was nothing between my hand and her smooth skin but a petticoat and a chemise, both of very light muslin. She felt so awfully nice! There’s something so thrilling in feeling the warm, palpitating body of a lovely woman in one’s arms; it was only natural that not only did my blood run more quickly, but I began to feel what the French call the ‘pricking of the flesh’. There she was, this really beautiful creature, half naked and palpitating, her cheeks glowing with health, though paler than one is accustomed to seeing in our more temperate Europe, her lovely shining shoulders and bosom almost perfectly naked, and so exquisite! The nearer I got my eyes to the skin the better did I see how fine was its texture. The bloom of youth was on it. There were no ugly hollows to show where the flesh had receded and the bones projected. Her beautiful breasts were round, plump and firm looking. I longed to take possession of those lovely bubbies! To press them in my hand, to devour them and their rosy tips with my mouth! Her petticoats fell between her slightly parted thighs and showed their roundness and beautiful form perfectly as though to provoke my desire the more, desire she must have known was burning me, for she could feel the palpitating of my agitated heart even if a glance of her eyes in another and lower direction did not betray to her the effect her touch and her beauty had on me. She held out one and then the other of her fairy feet, so white and perfect, as though to display them to my eager eyes. The soft and delicious perfume which only emanates from a woman in her youth, stole in fragrant clouds over my face, and her abundant wavy hair fell like silk against my cheek. Was she mad? That was the tormenting thought which would spring up between my hand and the glowing charms it longed to seize!

For some few moments we sat in silence. Then I felt her hand creep up under my white jacket and toy with the buttons to which my braces were fastened behind. She undid one side of my braces and as she did so said, ‘I saw you this morning! You were in a dak gharry and I just caught a glimpse of you.’

Her hand began to work at the other button. What the deuce was she up to?

‘Oh yes!’ I said, looking into her twinkling eyes and returning the starry glances which shot from them, ‘and I saw you too! I had been fast asleep, and just as I opened my eyes my sight fell upon you and I —’

She had unbuttoned my braces behind, and now stole her hand round and laid it, back up, on the top of my thigh.

‘And you what?’ said she, gently sliding her extended fingers down over the inside of my thigh: she was within a nail’s breadth of the side of my prick which was now standing furiously!

‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, ‘I thought I had never seen such a lovely face and figure in the world!’

The fingertips actually touched Johnnie! She slightly pressed them against him, and looking at me again with the sweetest smile, said: ‘Did you really! Well! I’m glad you did, for do you know what I thought, when I saw you lying inside the gharry?’

‘No, dear!’

‘Well! I thought that I would not mind if I had been travelling with such a fine-looking, handsome young man!’

Then after a short pause she continued: ‘So you think me well made?’ and she glanced down proudly on her swelling breast.

‘Indeed I do!’ I exclaimed, quite unable to restrain myself any longer. ‘I don’t know when I ever saw such a lovely bosom as this, and such tempting, luscious bubbies!’ and I slipped my hand into her bosom and seized a glowing globe and as I pressed it gently and squeezed the hard little nipple between my fingers, I kissed the loving upturned mouth which was presented to me.

‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘who gave you leave to do that? Well! Exchange is no robbery and I will have something nice of yours to feel for myself, too!’

Her nimble fingers had my trousers unbuttoned, my braces undone in front too, and with a whisk of her hand she had my shirt out, and with it my burning, maddened prick, of which she took immediate and instant possession.

‘Ah!’ she cried. ‘Ah! oh! what a beauty! How handsome! bell-topped! and so big! Isn’t he just about stiff! He’s like a bar of iron! and what fine big balls you’ve got! My beautiful man! Oh! How I would like to empty them for you! Oh! you’ll have me now! Won’t you? Do! Do! oh I feel that I could come so nicely if you only would!’

Would I have her? Why! Gods in heaven! how could a mortal man brimful of health, strength, youth and energy like myself, receive such an appeal to his ears and senses, and not comply, even if the fair petitioner were not half nor quarter as beautiful as this lascivious and exquisite creature, whose hands were manipulating the most tenderly sensitive parts which man possesses. For all reply I gently pulled her on her back; she still kept a firm but voluptuous hold on her possessions as I turned up her petticoat and chemise. Gliding my burning hand over the smooth surface of her ivory thigh, I uncovered, I think, the most luscious cunt I have ever seen or felt in my life! Never had my hand reposed on so voluptuous and full a motte! Never had my finger probed a charm so full of life and so soft outside, so smooth and velvety inside, as it did now. That this most perfect cunt, and the domain around and above it, were in my possession! I was eager to get between her lovely thighs, to snatch my almost painfully strained prick from her hands and bury it up to its balls, and further, in this melting charm, but she stopped me. With her face and bosom flushed, her eyes dancing in her head, and a voice choked with the greatest excitement she cried: ‘Let us put on our skins first!’

I was standing before her, my prick at an angle of at least seventy degrees, my balls and groins aching, for the most vigorous action had set in and my reservoirs had already been filled to the utmost they could hold. I felt I must either have this beautiful wild girl or burst!

‘What do you mean?’ I gasped.

‘I’ll show you! See!’

And in a moment she had, as it were, jumped out of her clothes, and stood, all naked and glowing, and radiant with a beauty fed by all that is voluptuous and erotic, before me.

In a moment — or perhaps a little longer, for I had boots and socks as well as coat, shirt and trousers to take off, but at all events, in a brace of shakes — I was as naked as she! I can shut my eyes now and there before me see this exquisitely formed creature, surely quite the equal of the beautiful Mademoiselle de Maupin, standing in all her radiant nudity before me. That form so purely perfect, so inimitably graceful, those matchless limbs! That bosom with its hills of living snow topped with rosy fire and that more than voluptuous motte, a perfect ‘hill of Venus’ clothed with the richest dark bushes of curly hair, sloping rapidly down, like a triangle standing on its point, until its two sides, folding in, formed the deep soft-looking inside line which proclaimed the very perfection of a goddess-like cunt. The only thing which slightly marred this perfect galaxy of beauty was the occurrence of some slight wrinkles which, like fine lines, crossed the otherwise perfect plain of her fair belly, that exquisite belly with its dimpling navel!

Gods! I rushed at this lovely creature, and in another moment I was on top of her, between her wide-opened thighs and resting on her beautiful bosom. How elastic did her beautiful bubbies feel against my chest and how soft, how inexpressibly delicious, did her cunt feel, as inch by inch I buried Johnnie in it, until my motte jammed against hers and my balls hung, or rather squeezed, against her lovely white bottom and I could get in no further. And what a woman to have! Every movement of mine brought forth an exclamation of delight from her! To hear her you would have imagined it was the very first time her senses had been powerfully excited from their very foundation! Her hands were never still, they promenaded over me, from the back of my head to the intimate limits of my body to which they could reach. She was simply perfect in the art of giving and receiving pleasure. Every transport of mine was returned with interest. Every mad thrust met with a corresponding buck which had the effect of taking my prick in to its extreme root! And she seemed to do nothing but come or spend! I had heard of a woman ‘coming’ thirteen or fourteen times during one fuck, but this woman seemed to do nothing else from beginning to end. But it was not until I had arrived at the exciting, furious, ardent, almost violent, short digs, that I knew to what an intense degree my Venus enjoyed pleasure! I thought she was in a fit! She almost screamed! She gurgled in her throat! She half crushed me in her arms, and putting her feet on my behind, she pressed me to her motte, at the end, with a power I should never have thought she possessed. Oh! the relief! the exquisite delight of that spend on my part! I inundated her, and she felt the spouting torrents of my love darting in hot quick jets and striking against the deep-set part of her almost maddened cunt! She seized my mouth with hers, and shot her tongue into it as far as she could, touching my throat, whilst her whole body from head to heel literally quivered with the tremendous excitement she was in! Never in my life had I such a fuck! Oh! why is there no better word to express what is really heaven upon earth?

The tempest past, we lay in one another’s arms, tenderly gazing into one another’s eyes. We were too breathless to speak at first. I could feel her belly heaving against mine, and her throbbing cunnie clasped my prick as though it were another hand, whilst her motte leaped and bounded! As I looked into that angelic face, and drank in the intense beauty of it, I believed this to be no abandoned woman but rather Venus herself whom I held thus clasped in my arms, and whose tender and voluptuous thighs encircled mine! I could have wished that she had held her peace and let me dream that I was the much desired Adonis, and she my persistent, longing Venus, and that I had at length complied with her amorous wishes and found the heaven in her arms of which, before I entered her matchless cunt, I had no notion! But my airy fancies were dispelled by her saying: ‘You are a good poke and no mistake! Oh! You know how to fuck! No fellow ever fucks like that without he has been taught!’

‘Yes!’ I said, pressing her in my arms and kissing the ruby lips which had just spoken so coarsely, albeit truly and pointedly. ‘I have been well trained! I had good lessons in my boyhood, and I have always tried to practise them as often as possible!’

‘Ah!’ she said, ‘I thought so! You do the heel and toe better than any man I’ve ever had, and I’ve had, I dare say, many more men than you’ve had women!’

Frank and how!

‘What do you mean by heel and toe, my pet?’

‘Oh! Don’t you know? You do it at any rate! and splendidly! Heel and toe is to begin each stroke at the very beginning and end it at the very end. Just give me one long stroke now!’ I did so. I withdrew until my prick was all but out of her panting cunnie, and then gently but firmly drove it home, as far and as deep as I could, and then I rested again on her belly.

‘There,’ she cried, ‘that’s it! You almost pull it out, but not quite, and never stop short in your thrusts, but send your prick home, with a sharp rap of your balls against my bottom! That’s what’s good!’

And she appeared to smack her lips involuntarily.

At length I withdrew and my fairest nymph at once commenced a most minute examination of that part of me and its appendages which had pleased her so much. Everything was, according to her, absolutely perfect, and if I were to believe her there had not passed under her observation so noble and handsome a prick, and such beautiful well-balanced balls as I had. That she was the mistress of my balls especially pleased her! She said they were so big! She was sure they must be full of spend, and she intended, she told me, to empty them before she would consent to my leaving Nowshera!

This first sacrifice simply whetted our appetites, and still more inflamed with the minute examination of one another’s charms, we fell to again, and writhed in the delicious agonies of another amorous combat! It was about two o’clock before I left her, and we had not been at any time more than ten minutes ‘out of action’. The more I had of this exquisite creature, the more I longed to have her. I was fresh, young, strong, vigorous, and it was nearly two months (a long time for me) since I had last indulged in the delights of Cyprian pleasures. No wonder my Venus was pleased with me, and called my performance a perfect feast.

They say that love destroys appetite for food. Perhaps it does when it is love unrequited, but I give you my word, dear reader, that I was ravenous for my tiffin after my morning’s work. I was really glad to get something to eat. What with the heat of the combat we had been through and the parching effect of the terrible hot winds blowing, I was dried up, as far as my mouth was concerned, though far from being so as regards the proceeds of my balls. I never felt so fit for woman as I did that day, and I never probably have had so much fucking with so little loss of physical force. Doubtless my steady married life with its regular hours, regular meals and regular, never excessive, sacrifices on the altar of Venus had much to do with the steady power I felt so strong in me, but over and above that was the fact of my new lady love being extraordinarily beautiful and voluptuously lascivious, and the erotic excitement raised in me, was, of course, great in proportion to the cause which gave birth to it. In spite of my hunger for food, I would certainly have remained with her on that most congenial of beds and have revelled on in her joyous arms and filled her with more of the quintessence of my manly vigour, but she told me she always slept in the afternoon, was hungry herself, and wanted my force to be expended between her lovely thighs that night for the solace of her liveliest of cunts!

Whilst the khansama was laying the table, I saw a note addressed to me leaning against the wall, on the mantelpiece (for in northern India the winters are sharp enough to render a fire not only pleasant but sometimes quite necessary), and taking it and opening it, wondering who the writer could be as I was perfectly unknown in this part of the world, I found it to be from my young officer friend who had quit Nowshera that morning. It ran thus:

Dear Devereaux — In the room next to yours is one of the loveliest of women and best of pokes! Verbum sap.!

Yours, J. C.

PS — Don’t offer her any rupees or you will offend her mortally, but if you are inclined to have her, and I think you will be on seeing her, just tell her so and you won’t have to ask twice.

Ah! Dear young chap, now I understand why you were so reticent this morning and did not like to tell me that I had a lady for my next-door neighbour! Well! Poor girl! I am afraid that you must be put down as one of the ‘irregulars’, although it is a shame to think ill of one who has given me the first few hours of real delight since I left home!

These thoughts naturally brought my beloved little wife into my recollection and I was somewhat staggered to feel I should so completely have forgotten her and my marital vows! But I was altogether too full of desire. Desire only just whetted and crying for more! More! I was in fact half mad with what some call lust and others love and, wife or no wife, nothing short of death would, or should, prevent my fucking that heavenly girl again and again until I really could not raise a stand. I longed for evening. I burnt for night. I ate my tiffin like a ravenous tiger, hungry for food, but thirsting for the sweet savour of the blood of a victim I knew to be within easy reach. Tiffin put away, I lit a cheroot, and began wandering round and round my room, glancing impatiently at the door which closed the communication between it and that of my supposedly now sleeping Venus, and like a Wellington I wished and prayed — not for night and Blücher but for night and her awakening! Suddenly it struck me as very funny that were some catastrophe to separate this girl and me, neither of us would be able to say who the other was! We had not exchanged names. My young friend the officer who signed his initials J. C. had not told me. I did not even know his name though he knew mine, probably from seeing it painted on my baggage. Of a surety, this lovely Venus must have a history, and I resolved to try and get her to give me her version of it, from which no doubt I could make out what was true and what was invention — for that she would tell me the exact truth I hardly expected. Oh! when would she awake?

Should I go and peep and see? By Jupiter, I would –

Throwing away the fresh cheroot I had lighted, I crept, in my stockinged feet, to her chick, and pulled it slightly open, and there on the bed, fast asleep, I saw my lovely enslaver. She had simply put on a petticoat and was lying on her back with her hands clasped under her shapely head, her arms bent in a charming position, opened out, showing the little growth of hair under the armpit, hair the same in tint, but not so rich in colour, as that magnificent bush I had moistened so liberally, aided by her own offerings, this morning; her bosom, with its two priceless breasts, so beautifully placed, so round, polished and firm, indeed her entire body down to her slender waist, was altogether nude! One knee, that next to me, was bent, the small graceful foot planted on the bedclothes, each gem of a toe straight and separated from its neighbour in a way that would have charmed the most fastidious sculptor that ever lived, whilst the other leg, bare from the groin downwards, was extended at full length, the lovely foot which terminated it resting against the edge of the bed, so that her thighs, those lovely voluptuous and maddening thighs, were parted! Gods! could I remain outside while so much beauty was freely displayed and I could feast my burning eyes upon it whilst its lovely owner slept?.

I went gently and noiselessly in, and passing round to the other side of the bed, so that my shadow might not fall on that exquisite form and hide the light, already softened by the chick, from it, I gazed in silent rapture on the beautiful girl who had made me enjoy the bliss of the Mohammedan’s heaven in her voluptuous embraces that forenoon. How lovely was her sleep! Who, looking on that face so pure in all its lines, so innocent in all its expressions, could imagine that in that soul there burned the fire of an unquenchable Cytherian furnace? Who, looking on those matchless breasts, could imagine that lovers innumerable had pressed them with lascivious hand or lip, and been supported by them when they trembled in the agonies and the delight of having her? The fair broad plane of her belly was still hidden by the upper portion of her petticoats, but the fine lines, which I had noticed when she ‘put on her skin’, had told me the tale that perhaps more than once it had been the breeding place of little beings, who, cast in such a beauteous mould, must needs be as beautiful as their lovely mother! Who, gazing in the girlish face and looking at those virginal breasts which seemed as if they had never been disturbed by pent-up milk and whose rosebud-like nipples seemed never to have been sucked by the cherry lips of babies, could connect such charms with the pains, the cares and duties of maternity? No! surely, like the fair houris of Mohammed’s paradise, she must have been created for the fulfilment of pleasure only, not for the consequences of the kiss of love! But the wrinkles told a different tale, and I should like to examine them more closely. It would be easy to do if only they were exposed; all that I had to do was to lift, gently so as not to disturb her sleep, that part of her petticoat which still hid her there, and lay the garment back upon her waist.

With a hand trembling with excitement, I did so! Lo! my nymph was almost as naked as she was born! God of gods! What a blaze of exciting beauty! I had uncovered the sweet belly to look at the wrinkles, but my eye was captured before it lifted its gaze so high! As the bird is caught in the snare surrounding the luscious bait exposed to it, so were my eyes entangled in the meshes of that glorious forest-like bush growing on that voluptuous motte and shading a cunt the like of which for freshness, beauty and all that excites desire could not have existed in anybody but the great Mother of Love, Venus herself. It seemed to me impossible that this beauteous portal to the realms of bliss could have been invaded by so many worshippers as her speech of the morning had led me to believe. It looked far from having been hard used. What grand full lips it had. How sweetly it was placed. How pretty did the fine, dark hairs which crossed it look against the whiteness of the skin, whose infoldings formed that deep enticing line. What a perfect forest overshadowed it, and how divine were the slopes of that glorious hill, the perfect little mountain, which led down the sweet descent to the deep vale between her thighs, and ended in that glowing grotto in which love delighted to hide his blushing head and shed the hot tears of his exulting joy.

But what is that? What is that little ruby tip I see beginning to protrude, near the upper meeting of those exquisite lips which open slightly showing the pearly mouth! She moves. See! I think she must be dreaming! She slightly closes the bent leg towards that one outstretched! It is her most sensitive clitoris, as I live! See! It grows more and more! and by the gods! it actually moves in little jerks, just like an excited prick standing stiff and mad at the thoughts of hot desire!

I gazed at the tranquil face of the sleeping beauty; her lips moved and her mouth opened slightly showing the pearly teeth! Her bosom seemed to expand, her breasts to swell: they rose and fell more rapidly than they had been doing before this evident dream of love, fulfilled or about to be, invaded the soft heart of this perfect priestess of Venus! Ah! her bubbies do move! Their rosebuds swell out, they stand, each like an eager sentinel perched on the snowy tip of his own mountain, watching for the loving foe who is to invade this dreaming girl in a soft and sharp and hot encounter.

Again those thighs close on one another. Heavens! again they open to show the domain of love, excited, moving, leaping, actually leaping! That glittering ruby clitoris is evidently striving to feel the manly prick of which my charmer dreams. Why not turn the dream into a sweet and luscious reality?

I do not hesitate. I swiftly strip and in a moment I am as naked as I had been that morning, but I would like to see whether, as when I raped my cousin Emily, my second love, I could actually get into this sleeping girl before she woke to find me in her glowing cunt.

So I gently got over the thigh next to me and, with knees between hers, supported myself upon my hands, one on each side of her, while, stretching out my legs backward, I kept my eyes fixed on the sweet and burning cunnie I intended to invade. I lowered my body until I brought the head and point of my agitated and jerking prick exactly opposite its lower half, and then I manoeuvred it in!

Gods! The voluptuousness of that moment! I could see myself penetrating that seat of love and luxury! I could feel the cap fall back from the tingling head of my prick and fold behind its broad purple shoulders! For a moment I glanced at her face to see if she had perceived the gallant theft I was making of her secret jewel! No! She was asleep, but in the excitement of an erotic dream! Little by little I pressed in further and further, only withdrawing to give her more pleasure. I am nearly all in — her thick and lofty bush hides the last inch or so of my prick from my eyes, our hairs commingle, my balls nudge her and she wakes with a start!

In a moment her eyes met mine with that keen, almost wild glance, which had so impressed me when I saw her out of the gharry, but in a moment they changed and beamed with pleasure and affectionate caresses.

‘Ah! Is it you?’ she cried. ‘I was dreaming of you! You darling man to wake me so sweetly!’

Some burning kisses, some close, close hugs, some little exclamations of delight, and then breast to breast, belly to belly, mouth to mouth, we play for the ninth or tenth time, I really don’t know which, that same excited tune which had sounded all that morning so melodiously to our ravished senses. Heel and toe, as she called it, and other delicious movements mingled every part, then hot, quick, thrilling short digs and the torrents of two volcanoes of love burst forth simultaneously and mingled their lava floods in the hot recesses buried below the sylvan slopes of the hill of Venus.

The ghurry or gong, on which the non-commissioned officers of the guard sound the hour of the day in India, rang five o’clock. We had been in intense action nearly a whole hour, and my charming beauty was for the fifteenth time examining what she called my ‘wonderful’ prick and balls — wonderful, because the first showed no symptoms of fatigue, and the second no sign of exhaustion or depletion.

‘I don’t believe this can be a proper prick at all!’ said she feeling it, pressing it, and kissing its impudent-looking head, first on one side and then on the other.

‘Why?’ I asked laughing.

‘Because it’s always stiff as a poker — always standing!’

‘That is because it admires your delicious cunt so much, my darling, and it is always in a hurry to get back into it after it has been taken out!’

‘Well! I never saw one like it before! All other men that I have had always grew soft and limp after the second go if not the first — and generally took a good deal of coaxing to get to stand again, unless one gave them lots of time! But yours! I never, never, met one like it! It will give me a lot of trouble, I can see, to take all the starch out of it!’

‘Oh! but I can assure you, my most lovely girl, that with ordinary women I am just as you describe the men you have known. I can assure you it must be your extraordinary beauty which has such a powerful effect upon me! Come!’ I continued, opening my arms and thighs, ‘Come and lie on top of me and let me kiss you to death!’

Enraptured by the lavish, but not unmerited, praise of her beauty, she threw herself, with a cry of delight, on top of me, and my prick found a sweet resting place between our respective bellies. She took and gave me the sweetest kisses, murmuring little words of love and passion like a cat purring, until I was just going to propose that she should put her thighs outside mine, and let me have her à la St George, when a sudden idea seemed to strike her. She raised herself on her hand and asked me: ‘I say! Have you reported your arrival to the station staff officer?’

What an idea! Fancy talking of such commonplace things just as I was about to propose the most delicious thing a woman can have from a man, the very poetry of life and love! I could not but think of Mrs Shandy asking her husband, when he was in the middle of that operation which resulted in Tristram nine months later, whether he had wound up the clock.

‘My dear girl!’ I cried. ‘Bother the station staff officer and all his reports. Come! I am hungry for another sweet go! I want this cunt!’ and I slipped my hand under her belly and between her thighs, and my middle finger into her palpitating cunnie.

‘No!’ she said, forcefully pushing my invading hand away. ‘No! Not one more fuck until you have gone and reported yourself! Ah! you don’t know the regulations, I see! But I do! I have not been in India all these years without learning what they are, and Major Searle, the brigade major here, is a perfect beast and devil! You may depend upon it, he knows you are here, and he would be only too delighted to get a chance of sitting on you, and he will be able to do so if you don’t report yourself before dark. Remember you got here early this morning!’

I tried to convince her that I did not care a fig for Major Searle and all the Bengal regulations to boot! I said I was on duty, the post of honour being between her lovely thighs and my Johnnie anxious to go his rounds of her darling cunnie, and I did not think I could properly quit my duty in her body to go and perform another which would do quite well enough tomorrow, by which time, in all probability, Johnnie would have come off guard and would require a rest from his labours! But it was of no use; she declared I did not know my man, she told me a great deal more, from which it was very plain that something unpleasant had occurred between herself and Major Searle, and that it really did matter very much, to herself if not to me, that I should report my arrival, and do so at once.

Never did man more unwillingly do anything than I did, when, in obedience to my lovely tyrant’s commands, I dressed and walked out to find the house of the brigade major. I know other men will not believe me or give me credit when I say that I felt as if I had not had one single fuck since I left England. That my balls and groin ached and I had all the sensations of a man who is soon about to have the fuck he has most looked forward to, for which he has lived chastely and kept himself in reserve in order to enjoy more that for which he burns, I can only state as a fact, and let others believe or not as they like. Certain it is, that there are times when either from length of abstinence, or the way in which a woman affects him, a man exhibits far greater power in the fields of Venus than at other times. Let me imitate Théophile Gautier, and request my readers, male and female, to remember that special time, when the former had that splendid night, and the latter had the active, big, strong lover, the best of all she ever had as far as fucking goes.

In this state I walked over to the bungalow which was pointed out to me as that of the brigade major. I was so far fortunate that I met him just as he was going out for a walk before dinner with his smooth English terrier.

‘May I ask whether you are Major Searle, the brigade major, sir?’

‘Yes, I am!’

‘I should have come earlier to report my arrival, sir, but I have travelled so far in dak gharries that I have been lying down all day, and it was so very hot when I got up that I have deferred my coming to report myself until now.’

‘And who may you be, sir?’

‘I am Captain Charles Devereaux, of the First East Folk Regiment of Infantry, and I am on my way to Cherat to join my battalion on promotion.’

‘Oh! indeed! How do you do, Captain Devereaux! I am sorry that I did not know you at first! Will you come in or are you inclined for a little stroll? Will you come over to the mess of the 130th and let me introduce you to the officers? I am afraid you won’t get to Cherat quite so soon as you may wish; every blessed machine with wheels has been ordered for a week to come, so that if I were offered lakhs [thousands] of rupees I could not get you a conveyance here — besides which the road from Publi to Shakkote, at the foot of the hill, is rutted and bad for anything heavier than an ekka [one-horse native carriage], and you would have to go up the hill to Cherat either on foot or on horseback when you got there.’

The whole manner of the man changed when he found I was an officer, and what was more a captain, i.e. just one grade below himself in rank. Had I been a subaltern, he might have kept up a higher degree of hauteur.

At first I thought my new acquaintance rather an agreeable man. He spoke affably and pleasantly. He asked me about my voyage, my stay in Bombay and journey up country. He spoke about the war which would practically come to an end when the Khandahar expedition had blown Ayub Khan and the conquerors of the ill-fated Marwand to the four winds of heaven; then he returned to the subject of Nowshera, the dak bungalow and its inmates. He spoke of my well-known (as far as her most secret charms were concerned but otherwise perfectly unknown) mistress and commenced a series of very subtle questions, which, from their very guardedness, showed me that there was one person, and one circumstance, which he was approaching like a cunning cat stalking a sparrow, taking every cover as a guard as he crept up to it. I remembered the evident repugnance my new love had shown when speaking of Major Searle, and I fenced his questions until at last he asked me openly: ‘Have you seen a woman, a rather lady-like person, in the bungalow?’

‘I have seen one lady,’ I replied, ‘but there may be more than that for all I know in the house; I have not been over it, so I cannot tell if the one I have seen is the person you refer to.’

‘Well!’ said he, ‘let me warn you that the woman I refer to is the wife of a non-commissioned officer — she is very pretty, and, I regret to say, about the most abandoned woman in India, if not in the whole world. She must be suffering from nymphomania, for she cannot see a man without she asks him to have her, and as she is really lovely to look at it is quite on the cards that if she asks a young man, fresh out from England like you, he might accept the proposition, and think that he had fallen in with a very good thing indeed — but — pardon me — let me finish — the penalty for adultery with a European woman in India is two years’ imprisonment and a fine of two thousand rupees, and expulsion from India of the woman herself. Already the woman I speak of has rendered herself liable to expulsion hundreds of times; no one has as yet informed against her, but her conduct at Peshawar has been so scandalous and indecent that proceedings will most likely be taken against her. A strict watch — of which she is not aware — is being kept on her, and some unfortunate fellow, say yourself, for you are young and no doubt do not dislike the ladies — ha! ha! ha! — might find himself a victim of her lust, for lust it is and nothing else.’

‘Well! Major Searle,’ I replied, ‘I am a married man and so I hope less liable to temptation from the path of duty than the unfortunate bachelor. Many thanks, however, for your timely warning, for of course I know that, married or single, a man may become the victim of his passions, especially when taken off his guard by a pretty woman!’

‘Ah! You speak truly!’ he replied, ‘and I can tell you that this wretched creature is as lovely as a houri, and as lustful as the most able whore in Babylon.’

I had not lived so long a life in the worship of Venus without having seen a good deal of the hidden springs of men’s minds, and I came to the conclusion that this tirade of friend Major Searle’s was not altogether spoken on the side of virtue, or caution, but that it was a kind of warning, ‘Don’t you touch that woman, she is my preserve, and no one hunts in the forest between her thighs but myself!’

Our arrival at the mess brought the conversation to a close. Like most messes of regiments which have been some time in India, this one was composed of a nice set of generally hospitable officers, all more or less languid from a long residence in a hot and unhealthy climate. They were also too much accustomed to seeing new faces, through the men going to or returning from Afghanistan, to be very greatly interested in me, but they were cordial and kind, made me drink a couple of pegs, asked me to dinner the next night, which happened to be their guest night, and begged me to consider myself an honorary member of their mess so long as I should remain in Nowshera.

I would willingly have excused myself from accepting their kind invitation to dinner, because I was so infatuated with my charming girl in the dak bungalow that the thought of being out of reach of her brilliant charms was purgatory to me, and my senses, but Major Searle was there, and his eyes were on me, and I felt that if my surmises as to the relations between himself and my lovely woman were correct, I had better ward off any suspicion on his part by cordially accepting the invitation, which I accordingly did with all the warmth I could muster. This seemed to relieve the major, for he turned and chatted with another officer. They asked Searle whether he would come and meet me at dinner, but he said he had some work to do tomorrow evening, but if he could find time he would gladly come and rattle the balls about at a game of billiards later in the evening.

After waiting a decent time I said I would go and have a look about whilst daylight lasted, and Searle proposed to accompany me. The man bored and bothered me and I wished him in hell, for my ideas about him began to become very jealous. I thought it extremely likely that he had fucked my charmer, indeed I was certain he had, but I could not suffer him to continue to do so whilst I was in Nowshera. I meant to keep her delicious cunt for myself, she had offered it to me, and I was its present master and entitled to remain so! I knew of the law and of the fine of which he had spoken, and they did not frighten me (as like all Draconian laws, it was seldom it was put in force), but I could not hide from myself that a jealous man, especially one who was something of a brute, would be able to interfere very sadly with such a liaison as I had now on hand, and make it very uncomfortable for the woman too. I had the sense, however, to try and keep my feelings under control and be as agreeable as possible. Our walk was a very simple and short one, for it was straight from the mess to the dak bungalow, whither Searle, as if unconsciously, led the way. I offered him a peg but he declined, as he said the liquor in the bungalow was vile, which was true, and they had no ice. Neither had the mess, then. Ice was unknown beyond Jhelum. But the mess had the simple means, so easily used whilst the hot, dry winds last, of cooling liquids by placing bottles in baskets of wet straw, in a position where the wind blows upon them. The rapid evaporation soon causes the temperature of the bottles to fall very low, and ice is not wanted. I did not know or had forgotten this, but I very soon had it put into practice by the khansama, and that very night and every day following I had cool drinks.

We sat on the verandah until it was dark. The gallant major never referred to my connection, whose brilliant and piercing eyes I felt darting their rays at us from behind the chick, and whose ears I was sure were drinking in every word. Then Searle went, only referring to his important conversation with the warning words: ‘Don’t forget what I told you!’

‘All right, major. Many thanks. Good-night.’

When it was certain that he was gone, my lady glided on to the verandah and occupied the chair that Searle had sat in.

‘What has that brute been telling you about me?’ she asked, her voice quivering with passion.

I gave her an exact account of all that had passed between us, and when I told her, though in much softened language, about the way he had spoken of her, she rose to her feet and walked up and down the verandah in a towering rage — like an infuriated tiger.

‘The black-livered blackguard!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh! truly a nice man to preach continence and virtue! I should like to know who drove his wife to the hills to become the real whore she is! Yes! she is a whore if you like! She asks money from her men! It’s five hundred rupees a night to have her, it is! I never yet asked a man for a pice, and I would not take one, or a million, as payment! If I do fuck, I fuck for pleasure, and because I like my lover! But I hate a cad! and if ever there was a cad in this world, it is Major Searle,’ and she spat on the floor in token of her disgust for him!

I used all my arts of gentle persuasion to try and calm her down, and at length succeeded. She told me that Searle had never had her with her permission.

I propose, but not just at present, to take you, my patient readers, into my confidence, and tell you what were the adventures of her amorous life, but before doing so I must explain how the abhorred attentions of Major Searle were put a complete end to and how Lizzie Wilson rid herself of a man who had been her plague for some years.

I had hired a native servant as my factotum when I stayed in Lahore en route for my destination at Cherat; a capable man he was, and one who had an eye to business, for whether he was married or not I do not know, but he brought a very fine young native woman with him and, as the reader will hear, her talents were not thrown away at Cherat — although for myself I had far finer game to follow than was afforded by Mrs Soubratie’s brown skin and somewhat mellow charms. Though no more than twenty she had gone the way of almost all Indian women and her bosom had begun to flow so that her bubbies, otherwise fine and plump, hung in a despondent manner. Such defects, however, are so common that they are little heeded by the British officers or soldiers, who whet their appetite on the fine, juicy cunt, rather than on other personal graces of the dame who affords them pleasure.

Soubratie, hearing I was going to mess, got out my nice, new, clean, white mess clothes, and himself gorgeously adorned and armed with a lantern, saw me safely across the compound, ankle deep in dust, to the mess of the regiment, there to partake of the generous hospitality of the glorious 130th. Is it any use to describe the ante-room, with its swinging punkahs, chairs, tables and pictures, carpets, books, newspapers, trophies of the chase, etc., etc. Shall I tell how the staff and self-important adjutant welcomed me in a proper and decent style; how the colonel seemed to inspect me; how the other officers, whom I had not yet met, greeted me with a polite ‘glad to see you’ from their lips, and ‘I wonder what the devil kind of a fellow you are’ glance from their eyes. Most regiments are alike; when you have seen one you have seen all. The English officer is undoubtedly a fearful ‘stick’ and of all weary humdrum lives, mess life is the most dreary. Along with the air of ennui and lassitude, however, there is a wicked, devil-may-care current, which forms the pith of an officer’s life, and I knew well that when a good dinner had been eaten, a good share of fairly good wine drunk, and cigars and pegs had become the evening fare, I should hear a great deal more than I was likely to at the dinner table, where propriety and stiffness more or less ruled the roost. Accordingly, I was now regaled with old stories of the war, tales of savagery and cowardly cruelty on the part of the Afghans, with an occasional growl at the generals and authorities who, it seemed, must have been incompetent to a degree or far more significant results would have accrued from the valour of the British troops. I knew how to discount all this, and listened with interest, more or less affected, to my new friends’ views.

But the ‘cloth off the table’, brought a subject which is always congenial to the fore. Woman, lovely woman, began to be discussed. My young acquaintance J.C.’s statement as to the complete absence of women from Tommy Atkins’ quarters in Afghanistan and the consequent immense demand for cunts on his return to civilisation and comfort was immediately confirmed. In those days (it has been very recently altered) the regulations obliged a certain number of native girls to be especially engaged for the services of each regiment, and these ladies of the camp accompanied their regiment wherever it marched in India, just as much a part and parcel of it as the colonel, adjutant and quartermaster. But Tommy likes variety as well as other people, and in every place where there is a bazaar or shops there are establishments for ladies of pleasure and these latter earn a good many four-anna bits which should by rights find their way into the pockets of the proper regimental whores. The recent influx of troops into Peshawar from Afghanistan had created an enormous demand for cunts, and Nowshera, Attock, even Rawalpindi, Umballa and other places had been denuded of ‘polls’ who gathered like birds of carrion where the carcass lay. This was a great grievance for the officers of the gallant 130th, who were almost as badly off for women as they had been when they had been at Lellabad and at Lundi Kotal, at which latter place a Gurkha soldier who had got a bad case of clap from some native woman was universally spoken of as the ‘Lucky Gurkha!’ Not because of the clap, bien entendre, but because, though he suffered afterwards, he had managed to secure for himself a pleasure so uncommon, under the circumstances, that it seemed like water a thousand miles distant to a traveller lost in the great Sahara!

Once the subject of love and women was started rolling the tongues of those who had been most reticent during dinner were set wagging, and I found a most entertaining host in the fat, pudgy, double-chinned major, who seemed to take a fancy to me. He proposed that we should adjourn outside where the band of the regiment was performing some operatic airs and lively dance music, and there we sat, in those voluptuous Madras long armchairs, enjoying whatever coolness there was in the air, the sounds of the suggestive music and the brilliancy of the myriad bright stars which glittered overhead, literally like ‘diamonds in the sky’.

‘Searle, our brigade major, said he would come later this evening,’ said the major, ‘but I rather think he won’t.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because he is cunt-struck with a very pretty little woman in the dak bungalow.’

This I guessed was a shot to me.

‘Indeed! Well! I hope he will succeed and get his greens! Poor chap!’

‘Oh! Do you! Well! We were all saying that it was a dammed shame, because we had made up our minds that you were surely in her good graces yourself, and we thought it mean of Searle to try and cut in whilst you were out! ha! ha! ha!’

‘Oh!’ I said quietly, ‘but I am a married man, major, and have just left my wife, and do not go in for that sort of thing! So, as far as I am concerned, Major Searle is welcome to the lady if he can persuade her to grant him her favours.’

‘Well! But Searle is a married man himself, Devereaux!’

‘Oh! I dare say! I don’t mean to imply that a married man is impervious to the charms of other women because he is married. I am not straitlaced, and I dare say should be quite as liable as anybody else to have a woman who was not my wife, but you know I have not been married long enough to be tired of my wife, and I have not been long enough away from her to feel any inclination to commit adultery yet!’

‘Well! Searle is married — but he’s a brute! Yet I somehow pity the poor devil too! I don’t know how it is, but he and his wife, a devilish fine woman, a perfect Venus in her way, don’t get on altogether well; in fact she has left him!’

‘Oh! my! do you say so?’

‘Yes! Now mind you, Devereaux, you must not give me as your authority, but I can tell you that he treated that poor woman like hell, half killing her with a blow from the side of his hairbrush; devilish nearly smashed her skull, you know, and after that she left him, and went and set up on her own account at Ramsket.’

I am sure my dear readers are amused at my assuming the air of a thoroughly moral young husband still contented with the breasts of his spouse, as Solomon, I think it is, tells us we ought to be, but of course I was not going to amuse my new friend, or indeed any others, with tales which somehow spread so wonderfully quickly, and in rapidly widening circles, until they reach the ears of those we would least wish to hear them. Really and truly, my heart and conscience pricked me when this conversation brought to mind my beloved little Louie, and I thought of her in her lovely bed, perhaps weeping in sad silence as she prayed for the safety, welfare and quick return home of one whom she loved so dearly, who made her joyous by day and gave her rapturous fun at night, her husband, and the darling father of her angel baby girl. But alas! the spirit is willing and the flesh weak, as I have remarked before, and the weakness of the flesh exceeds the strength of the spirit all too often.

But the conversation was bearing directly on a subject which was becoming interesting to me since I had seen Searle and heard Lizzie’s indignant remark that his wife was a regular whore, whose price for her charms was, however, uncommonly high. I did not mind what my fat major said about Searle’s designs on Lizzie that evening, because Lizzie would have to have been a most unaccountably stupid deceiver if she had merely expressed abhorrence of him to blind me! No, I felt certain the abhorrence was real and true, and I had no fear that I should find that she had afforded him a retreat, either hospitable or the reverse, in her sweet cunt when I got home to her again.

‘How do you mean “set up on her own account,” major?’ said I.

‘Oh! hum! well! look here, bend your head a little nearer to me! I don’t want to talk too loudly! Well! she is — that is, any fellow almost, who cares to give her a cool five hundred rupees, can have her.’

‘What!’ said I in well-affected incredulous tones, ‘you want to persuade me that an officer’s wife, a lady like Mrs Searle must be, has actually done such a monstrous, not to say such an idiotic thing, as not only to leave her husband, a thing I cannot understand, but to set up as a whore, and in such a place as Ramsket? Surely, major, you are mistaken! Remember! we are told to believe nothing we hear and only half of what we see!’

‘I know! I know!’ said he, still as calmly as if he were Moses laying down the law, ‘but look here, Devereaux, you won’t tell me I am a liar if I say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that my proof of what I say is that I, Jack Stone, have had Mrs Searle, and paid for my game! Yes, sir! Rupees five hundred did Jack Stone pay Mrs Searle for a night in Mrs Searle’s bed.’

‘Goodness, and you have actually –’

‘I have actually fucked her, sir! and fucked her well! and a damned fine poke she is too, I can tell you, and well worth the five hundred she asks for the fun. Such a damned fine poke is she that Jack Stone, who is not a rich man but must lay up for a rainy day, has put three times five hundred rupees away in the bank of Simla, and means to lodge them some day soon in the bank of Ramsket, of which the banker and sole proprietress is Mrs Searle, the bank itself being her goloptious cunt, between her goloptious thighs. Did you mark that, young man!’

‘And does Searle know this?’ I asked, still incredulous.

‘What? that I have had his wife?’

‘No, not that you in particular have had her, but that she is had by other men, and for money paid down on the nail.’

‘Know it! of course he does! It’s her way of paying him off for his brutal conduct to her, to drive him nuts by writing and telling him how nicely she is dragging his name through the mud.’

‘Then why does he not divorce her?’ I cried indignantly, for I felt that it was monstrous for a wife, no matter what her grievance might be, to behave in such an outrageous manner.

‘Ah! — but sink your voice a little lower, Devereaux, not that all this is not perfectly well known by our fellows, but about the divorce. Well, you see, if what I have heard is true, a divorce is the last thing Searle can get, or would care to ask for, no matter how much he might wish it could be managed.

‘Certain little things would come out at the trial, and he might find himself not only minus a wife whom he hates, but also minus his liberty and what remains of his honour, and I don’t think anyone would care to become a convict, even to rid himself of his wife!’

‘What little things?’ asked I, quite bitten with curiosity.

‘Oh! Searle was a long time in Persia before he married, and he got the Persian taste for boys! Sodomy, you know!’ And the modest major sank his voice to a whisper. ‘Sodomy! he tried to get Mrs Searle to acquire a taste for it herself, but she, like a proper woman, indignantly refused to comply. It might have stopped there, but one night Searle, full of zeal and brandy, actually ravished his poor wife’s — hem — hem — hem, well! — bum! and from that day she hated him — quite naturally, I think! Then, of course, she gave him the nag, nag, rough side of her tongue, until he nearly killed her, as I told you, in his passion. Then she went and set up at Ramsket.’

‘But,’ said I, horrified to hear such a disgusting story, so loathsome on either side, ‘how is it she can demand such enormous sums for what I expect equally good returns can be got almost anywhere in India!’

‘Oh! but you don’t know. First of all, Mrs Searle is in society — she is, I suppose, the most beautiful woman in India, if not in all Asia!’

‘In society!’

‘Yes! bless you! you don’t understand. Now come! You, who have seen the world at home! Have you not heard how Mrs So and So is suspected of poking, and yet you have met her every night at the best houses? Have you not seen common or fast women, who dare to do what your own wife or sister dare not, and nobody says more than that they are fast? Do you suppose you know what women actually do poke, and those who only get the credit for it? It is just the same with Mrs Searle. She lives in a pretty little bungalow, some three miles deep in the hills of Ramsket; she calls it Honeysuckle Lodge, but the funny fellows call it Cunnie Fuckle Lodge. Ha! ha! ha! and she has named the hill it is on Mount Venus; she stays there all the hot weather; in the cold weather she goes to Lucknow or Mteerut or Agra or Benares or wherever she likes. No fellow has her without an introduction. The Viceroy is damned spoony on her, and that is sufficient to keep the fashionable people quiet. People suspect, people know, but people pretend to think it impossible that the quiet lady, living in a little bungalow, away from all the world, minding her garden and her flowers, is anything but a poor, persecuted wife whose husband is a brute!’

‘Oh! that is it! So to have her you must get an introduction?’

‘Yes! Without that you might as well cry for the moon!’

‘And how is it to be managed?’ I asked out of simple curiosity, for I had no notion of having Mrs Searle, but I was interested in this curious story of which I did not know how much to believe or how much to discredit.

‘Ha! ha! ha! Devereaux! I fancy you are beginning to think whether you can find five hundred rupees for yourself, eh?’

‘Not a bit!’ said I indignantly, ‘I have no idea of such a thing, but simply asked out of curiosity!’

‘Well!’ said the pudgy little major, puffing his cheroot hard as it had nearly gone out, ‘no harm to tell you, anyhow! You can get an introduction from any man who has had her! I could give you one for instance. See! This is how I had her. I had heard of Mrs Searle and had, like everybody else, heard funny reports about her, which, like I see you do now, I only half believed. Well! I did not then know she lived at Ramsket, but chance made me pitch upon that place to spend three weeks’ leave in during the hot weather of ′75. The Viceroy and his staff were spending the time there also, and everybody was wondering why he chose Ramsket instead of Naini Tal. There is reason in everything and Mrs Searle was his reason, no doubt. However, without being too long winded, I met Lord Henry Broadford, the Assistant Military Secretary, you know. Broadford was at school with me, and is a damned good fellow. One day, soon after I went to Ramsket, I was standing talking to Broadford, when the finest, handsomest woman I had ever seen walked by, and Broadford took off his hat and smiled, and she bowed. She looked full at me as I took off my hat and, by George, sir! she made my heart thump in my bosom, she was so lovely. When she was out of earshot I said, “Harry, who is your friend? By God, she is a clinker and no mistake!”

‘ “Don’t you know,” says he, “why that is the famous Mrs Searle.”

‘ “Is it,” says I. Then I asked him if he knew whether it was true she poked, as people said.

‘Broadford looked at me and grinned and said: “Would you like to know for certain, Stone?”

‘And I said, “Yes.”

‘ “Well,” says he, “the most certain way is to poke her yourself, for you might not believe me if I told you that I was in bed with her up to five o’clock this morning!”

‘ “I don’t believe you, you beggar!” said I, “you are laughing at me.”

‘ “All right!” says he, “have you five hundred rupees to lose on a bet?”

‘ “Well!” I hesitated; five hundred is a large sum and the subject was not worth it.

‘Seeing me hesitate, he said, “Well, would you give five hundred rupees to have Mrs Searle yourself, Jack?”

‘ “Yes,” said I, plump as could be.

‘ “Then come along with me,” said Broadford.

‘Well, we went to my hotel, and there Broadford made me write a cheque, and get five one-hundred-rupee notes from the native banker, new and crisp, in exchange. Then he made me write a letter addressed to Mrs Searle, in which I asked her might I come and take dinner with her on such and such a day? naming the day. I was more than half afraid the fellow was humbugging me, but he pulled out a case from his pocket, and showed me a lovely photo in it of a stark-naked lady, cunt and all complete, and, says he, “Mrs Searle gives one of these to each of her lovers, and she gave me this this morning; see, her name, date and the number of times I had her last night!” Well, I looked at the photo, and sure enough there was no mistaking it was the lady I had just seen, besides which I remembered having seen photos of her taken in the plains.

‘By God! sir! the sight of such lovely charms settled my hash. I told Broadford that he would have to bear the brunt if anything went wrong. He swore all would be right, and after I had signed my name to the note to Mrs Searle, he added his initials and “WTBF?”

‘ “What does that mean?” I asked.

‘ “ ‘Will there be fuck?’ of course!” Well, this done, I put the five good crisp notes in the letter, and we went to the post office, registered it, and then I began to think I had been made a fool of. But it was all right. The day afterwards I got a registered letter. It was from Mrs Searle. In it were my five notes. She said she was very sorry but that she did not think she could have the pleasure of my company at dinner for another ten days, would I write again in about a week’s time, if that would suit me, and she would be sure not to disappoint me. I rushed off, found Broadford, and nearly had a fit of apoplexy from excitement. By his advice I waited some eight days, then sent another letter, and again enclosed the notes, and I added after my own signature, WTBF? Next came a letter by hand. It said, “My dear Jack,” this time. It invited me to dine the next evening at eight and ended with “Matilda Searle. TWBF.”’

‘And did you go?’

‘Oh! What a question! Of course I did. By God, sir! I was simply bursting. Even now I can hardly tell my story with any degree of quiet! Well, I went; I was received by her in an awfully pretty little drawing room, most beautifully furnished and bristling with knick-knacks, mirrors, pictures and everything that can make a room handsome and elegant. The floor was covered with carpet into which one’s feet sank as one walked on it. Mrs Searle was sitting reading when I arrived, and as soon as the bearer had gone out of the room she came and took my hand, shook it, and then kissed me! I was so excited; I felt such a sense of false shame, that at first I was like a stuck pig! But she quickly put me at my ease, sat on the sofa, made me sit next to her, jammed her knee against mine and, whilst asking me where, how and when I had known Lord Henry Broadford, showed off her splendid shoulders and magnificent bosom. I had been awfully randy on my way there, I had been randy all the days I had been waiting for her, but I was so knocked over by the elegance I saw on my first arrival that I declare, if the truth were told, I felt inclined to run away. But little by little, as I got to see the woman I was going to have, as I began to hear her talk as if we were quite old chums, and at her touch — the contact of her hand on mine, to say nothing of the kisses which from time to time she gave me — I began to pluck up courage. So by way of showing her I was no fool but expected something, I offered to put my hand on her bosom, and take hold of one of her glorious bubbies, of which I saw nearly half over her dress. But she laughed and said it was not time for that yet, that when we had dined, and I had had my smoke, we would go to bed, where I should find her all I could wish for, and where I should have the fullest liberty, so long as I did not exceed the bounds which every honest man observed who had a woman. Well! I kissed her and begged her pardon. I had a rosebud in my buttonhole, and she took it out and said, “See, I place your rose where you shall be!” and she put it between her bubbies and said, “there it is, a rose among the lilies, but that is all of you I can allow at present to be there.” Well, sir! we had a splendid dinner. In spite of my impatience I did justice to a rattling good feed, and afterwards she made me smoke a cigar, and when it was nearly done she said she would go and undress, and that when I heard a little bell ring, I was to go to her bedroom which she had already pointed out to me. Soon I heard the bell and I went. Oh! I was delighted! By God, sir! I have had many fine women, but I never saw one who was a patch on Mrs Searle when undressed. She had on a quite transparent kind of nightgown, which covered her from neck to heels. It had no sleeves, and her arms were something splendid. Her bubbies looked more enticing covered with this transparent stuff, than when I saw them bare. Her nipples looked like strawberries, red and luscious. I would have been able to see her cunt, but all the whole of the way, from her chin to her feet, there was a broad rose-coloured ribbon, which fell exactly over it, so that I could only see the fringe of hair on either side where it passed over her bush. I declare, Devereaux, I cannot describe the night I had with her, for it would drive you wild and you would be trying to slip into that woman at the dak bungalow, and it would never do, you being, as you say, a married man, but I never — never — never had such a glorious fucking in my life. It is true I was five years younger than I am now, and as I keep a pretty little piece of brown meat, and have my regular greens twice a week, I might not be able to do as good a turn now, as I did then, but I had that woman eight solid times, sir, seven times before I went to sleep, and once in the morning. She said herself that she did not expect it of me at first sight, as she said I was too fat, and fat men were bad pokes as a rule. When I went away after breakfast she gave me a case like the one Broadford had shown me, and told me not to open it until I got home, and she told me she relied on me not to show it to anyone, unless I thought them a fit fellow for her to have. I’ll show it to you now! Ha! Bearer! Kitmutgar! koi, hai!’ and the excited major shouted to the servants, one of whom came. By his orders the major’s bearer brought a little writing dispatch-box, and from this he took a small case, some six inches by four in size, and then, giving me a nudge, he walked to the anteroom of the mess, which was deserted, and showed me a very well-executed photo of a perfectly naked woman. On the back of the photo was written: From M. Searle to Jack Stone — 15 June 1875 — 8.

‘Now!’ said the major, ‘any time you would like to have that woman, you drop me a line and I will give you the necessary introduction.’

I thanked him heartily, but I must say I did not feel tempted to give five hundred rupees for the favours of any woman, just then, and mentally I made comparisons between my Lizzie and Mrs Searle which were not favourable to the latter, though, according to the photo, she was certainly a fine woman.

Then, after smoking another cigar, and drinking a couple more pegs and talking Mrs Searle and fuck generally, I left to go home, and I looked forward to returning to Lizzie and getting rid of some of the hot blood which was running in a desperately excited manner through my throbbing veins, for the little major’s conversation had been the reverse of cooling.

It was very nearly midnight when I reached the bungalow and there was not a light in the place. The stars had shown in the road fairly well, but the verandah and rooms, on my side at least, were pitch dark. I imagined that Lizzie must have grown tired of waiting up for me and taken the opportunity of getting a good sleep before I came home, since it was highly likely that, after a good mess dinner and quantities of generous wine, I would be rather lively and keen and put her into that condition too.

Full of this idea, and determined if possible to give her a surprise sweet-awakening by getting into her whilst she slept, I stole on tiptoe towards my room, to undress there and then join her in her ‘naked bed’. But as I crossed the verandah something white gleamed on one side and, on looking, I saw it was Lizzie, sitting in my easy chair, apparently, from her position, asleep. I stole up behind her and bending over her I kissed her soft cheek, at the same time stealing my hand into her glorious bosom, and caressing her warm, swelling, elastic bubbies, which always gave me such delight to feel. Oh! What nice things good bubbies are to feel!

‘Ah! is that you, Charlie, dear! I must have been half asleep,’ she said.

‘Yes! darling!’ I said softly, still pressing the delightful globes in my hand, one after the other, and kissing the sweet mouth turned up towards me.

Lizzie seemed to enjoy my caresses, for she merely returned my kisses and patted my face lightly with her hand. I found that although she was still dressed, her clothes were loose on her, and that I could pass my hand between the band and her waist, and her beautiful skin felt so soft, so satiny, so smooth, it delighted me as though I had never felt it before. From her bosom I descended until I reached the pretty plain of her lovely belly and here I let my roving hand wander from side to side as it gradually crept lower and lower until it reached the upper fringe of the glorious bush which so splendidly adorned her domelike motte, and then I threaded my way through this pathless forest until I reached the spot where the infold formed the precious and voluptuous deep line of her delicious cunt. I passed my middle finger in the groove, just tipping the awakened and slippery little clitoris, until I reached the entrance to the rich depths I sought for.

Lizzie said nothing; my left hand, which was over the bosom, felt the breast rise a little more tumultuously, and my arm bore a slightly increased strain as she leaned her head back upon it, but that was all. It was so dreamy, so exquisite, that I stood in that position, caressing the warm moist cunt, kissing the cherry lips with little caresses of mine, as if I were a dove billing its mate.

Suddenly a change seemed to come over me. I was no longer in India; it was no longer Lizzie whose charms I was master of, but my own beloved little beautiful wife. I remembered how, on the third night of our blissful and heavenly honeymoon, she had preceded me to bed; how it was the month of July, and the night was warm and balmy, the scent of the blossoming lime trees filling the air with its sweet aroma. I had given my Louie ten minutes to undress and perform those necessary little acts to make her comfortable for the night, which no young married woman likes to do in the presence of her husband, and then I had gone up to follow her into the bed, my beautiful heaven, in which I expected to find her, a luscious feast for my still ardent and excited and quite uncloyed desire. But when I went to the room she was still dressed. She was seated at the open window, reclining back into her chair. There were no candles. The stars were shining brightly but softly; the heavy masses of foliage on the trees loomed dark against the skies, and there was silence outside, except the occasional rustling of the leaves as the amorous zephyrs kissed the heads of the trees they loved, and the poetry of the moment filled me with a degree of tenderness and love I had not experienced in a similar manner since Louie and I had been made one at God’s holy altar. Like Lizzie, she had only half turned to accept my kisses, with a little question as to whether it was me — as though it could be anyone else! — as I had glided my happy hand into her so lately virgin bosom, and caressed the swelling globes which it had so delighted me on my wedding night to find did exist in truth and reality, beautiful, round, firm, polished, elastic and rose-crowned; for Louie had been so jealous of those exquisite beauties, that even when I had seen her dressed for the evening, in her low-necked gown, not one line of the lovely hemispheres did she show, and I had to imagine beauties to exist where my fancy painted them; and I had prayed I might find she really had sweet bubbies; for alas! how often is man deceived in his expectations as to the physique of his beloved bride. Neither of us spoke; we were too happy; and over her beautiful bosom my wanton hand had descended, until, finding her waistband loosened, it had explored the sweet pastures of silvery belly and crossed the rough surface of the mount of Venus; as my finger pressed in Cupid’s furrow, the lovely little clitoris, ever on the watch, had sprung up to salute it with a moist and eager kiss; a thrill, which I could feel, passed over my Louie’s form, and as she felt the strong middle finger bury itself in the hot depths of her velvety cunt, she had pressed my face to her burning cheeks, and murmured, ‘My man! Oh! my beloved man!’

Full of overflowing sentiment, which this entrancing quiet and this voluptuous scene of love and passion had inspired me with, I quite forgot where I was, and whom I was caressing. I kissed Lizzie rapturously and I murmured in a voice which must have quivered with deep emotion, ‘Oh! my darling! my own, own, darling.’

Lizzie started. She disengaged my hands and, standing up, she exclaimed in a voice which sounded strange to me, so different was it from her ordinary tone, ‘Charlie! Charlie! Don’t speak to me like that! Don’t! there’s a good fellow!’

‘Oh! Lizzie! what have I done?’ I said in alarm.

‘Oh! you must not speak to me like that! You know you don’t love me, Charlie dear. You don’t love me like you do your wife, and if you did it would only make me unhappy. Oh! Charlie! the one thing which would take away the only pleasure I have in life, would be to know that some man really and truly loved me. I could not leave my husband and live with him, and I must have a man as often as I can. You don’t understand. When a woman has led the life I have she can’t steady down unless some illness puts an end to all feeling of desire in her. She must go on as she is till death, or at least till decay of all her bodily powers. Confess now, it was not Lizzie Wilson you were speaking to but your wife!’

‘Well, Lizzie, dearest!’ I said, quite thunderstruck with her vehemence and her outcry against love, ‘I won’t tell you a lie. I did for the moment forget where I was. It was this way — but sit down darling — and I will tell you truly.’ She did so, and still standing over her, and again possessing myself of the sweet charms between her thighs, to which she admitted me full rights as a true friend but not as an earnest and passionate lover, I told her about the scene of which I have given my readers a faint notion, as regards the delicious commingling of the adoration of the heart and the worship of the senses.

When I had finished Lizzie heaved a prodigious sigh and said: ‘Charlie! Take my advice and don’t be too long sending home for that true wife of yours! She will keep you from harm out here, and it is not right, it would be a cruel shame to condemn her to pass the life of a nun whilst you are amusing yourself in India, fucking to your heart’s content women who do not deserve such delight. For, mark my words, you are not the kind of man to go without women, nor will you find a station where there are not women, pretty and fine, who will not leave you alone — they will be as eager to have you as you will be to have them. Yes! believe me, if ever a man was formed to strike a woman’s fancy it is you. Send for your wife, for otherwise some mischief will be brewed, and you may be made to repent that you left her at home.’

These words, spoken with great earnestness, struck me very forcibly. It seemed also so like Satan rebuking sin that I could hardly help feeling amused. After a pause of a second or two, during which I gently stroked the sweet cunt under my hand, I said: ‘All right, Lizzie! I believe you are quite right! I will send for my wife as soon as you advise, but come in, there’s a darling, and let us enjoy the fleeting hour. It seems like ages since I last had my prick in this sweetest, softest, juiciest little cunt of yours!’

To this she replied, ‘Searle has been here tonight.’

My goodness! All my blood ran cold. I felt now as if my Louie, in answer to my prayer to come to bed, so that I might enjoy her loveliness, told me, ‘Too late, my dear, So and So has just been fucking me and I’m not inclined for any more!’

‘Searle!’ I exclaimed, snatching my hand away from under her clothes. ‘Searle! Oh! Lizzie! and did you let him have you?’

‘I did not say that he had me, Charlie, so you need not get into a fit of jealousy, you silly boy! No! If there is one man in the world to whom I would forever say no, it is Searle; but he was here all the same.’

I breathed. Somehow Lizzie had grown dear to me, she had been so nice, such a splendid fuck, and so tender towards me in spite of her disclaimer of love.

‘What did he want, Lizzie?’

‘What you say you do now, Charlie! But oh! we had such a row! I declare it has given me quite a headache! Oh! Searle! you … cursed beast!’

‘And what did he do or say Lizzie! Tell me!’

‘Well, you had hardly got across the road before Searle, who had apparently been watching for you to go, sneaked on to the verandah around the corner, and asked if I had got his note. Now I had received a note from him which I had kept to myself, and which I had not shown you, dear, for I did not want to make you jealous; a fine production it is, too, and a very useful one for me, I can tell you. I think he must have been either drunk or mad when he wrote it, for he could not have written a more damning piece of evidence against himself if he had tried to do it in his sober senses. Oh! Mrs Searle would give a cartful of her rupees to have it, for she could then get the divorce she longs for. Plenty of good fellows are ready to marry her if she could get divorced, and I know she has often said she would be glad to give up her present life; but Searle knows this, and his only revenge against her is to behave so prudently as not to give her any chance. If ever he has a woman it is so on the sly that no one knows it. Well, he has written down in black and white that he has had me — and since Mrs Searle left him, too. Let’s light a candle and I’ll show you the letter!’

Full of curiosity and rather astonished to find how the truth comes out, for I had certainly understood Lizzie to say that Searle had never had her, nor ever should have her by her permission, I went for my candle and lit it. Lizzie then took the precious letter out of her pocket and gave it to me to read.

It commenced with prayers and entreaties to let him come and have her whilst I was at mess. It said that he knew well that I did nothing all day and night but fuck her, that by this time she must be tired of me and at least that a little of her accustomed change of diet would be agreeable. From prayers, it went to using threats. Her husband’s regiment was at Peshawar, now with a newly appointed colonel who was death on adultery and fornication, and he had given out that the first time he found any of it going on amongst the married women of his regiment, he would set the penal laws on the subject in force and that he (Searle) had plenty of evidence which would put me (Devereaux) into prison and send her out of the country branded as an unchaste woman, a whore and an adulteress, and that unless she admitted him to her embraces he would help the colonel to make good his word. Then came more prayers and more earnest entreaties — then offers of a thousand rupees (twice what his own wife charged) — jewellery, anything, if she would but consent, and then in a postscript, he boasted that he had already fucked her, at Agra, on an occasion when, stunned by a fall from an overthrown gharry, she had been carried into his bungalow, and seeing who she was, and determined not to lose the precious opportunity, he had raped her in her unconscious state, and enjoyed the ‘wealth of her voluptuous cunt’ — he actually used these last words.

‘The intense blackguard,’ I exclaimed, moved to great wrath by the reading of this precious epistle.

‘You may say so, Charlie! But now hear what the brute did. At first he asked had I got his letter. I said yes. Then he asked me in a wheedling tone would I consent and let him have me. I said not for all the thousand rupees in India, that he was too loathsome a brute for me to touch with the end of a barge-pole, let alone take in my arms. Then he began to threaten me with our new colonel, saying that I could not get away from here now unless he, Searle, gave me an order for a gharry, that everything like a cart with wheels was engaged for the next ten days, and that long before that time was over the regiment would be on the march from Peshawar to Muttra, and that the colonel, finding me here instead of at Muttra, where he had ordered me to go, would be furious, and he, Searle, would take the opportunity then of telling him why I stopped at Nowshera, namely, to have three separate officers who stayed here, two on their way down country, and one on his way to join his battalion at Cherat, and he would tell who these officers were, and it would go hard on them, each of them would lose two thousand rupees or get two years’ imprisonment, and “then they will have good reason to curse you for being a damned little bitch, for why should you condemn them to these fines and punishment when by letting me have you for an hour or two you can prevent any harm arising, and I will keep my word if you don’t …” and he got more and more angry.

‘I told him I would see him damned before I would let him touch me, and I dared him to report me, or you or the others, and I reminded him of what he had said in his letter, and how completely I would cover myself, and you, and others by it, and I advised him to go away quietly or I would call the khansama. That put him in as complete a passion as ever I saw a man. He rushed at me and swore he would have me. I put myself like a shot behind a chair. He stopped for a moment, unbuttoned his trousers, pulled out his prick, which was in a furious state, and then rushed at me again. I shouted for the khansama, but Searle did not mind. He seized me around the waist, and lifted me off the floor, and ran with me into my room, dashing the chick down as he lunged into it. But I was not going to be ravished without making the best defence I could. I got my ten nails well into his cheeks, and scrawned them down as hard as I could. I could see and feel the blood spurting. Searle yelled and cursed, swore and called me the most awful, dreadful names. I gave him as good a clawing as I could, but he got me down on the bed, pulled my petticoats up to his face, and lay on top of me with all his weight, trying to get his knees between mine. But I kept my thighs locked hard; although he pounded with his knees on my thighs, and nearly choked me with his hand on my throat, he could not get between them. I could feel the tip of his prick banging against my motte like a bar of iron, but he never once got it nearer my cunt than that. At last, finding that he could not manage to make me open my legs to him that way, he began to put his hand between my thighs, and to pinch me most frightfully. Oh! he gave me dreadful pinches. I am sure I am all black and blue, but his weight was off me now, I was able to scream; and I yelled. I called out murder! murder! help! help! as loud as I could, and at the same time I tried to get hold of his balls, so as to crush them if I could, but he managed to keep them out of my reach, whilst he pinched, scratched and beat my thighs as though he would tear them to pieces. But before my fast failing strength left me, help came. Two young civilians came in today from Peshawar, whilst you were dressing for the mess, and got a room on the other side of the bungalow. They at last heard my screams, and came running to see what was the matter. When Searle saw them he ordered them out of the room, saying that I was his wife, and that he had a right to treat me as he liked; but I tried to get out of his clutches, and I implored the young men to save me, and I said that Searle was not my husband and was trying to rape me. The young men then ordered him off my bed, and as he did not obey, one of them pulled him off. Then Searle went for him, for he was blind mad with rage and passion, but the young man was pretty cool, and he gave Searle a most dreadful blow in the face with his fist — oh! I was so delighted to hear it — it made him stagger and the blood spurt from his nose. But Searle seemed really like a lunatic. He rushed again at the young man, and hit him several nasty blows, so that the second one came to his friend’s assistance. I urged the two on and Searle got a thrashing, I can tell you! Still he would not quit. By this time the khansama, the principal coolies, your servant Soubratie and everyone belonging to the bungalow had come. I could not help continuing to scream. Everybody went for Searle, and at last he was turned out of the house yelling and fighting like a wild beast. Some soldiers came running off the road, and at first, seeing who Searle was, wanted to help him, but the young men told them what he had done, and apparently they don’t love Searle at the barracks, for these men joined in beating him, and upon my word I began to get frightened. I thought they would kill him between them all. Oh! the row was tremendous. Presently down came the picket from the barracks; the soldiers seeing them ran away. Searle was lying on the ground, a crowd around him; some men had torches alight, and the khansama had got a lantern, and you never saw such a group as they formed. The young men who had helped to save me from being ravished explained the whole matter to the NCO of the picket, and as Searle’s trousers were open, and his prick showing, though no longer stiff and standing, he understood the whole thing. Searle, though hardly able to breathe, wanted them to take the young men prisoner, but the NCO begged them to go away, and persuaded him to let himself be carried home, for he could not walk. Oh! Charlie! it made me so sick and ill! I don’t know how I have been able to tell you so much — my head is splitting, and I feel all pounded to death by that brute.’

I leave my readers to appreciate the state of anger and disgust towards Searle which this vivid narrative of poor Lizzie’s produced. Oh! I had come home hoping for such a sweet night of delightful fucking, but it was plain that that was out of the question, and indeed, all desire, other than for vengeance on Searle, had gone out of my head. Lizzie looked very ill, when I came to examine her by the light of the candle, and I begged her to go to bed.

‘Yes, dear!’ she said. ‘It is the best place for me, but oh! Charlie dear! I am afraid I cannot have you tonight! Poor boy! I am sure you came home expecting to have some grand fucking, and I am so grieved to disappoint you, but I feel too sick!’

‘You poor darling girl!’ I cried. ‘I had hoped, as you say, to have some more delicious fucks with you tonight, but of course it cannot come off now. Come to bed and let me help you to undress.’

She did as I asked her. I undressed her and was shocked to find the state she was in. Her throat was bruised a little but her poor thighs were one mass of contusions, all scored by the fingernails of the monster who had attacked her. I kissed them, ‘to make them well’, and poor Lizzie smiled faintly and kissed me, and then lay down and begged me to leave her alone. But hardly had she put her head on the pillow than she called out that she was going to be sick.

‘Oh! Charlie! Help me to my bathroom!’

But I ran and got her a chillumchee [brass basin] and brought it to her, and she, poor creature, was deadly sick. I held her burning forehead in my hands and did all I could to comfort her, and to assist, and at last, completely exhausted, she sank back and her whole appearance alarmed me. When I came home she was fairly cool, but now she was the colour of a penny, and her skin was hot, parched and burning. I guessed she had a fever and the suddenness of the attack alarmed me. All that night I tended her, keeping her well covered up to induce perspiration, and from time to time gave her water to drink for which she moaned. Nobody who has not watched a sickbed under circumstances somewhat similar can tell how tedious, how weary, such a watch is, especially when, as in my case, the watcher is ignorant of what he ought to do, and has to go by instinct, as it were. At length, just as the morning began to break, Lizzie seemed to fall into a sound sleep. Her breathing was more regular and easy, her colour was more natural, and — blessed be heaven — her skin was again cool and moist. It was evident that the strength of the attack had passed.

Satisfied that Lizzie was really in a healthful sleep, I got myself a cool peg, and then going back to the bedside I sat down in my chair, leaned my head against her pillow and fell into a sound sleep myself. How long I slept I do not know but I was at length awakened by Soubratie, who touched me and murmured that sickening: ‘Sa—hib! S—a—a—hib!’ in my ear with which your native servant always rouses you.

‘What is it?’ said I, raising my heavy head.

‘Major Stone, sahib! Outside on verandah! Wanting see master!’ replied Soubratie who spoke English like a native.

‘Major Stone! Oh! yes! all right! Tell him I will be with him in a moment, Soubratie.’

‘Yes, sahib!’

I felt desperately tired and not in a pleasant humour at having my much needed rest broken. However, after a yawn or two, and an anxious glance at poor Lizzie, who seemed to have quite regained her ordinary appearance and to be having a really sound and refreshing sleep, I tightened the strings of my pyjamas, and went on to the verandah, where I heard the footsteps of my friend the major as he moved about somewhat impatiently. Seeing me come from Lizzie’s room in sleeping costume, he put up his hands in mock deprecation and said, sotto voce: ‘Oh! Oh—h—h! Captain Devereaux! Oh—h—h!’ and he put on such a comical look I could not help smiling.

‘Not so fast, major, please! Appearances may be against me, but I think I can give a satisfactory explanation. The lady who lives in that room was most dreadfully ill last night and I, out of pure charity, have been nursing her!’

‘In your nightshirt and pyjamas, exactly! I expect she required a little cordial administered by an enema, only in front instead of behind, and required your services and elixir! Oh! Devereaux! it won’t do, my boy, but Jack Stone is not the man to preach; still he would like his friends to be frank with him, so, Devereaux, you may as well tell the truth and confess that, full of my description of Mrs Searle, and the splendid night I had between her plump white thighs, you came home and spent, I hope, as good a night with the fair lady in there! Confess now!’

‘Quite wrong, major, I can assure you! I plead guilty to having been much moved and stirred by your voluptuous narrative, and as human nature is frail, I dare say might have spent such a night as you believe, only that the lady was, as I said, fearfully ill, and all owing to that blackguardly brute Searle, too!’

‘Ah!’ said the major, ‘that is just what I have come to enquire about. Look here, Devereaux, there is a devil of a row on. Searle was brought home last night between seven and eight o’clock, whilst we were at mess, with five or six ribs broken, his right leg broken above the ankle, his nose smashed flat, his front teeth driven down his throat, and battered, cut and bruised all over. In fact, the doctor hardly expects him to pull through, he is so fearfully weak, and so completely smashed to bits. The corporal of the picket reports that hearing a disturbance going on in the dak bungalow, he doubled his men down and caught sight of two men of the 130th running away, and hearing loud voices in the bungalow compound, he found a crowd of natives and two civilians, Europeans, standing round the brigade major, who was lying on the ground, all doubled up, and from what he could gather there was a woman at the bottom of it, but he could give no clear account of what had happened, or how it had happened, or anything. Well, the colonel is, of course, much put about. We none of us love Searle, who is a sulky brute, if a good officer, but a brigade major can’t be half killed without a row being made about it, so he has sent me to try and find out all about it and as I guessed you would very likely have heard something, I came first to you.’

I then gave the gallant major a succinct account of the whole business, as told me by Lizzie. I had to undergo some unmerciful chaffing from Stone about her, and found it impossible to hide from him the truth about my relations with her. But he promised to be mum, and, as he said, there was no need for my name to be mentioned at all in the business, at all events at present, and perhaps not at all, as I was not at the bungalow when Searle was there but at the mess, luckily for me!

Armed with his news, and quite interested how it was that Lizzie should have had such violent ill usage, and should have passed through such a terrible scene, he returned to make his report to his colonel, and about four o’clock he sent me a note, or chit as it is called in India, to say that the colonel had agreed to hush the whole matter up, and simply report Major Searle on the sick list, and him — Jack Stone — acting station staff officer. He went on by saying that the sooner the parties were out of Nowshera the better, and he advised me to prepare Lizzie for a start; he would order a dak gharry

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