Training Ship Viceroy

A YSS story from Blushes 2

FROM ADMIRAL I.C. TRAINING COMMAND TO COMMANDING OFFICER T.C. VICEROY……..MESSAGE BEGINS: H.M. INSPECTOR OF TRAINING ESTABLISHMENTS WILL VISIT YOUR SHIP THIS A.M. 11.00 HOURS. MESSAGE ENDS……..10.37

Although the afternoon sun struck dazzlingly across the water in the harbour, there was a breeze off the sea that was distinctly cool against the cheek as it blew up little wavelets to chuckle against the planking of the boat. Bare skin chilled in the intermittent gusts and there was plenty of unclothed girl-flesh in the whaler which had been sent to ferry the inspector across to the training ship moored in the deeper water of the main channel.

The bespectacled figure sitting awkwardly at the stern beside the girl handling the tiller looked now and then towards the tall-masted vessel riding quietly at her buoy, but his attention was more often focused onboard, where the girls on the thwarts laboured clumsily against the weight of their oars, dashing up little flecks of spray that spangled the man’s raincoat and got onto his glasses so that he had to take them off several times and wipe the water away. The girls’ legs were bare up to their shorts which cut close across the tops of their thighs and pulled intimate creases up from between their legs. Their tee-shirts left their arms bare and their alternate leaning forward and straining back gave glimpses of flat naked bellies at each stroke. Nipples pushed against tight-stretched shirts as each pull had the girls inclining backwards and breasts bounced youthfully as they leaned forward again. Plump little peach-clefts strained juicily against white cotton between suntanned thighs and the healthy pink of physical exertion suffused young, smooth cheeks below bright eyes which watched the watcher watching.

Ten minutes saw them rounding the bow of the ship to pass under the boom and along the side to the ladder. A girl stood straddle-legged in the bow with a boat-hook held erect between her feet like a lance tipped with brass. Only when the girl had got to her feet had the inspector realised just how immodest the girls’ shorts all were. Self-consciously this girl had looped a finger up under the leg of her shorts and eased the cotton down over the perkiness of her buttocks, aware no doubt that her saucy young bum would offer the inspector a fresh place to rest his eyes after their exploration of the other girls’ thighs, but her buttocks could still not be entirely secluded from interested eyes, the diagonal upsweep of the shorts being cut high on the hip, emphasising the length of a girl’s legs but making no secret of the roundness of her bottom in so doing. The inspector eyed the up-pull of the shorts between the girl’s bum cheeks, noticed the edge-outlined shape of brief knickers underneath and noted too the way the boat’s crew-leader, a girl older than the rest with three red diagonal tags on the left breast of her shirt, one for each six months of her service, weighed a short straight cane in her hand and constantly turned her head to judge the distance still to go to the ladder and then looked back at the girl with the boat hook.

The boat swept down beside the ship, swinging sideways across the tide as the girl at the tiller heaved on the shaft. The crew-leader whacked her cane loudly down across a thwart. ‘Pull, oars, pull!’ she bawled, and the girls threw their weight back and the boat stemmed the tide for a moment. ‘Hook on!’ yelled the girl and the boat-hook swung for the ladder — and missed!

Thwack! The bow-girl’s bum-cheeks trembled with the stroke’s impact. With a squeal she clutched desperately at her bottom and the boat-hook splashed into the water. Squeezing her bum, her knees clamping together with the pain, the bow-girl’s bare thighs caught the next one, loud and meaty across both legs at once. Her anguished yelp caused several of the girls at the oars to look round and then everything went wrong at once. One of the crew swept at the water with her oar and skimmed it across the surface instead of making it bite deep. A shower of salt water drenched the inspector, the oar slipped from its rowlock and went over the side, and the girl slipped backwards off her seat to end up half-lying between the knees of the girl behind her with her legs still hooked over her thwart and the seat of her tight-stretched shorts in a puddle of water in the bottom of the boat. With the girl behind unable to move because of the first girl’s arrival in her lap, and the girls on the other side still rowing, the boat began to swing broadside to the tide flow and away downstream. The crew-leader shouted orders at the top of her voice, and dealt the bow girl a third wicked stroke up under her half-bare bum out of sheer spite. The girl at the helm stood up to lean all her weight against the tiller but the rudder blade caught against the ship’s side and swung her hard across the boat into the inspector’s lap. He helped her struggle to her feet, his hands alternately full of firm young breasts and chubby buttocks as he handled the situation the best way he could, while the crew-leader snatched the boat-hook from the water and yelled ‘Catch that oar there!’ A second time the inspector found his lap full of warm young femininity as the tiller girl dived across him to grab the floating oar. At full-stretch she found she couldn’t lift the oar, but she hung on determinedly until help should arrive. The inspector did what he could. He held the girl round the hips and tucked his fingers into the waist of her shorts for the sake of security, and while the crew-leader lent a hand to recover the oar, the inspector affected a look of embarrassed surprise as he found that the girl’s shorts slipped down very easily when he tugged at them, under the pretence of keeping her steady. A nimble readjustment of his grasp on the shorts ensured that he had her knickers clutched in his fingers too.

‘Oh Christ!’ It was the tiller girl still struggling to hang on to the oar as both her shorts and her knickers slipped down off her hips. As though more concerned not to embarrass the inspector than she was about falling out of the boat, she turned her face back towards him and stuttered that she was — ‘Sorry sir, only there wasn’t much I could do about it, Sir, honest!’ With his lower hand cupped under the girl’s pubic swell, the inspector clung on to her hips until the oar was back in the boat.

‘Thank you, sir,’ gasped the tiller girl, struggling to pull up her knickers while the crew-leader regained control of the debacle and shouted for the boat to be steered up into the current. With her pants still only half-way up the girl had to attend to her helmsmanship. Gallantly the inspector volunteered to help her. He could have taken the tiller of course, but instead he retrieved her knickers, made quite sure that they were snugged up into all the warm little places knickers are meant to keep snug, and then did the same with her shorts.

With the bow-girl relegated to holding the boat’s painter, the crew-leader herself supervised the pull up-current and hooked on to the ladder. Solicitously she helped the inspector onto the steps and with anxiety plain in her face she offered her sincere apologies for the incident.

Relieved to be out of the whaler — he didn’t like small boats at the best of times — the inspector regained his dignity as well as his sodden condition would allow and gave her a thin smile.

‘Miss, er —?’ The inspector paused for her to tell him her name.

‘Marley, Sir’ said the girl helpfully, and after a hesitation as she realised that he was looking at her nipples poking themselves erect under her wet shirt, she added ‘Allison Marley, actually sir,’ just in case the discreet suggestion of informality might do some good somewhere along the line.

‘Well, Miss Marley,’ — she really did have very nice breasts, didn’t she — ‘um — I was going to say that I don’t get paid to risk life and limb on these visits, you know. I should like to think that you’ll give that crew of yours something to wake them up, eh?’ He glanced down at the cane which was still in her hand, remembering the way she had whacked it across that girls bum, and the tantalising thought occurred that he’d really like to see it being used on her bottom. ‘Er — will you see to that for me, Marley?’

‘Yes sir — I certainly shall!’ she said, the cloud of apprehension lifting instantly from her face now that she realised she wasn’t going to be held personally responsible for the fiasco in the boat. The cane flicked eagerly against her leg — it seemed probable that she would enjoy herself ‘seeing to it’ as she’d been told to.

As a tall girl came along the deck to salute him and take him below, the inspector heard the crew-leader’s voice calling ‘let go for’ard!’ down near the waterline, and then quite distinct, although distant, the thwack of cane against cotton shorts. The plaintive yelp which floated up over the side confirmed that Allison meant to discharge her duty with a will.

----//----

T.S. Viceroy’s intelligence system hadn’t had much warning of the inspector’s impending arrival but it had coped perfectly nevertheless. While the whaler had been pulling across the harbour towards the jetty to fetch the inspector, the motorboat had slipped away on the far side of the ship in the direction of the signals office, and while Senior Cadet Marley’s crew were still making a pig’s ear of hooking on to the ladder, a breathless girl had been tapping at the door of the Captain’s cabin.

‘Sir — a signal, sir.’ The captain had read it in a moment.

‘Thank you. No reply.’

The Educational Petty Officer’s grape-vine had back-tracked to the inspector’s last three visits and the word had come back — ‘Bent as a nine bob note.’ Susceptible, persuadable, a man who liked to enjoy his work like most of them on the Inspectorate. The Captain had already summoned the girl who, for lack of a proper officer in these straitened times, acted as his First Lieutenant.

‘Who’s on punishment detail for this afternoon?’

‘Um — Cadets Howard, Cranley and Everwood, Sir. I dare say I could muster a few more, sir —.’

‘Right. Put Cranley on Captain’s Steward for lunch. This one probably likes ‘em young and pretty — don’t they all — and see that she looks her best, Fairbrother — I imagine you know the drill by now.’

‘Yes sir.’ The girl had licked briefly at her lips, checking through the myriad items that would have to be seen to if the inspector’s visit was to be a success. ‘Punishment parade on the foredeck as usual, sir? Eighteen hundred?’

‘Yes — oh and see if we can arrange some kind of tour of the harbour or something for this afternoon — get the sod off the ship while we smarten the place up eh?’

‘Yes sir. Will that be all, sir?’

‘I think so. Right then — get up there and smile at him girl — and wiggle your bum!’

‘Yes sir!’ Senior Cadet Fairbrother had taken herself off and the Captain had had a moment to himself before he needed to turn on the charm.

With the information from the Educational Petty Officer’s dash ashore, he was at least equipped to deal with the situation with his eyes open. More than once it hadn’t been that easy — but never mind. This inspector it seemed, was a man after his own heart. He had snatched up his cap and gone up to meet the man from the Ministry.

----//----

The Captain leaned back from the table, took his pipe from his pocket and fed it slowly and carefully with an aromatic mixture from a leather pouch. This operation absorbed his attention and the inspector seated opposite was free at last to stare unhindered by considerations of politeness at the softly-plumped pout at the bottom of the girl’s belly — the girl who had stood a little behind and a little to one side of the Captain chair throughout lunch, when she had not been waiting on them during the meal. The impudent fullness of the girl’s pubic swell, enhanced by the snug fit of her little knickers which quite failed to conceal anything of the underlying shape of her pubes, had fascinated him for the entire time he had been at the Captain’s table, as had the mere fact of the girl’s virtual undressedness in the presence of the Captain and, most surprisingly, himself, without any conscious intimation having been made on his part that such an unusual circumstance would even be permissible according to his own lights, far less something for him to be confronted with over lunch on his first hour aboard the ship. He had said nothing however, because disregarding the oddness of it all, the truth was that the titillating effect of the girl’s presence had excited him considerably and he hadn’t seen enough of her yet by any means.

Cadet Cranley, the girl whom Senior Cadet Fairbrother had reported as being on punishment parade and who was now acting as the Captain’s Steward, stood smartly to attention with her whole posture as militarily correct as she could make it after only nine weeks training, but with the effect entirely dissipated by the maidenly blush which heightened the colour in her cheeks and by the virginal downcast of her eyes each time the inspector’s penetrating gaze could disengage itself from her pubes or her nipples long enough to take in her face as well. She started suddenly as the Captain spoke.

‘You may clear away now, Cranley,’ he said, as he put his pipe between his teeth.

‘Yes sir.’ The girl came round the table to take the inspector’s coffee cup — the Captain hadn’t wanted coffee — and then she had to lean across to reach the pot with her knickers stretching across her round young buttocks under the inspector’s very nose. The inspector, who had been invited to watch the girl’s forthcoming chastisement — in the line of duty of course — which was scheduled for that afternoon immediately after the Captain had finished his lunch, rather self-consciously eyed the solid look of her bum under the flimsy pants and found himself wondering how it was going to respond to a good hard whack with a cane.

‘Ooh!’ The girl’s gasp took him aback, as though she had read his thoughts and felt the imaginary stroke as he had pictured it landing. Even the Captain, couldn’t restrain a grin as she stood back from the table with a petulant look on her face and kept the hot coffee-pot well away from her bare breasts this time. ‘S-Sorry sir’ she whispered, aware that she had caused a little bit of a stir by her clumsiness.

‘Clear off, Cranley!’ said the Captain mildly, ‘and you can come back with two brandies — you’d like a brandy wouldn’t you Mr Vallis? — in five minutes.’

‘Yes sir.’ The girl’s scantily-knickered bottom bounced indiscreetly behind her as she left the cabin while the Captain kept an eye on his guest’s interest in her retreating shape. He waited until the inspector withdrew his glance and then he puffed on his pipe and allowed a convincing chuckle to lighten the atmosphere between them.

‘Pretty little thing isn’t she?’

‘Oh — yes, she is.’ The inspector seemed undecided about something. The Captain wondered for a moment whether he had judged his man amiss. He thought he’d better let his visitor make the pace.

The inspector wondered for his part if he oughtn’t to stamp his authority on this meeting and demand to know what the Captain meant by having his girls wandering around virtually naked — on the other hand, he knew perfectly well what he meant by it, and it would save him the awkwardness of having to suggest a bit of mutual back-scratching himself. He made up his mind to play the ball as it lay.

‘I wonder — perhaps you know that one of my tasks on these visits is to interview a few of the girls — in private, that is — to get an idea of their points of view with respect to conditions as they apply to them at these establishments. Ah — d’you think your steward — Cranley? Was that her name? D’you think she’d make a suitable interviewee?’

‘Er — yes, I should say so.’ The Captain wasn’t sure of his man any longer — but he could hardly start any cover-ups now, not with the cards already dealt. Perhaps it had been a mistake after all. He began to think about his pension entitlement and wondered whether he was about to say goodbye to it.

‘Fine. Well, would you mind if I had my chat with her when she comes back?’

‘Alright with me, Mr Vallis,’ said the Captain, a trifle too heartily. This had all the makings of a catastrophe, if his information had been wrong.

‘Good, so that’s agreed then.’ The inspector reached for his briefcase and took out an ominous-looking pad of forms, then looked up at his host. ‘By the way — the crew-leader in the boat which brought me across — Marley, I think she said her name was.’

‘Marley? Oh yes.’ Now what was he up to.

‘How old is she?’

‘Er — coming on eighteen, I should think. I could find out.’

‘No, no. It’s just that she seems a little inexperienced in handling her cadets — she made rather a mess of coming alongside this morning, you know.’

‘Yes, I heard —’ What was he up to?

‘I wondered whether you thought she ought to be replaced — perhaps temporarily, that would be up to you — and another of the girls in her crew given the chance to show what she could do.’

‘Ah — well, I don’t see why not, if you think so.’ It seemed best to go along with him — that way things wouldn’t get any worse!

‘Fine.’ The inspector shuffled his papers. ‘And out of interest, what would you say would be a suitable punishment — I’m speaking of corporal punishment, of course — for a senior cadet whose negligence in boat-handling put the safety of a passenger at risk? And here I’m speaking of myself, Captain.’ He eyed the Captain in a bland way that was somehow all the more threatening for its lack of expression.

‘Well, I suppose the rules allow for her to be caned, just as any cadet might be —’

‘Would you think that to be a suitable punishment — a caning?’

‘Ah — well, yes. But I rely upon my senior cadets quite heavily — I wouldn’t want to undermine the girl’s authority in front of her juniors. I mean, I shouldn’t think I’ve had Marley’s knickers down — for punishment that is, of course — in the last six months.’

The inspector smiled a thin smile. ‘Whereas you’ve had her knickers down for other purposes, Captain?’

‘No no. Of course not. That wasn’t what I meant at all.’ It hadn’t been what he’d meant, needless to say, although the inspector’s interpretation had been too damned near the mark for comfort. The Captain gave in. ‘Well, let’s say the girl does deserve a caning shall we, Mr Vallis. May I take it that you’d like to see her get it?’

Knowing that he’d hit upon a chink in the Captain’s armour, the inspector felt free to say ‘Yes, you may take it that I should like to see the girl punished, Captain.’

The Captain puffed aggressively on his pipe, nodded his approval, and turned suddenly to bark at the unfortunate Cadet Cranley, who had reappeared in the doorway with two glasses and a brandy bottle on a tray.

‘Don’t you know better than to barge into this cabin without knocking girl?’

Cadet Cranley stopped in her tracks and a glass toppled over on the tray and broke into pieces.

The captain got to his feet and caught the girl a hefty slap on the buttocks.

‘I’ll deal with you when Mr Vallis has had a word with you, Cranley. Right now I need a breath of fresh air.’ He left the cabin and shut the door heavily behind him, leaving Cadet Cranley bewildered by the suddenness of events and worming her hips distractedly as the sting of the spank sank in. Her frightened eyes met the inspector’s and she burst into tears.

The inspector watched the girl, who was no more adequately covered than she had been earlier, and slowly she stopped her crying and attempted to concentrate upon her assigned task.

‘Um — s-sir, would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you’. The inspector crossed his legs and motioned to her to put down the tray.

‘What’s your first name?’ he enquired pleasantly.

‘Sir — Susan, sir.’ She stood now with her hands folded demurely in front, but her attempt at a modest pose was altogether spoiled by the impudent thrust of her young breasts and the rather snooty way her pink nipples pointed in different outward and upward directions.

‘Susan — are you happy here? Hmm?’

The conflict between self-preservation and the longing to tell someone just how awful it was on this ship was evident in her troubled face, but her eyes met his, frank and appealing, as though she thought that he might be someone she could trust.

‘Sir — n-not really sir. I wish I could go back home sir.’

‘Do you my dear? And what is it that’s so dreadful here that you wish you could go home, eh?’

Stuck for words, fearful of saying too much, Susan could do no more than gesture hopelessly with her hands — the plump pout of her pubes was disclosed for a moment. She saw the inspector’s eyes drop to the level of her knickers and folded her hands there again, but then in a gesture which she probably hoped would be interpreted as an expression of trust, she let her hands swing down to her side. It wasn’t lost on the inspector.

‘Ah — have you been Captain’s Steward on other occasions, Susan?’

‘Sir, once sir, about two weeks ago.’

‘I see — and is that —’ He indicated the girl’s near nakedness — ‘the usual dress for a steward on this ship?’

‘Umm — well, no, not really sir.’ She seemed embarrassed.

‘So it’s specially for my benefit, eh?’

‘Sir — I suppose it must be.’ She blushed as she sought for the words. ‘Um — we — we aren’t usually allowed knickers, sir.’ Her cheeks were crimson as she looked down at her feet.

‘No knickers?’ He said it mildly, but if anything the flush in Susan’s cheeks heightened.

‘N-no sir — not on Captain’s Steward sir. It — it’s very humiliating sir.’

‘I see.’ His crossed-over leg swung lazily, the girl watching his polished brown shoe for somewhere to cast her nervous glance. He left the obvious question aside for the moment.

‘And what else do you find makes you unhappy — mmm?’

‘Sir — getting caned is worst sir.’

‘Hmm.’ He caught the momentary flutter of her eyelashes as she looked up at him then away again. Greatly daring, she risked initiating a fresh turn to the convention.

‘Sir — the girls say you’re someone important sir. Someone from the Ministry. Are you sir, someone important?’

The inspector noted this development with interest. ‘Yes — I suppose you could say I’m sort of important. Why d’you ask?’

Susan swallowed audibly before she risked speaking again. ‘Sir — after this — after you’ve finished with me — the Captain’s going to cane me sir. I-I hate being c-caned —’ She looked at him pathetically, near to tears again. The inspector smiled at her, seeming sympathetic.

‘So —’ The girl’s tack was transparently obvious ‘— you’d like me to intervene? To save you and your pretty little bottom from the Captain and his cane? Is that it?’

‘Er — well, yes sir, I suppose that’s what I mean.’ Her hands moved to her hips, thumbs tucking into the waistband of her insubstantial knickers. The inspector watched — there was no mistaking the inference of that little motion. He watched as she plucked up her courage then inched her pants down from her hips, a crinkle of pubic hair appearing as she slipped the knickers down to the tops of her thighs. She put her hands behind her back and wouldn’t look at him — this helpless offering of the only thing she had, her sweet youthfulness and her body’s most precious secret — stirred the inspector to consider the possibilities; possibilities which had to be rejected the moment they came into his mind for fear of the consequences which might ensue it he gave way to his natural impulses and was then discovered by someone coming in unexpectedly. But the girl had advanced, hesitantly but still determinedly, to within arm’s-reach of his chair. The fresh, warm smell of her body was in his nostrils the invitation becoming more difficult to decline. Almost unconsciously the inspector’s hand reached out, stroked the inside of her upper thigh with the back of a finger, delved between her legs, slipped two fingers along the warm, moist tunnel and felt her shiver at his violation of her modesty, or perhaps it was shock at her own invitation to him to have done it. The full, soft weightiness of her bum-cheeks, explored briefly from between her legs, made him think of the caning the Captain was about to give her — the caning which he would let the Captain give her, sweet pleading or not. He withdrew his hand, letting a finger trail down between her cheeks, feeling her little start as he touched a sensitive area on the way back.

‘Well now Susan — I’m not sure I should interfere in the Captain’s plans for this nice little bottom of yours, you know.’

She edged a little away, just a sort of mental distancing from the disappointment that the inspector’s words implied.

‘Sir — please, I really don’t want to be caned — it frightens me; even thinking about it scares me sir!’

‘How many strokes will the Captain give you d’you think, Susan?’

She swallowed again, her nerve beginning to go now that this last chance to avoid her punishment seemed to be slipping away. ‘Er — t-twelve sir, probably sir. Actually I don’t know —’ She trailed off, her voice catching in her throat.

‘Well I’m really not at all sure I should interfere, Susan.’ He looked up at her, his face bright as though he’d just had a good idea. ‘But if you’re really frightened —’.

‘Sir — I am sir. I don’t want the cane sir —’ She looked terrified, in fact, her lips moistly apart, her eyes wide, her cheeks pink. ‘Please sir —’

‘Very well, Susan — I shall stay here and see it through with you.’ He said it boldly as a man would who was preparing to demonstrate his great loyalty to a friend by the making of a considerable sacrifice.

‘Oh — sir, please —’

‘No, no, I insist. It’s the least I can do.’ He slapped her bottom playfully. ‘Now then, run along and tell the Captain I’ve finished with you — oh, and this conversation is to remain strictly between you and me, alright?’

The girl looked at him fearfully — he slapped her again. ‘Come on — don’t worry. I shall be here to look after your interests Susan.’

Susan backed awkwardly away. The inspector ‘shooed’ her towards the door with a wave of his hand and she turned and went, her step leaden her face turning towards him one last time, only to be waved away again. Bursting into tears she turned the door handle, realising only when she had opened it that her knickers weren’t where they ought to be. With a sob she yanked them up — too much, because they slid up between her cheeks and left her bottom virtually bare but she seemed not to notice and scampered from the cabin, her crying fading with her running footsteps.

----//----

Susan’s caning was a very noisy affair. Swishy canes on girl’s bare bottoms make a sound that might not be heard very clearly through a heavy oak door, but a girl’s yells as she is thrashed have a more piercing quality which no door can adequately muffle. Susan’s caning was no secret on that ship.

Spread-eagled across the cabin’s big table, her knickers taken down and off and stuffed nonchalantly into the Captain’s pocket, Susan began her sobbing even as the cane was first presented to the impudent up-swell of her satin-pink bum cheeks, then flicked as if to assess this particular bottom’s firmness and resilience to the cane. With the inspector holding both her hands and keeping her well stretched-out, her face, when she looked up, was no more than a couple of feet from her ‘supporter’s’ own as he sat in his chair and leaned a little back to exert a slight but constant tension on her arms. Her young breasts were squeezed against the table by her weight, her belly squeaked against the polished wood as she fidgeted nervously while the Captain’s cane toyed with the insouciance of her bum — then thwack! the cane descended.

Susan’s head jerked back — over her shoulder the inspector could see the twitch of her buttocks as the cane’s venom sank home. Again the captain brought the cane down across the crowns of both cheeks, and Susan’s tears splashed onto the inspector’s lap as she threw her head from side to side, her mouth open as she first gasped then sobbed in a series of descending tones, over and over again.

Her caning proceeded methodically; when her legs began scissoring up and down the Captain trapped them against his side with his free hand and caned the agile buttocks with a backhand stroke diagonally across the cheeks, although even his sizeable bulk was barely sufficient to anchor the squealing cadet in the moments immediately following the cane’s crisp arrival. By the time the twelve strokes had been delivered, her reactions to it were virtually uncontrollable. When the inspector finally released her there were reddening marks around the girl’s wrists from the tightness of the grip it had taken to hold her. His glimpse of her thrashed bottom as she stumbled back from the table and the colouration that the cane had engendered in those previously pale pink cheeks was startling. Hardly recognising that what the Captain was holding out to her was her knickers Susan struggled to stand to attention as the Captain entered the fact of her punishment into a book, and doing things strictly by the rules because of the inspector’s presence, read out to her the entry he had made. The girl’s legs alternately bent and straightened convulsively and one knee lapped over the other even when she could stand up straight, and all the while her buttocks trembled and squeezed together in an independent little routine which they maintained even when Susan had stepped into her pants and hauled them up.

Weeping still, Susan was dismissed and the Captain poured himself a brandy into the remaining glass without even thinking of offering a drink to the inspector. Perhaps it was just as well — Mr Vallis’ heightened blood-pressure might not have been able to take the additional stimulation of the Captain’s brandy. Besides, there was still the business of crew-leader Marley’s punishment to superintend — that he was really looking forward to!

----//----

The Senior Cadet’s public humiliation took place on the deck immediately below the Captain’s cabin. Had the ship been at sea they might have bared the girl’s bum to the sea air and done it on the upper deck, but the Captain quite sensibly preferred to keep his disciplinary activities as a matter for shipboard awareness only. The ten girls of Senior Cadet Marley’s boat were assembled to witness their crew-leader’s punishment. Allison Marley herself was told to parade them and to report her crew as being all present to the Captain, during which piece of ceremony she was presumably not supposed to notice that the bow-girl — the one whose bottom she had whacked when the boat-hook had fallen into the water — was carrying the cane which was to be used across her bottom in a few minutes time. Bravely Allison ordered her crew into two ranks and turned to present them and herself to the Captain. She saluted smartly and reported the parade as being ready for punishment to proceed, and then while the Captain inspected the girls ranged behind her, followed by an inspection, chiefly from the rear, of Allison herself, who somehow managed to avoid an eyeball-to-eyeball meeting of glances between herself and the inspector, who was hovering on the fringes of this often-performed ritual and keeping his options open as to his exact position during the forthcoming entertainment, since he hadn’t yet worked out which would be the best vantage point to view it from. Of course, he was already enjoying it — the girl herself was as fascinating a picture of teenage femininity one could have imagined. If he had been called upon to record the event for a report back to his ministry, he might truthfully have stated that the girl had been wearing gym shoes, socks, shorts, a tee-shirt and her cap, which she had now passed to one of her crew to hold. On the face of it, nothing to raise an eyebrow about. A more accurate report, however, would have recorded that Allison had been less dressed than undressed and a photograph might well have given an upward lift to more than eyebrows in the office.

Allison’s tits, which had excited the inspector’s attention earlier up on deck, were an especial treat; not particularly because they were large, they were not; nor because they were exactly womanly — Allison’s whole presentation of herself made her look more like a healthy sixth-form schoolgirl than a woman; no, it had to do with the way they carried themselves — firm but inviting, uplifted but cuppable in the hand — in fact, very much like the girl’s bottom in all these respects. And that was a comparison which in the circumstances, was easy enough to observe. Allison’s tee-shirt, no doubt specially ‘tailored’ for just such occasions as these, stopped short on a horizontal line just below her nipples — the fine upcurve of the underside of her breasts could be plainly seen. As she had saluted the Captain, the raising of her arm had been the cue for the nipple of her right breast to peep cheekily from below the angled hem of the tee-shirt, the whole firm weightiness of both tits bobbing faintly as the girl had brought her hand snappily down to her side. As for her shorts, they had been trimmed and hemmed to proportions no more generous nor modest than the tee-shirt; at the back they curved up so steeply across each buttock that they hardly departed from the crease of her bum until they had reached the top of that soft division of bum-cheeks, whilst at the front, the same tailoring technique had pared down the material until it was little more than a wide seam which appeared between the girl’s thighs, dipped snugly between softly swollen labia and ascended in a narrow downward pointing arrow to the girl’s waist. If presentation counted for anything, Allison was the most erotically decorative young cadet that the inspector had ever seen.

Allison wasn’t required to remove any part of her scanty clothing — there was, indeed, hardly the need — before she was told to step forward and spread herself laterally across an overturned half-barrel — an unusually large one — which, as the inspector noted, had been provided on one side with cut-out hand holds and on the other with similar but larger places, padded inside on their lower surfaces, into which the girl to be punished would place her knees, these lodgements being sufficiently widely-spaced as to require that her legs were parted at an angle to each other which approached some forty-five degrees. Thus presented, with her body curved across the barrel’s fat belly and her bottom conveniently at waist height, Allison was ready for her punishment.

The girl carrying the cane stepped smartly forward and handed it with both hands to the Captain, then stepped back into line. Across her own semi-exposed bottom-cheeks the marks of Allison’s cane was plainly visible beyond the coverage line of her shorts — her expression, though not so unseamanlike as to be worthy of remark, held a glow of satisfaction as she resumed her place and bent her glance upon the upturned bottom of the girl who had made her life miserable for the previous few months.

The eighteen strokes of the caning took some ten minutes to administer — Allison’s conduct, as the cane whipped across her plumped-out bum-cheeks, was that of an ordinary teenaged girl whose bottom was as vulnerable to the cut of a cane as that of any girl who was trying desperately, almost endearingly, to be very brave yet failing to be quite brave enough. The first stroke, which was hard and low across the undercurve of both cheeks together, wrenched a shudder from her body and a shiver from her buttocks, but no more than a faint gasp in the way of vocal protest. The second stroke, an inch or so higher up the swell of her bum, brought a little forward jerk across the barrel and a convulsive tweaking together of her bottom-cheeks while the cane was drawn back and held in readiness for the next stroke. Allison’s gasp was clearly audible this time; in the ranks of watching girls more than one pair of buttocks reacted in sympathy with twitching of the crew-leader’s bottom.

By the sixth stroke, Allison’s bum had livened up considerably. As the whack of the cane still echoed along the deckhead, there was a scrabbling noise as she lost her hand-hold on the far side of the barrel and a gasp that had more than a hint of panic in it. A second gasp, sounding more frantic, accompanied a lift of her hips and a slow worming of her bottom which took several seconds to subside and which was the first of a series of such pathetic little movements that after a few more strokes would become a sustained squirming that persisted through the interval between every subsequent cane stroke.

Stroke number twelve, and Allison’s gasps were now hearty sobs which died away only just before the cane whipped across her buttocks for the thirteenth time. Allison squealed and wrenched her bum sideways across the barrel. She lost her finger-hold again and her hand waved plaintively back towards the twitching buttocks as if to clasp the crimsoned cheeks. ‘Stop that!’ came the Captain’s stern voice — Allison’s hand returned reluctantly to its proper place and the caning continued.

Thereafter Allison’s active young bottom didn’t desist from its panicky wriggling at any time, and every stroke accelerated the rate at which it swerved from side to side, with little liftings-up and bumpings-down when the cane delivered a particularly meaty whack across it’s crimson-wealed target.

With stroke sixteen, Allison at last gave way to the tears which she had so nearly defied altogether, and her weeping marked the end of her determination to be a brave girl. The seventeenth stroke had her blubbering for it to stop — ‘Oh please sir, please no more!’ — but the last stroke swept down and cracked as hard as all the rest across Allison’s frantically squirming bum. Her panic-stricken yells gave way to uncontrolled sobbing as she was ordered up from her place across the barrel and she couldn’t help but clutch at her trembling bottom even when she saluted the Captain and turned to march her squad away. The girls, although they all had reason enough to want to see their crew-leader whipped, helpfully obeyed her sobbed words of command even though they were almost incomprehensible, and the girls marched away followed by the unsteady, still weeping Allison with her bobbing cane-reddened bottom perfectly displayed in all its nakedness by the almost non-existent shorts. 

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Some twenty minutes later, his visit having achieved its various objects both official and otherwise, the inspector climbs down the ladder over the side of the ship and drops awkwardly into the whaler alongside. Averting her eyes from him, indeed from everyone, Allison stands in the bow of the boat with the boat-hook, holding the whaler close to the hull of the Viceroy. Someone, presumably the new crew-leader who was to have taken over as soon as Allison’s punishment had been completed — has obviously refused the other girl permission to change into her regulation shorts. She is wearing the same tee-shirt as all the others but her punishment shorts still display the plump canedness of her bum cheeks and a glance at the new crew-leader, the girl who had been bow-girl on the outward trip — convinces the inspector that Allison’s lack of covering for her bottom is no mere piece of cattiness on the new crew-leader’s part. Although she has a respectful air about her with the inspector in her boat and probably hasn’t had time to gain sufficient confidence to assert her authority properly with a VIP looking on, from the way she carries the cane across her knees and flicks it now and then against her own bare thigh, the inspector would guess that she is quietly assessing what degree of swish the implement needs to induce what degree of sting on bare flesh. Once the inspector is out of the way the ready accessibility of those bare and well-caned buttocks, glowing tenderly in the bow of the whaler is no doubt going to be exploited to the full.