you see the world turn'd upside down

The whole thing has the perverse tone of a public entertainment, a Vauxhall Gardens exhibition match — some puppet-show put on for the amusement of one man only. Sol feels stiff and ridiculous standing there in his proud scarlet — and there is a body before him on the table that has already been spoiled. This is how mutinies are made. This is how men die.

Mr. Johnson breaks him in first, like a grim duty — the fresh blood of his stripes is all in a welter but still when he parts Hickey’s legs it discloses the last white unspoiled place on his body. Johnson fucks him with the stiff leather-wrapped handle of the cat, so that only the motion of his powerful arm can be seen and the little flinching jerks of Mr. Hickey’s legs against the table’s edge. The sound it makes is beyond words,

Mr. Hickey has been laid out like an anatomized man, stripped and tied at the four legs of the table. A knotted rope has been thrust into his mouth like a nag’s bit, and his eyes have been bound with a sailor’s neckcloth, white crosses on a dark indigo field. That much Tozer supposes was meant as a mercy to the men administrating the punishment, but it only gives the little caulker’s figure the aspect of a condemned man, and indeed it would be better to be hanged than suffer this.

No officer could do such a thing — here they are in Hell, but even so the distinctions of rank must be afforded. No officer could ever dirty himself with such a task. The captain is lit from within with a satanic fire, and all good order has been shattered.

Captain Crozier watches all the while, crossing the deck to get a better vantage point like a fellow watching a play from up in the gallery. The look on his face is inscrutable — flushed with fury or alive with lust, pock-marked cheeks caught in a tight rictus.

They’ve all but been invited to partake — gathering round for the filthy show the same as Sunday service or a lively sing-along at the mechanical organ. Which men obey and which decline? Young Manson can’t bear to look, frightened as a child for all his mild bigness; Lieutenant Irving in the strength of his righteous protests has driven himself into a swoon and Mr. Gibson has withdrawn to attend to him against the far wall, yet none of them are at liberty to depart until the order is given. Yet other men who Solomon barely knows the faces of are middlingly ready to take their piece of a crewman never much liked to begin with. Which men fear their own punishment and which are enjoying this new license, or have the example of their friends and the good word of their captain to urge them on to it. Mr. Hickey’s body twitches and jerks against the table’s top, or lies still.

The next to last to step forward is young Hartnell — the air in the room seems to shift from blunt perversity to something quick and nervous. Tom carries on as he chooses, but he can’t get his prick to stand and the captain must be satisfied with the clumsy jabbing of his fingers — he is angry, too, as much with the captain as with the caulker’s mate who arches against him in a parodic gesture of lust. The man has it in him to mock and gibe even now.

Tom looks just as happy to beat him, but he fucks him in sharp sudden earnest with strokes so quick and sharp. Mr. Hickey must make some utterance around the cloth stuffed in his mouth — maybe a laugh, for Armitage knocks his head against the table for it.

This breaks the spell. Sol shifts his body all at once, rocking back as if to take up his weapon, but the motion is nearly involuntary — only the crack of cartilage as some joint ruptures is loud enough to be heard and the horror must stop, it cannot continue. Only the captain’s sly eye is on him now, and that bogtrotting bastard voice of his is calmly delivered through the new silence, as the Hartnell boy wipes himself off and retreats to his place in the sheep-faced crowd.

The captain has never sounded so much like the devil himself as he does now, raw and drink-sodden in a mockery of good order. “Sergeant Tozer, will you do the honors of finishing for us?”

Sol’s throat is tight with outrage. “You can’t mean that, sir.”

“Don’t presume to tell me what it is that I mean.” The captain’s grin is tight and threatening. From time to time throughout the proceedings Tozer has allowed himself a fleeting glance and seen the man pawing himself through the wool of his trousers, as if hoping to take a turn himself but not quite able to manage. This whole business is balanced on the tip of a needle, ready to take a turn and plunge into horrors still unknown. Men will be hanged for this. They are all of them on the brink of escalation past a point that can never be recovered.

The body on the table is almost inert, not lifeless but waiting in silence. Tozer steps up to the table’s edge. Smooth and white and wet as a woman, even if only with sweat and blood — Sol finds it in himself to be ashamed of quite how easily it was to do, to bring his cock to standing and to fit himself inside another man’s body. He frigs himself to standing, like a grim duty. Tozer ought to feel a pang about this, being exhibited under such conditions of lawlessness and dishonor, but he finds that he does not. The men standing around white-faced and pitiless in their creaking leather boots are not gathered around to look at him.

Sol grips Hickey’s upper arm, uncertain of where else to grip for easy purchase, and feels all the muscles of him trembling with electric strength. His own voice comes rough and distant, from some other place besides his own raw throat:

“I’ll be quick with it. Lie still, now.” The bugger can hardly do anything else, with half the skin flayed off of him. He strokes Hickey’s hair with clumsy fingers. “Be a good girl for me, sweetheart. Come on.”

No need for it to hurt any more than it has to. The fellow’s arsehole is well-greased already, but Tozer’s tool is thick enough that easing it inside he still feels the muscles of him hitch around his length. His cock moves slickly inside him, responding to the blood-heat of that grip with treacherous enthusiasm. He’s never fucked another man before, and what he has done hasn’t counted, it’s not like letting some fellow suck you for a few shillings and a glass of beer. You can’t be proud of it. But Hickey’s narrow body is yielding, not just the raw swollen hole between his legs but the very bones of him, the very marrow of him going pliant.

The blindfold has come undone, slipping up to tangle in Hickey’s disheveled hair. He turns his head, and against the dark wood of the table his features are luminous as a saint’s — ferrety whiskers shining and cheeks pink, eyes bright and wet behind the seam of bruises. His chin is wet with spit, and he is watching Tozer closely.

This stuff is more fit for whorehouses than the Queen’s own Navy. The heat of another body, the closeness, the raw lewd abandon of watching other men take their turn and hearing them groan and curse as they spill their stuff — the filthiness of it has done its work on him, all the grotesque license taken by men who fear they may be next on the block if they fail to act.

Tozer shoots against his back, one more jet of spunk there in the blood and mire, and he sees those shining eyes flutter shut.