Chapter 1

 

I am a friend of the Earl of Dunthorpe's daughter, Beatrice. Her father, unlike many of the old aristocracy, was still very wealthy, his grandfather and father having invested heavily in industry at the proper times and not merely rested on the old family estates to maintain the traditional lifestyle. My family was middle-class, but I had won a sporting scholarship to Trix's school, Cranbrook and as she was also a sports whiz, we became good friends.

I spent many happy holidays up at Dunthorpe and got on well with her family, especially her older brother, Richard. He had inherited his father's dark good looks and was a near twin to Trix, while I am fair with very fine, blonde hair and blue eyes although I tan as easily as Trix and Richard.

As I said, I had become friendly with her originally through our common love of sport. I was good at athletics and tennis and I also played hockey and enjoyed gymnastics and was on both those teams as well. Trix was also a very good tennis player and as she too was in the hockey team, we quickly struck up a close friendship.

We were both near the top of the school academically too, and when we finished our final year there, having matriculated near the top of the national tree, Trix's father rewarded her (and me as her friend) with a cruise on the family motor yacht, also named 'Dunthorpe'.

It was a beautiful vessel, a small ship really and the accommodation was sumptuous, at least to my eyes. We left Southampton and headed south and the first few days were wonderful. We were heading down the West Coast of Africa and were then going to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean islands.

We never got there - or at least not to the ones to which we were headed.

After passing Portugal (and calling in at Lisbon) we visited Tangier and Casablanca and then headed westward towards the Caribbean Sea where we were to visit Bermuda and then Jamaica. Then, out of a clear blue sky, while approaching the eastern Caribbean area, there came this weird storm. I am no sailor, but I am sure this was no ordinary storm.

It billowed up before us, the clouds black and rolling, lightning flashing in and around its front, thunder rumbling even as it approached the bows of our ship at great speed. Trix and I were up on the bridge with the Earl, the Captain and the men stationed there and the Captain said there was no point trying to avoid or outrun the storm. It was heading towards us and we simply couldn't avoid it. He also said he couldn't understand it. There had been no warning by the weather bureau he had consulted and it wasn't showing up on his radar, even now.

But it knocked us around. The ship, big as she was and fitted with all the latest technological marvels in stabilisation, was buffeted around like a cork and we all had to hang on for dear life as the 'Dunthorpe' rolled and pitched heavily in the terrible seas. It went on for half an hour and then we emerged - into weather and seas as calm and serene as before.

We all looked at one another - and at the retreating storm behind us - in shock. "What the hell was that, Andrew?" the Earl asked the Captain.

"No idea, James." (The Earl was rather modern in his ideas about what his people called him). "It's like nothing I've ever seen before ..." But then he paused, staring out over the starboard bow in more shock.

We were being approached by a ship - but what a ship! It looked like an old galleon (although without high masts and sails), broad and high and made of wood, but it was approaching at the rate of a racing speedboat. It was sitting up and out of the water, planing (if it was touching the water at all, that is) and headed straight towards us.

Our engines had not stopped during our movement through the storm although the Captain had reduced speed. Now though, as the galleon approached us, they stopped entirely. The Captain rang down to the engine room but they said they couldn't understand what was wrong, their engines were dead, not responding to the controls.

At the same time, all instruments and even our lighting failed. The 'Dunthorpe' was quite dead in the water. The crew of the galleon pulled alongside and the Captain went down to greet them. They didn't bother to ask permission to board and when he asked them for their credentials, he was given them - a bullet through his head. Or at least I thought it was a bullet. Later I discovered their technology was far in advance of mere bullets even if their boat looked old-fashioned.

We were lined up on the forward deck, every one of us, from the Earl and Countess, down to the scullery maid in the kitchens. Neither James Thorpe, Earl of Dunthorpe, nor his son were cowards and as soon as he had seen what had happened to the Captain, he had armed himself and handed a gun to Richard but when they tried to fire them at the pirates, which was what we thought they were, nothing happened. They were as useless as the engines and other machinery on the ship.

"All prisoners will strip naked!" said the pirate leader.

I stared at him in horror. He was a tall man and quite handsome although his dress was weird. He wore a sort of tunic, like the ancient Romans or Greeks that left his legs and arms bare, showing off a muscular body - as athletic as all his men.

The Earl wasn't having this, though. He stepped forward and protested: "Now see here, Sir ..."

That was as far as he got. The pirate aimed his weapon - it looked like a pistol to me - at him, a red pencil-thin ray erupted from it and the earl dropped to the deck, as dead as the Captain. The Countess screamed and bent down over her dead husband - at which she was also slain.

The rest of us were numb with horror.

"As I said before, you will all strip naked ..." He spoke English like a native and he actually looked English, although he wasn't.

We all now obeyed very quickly, even Richard. He didn't lack courage but these men obviously had the upper hand and rashness now was clearly not an option. In no time we were all naked and standing up, ashamed at our nudity, covering our privates as best we could, although I have to say I kept stealing glances at Richard's beautiful body for I had long secretly wondered how athletic he was. I knew he was tall and slim, of course, but I had never even seen him in swimming trunks before. Now, I looked at his body in awe. He was just simply beautiful! Tall and so wonderfully muscular in a slender sort of way. His body capped off his matinee idol looks to a tee!

Some of the male crew also had nice bodies but Richard's was the best by far, or at least I thought so. So far as the females went, I had already seen Trix in the showers at school and knew her athletic body backwards. We were both quite muscley actually but now as I stared at the female crew, the stewards and kitchen hands, I noticed some of the younger among them were nicely built as well.

The pirate leader (as I still thought of him) introduced himself as Philip and went along the row pulling some forward and leaving others alone. Those he pulled forward were the older or less attractive amongst us, and these his crew now summarily threw over the side of the ship, following them up with the dead bodies of the Earl the Countess and the Captain. I watched in sorrow for both of them had been very good to me but I really felt for Trix and her brother who had just watched the unnecessary slaughter of their parents.

The rest of us, now in even more shock at the awful events we had just witnessed, still stark naked, were herded over the side of the 'Dunthorpe' onto the deck of the galleon. Moments later, the 'Dunthorpe's engines rumbled into life and she got under way but now considerably down by the head. Obviously some of Philip's crew had opened her forward sea-cocks.

We followed her, the weird galleon maintaining station to her stern and off her starboard quarter and then, now very low in the water at the bows but running at full speed, she simply drove herself under the water and on her way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The galleon then picked up speed and soon we were racing at a good fifty knots across the ocean ourselves. It was an incredible feeling. This huge ship, now racing like a speedboat at breakneck speed to ... where?

Those who remained: Trix, Richard, me and a dozen of the younger and better looking of the crew, all still stark naked, were now herded down into the hold of the galleon and the cover placed over our heads.

"What the hell is this ship?" Trixie said belligerently once we were alone.

"I don't know," answered her brother, "but I have a feeling that weird storm is connected with it. I don't even think we are in our own Atlantic Ocean ..."

"What do you mean, Richard?" I asked softly.

"I don't know, Elena," he said, smiling fondly at me (at which I melted. I always did when he smiled at me). "I just have a feeling we have just moved into another dimension, you know, like the sliders in the TV programme."

I stared at him in awe. "You mean you actually believe in other dimensions within our time and space?" I was pretty good at physics at school but didn't really believe in such things myself.

"I really don't know. Anyway, it's only speculation. Of more importance is what they are going to do with us ... It will not have been lost on you that they have not restored our clothing ...?"

Trix and I grinned back at him but the others all blushed and tried to hide their breasts and/or their genitals from the rest. "I had noticed," I said.

Richard didn't smile back at me, however. In fact he frowned even more. "I think it may well mean we are now slaves ..."

The rest of us stared at him. "Slaves!" we all chorused, almost in one voice.

"It's possible. Why else would they not allow us to dress again?"

"What will they do with us if that's the case?" I asked, in a now considerably smaller voice.

I wondered actually that after just losing his father and mother in so brutal a fashion, right before his eyes and those of his sister, that he could even think rationally but the Thorpe family hadn't got where they were - and stayed there, by any lack of nous and Richard, the new Earl now, was showing his mettle. I knew his father would be proud of him.

It didn't take us long to find out. At that break-neck speed, the galleon was soon at her destination. It seemed Atlantis was a very real entity and so advanced was its technology that it was able to keep its existence completely hidden from the rest of the world.

It turned out that we weren't sliders. The storm had indeed been generated by the Atlanteans but its purpose was not to facilitate a 'slide' but to enter a porthole into the invisible bubble that surrounded the island of Atlantis.

Ships moving into this area simply slid around this undetectable bubble without their compasses or other navigational equipment being aware of it and once passed the area, simply resumed their former course. They might as well have been travelling right through the island - almost as if it was non-corporeal and invisible.

We on the other hand, were now inside the bubble although we couldn't see it (or couldn't have if we were still on deck). What we did see was the city of Atlantis once we arrived at the port.

It wasn't a huge city. Not by our standards, having a population of about 20,000 supported by an incredible agrarian industry - again a result of their advanced technology. Its buildings were in the classical Greek style, all hewn stone faced with polished marble. This much we saw as we were marched, still stark naked, through the streets to our destination. This wasn't polished marble although it was stone ...

We were headed for the slave school for we were indeed slaves, just as Richard had predicted.

They paraded us most shamefully. Our wrists were cuffed behind our backs and a short chain (but a heavy one) linked us from the cuffs back to the metal collar around the neck of the person behind us. This prevented us from hiding any of the formerly private parts of our bodies, our genitals, of course, and in the case of us females, our breasts as well, from the prurient gaze of the citizens who lined the streets to watch us pass by.

I have never been more ashamed in my life than I was on that first terrible occasion of public exposure of my naked body to all and sundry. Okay, I have a good body and all of us in that coffle of slaves did too, since they had summarily disposed of all of us who didn't, but apart from showering with my schoolgirl friends after a sports meeting, no-one had ever seen me naked before - and certainly not out on the public streets.

There, though, some classes of slaves were commonly thus exposed and I was going to have to get used to it ... As we were herded up out of the ship's hold and onto the wharf, they lined us up. There was a crowd to watch but they were kept back behind barricades. Not so far they couldn't get a perfect view of our naked bodies, though.

"All prisoners will place their hands up on the backs of their heads. Elbows right back! Feet apart ... wider! Wider still!"

We didn't even think of disobeying. They had those guns and they proceeded to show us they could also be used to stun or even merely to give us a dose of horrible pain. The intensity of the ray could be altered to any of those settings and they demonstrated it - on poor Richard. One of our guards pointed his weapon at his naked genitals. Richard's antics were comical - if you could ignore the horror of the situation. He danced and leapt about, screaming horribly, hands down at his now terribly shocked cock and balls until they asked him if he wanted another dose. We all got the message... And we quickly stood up straight, hands up behind our heads, elbows right back, bellies sucked in and legs wide apart.

It was awful. In this pose, all of our bodies - our breasts as well as our genitals were openly exposed to the cheering crowd only feet away from us. They weren't cheering us, however. Their approbation was for Philip who had brought in another dozen or so slaves to serve the city...

He grinned and waved at them, then went back to his ship, ready to take off and kidnap some more likely candidates for their slave markets.

In the meantime, our new handlers cuffed our hands behind our backs with more heavy shackles and then chained us, each to the other, as I have described. And then they marched us, just as we were, naked, collared and cuffed, hands still up behind our heads, off the wharf and into the city proper, through the streets to the slave prison...

Another thing I was going to have to get used to was pain and the even worse humiliation of being fondled by all and sundry. We were brought into the cold pile of stones that made up the slave fortress and there lined up for the inspection by our Master...

It was now I discovered that slavery was an institution practiced systematically by the Atlanteans. But they didn't enslave their own citizens. This was why we had been chased and 'harvested' by Philip whose job it was to seek out likely ships, kidnap their crew and passengers, select those who would make good slaves and dispose of the rest, then bring them back here to be trained as slaves. The strange happenings of the 'Bermuda Triangle' now began to make sense to me...

First we were inspected.