LONGHOLME ISLAND
RETURN TO LONGHOLME ISLAND
Part 3
Trevor’s Second Trial
When Trevor returned, he noticed that his new friends had been busy. He knew what the ropes, football scarves and gaffer tape were for and he could guess how the plank was going to be used, but he wondered what the hell the crates were for and why the plank had a hole in it.
“Blindfold first?” That was Dave.
“Blindfold first,” confirmed his big brother.
Dave wrapped one of the numerous football scarves from the store several times round Trevor’s eyes and his upper face in general and tucked the end in before Roy taped over the top of it several times. He was obviously feeling generous, that way the tape would not tangle with Trevor’s own rapidly drying tangle of hair.
“Open wide.” Trevor obediently did as he was told as the unseen Stewart pushed the customary knotted cloth into his mouth and tied it securely behind his neck.
“Tape?” That was Roy’s voice.
“Tape. - - - Ta!” That was Rob’s. Rob was a bit more cavalier than his brother had been and far more generous as he wrapped Trevor’s lower face into obscurity.
The Lennox brothers meanwhile, both of whom now sported royal blue square-leg briefs, went to collect their other prisoner while the MacGregors marched their unresisting captive towards the crates and guided him to stand on one of them. Trevor felt his wrists being tied with his hands palm to palm behind him; whoever was doing it didn’t seem to be sparing the rope. He thought he heard Stewart declaring his satisfaction with the snugness of the bonds as he felt hands pulling them around quite assertively.
“OK, Squirt, your go.” Yes, that was definitely Stewart. What Trevor didn’t know was that Stewart was adjusting the loops so that, although he wouldn’t be able to escape easily, the ropes shouldn’t dig in too painfully. Dave started his turn. He pulled Trevor’s elbows slightly closer together and wrapped them four times before completing a cuff-tie that drew them even closer but not too painfully so. “Hey Squirt, you been practicing?” Trevor couldn’t see the beam that had spread across the face of the little pocket Hercules as he brought the rope round the front of his subject, looped it round his elbow cuff and returned it once more before tying it off several times. Trevor’s elbows might not have been painfully close but they were certainly drawn tightly against his back leaving him no scope to move his lower arms whatsoever.
As the Lennox brothers withdrew to examine their handiwork, Trevor started to wonder if that’s all there was going to be to it. After all it was only his first time as a voluntary prisoner. He soon learnt otherwise.
The MacGregor brothers had been busy. The oar that had immobilised Koff overnight was released from the trees and the climbing rope was removed and coiled carefully. Koff was forced unsteadily to his feet and the laughing brothers used the oar to carry the futilely protesting boy towards where Trevor was standing. Upon their release, he fell, still protesting, onto his face.
“Shut up, Koff. I’m sure your mummy wouldn’t like to hear about the language her little Kevin is using.” Dave’s goading didn’t seem to make an appreciable difference to the imprecations that still managed to struggle their way past the knotted cloth and several layers of gaffer tape.
Rob knelt and asked, “OK, mate?” Koff nodded his head on the dust. “Safe word?” He shook his head. That was the way to shut him up. Rob sat, placed his feet on Koff’s side and shuffled his white-speedos-clad bum forwards whilst holding on to the oar. “Brace yourself. On three. One, - - - two, - - -“
“Ngghh! - ‘UN’!”
“I lied!”
“And mummy really wouldn’t have liked that word!”
To the laughter of all four captors, Rob had braced himself against their prisoner and forcefully straightened his legs and drawn his arms backwards thus withdrawing the oar almost completely but leaving the handle propped on his victim’s back, having released his left arm but holding the right one up off the ground. With Roy’s help, Koff was soon disentangled and made to sit.
Rob dusted down his backside but his square-leg briefs, not yet being dry, rendered it a wasted effort and their seat was no longer a pristine white. As Rob vainly tried to remove the sand from his backside, Roy helped Koff, under instruction, to pass his knees, his feet and then his backside through the wrist cuffs so that his wrists were behind him. Rob congratulated Stewart (and himself) on a job well done as he examined Koff’s bindings and found them still to be intact. Koff was dragged to his feet and felt a rope being looped between his wrist-cuffs, round his front and round the other end of the cuffs before being pulled tight and tied off. He wasn’t best impressed by that; not only were his hands now clamped close to his backside but the lower part of the rope loop passed only just above his most precious assets. Koff immediately, and rather ineffectively, tried raising his wrists.
“Stop making a fuss. You’ve got nothing there to worry about in any case.” An indignant Koff continued his struggling.
“If you don’t stop that, we can add a little rope that will make sure you can’t lift your hands.” Rob enhanced his threat by inserting a finger of each hand into the rope about which Koff was now complaining unintelligibly only just wide of his compact Speedo bulge on each side. He took the hint and Rob removed his fingers and ostentatiously and ineffectually wiped them on his victim’s chest. Koff’s “look” was completely wasted by his blindfold. Once he had stopped struggling, Koff felt his elbows being tied. He was grateful that whoever was doing it hadn’t pulled them much closer together during the process because being so broad shouldered made that sort of tie very painful for him before his elbows could be drawn very close together at all. Roy had soon got Koff’s elbows secured closely to his back. He still wished his older brother had applied the threatened crotch rope even though his elbow tie had itself removed any scope the prisoner had for raising his arms.
“OK prisoner, just jump up here please.” Stewart and Dave hopped Koff over to the crate that was not currently being occupied by Trevor and lifted him up to stand back-to-back with the taller prisoner. The two boys leaned against one another. Trevor, having his ankles free added a certain stability to the human construction. Both prisoners were briefly pulled away from one another and then pushed back again. Trevor was right about what the plank was for.
“Good job you haven’t got much body hair, Koff; shame about you, Trev Mate.” Trevor found the abundant hairs on his legs being tugged. “Safe word anyone?”
The prisoners tensed against the plank and adopted a stoical silence.
“OK Trev, feet together.” Once he had done as ordered, he no longer added any stability at all to the work in progress so the older brothers held the prisoners at arm’s length while Roy started at their ankles and wrapped them several times before starting to work his way gradually up their legs with a roll of Trevor’s gaffer tape. He’d obviously splashed out on supplies and bought two heavy duty 75 mm rolls. Fifty metres of gaffer tape goes a really long way if handled carefully and Roy was already an expert.
As Trevor felt the tape working its way up his legs and feeling his stance becoming even more precarious, he found the strange new sensation both vaguely worrying and quite arousing. He was just hoping that that particular aspect wasn’t showing too much. As Roy reached the tops of Koff’s thighs, Rob threatened him with all sorts of punishments that Trevor didn’t understand if he even tried to move his hands before his brother had finished. Roy continued. First Koff and then Trevor felt the fronts and sides of their swimming costumes, not to mention their privates, being covered in tape before Roy started working his way back down again. He got to about as far as Koff’s knees before, in case he ran out of tape, he wound several rounds over one another and tore off the remnant of the roll and smoothed the end down against the rest of the tape. The narrow plank was holding the victims’ legs absolutely rigid and rendering them completely useless for maintaining their balance.
“OK Squirt, well done. Stewart’s turn.” announced Rob. “Roy, you help me support these two. Dave, go and get the block and tackle and set it up.”
“Yes, Oh Great Master,” said Dave, bowing low sarcastically before sidestepping Rob’s poorly aimed kick and running barefoot to the store room.
Stewart took a second roll of gaffer tape and started wrapping it round the two increasingly immobilised boys at about elbow level before continuing down to encase the top of where Roy had left off and returning gradually to Koff’s shoulder level. Several reinforcing turns were wrapped round at that level before Stewart continued wrapping until he’d reached approximately where he’d started. By then, he’d run out of tape and smoothed the end down before stepping back to examine his handiwork.
The MacGregor brothers released their holds on their prisoners and watched them totter enjoying their muffled swearing before catching them several times, letting them fall further each time. After a few minutes Dave had completed his mission and lowered a block and tackle from the branch that he was sitting on. Trevor hadn’t noticed that the Pirates had positioned the crates upon which Koff and he were standing very carefully. They were under a strong bough of probably the only large tree on the island. Dave had climbed the ancient oak with the block and tackle over his shoulder and locked the fixed block to a chain that always stayed in place for just such eventualities. When he dropped the moving block, it stopped just above Trevor’s head.
“Good guess, Little Brother,” called Stewart. Trevor had no idea what was causing the rattling noise just overhead but he was hardly capable of avoiding any such thing. Dave threw the end of the rope to Stewart who kept the block in place.
“Tiiimberrrrr!” shouted Rob and his brother released his hold on the prisoners once more leaving them supported safely (more or less) by the slender red-head. Koff was underneath the sloping plank and tried in vain to remove his feet from between the plank and the crate. At least he had some idea of what was probably happening as Stewart pulled the moving block into the space recently occupied by Koff’s head so that he could right it and thread the rope properly onto the pulleys as Dave climbed down again.
“Heave Ho!” On Stewart’s call Roy and Rob raised the victims again so that Dave could thread the hook of the block and tackle through the hole in the plank. With the advantage of the pulley system Stewart raised the victims to the vertical once more. He worked the end of the rope through an iron ring set in the side of the cannon emplacement causing some alarm in the prisoners as they felt themselves swaying while Stewart applied himself to his task. Between him and Rob they soon had the end of the plank off the ground and the prisoners’ feet off the crates. Once Stewart had secured the rope, they were balanced on the balls of their feet. Gravity soon put that right as the boys slipped very slowly a few inches down the plank.
It was already hot and Trevor and Koff were soon going to start sweating profusely. Although it would loosen the tape from their bodies, their sweat couldn’t penetrate the several layers that the MacGregors had applied. Everybody was already dressed for swimming, Roy in a shiny gold pair of swim-briefs with white panels on the sides, so Dave and he said they were going to cool off for a while and ran off to the landing stage leaving their older brothers to look after the prisoners. The older boys laid out dry towels from their kit, applied sun-block and lay down for some shut-eye. Enjoying yourself can be such hard work.
The gag talk from Koff and Trevor was as much use as nothing really but that didn’t stop them as they stood (eventually) trying to work themselves free of the tape. Yes, Trevor did come to be tied up but he also understood that attempting to escape was also part of the game. The two new, and currently rather close, friends pulled and flexed in vain for a couple of hours in all while the younger Pirates dived repeatedly from the landing stage, fought in the water and made more noise between them than any six normal boys could generate, and their big brothers worked hard on impregnating their towels with factor fifteen.
The plank oscillated reasonably freely, gradually pushing the crates apart, until they offered no reliable support whatsoever to the mummies who gradually slipped down until their feet met the ground once more. With increasingly coordinated, grunt-controlled efforts the boys started forcing themselves off the end of the plank and the more they succeeded, the more the plank oscillated; the more the plank oscillated, the more quickly they seemed to be succeeding. It was probably just as well they didn’t get too far before being noticed – just as well, that is, for the one who might have been on the bottom as they hit the ground if they had parted completely from the board.
Dave and Roy returned screaming to the site, waking up their older brothers and pointing out that their prisoners were escaping. By now, in spite of the sun-block, the tall gingha’s back had gone bright red and it probably wasn’t the best idea that Roy had ever had when he woke his brother with a “friendly” slap on the back. Fortunately, he managed to outrun the still-sleepy Rob for long enough for him to need to return to the prisoners.
By now, the plank had slipped nearly to bum level on Koff and was hanging at a good diagonal. Stewart un-hitched the rope and, using the block and tackle, pulled the boys upright again. Two despairing “uuuurr” sounds escaped the prisoners’ gags. Even without the plank between them, Koff and Trevor still had little scope for movement in their legs, and their backs were still closely drawn to the plank.
Once the MacGregors returned, with Roy breathlessly begging, “Squibs, later, later, squibs, look at the prisoners,” and his brother agreeing to the truce, there would be punishments to be decided. There could only be one Pirate punishment suitable for prisoners who tried to escape. All were quickly agreed. They should walk the plank.
TBC