The Atlantic

“Come on,” said Fiona, urgently. “We’re almost home!”

The sixty-nine day deadline was rapidly approaching. Fiona had boarded the Atalanta, a state-of-the-art ocean liner, with every confidence that she’d be home in time to win her wager. But, halfway across the Atlantic, a minor collision with an iceberg had resulted in half the ship’s coal supply being accidentally dumped overboard! The captain had explained, apologetically, that in the absence of fuel for the boilers, the remainder of the voyage would have to proceed at half-speed.

This was obviously unacceptable.

The menfolk aboard the ship, citing the risk of impropriety, had declined to assist Fiona in her time of need. Fiona had cursed them all out for blaggards and poltroons, but they’d refused to budge.

The women passengers, luckily, were not so stubborn. Having read of Fiona’s exploits in the papers, they were strongly on her side, and believed adamantly that it was their solemn duty to assist the stalwart Englishwoman in the conquest of the vile Lady Evelyn, her hated foe.

There was Miss Clarabelle Strappe, headmistress of a girls’ academy, with her class of eighteen-year-old schoolgirls in tow. There was Megan the Scottish heiress and Manon the French fashion designer and a squad of other young ladies who’d previously travelled together aboard the Orient Express. There was Giselle Gropius, the extremely wealthy and evil French lesbian, and all her evil lesbian friends. There was Duchess Bianca Vergogna from Venice, who’d just popped over to New York for a little holiday, and a dozen escapees from the harem of the Sultan of Constantinople. There was Amelia Featherstone, the world-famous lady archaeologist, who was apparently on the run from some kind of ancient curse, and her arch-nemesis Fatima Firouzi, who was doing the same.

There were a trio of New York heiresses, all called Tiffany, and a number of beautiful blushing brown Indian women who weren’t allowed to wear any clothes for some religious reason. There was Lady Bluesnap, international head of the Ladies’ Moral Decency League, and a handful of Siamese and Filipino pirates. There was Mei, manager of a Hong Kong cathouse, and Kimiko, a Japanese translator who’d decided to see a bit of the world. There was Captain Esmerelda Hong of the Suffering Sappho, ex-Sheriff Jolene Jezebel of Reno, Nevada, a number of Mormon women in interesting undergarments, a few cavalry girls, a pair of election losers from Omaha and five or six lady police officers from Chicago.

All of these extraordinarily beautiful women, by sheer coincidence, happened to be aboard the Atalanta at the very same time. All, for their own reasons, were en route to London. And all, once they had heard Fiona Fairweather’s side of the story, plus the dreadful fate that awaited her were she to fail in her attempt to circumnavigate the globe in just sixty-nine days, knew precisely what they were obliged to do.

They had to fuel the ship.

But what did the women have that could possibly fuel a raging fire, down in the ship’s hold? Only one possibility presented itself.

Embarrassing?

Yes, of course! Make no mistake. The women did not, in point of fact, actually want to have to hand over every last scrap of clothing in their luggage, every spare dress and stocking and gloriously lacy underthing, over to the grinning impertinent sooty-handed stokers, to be burnt in the ship’s roaring engine. But they had ****. It was the only way to keep the ship racing across the icy Atlantic, with Fiona counting every second as the prow split the cold grey waves to bring her closer and closer to her goal.

And, with all the spare clothes gone into the fire, and England still beyond the eastern horizon, it was then the solemn duty of the hundreds of ladies aboard ship to hand over the dresses on their backs. This kept the Atalanta going for another day - a long day of ladies pacing the foredeck in bloomers and corsets, splashed by cold spray, discouraged by standard safety protocols from retreating into the shelter of their cabins and giving the gentlemen passengers nothing to leer at.

But the next day was longer still. For that day, with England almost in reach, was the day the courageous ladies, flustered but persistent, had to fuel the ship with the last and tiniest scraps of clothing they had. This being, of course, their undergarments.

The women, proud and haughty to a fault, agonised over the decision. But, in the end, they had ****. They’d come too far to give up now.

And so bloomers and corsets and stockings and sexy French lingerie was peeled off luscious curves and lovely legs, and reluctantly handed over to the engine-stokers, now broadly beaming as their eyes roamed freely over the shivering, squirming bodies of the fancy nude ladies, hands darting across their intimate regions in a vain attempt to preserve some final scrap of modesty from the leering plebeians.

Eyes widened, lips were bitten, cheeks went red as Fiona and Miss Strappe and Giselle and Bianca and Amelia and all the rest of them were **** to live out one extremely long shipboard day in the nude, dining and dancing and promenading the decks before an assortment of deeply amused male passengers who seemed unwilling to offer them even the slightest bit of gentlemanly courtesy. In fact, the men openly mocked the girls, teasing them about how silly they looked, and even seizing on the opportunity to fondle their bare breasts and bottoms while the shamefaced ladies fumed, unable to offer any resistance.

And, that night, the captain (a handsome black-bearded Irishman with an impish twinkle in his eye) explained that safety protocols required Fiona to spend the evening in his quarters. The other male passengers, meanwhile, had singled out their own targets from the bare-naked blushing crowd. And so, one by one, the ladies were grabbed by strong and in some cases coal-smudged hands, and spirited away to a number of undignified (though strangely predictable) fates.