George Bacchus

Pleasure Bound: Ashore

CHAPTER ONE. The Autocrat of the Island

John Tucker, ex-MD, Edinburgh, sat on the great flower-bedecked balcony of his summer palace on the island of Fleur de la Chair.

Before him, steps cut in the turf led down to a glistening white stone jetty. A few little yachts, a half-dozen motor launches, and a score or so of small boats rocked lazily on the gentle waters of the bay. The sky was a vault of pure turquoise, the sea a little deeper blue, and the undulating hills which fringed the bay made a verdant carpet studded with radiant flowers.

A soft sweet breeze from the sea lulled the fierce rays of the sun, and the regular swing of the punkah above him made John Tucker very comfortable.

John Tucker was a square-jowled man of stocky build, with determination writ large all over him. As he sat in his brilliant silk pyjamas, smoking a pipe, he looked a little out of place in this lazy lotus land.

John Tucker did not look a sensualist, but after leaving Edinburgh for an unmentionable offence in Princes Street Gardens, he had still further disgraced himself in Newfoundland, and on his departure a wag had written:

There was a young man of Cape Cod,

Who put his best girl into pod.

His name was John Tucker

The bugger, the fucker,

The bleeder, the blighter, the sod.