“You’ve wanted this a long time, haven’t you?” Hickey’s voice is wheedling, even conciliatory; he has taken off his tall silk hat, and he strips off his gloves.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Des Voeux no longer remembers what it is he wants. His mouth is dry; he works his tongue over his lips. Mr. Hickey gives a sort of shrug.

“On your knees, then.”

Des Voeux kneels. Elsewhere, men are raging away in drink — they will not be noticed, even as participants in the grossest sort of boyish larking. Uncleanliness is not to be tolerated in Her Majesty’s Navy at any other time, but they are beyond decorum now, and a man who has been lashed for dirtiness can hardly scoff now. Mr. Hickey looks down on him expectantly, as if taking the measure of him, making certain of what he wants — but the posture of his body must tell it plainly enough, his excitation and surrender. Des Voeux opens his mouth without thinking, as if at the rail to receive the blessed sacrament; Mr. Hickey thumbs at his ragged bottom lip.

“You little swine,” Hickey says, with affection. “I should have the whole crew line up and take advantage of such a pleasant hole as this.”

The caulker's mate gives him what he wants. The first jet of piss strikes his open mouth, hot and bitter; Des Voeux works at his cock through his woolen trousers, stoking a dry heat as the wetness of Mr. Hickey’s piss runs down his chin and chest. Before long it is overflowing his mouth and bathing the rest of him, with a steady stream summoned up from somewhere deep inside a man who is no heavy drinker, and not that large to begin with. Hickey’s cock is beautiful and ruddy in his hand, blushing as red as his rosy cheeks — his cheeks like a girl’s, all white and red.

Des Voeux had known a girl once, a parlormaid with pretty shining copper ringlets and plump arms — she had stoked his curiosity as much as his excitement and when she had permitted him to access her secret places he had been alive to the differences in their bodies, the secret mossy folds of a woman’s pudenda compared to the stiff proud forwardish nature of cock. She had let him watch her piss, and pretended not to know he was looking — her pretty white haunches almost obscuring what took place, the dainty stream ringing out against the porcelain basin.

Mr. Hickey is no girl, but he has small soft hands for a caulker’s mate and something about his laggardly insolence is exciting. In carnival-time men may do what they otherwise might not. He halts his stream, and steps closer — the piss is steaming around them, and Des Voeux’s heart is thudding in his chest. Hickey fits the tip of his shoe over Des Voeux’s cock, over his busy rutting hand, and treads down hard. The resultant climax is exquisite.

Des Voeux groans, and Hickey passes his hand over his head — like a benediction, Des Voeux thinks, though there is nothing holy about the dousing he has just received. Hickey thumbs the head of his cock into Des Voeux’s mouth.

“Here, there’s no call for such wastefulness. I want you to drink every drop I have left.”