And they were doing something to the crowd of naked clothes-washers.

Suddenly I felt my hands pulled behind me and noosed together so swiftly that I had no time to resist. With casual efficiency. my elbows were similarly bound, pulled together painfully until my arms were cramped up behind me and my breasts stuck out in front like ripe melons! I turned and saw a dusky, sarong-clad native woman going about all this as if it were the most natural thing in the world!

Desperately close to panic,

I looked about me. All of us were being tied up in some fashion! I searched around and finally saw Eric, his wrists tied to a collar around his neck, staring at me in silent worry. What was all this?

But now my right ankle was being bound to the right ankle of a nude native in front of me, with only about a foot of slack between us. And the ankle of the girl behind me was being similarly bound to my own! We were being shackled together and marched off someplace!

"Someplace" proved to be a large communal hut surrounded by about a score or so of smaller huts. All of us bound weomen were led in, then, to my relief, untied! I gratefully shucked the vine-ropes from my body and sought out Eric, who was looking around fearfully, her soft eyes wide

with worry.

"Eric!" I whispered amid the din of women chattering in some unknown tongue, "What's going on here? Do you have any idea at all?"

"I don't know," She whispered back, "I mean, I think I have an idea, but I hope I'm wrong! Look what al the other girls are doing!"

One by one, the other slavegirls for that's clearly what we were were walking up to the sarong-clad women and offering themselves up for bondage! And the Boos-Ladies seemed very happy to oblige!

I saw a woman happily hobbling outside, her knees lashed to a SpreaderBar and her wrists lashed to her knees, so that she had to hobble about bent-over in a half-crouch. Another woman had an elaborate cage of woven baboo, about three feet long and maybe a foot square, lashed about her, securing her body from shoulder to knees in what looked to all intents and purposes like a giant Bird Cage! Still another girl had her hair braided in back and then tied tightly around her wrists, which had been pulled up behind her until they touched her shoulder blades, forcing hee head back and her breasts out! Still,

she smiled a sort of seductive, secret smile as she went out, like a civilized woman who knows her dress is too tight but also knows that she has