Friday

Early last night we was pitched up at a posh riverside local, an olde poppy refinery it were, me and Long Peg and Longer Jim and my mate Sunnie, tucking into fancified local fare when we were run down by one o' Sunnie Annie's shipmates, 'Teeny, who was to be moonlightin' later on in the tavern upstairs from where we sat. It was a surprise change-of-course, but not to be unwelcomed, and God surely knows we can't always tack against the hot winds blowin' us yonder. So later on, fatted on Spring rolls and lovely bitty morsels of fish-cakes stewed in greens, we mounted the steps to rough-and-tumble abovedecks. The evening's event was to be a south-seas performance of the sketches of the Britisher Troupe Monty Python, a comedie play enacted in some dozen parts. Me and Sunnie Annie walked in there with a pocketful of boon and back out again two hours later with a bellyful of what-have-you: Sunnie'd stuck to the standard tots in cola, whilst I guzzled island tea blends, if ye ken. And the plays were good, and the players, I'll be shivered--every man-jack one of 'em. But I tell ye, laddies, and look into me last eye and see if I be lying to you--and you may have that eye if I have--what a strong man's perfectly able to partake upon a wild night and still walk upright, and still swab the decks and still surf the portholes, can come back to confound that man while he's trying to jog his nightly one-and-a-half nautical miles on the old electric plank in the gym deep in his darkened hold. Aye, he persevered alright, to his everlastin' credit, but at a notch less than the five-and-a-third knots pace he's a-used to keepin'. [Cap’n]