The final voyage of the Willinimbles
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 6:51 pm
Well yah askin' me 'bout the Willinimbles? I'll tell yah, twas a lil fishin' sloop me an' Jackie had spent most of our young lives savin' up for. See Jackie was mah brother's wife's second cousin third removed or somethin' like that. Anyways, we was pretty good friends for a long time, an' we sees this sloop and we just have to has her. Bit broken up but we hired Groucho to fix 'er up and to man the tiller, and we found a fellow named Ticky that we renamed Galley cause he decided to be doing the cookin's.
Anyways, those three lads and I, we sailed the seas round the isles somethin' fierce, never made no landfall that wasn't for reuppin' supplies or sellin' off our fishes and junk. We had the Willinimbles lookin' sharp, sharp as the ice on glaciers, ain't never seen one but I guess it works as a metaphor right? Anyhows, we're sharp, good lookin, cutting the waves slick like. We just had a nice two month haul we'd traded in for fresh rum and apples, Galley had his galley full and Jackie had enough 'bacco for the next six months. We were sailin' strong. So we decided to head for the southern tip of the isles, looking for some sort of shipwreck we'd heard about that had gold from the far east! What a trip it coulda been, we be saying at night as we drinkin' away our booze, what the riches there must be!
Well it turns out Groucho don't hold his liquor so well, 'specially wit us goading him on and taking turns playing cards, so come mornin' we realize we're about fifty leagues off course! Ol' Groucho's slumped at the till, sleeping off his drunk, as the storm starts to come a callin' on us. Before we know it the gale has swallowed our mast and dragged the other sails into the drink! We tossed and turned and heaved and hoed for the next three days in that awful storm! Finally the hull cracked under a thirty foot wave and poor ol Galley wrapped himself 'round his stove, there ain't no way I coulda saved him as he sunk to the bottom of the deeps. Jackie landed near me, swimmin' but he was bleeding something awful from his head and his face looked all flat. Never did see Groucho. We hung onto some splintered bits of the hull as we kicked our way away from the ship to avoid gettin' sucked down.
It was another two days, after the second night Jackie went limp and I tried to haul him but when I saw land, I'm sorry I ain't no saint o' that Church they talk about, but I had to let 'im go or I was dead too, so I pushed Jackie off that board and kicked hard as I could for the land. And that's how I found myself a landlubber like the rest o' ya'll.