A Sailors Tale

It blew hard and it looked like it wasn’t going to let up so I ordered the men to throw some of the cargo over board to lighten the ship, better to arrive without dates and olive oil then to arrive without a ship, if you know what I mean. And as the men worked they cried out to their various gods and a lot of gods there were amongst the boys, but they must have been deaf gods because the storm didn’t seem to be getting any better. It’s no fun when you start you trip by sea and end up travelling by rail, if you know what I mean.

And then someone noticed that the landlubber wasn’t with us, the cap’n told me to find the bilge rat and get him to pray to his god as well. Alas we found him asleep in his bunk, asleep! The entire ship and its cargo were in danger of being lost along with all the crew and the scurvy passenger’s asleep. Know nothing fear nothing that’s what I say. So we woke him up, after all if the rest of us were going to be terrified then he should be too.

As the storm grew worse the Cap’n called a parley, that’s a French word you know, they invented mayonnaise the French did. And during the parley it was suggested that we cast lots to see who was to blame for the storm and you’ll never guess where the lot landed. That’s right with the Jonah fella, so we demanded that he tell us why the storm had come.

And what a tale he wove. He told us he was a prophet, from Israel, that be where Joppa is. And he said that his God commanded him to go to Nineveh and tell the people there that if they didn’t repent and turn from their wicked ways that God would bring Judgement upon them. Then I says “But Nineveh be in the middle of the desert, not in the middle of the ocean.” We’ll just pull up the chart again, here be Joppa where we be sailing from and here be Nineveh where the lubber was supposed to be. And suddenly it all became clear he was running from the God of Israel, oh that can’t be good. As Captain Solo would say “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Then he started rambling saying something about how he should have believed David and that he should never have tried to flee on the Wings of the Morning. And I said, “This be your fault, you bilge rat you, now stop your whinging and tell us what we have to be doing to make the storm stop.”

Well blow me down the swabby said that we needed to be throwing him into the briny deep if we wanted to be saved. Arrr I might talk like a pirate but I've never made a man walk the plank before and I wasn't about to start with this Jonah fellow. So I yelled at the men to pull in the remainder of the canvas and break out the oars that we would turn the ship into the wind and hold her in place. But it was no use, the wind got stronger and the waves got bigger and I suddenly realized that I wasn’t sick anymore, arrrr I was too scared to be sick by now, if you know what I mean.

And I looked at Jonah, and I be thinking, if it works if we throw him over the side and the storm stops then we will have saved the ship, the rest of the cargo and all the men just by sending one disobedient prophet to Davey Jones Locker. And I realized how selfish and self serving that was; I knew that must be a way to save all of us, the ship and that mangy landlubber. There had to be a way I just had to figure it out, so I thought and I thought and I thought and while I be thinking the bosun and the rest of the hands threw him overboard.