Forgotten Lands

Fierce wind lashed the deck of the SS Invisible Possum as she plowed through the roiling seas. It screamed through the rigging and turned the sails into wild, thrashing beasts. The surface of these seas (all of them, as far as the glass longeyes could see) was like corrugated cardboard, if corrugated cardboard's corrugations were made of water, and moving, and had fish in them. Tonight, the corrugations were big and wild, and the fish were angry and bitey.

Captain Gerard Spork chuckled madly into the teeth of the gale. "Tee hee hee! Can you hear me, gale? Ahr haarr! You have something stuck in your teeth, gale!" he shouted. "It looks like parsley!"

A man approached the helm, holding tightly to the railing with one hand, the other planted firmly on top of his head to keep his hat from blowing off. He squinted through the rain up at Captain Spork. "Cap'n!" he shouted. "Could ye please keep it down, sir? The men are trying to sleep, sir, and, well, y'see, some of 'em is worried yer tauntin' will make the gale madder, sir. Beggin' yer pardon, sir!"

The mad captain shot his first mate a contemptuous scowl. Having neglected to compensate for the wind, his scowl went wide, clattering harmlessly to the deck some ten feet behind the first mate.

"Squidge! Go fetch me scowl! And tell the men that they're all invited to shove it. The gale an' me has business to work out."

"Beggin' yer pardon again, Cap'n, but me name's Harry," Squidge said, bending to pick up his captain's scowl.

"Ye been sayin' that all week, Squidge. That'll be enough o' that rubbish, or I'll have ye tarred and popcorned. Gimme that." He snatched the scowl from Squidge and tucked it into his sash, next to his sword. "Tell the men that when I've finished hurlin' terrible profanities into this here storm, I want 'em all on deck in full battle rattle. Armed to the teeth and so forth, there's a good lad. The Island of The Nitwits ain't gonna chart itself, no sir!"

Squidge swallowed hard. They would be lucky to survive the storm, but no man had ever returned from the Island of the Nitwits with his soul intact.

...bum bum buuuuummmm...