-
And in the eerie blackness came a voice that was distant, yet close and reverberated throughout the very timbers of the ship.
"Hey, y'all white honkey's wa'choo do'in in da brother's side of da uniee-verse"
Groans turned to the cook who just happened to be the closest to him and said "Argh!...Cook, did ye hear that?".....
To which the Cook replied "Yeah!...I'm not deaf ya' know!"...
Groans mumbled to himself "Grumpy dog!....Must'a burnt his gruel this morning".....
Then the voice boomed louder than the first time (if that was possible), "A say's wa'choo do'in here?"...
Frontbottom replied ".........
-
"I say! Have a care. Just who do you think you're talking to?"
The rest of the crew waited with bated breath, agog to see if Frontbottom's customary arrogance would get him (and them) into even more trouble.
There was a pause.
It lengthened.
Just when the tension was about to become unbearable, the Mother Farcquar's enormous bulk loomed up in the gloom on the main deck.
"What's going on?" she demanded. "Who put out the lights?"
She stamped her gargantuan foot. That did it! The entire vessel trembled from keel to burgee (that's the little flag that flies from the top of the mast, by the way;) - or is that bargee? ... or bungee?).
With a strange wrenching sound, the Very Little Gravitas Indeed shook itself clear of the Rip and floated free on an azure ocean.
However, there had been some changes .....
-
There was a newcomer to the crew,
the renowned
or is it the infamous
Buck R
in his everyday alias of .....
-
Buck Naked, that well broiled suntan lotion test pilot from the Cayman Islands, who has a habit of writing things on his skin with tanning lotion and then sun baking for hours on end only to then parade around with this script in stark white on a lobster red back ground of blistered flesh. In his off season he goes under the guise of somebody named Micheal Jackson!!!..
A fugitive from the darkside of the universal rip, who announced "......
-
"Read my hips!"
The assembled crew and supernumeries gave a collective groan at this atrocious pun. "Groan", they groaned, "What an atrocious pun."
"Don't blame me" groaned Groans, "It's that infamous, atrocious punster Buck Naked who's responsible for it. For all I know, he's been sitting there on the dark side of the universe flinging atrocious puns into this saga whenever he feels like it. He's probably responsible for naming Seaman Staines as well."
The expression on Buck's face clearly showed that he was both affronted and taken aback. With a flounce of his right eyebrow, he.....
-
...nearly ripped himself into three large pieces. The combined effect of being affronted, taken aback and seriously flounced about the eyebrow was enough to give him a severe attack of RSI.
He limped off in search of a physiotherapist.
"Ahem!" Roger (VC and Bar) cleared his throat.
"Right," he said. "Now that's clear, where were we?"
Lance Corporal Frontbottom and Regimental Sergeant Major Groans (See? - I told you some things had changed) - were gazing at their uniforms in amazement.
However, Seaman Staines (not everything had changed) was ready to respond to his commanding officer's question.
"We've been nearly every bloody ...."
-
where in this bloody uni..bloody..verse, and you, Roger are to blame for ninety bloody nine per bloody cent of them you little twat. Oh, yes I know you're a bloody big shot (VC and Bar etc) but the bloody truth is you're a git!
We all hate you and your shiny bloody buttons, you're....
-
Roger (VC and Bar) held up a restraining hand and interrupted him.
"Sponcracker," he said, conversationally. "Could you...?"
He waved his hand dismissively in Staines' direction. Sponcracker drew a remote control device from his pocket, pointed it at one of his droids and dialled in what looked like a complex code. The droid strode across to Staines, twassocked him firmly about the ears, spun him round and kicked him fair up the clacker - twice. Staines - after leaping in the air (and so would you if a droid had just planted his metallic foot firmly up your rear end - twice) - subsided into a grumbling but apparently non-mutinous semi-silence.
"Thanks," said Roger (VC and Bar). "Now, as I was saying: where were we?"
"Wait a minute!" protested Lance Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom. "What about...."
-
...Christmas? It seems that just a few moments ago we were on the creaking deck of the wind-driven ship the Very Little Gravitas Indeed, sailing merrily towards Christmas, when suddenly there was a flatulent roar, and the next thing we know, we've been stripped of our rank, the worm-raddled timbers of the VLGI have been transmogrified to some synthetic product and Christmas is vanishing in the distance, with a hiss and a roar and a cloud of chatter!"
Staines massaged his droid-bruised backside and ...
-
tightend his some what loose nuts, "Ahhhh!...that's better!"..he mumbled in a stilted robotic voice.
As he proceeded to look around the ship, he couldn't help but feel a little odd, as though something was not quite right but just couldn't put his finger on it.
A buzz ran through the crew, I mean it a real buzz, it was the static created when the fateful flatulance was released into the air.
Groans said "Cor!...what is that 'orrible buzz, it stinks, makes all me innards feel like I'm about to slip a cog or sumfin'!".....
As Groans proceeded to bend over and disgorge about two pints of slightly discoloured 20W/50 onto the deck, the rest looked on and said "......
-
"I say Sponcracker, be a good chap and push the reset button on that Captain Cook-Bastard cook would you? There's a good fellow.
It seems to have some bytes loose in the belfry."
As he had been asked so politely, Sponcracker hurried to do as he was bid.
Captain Roger (VC and Bar) meanwhile was puzzled.
"I'm .....
-
"... reluctant to be perceived as predictable but it has to be said: I'm puzzled. Why is it that some of the more human of the humanoids appear to have suddenly acquired droid-like characteristics?"
"I mean," he continued. "Take Groans, for example. Leaving aside his apparent elevation to the very senior rank of Regimental Sergeant-Major, it seems that he is extensively (one might even say, excessively) imbued with a high-grade lubricant."
"Yes," interrupted Leading Nursing Auxiliary (formerly Bo'sun) Bastard, smoothing his (her?) crisp white apron. "I was about to mention that. Difficult to administer the right prescription when you don't know if it's a dose of salts or a couple of litres of machine-oil!"
Lance-Corporal (formerly Major) Frontbottom was affronted.
He felt compelled to say: "I'm ..."
-
"... affront....affront....a Frontbottom! No member of my family for the last seven generations has held a military rank lower than 2nd Lieutenant! I simply cannot be a Lance-Corporal. It's unthinkable!"
So affronted was he that he stamped his foot.
Now Frontbottom's foot was nowhere nearly as enormous, threatening or horrendously unattractive as that of the Mother Farcquar but, in its own way, it had (apparently) just as severe an effect.
The horizon, the gunwales and even the taffrail all appeared to shimmer. (Of purely incidental interest, this caused a certain visible frisson to run through the ranks of the hamsters - poised, as was they customarily were, along the taffrail).
But what could have caused the shimmering? Well, we shall see:-
Chapter Ten
'Twas the night after Christmas and all through the ship.....
-
all of the crew where sated with the customary double ration of ships rum, but as the night wore on the squabbling started.
Firstly, over minor things and quickly escalated too much more serious matter like, "Who stole groans crayons he got off Santa" or "Why was Frontbottom running around with a blue and a red crayon stuck up his nose"?.....
The droids where also acting strange, this was noted when one of them was found onthe poop deck showing the other droids his.......
-
