Now you have to understand the background
to what happened. We'd been hand steering down the Mocambique Channel for ten of what turned into nineteen
days after the autopilot died. This meant never getting more than two and a half hours sleep at a time,
and both of us were wearing a little thin.
At midnight she came up on deck to take her watch, only to find that I'd spent the last two hours of my watch in
a creative frenzy composing poetry for the first and last time in my life.
There's a full moon casting a strange
light over the scene, as I prance around the cockpit, and occasionally roll round in the bottom of it cackling, and recite
the following.
* * * * * *
*
SEA CREATURES
What
purpose has a porpoise,
In swimming free and easy?
One answered me as he went by,
I do it 'cos it please me.
The dolphin is an unfortunate fish,
And
much maligned in prose,
I've never seen a single one,
With a bottle on his nose.
He doesn't even work his tail,
Back and forth, he's smart,
He likes to beat it up and down,
I'm sure it helps him fart.
We saw a Lesser Noddy,
The first we've seen in years,
I thought it strange, he wasn't with,
His long-time friend Big Ears.
The
Frigate Bird's name is rude,
I sometimes can't recall,
If he goes by "Bugger It",
Or was it "Stuff-it-all"?
The Booby Bird has been misnamed,
I have one here on hand,
I've searched and searched but cannot find,
A single mammary gland.
The
whale that came to visit,
And round us to carouse,
Went by the name of Minke,
Or was it Minke Mouse?
His relative, the Southern Right,
On occasion can be wrong.
I saw one in the North you know,
Where he hardly would belong.
The
Portugese Man 'o War,
Has never fired a shot,
All the same he's dangerous,
I don't want him on the yacht.
* * * * * * *
She thought I'd cracked up due to lack of sleep, and I'm at a complete loss
to understand what made her think this.
But then, strange things happen at sea.