Bicklesworth told the prisoner, “It’s the fluctuations in the root mean square of the variance.” The prisoner squinted his eyes and the bosun added, "Yarr, ‘tis,” and winked.
The prisoner couldn’t argue with the bosun’s logic. The explanation was pretty good but a hundred other things on board made no sense at all. He said, “Rosalie told me the Sea Star is really a catamaran. Where’s the other hull then?”
“Down below, low down beneath, aye.”
“Where is it though?” The prisoner gestured for the bosun to follow him to the gunnel. The prisoner leaned far out over the water and didn’t see it. “Where?”
“Bo! Hurrr! It’s down thurr young master. D’ye see water lappin’ ‘gainst the ‘ull?”
The prisoner did not and said so. He’d assumed that was just the breadth of the big ship.
The bosun said, “Down there ‘tis, skirtin’ a dangerous nether realm ‘tween thither and yon, and ye wouldn’t wanna fall inter. Narr, siree.”
The prisoner leaned out even further. He saw no evidence of any waves reflecting off the hull. How did I not notice that before?
“Careful tharr, ‘tis a dangerous nether realm ‘tween ‘ere and thurr. Bo, hurr.”
The prisoner thought about it for a moment and, though he didn’t think the bosun was lying, he declared, “Bullshit,” and picked up a length of rope.
Bosun Bicklesworth put his hand on the prisoner’s arm when he saw the prisoner meant to rappel over the side. “Narr, narr, narr, master. We can’t ‘ave that, now. Narr way in heck.”
“Why not? If I die here then that must mean I wasn’t the one who wins your Guild war for you, right?”
The bosun’s fat cheerful face went grim. He’d heard that line of reasoning before. The bosun’s countenance was so changed and gaunt that the prisoner felt uncomfortable and stopped tying the rope around his waist. The bosun looked at him hard. There was no silliness on that face.
The prisoner said, “What? Am I wrong?”
“Narr. Yer not wrong, master, but that’s dangerous thinkin’. Aye, ‘tis.”
“What of it then? Pull me back up when I yell.”
“Don’t do it, master. If ye slip and get lost, y’ll suffer. ‘Tain’t just dyin’.”
“I’ll be fine,” the prisoner said. He secured the other end of the rope to a cleat on deck. He threw the rope over the side and was surprised that the rope didn’t hang slack. It followed the curve of the hull and rolled out of sight beneath the ship. The prisoner mounted the gunnel and then half rappelled and half walked down the outer hull.
“Be careful, master,” the bosun said. “We’ll pull ye right back up. Yarrr, we will,” and he continued to mutter as the prisoner descended.
The gravity was wrong and the prisoner’s feet kept stepping on the hull even as he descended past the overhang. He looked up and saw Bicklesworth wave one last wave before the overhang blocked his line of sight. He looked down and the water didn’t seem any closer but then he looked to the aft and nearly slipped when he saw a waterfall of the ocean spilling out into the void of space. He took two more steps and underneath the ship he did see another vessel’s sails. Another two steps and he saw the crossbeams joining the two. The prisoner was fully surrounded by space, and the star field felt cold. The rush of water all around seemed like it should pour onto him but the torrents bent away. He called for the bosun to pull him back up but the man must not have heard him so the prisoner grabbed the rope to pull himself up. When he pulled, all the dead flesh sloughed off the palm of his hand and he lost his grip. He fell about twenty feet before the rope snapped taught. The harness held fast and he dangled there taking in the ocean above, the star field, and the other ocean that the Sea Star’s second section sailed. He looked at his hand. He could see the hand bones and the finger bones.
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The yank on the rope at the prisoner’s slip alerted the bosun and he pulled him back up. Bicklesworth said, “Did ye slip?”
“Aye, we did,” the prisoner said. He was glad to see the warm happiness back on the bosun’s face.
“Did ye see yon’ other hull.”
“I sure did, thanks.”
“So yer satisfied then, are ye?”
“I want to go down there?”
“To the other hull?”
“I want to see how what we see up here looks from down there.”
The bosun was exasperated. He said, “Narrr, ya can’t go down tharr. Narp.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll tell ya why not, Mr. Sleepy Head. It’s because yer a mimsy wonka.”
“A what?”
“A mimsy wonka. Aye, ‘tis whatcha are. Yarrr.”
“What the fuck is a mimsy wonka?”
At that the bosun’s face brightened and became full of joy. “What did ye ask me thurr, young master?”
“I said, ‘What’s a mimsy wonka?’”
“Aye, I thought that’s whatcha said. Yarr, me thought ‘twere just so, aye. Come wi’ me. Barr!”
They descended from the main deck to the waist where the bulwark was too high for even a tall man to look over. Then they climbed up the taller ladder onto the quarterdeck where the bulwark gave way to a rail of fancy carpentry. The bosun unclipped the purple velvet cordon rope, which was crisp and new, and not salty and old like everything else on the Sea Star. The bosun and the prisoner took the attention of the helmsman at the wheel, the navigator at the table, and the captain and his first mate behind them. The bosun told the prisoner that it was alright to step forward. Then Bosun Bicklesworth clipped the purple rope’s golden fastener back where it was.
Captain Atlas said, “What are you about, Bicklesworth? He shouldn’t be over here.”
“This young master wants to know what a mimsy wonka is.”
Smiles spread across the faces of the bridge crew in unison. The captain said, “Oh? He does, does he?”
“Aye, Captain. He do! Yarrr, me heard it with me own ears just now. Not forty moments ago, narr.”
The captain said to the prisoner, “Is it true?”
The prisoner said, “What the fuck is a mimsy wonka?”
The captain turned to the first mate, Leftenant Commander Mancuso, and said, “Go for it.”
Mancuso stepped forward and began singing to the tune of He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, “For he’s a mimsy old wonka, for he’s mimsy old wonka—” Music from a ragtime band filled the air and suddenly the quarterdeck was three times wider than it had been.
The prisoner looked to the bow and there were sailors singing along, doing acrobatic tricks in the rigging. The song went on with dozens of voices sounding louder than a jet engine, “And so say of all of us!” A loud cymbal crashed on the word us and the prisoner jumped. He looked in the other direction and quickly moved out of the way for a marching band wearing all white, and even gleaming white patent leather shoes. “And so say all of us!”
The song went on, “For he’s a mimsy old wonka, for he’s a mimsy old wonka. And so say all of us!” At that us, the hatch to the space under the poopdeck burst open and a line of tropically themed Rockettes in Carmen Miranda head gear pranced out. They sang along and kicked their long legs high. From the other direction, a line of sailors weaved through the Rockettes dancing with their mops and swabbing the deck theatrically with vaudevillian vim.
The song went on. The prisoner watched the sparkling choreography of the rockettes and sailors doing a number in front of the band stepping in place where they played their tune behind the navigator’s table. “For he’s a mimsy old wonka, for he’s a mimsy old wonka. Which nobody can deny!”
The bosun yelled the last line right into his ear and it jolted the prisoner again. “Which nobody can deny!” After his glance, the song and the music ended, and the quarterdeck was its usual size. There was no dancing, no rockettes, and no band.
Bosun Bicklesworth clapped the prisoner on the back. “Nardy narr narr narr. Nobody can deny it fer ye now, can they?” The prisoner didn’t know what to make of it but, in a few hundred years aboard the Sea Star, he never again expressed any irritation with something not making sense.
The captain told the prisoner that he stunk and they should get the doctor. The captain wanted to boil him to get all the rotting flesh off of him. The doctor assured the prisoner that he would be fine so they made a fire on the main deck and brought a big black cauldron full of seawater to a bubbling boil. The prisoner put his hand in the steam and it didn’t hurt. He dipped a finger in the water and it didn’t hurt so he hopped it and sat there for a while. After that, he was just a skeleton.