Namoric
March 15th, 2009, 08:53 PM
Posted by Santiago many moons ago - reposted here for safe keeping:
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest
by Santiago
The scruffy--looking pirate suddenly paused in mid--stride and began to scratch at the stubble on his chin -- a sure sign of confusion in a pirate. "How in the heck do fifteen men all fit on a dead man's chest, anyways? Even if they was all midgets, I reckon they'd have a hard time of it."
He kept walking a few paces along the old cobblestone road, and then stopped again. "Is it a chest, like what I keep me treasure in, or a chest, like what I keep me heart in? I could see as it were a box, but it'd still have to be a bloody big box, to fit fifteen. Maybe a coffin...aye, a dead man's chest!" He took a swig of ale to punctuate the idea, and then resumed his journey.
"Or...what if it was a lady's chest? Some ladies got pretty big chests." He smiled for a moment, as if lost in a pleasant daydream.
Left to his own (admittedly clumsy) devices, the simple pirate might have eventually stumbled upon even greater questions, such as why fifteen men would have bothered to congregate upon a chest in the first place, regardless of whether or not it was made of wood or flesh. And from there, he might perhaps have gone on to question why it is that men do some of the downright silly things that they so often do.
But Santiago was not given to such profound mysteries. His was a world of simple facts and simple conclusions, and the mystery of the dead man's chest was solved well enough by the inevitable refrain:
"Yo ho ho, and a bottle o' rum!"
It didn't really occur to him that the answer was as meaningless as the question. But he took comfort in it, and repeated it several times as he strolled drunkenly down the road toward the tavern, his thoughts drifting effortlessly back to pirate women and big chests.
Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest
by Santiago
The scruffy--looking pirate suddenly paused in mid--stride and began to scratch at the stubble on his chin -- a sure sign of confusion in a pirate. "How in the heck do fifteen men all fit on a dead man's chest, anyways? Even if they was all midgets, I reckon they'd have a hard time of it."
He kept walking a few paces along the old cobblestone road, and then stopped again. "Is it a chest, like what I keep me treasure in, or a chest, like what I keep me heart in? I could see as it were a box, but it'd still have to be a bloody big box, to fit fifteen. Maybe a coffin...aye, a dead man's chest!" He took a swig of ale to punctuate the idea, and then resumed his journey.
"Or...what if it was a lady's chest? Some ladies got pretty big chests." He smiled for a moment, as if lost in a pleasant daydream.
Left to his own (admittedly clumsy) devices, the simple pirate might have eventually stumbled upon even greater questions, such as why fifteen men would have bothered to congregate upon a chest in the first place, regardless of whether or not it was made of wood or flesh. And from there, he might perhaps have gone on to question why it is that men do some of the downright silly things that they so often do.
But Santiago was not given to such profound mysteries. His was a world of simple facts and simple conclusions, and the mystery of the dead man's chest was solved well enough by the inevitable refrain:
"Yo ho ho, and a bottle o' rum!"
It didn't really occur to him that the answer was as meaningless as the question. But he took comfort in it, and repeated it several times as he strolled drunkenly down the road toward the tavern, his thoughts drifting effortlessly back to pirate women and big chests.