4992. ALL SUPERLATIVE JIVE

ALL SUPERLATIVE JIVE

All superlative jive shall go unheeded, and the

handclappers need not apply : my raven in the

mizzen is left to be stern, my high hopes for

shore leave soon are fading. It's been ten

months already on this jabbering sea, and I'm 

tired both of noise and of quiet.

-

Once I land, where will I be? And what place

has a shape like this? I speak five tongues, but how

do I know? What speaks a native here, and how?

What are they eating, some purloined turtle fish from

the bottom of a kettle-scow? Ask me for dinner? No,

not now; I've sterner stuff to finish yet within my iron gut.

-

We've fourteen left from seventy starting out  -  how's

that for odds of streaming? Swim the rafts to the land of

gout? Two, I remember, in fact too spears to the head

and died. I have one man's knife, and boots as well.

Some picture of some lady, I don't know. Bothersome

mettle, all this human stuff with others. I'd rather be a'sea 

and sick than laid up here again in a bad-man's trick.

-

Feels like iron, feels like gold. All the same to me, so what?

I cash for nothing 'cept living on, blubber boy. Come be my

mate again if you've the constitution. my stuff is sterner and

more than steel  -  the kind of rub that can cut your ribs

in two. Keep back then, before I throttle you.