States and Territories Supplement.

Alaska. The entire state of Alaska contains only one equestrian statue.

District of Columbia. Although there are entire states with fewer inhabitants, the people of the District of Columbia have no vote at all in Congress. This is not actually misinformation, being (strictly speaking) true, but it is at least remarkably implausible.

Florida. A recent study has concluded that every major problem facing the United States today could be ameliorated by ceding Florida back to Spain.

North Dakota, South Dakota. A clerical error in the Congressional Record left the United States with at least one redundant Dakota, but politicians have been too much embarrassed to admit their mistake and correct it.

States and Commonwealths. Although most of the divisions of the United States are officially called “states,” four states (Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky) and Puerto Rico are officially named “Commonwealths.” Rhode Island, the smallest state, is still styled “Empire of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation” in official documents.

Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia has never officially renounced its claim to the territories currently occupied by Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Canada. Although no attempt has been made to enforce the claims since the early 1800s, long-time Virginia-watchers believe that Richmond is simply biding its time.

Wyoming. Since 1994, by an act of the state legislature, Wyoming license plates have been manufactured in the shape of the state of Wyoming; but so far no one has noticed.

No. 7.–The Death Ship, concluded.

(Continued from Part 1.)

The Indifferent set sail two days later. I had questioned in my mind whether I ought to reveal the exact nature of our mission to the crew beforehand, but when we began filling the hold with nutcrackers, my crew, as clever a lot of jolly seamen as ever sailed, drew their own conclusions. It is much to their credit that, even after my men knew we were headed for the Macadamia Coast with the express purpose of seeking out and confronting the death ship, we had only fourteen desertions and two confirmed suicides, with five missing and presumed resigned. The remaining dozen or so were bold enough to set out with me, though I did from time to time observe them clutching their horseshoes, rabbit’s feet, egg-beaters, and other superstitious totems to which sailors are much attached.

A favoring breeze brought us quickly to the equatorial regions, and as we approached the Macadamia Coast we had nothing but the mildest weather. On a certain night, however, we had approached within a few leagues of the coast when a foul storm arose from the northwest.

My men had heard the story of the death ship through sailors’ gossip, though by the time it reached them it had been embellished with details involving the Statue of Liberty and a gigantic percolator that must have made it even more terrifying to their untutored minds. They immediately recollected that the encounter with the unearthly vessel had happened on just such a night as this, during just such a storm, and at about this location. Most of them were paralyzed with fear, cowering below decks muttering to themselves and spinning their egg-beaters in a distracted manner. I therefore had to man the wheel myself, while simultaneously seeing to the rigging, which I could accomplish only by improvising a system of ropes and pulleys controlled from the helmsman’s post. This was, I believe, the first time in the history of our navy that a frigate of this size had been controlled entirely by a single man, and in a howling gale at that; but I had no time to congratulate myself on my accomplishment, as the glowing outline of the death ship suddenly appeared not more than fifteen fathoms off our bow.

It was just as the scruffy but honest sailor had described it in Admiral Blanderson’s chambers. The decks–for it seemed to have multiple levels–glowed brightly with a brilliant illumination, and I could see the same sepulchral figures the scruffy but honest sailor had described, wandering here and there on the deck with no apparent aim or purpose.

Tossed by the storm, I lost sight of the apparition again as the mists and cloud closed around it. When next I saw it, the ghastly specter was astern and farther off; we must have passed in the storm without realizing it. Frantically spinning the wheel and yanking my pulleys this way and that, I managed to bring us about and set off in pursuit of the death ship, at least as well as I could in the crashing waves. The Indifferent was a brave ship, and responded as well as she could in the gale; and though the storm occasionally hid the specter from view, I did not lose it, but kept up my pursuit until the storm abated.

Now it was clear sailing, and I rapidly erased the distance between the death ship and the Indifferent. After lashing my men to their bunks to prevent them from leaping to their deaths in the shark-infested waters, I brought the Indifferent within range of our grappling-hooks and prepared to board the enormous glowing apparition.

I had not been aboard the ship more than half a minute when one of its skeletal crew surprised me by approaching me from behind.

“Ghastly storm tonight, wasn’t it?” said a voice like cold death.

I whipped around, and I am certain that, if I could have seen my own complexion, it would have been as white as a sail. I did, however, find the courage to respond as though I had my wits about me.

“Quite,” I replied.

Now, however, I noticed an extraordinary thing. In the brilliant light, I saw that the skeleton was indeed covered with flesh, and presented some evidence of being a living human. It is true that the man was extraordinarily emaciated, so that every one of his bones was easily visible, and from a distance he did present the aspect of an animated skeleton. It was only from nearby that one could discern the thin layer of flesh that covered his bones. Nevertheless, the flesh was there, and the man did seem to be living and breathing.

“Mind you,” he continued, “I imagine it was worse for you in your little boat. Got a bit wet, did you? I say, would you care for a midnight snack? The Nature Bar is open for sprouts and smoothies.”

Still not sure of myself, I simply nodded and followed him into what appeared to be a kind of salon or tavern on board the ship, where a number of similarly emaciated men and women were seated at tables grazing at what appeared to be plates piled high with gorse. We sat at an empty table, and immediately a uniformed waiter, just as skeletal as the rest of the inhabitants of this strange ship, brought us each a plate of gorse and a glass of sea-foam, or something similarly greenish.

“If it’s not impolite,” I began, “may I ask what ship this is, and who its passengers are?”

“Not at all impolite, sir,” the skeleton man replied as he began stuffing the greenery into his mouth. “This is the Jolly Marrow, a cruise ship patronized by ardent devotees of vegetarian health foods. Once a month, it makes a cruise to the Macadamia Coast, where the famous local bazaars are filled with the sprouts and soy products we crave.”

In an instant the mystery was unraveled. The brilliant illumination, the skeletal appearance of the passengers, the immense size of the ship–everything was explained in one sentence. I am still a believer in the supernatural, but this was entirely a natural affair, if “natural” is the word that springs to mind to describe human beings grazing like cattle.

We had a cheery conversation that lasted until the rosy fingers of dawn lit up the eastern sky. It was only then that I remembered my crew, still tied to their bunks on board the Indifferent. I bid my new acquaintance a hasty adieu, and as the sun rose in the east we were already sailing back homeward, my crew much relieved at my discoveries on board the Jolly Marrow. Along the way we ran across the Flying Dutchman, a rather more famous supernatural manifestation; but by that time my crew, bless them, had thoroughly rejected superstition, and were steadfast in their belief that we were seeing merely another vegetarian cruise liner: a comfortable delusion in which I was content to leave them, seeing no reason to disturb their complacency with pedantic details that they could very well live without.

No. 6.—The Death Ship, Part 1.

 

NOT LONG AFTER the adventure of the Axe of the Apostles, I was called into Admiral Blanderson’s private chambers once again. Such a summons invariably indicated that the Admiral had some special mission for me, or that there were bagels left over from the admirals’ daily staff meeting. Among the captains of the fleet, I was by this time the one whom Admiral Blanderson trusted with the most unusual and difficult enterprises, and I flatter myself that I had at least in some measure earned his trust.

As the matters on which Admiral Blanderson consulted me were usually state secrets, I was somewhat surprised to discover that Admiral Blanderson was not alone when I entered his inner sanctum. A rather scruffy sailor, whose obvious efforts at cleaning himself up to make him suitable company for the Admiral had been less effectual than he imagined, was sitting in front of the Admiral’s desk, occupying the chair that I usually sat in when I had my conferences with the Admiral.

“Good morning, Captain Hornswoggle,” the Admiral greeted me—not with his usual heartiness, however, but with a rather hoarse voice, as of a man whose spirit has been shaken by some terror. “I shall dispense with the ordinary pleasantries, and ask you a simple and direct question. Are you a believer in the supernatural?”

One is never entirely certain how to answer an unexpected personal question from a superior officer. In this case, I decided the truth was the best answer; so I reminded Admiral Blanderson of my encounters with the demon-god Picante and the Ghost Galleon of the Maldives, and declared that I chose to believe the testimony of my own experience.

“A sensible answer,” the Admiral responded. “Would you like a bagel, by the way? Help yourself. I must confess that I have never been much for that supernatural hocus-pocus jiggery-pokery higgledy-piggledy hickory-dickory-dock myself, but this honest fellow, a sailor in our merchant marine, has been telling me a story that would have made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up did I not carefully shave them off every morning.”

“Aye, cap’n,” the honest sailor interjected. “Thar be more things in heav’n an’ arth than wot be dreamt of in yer philosophizin’.”

“Mr. Sludgewater,” the Admiral said to the sailor, “would you be so kind as to repeat the story you have just told me, so that Captain Hornswoggle may hear the details of it?”

“Aye, ’twere a dark an’ stormy night, that it were,” the honest sailor began. He continued in that vein; but to spare you the trouble of deciphering his honest but impenetrable accent, and myself the trouble of transcribing it, I shall continue his story as though he spoke the Queen’s English, or at least the King’s.

“I was sailing on the snow-brig Merry Brindle on the equatorial route. We were hauling a shipload of nutcrackers to the Macadamia Coast, hoping to trade them for a cargo of the soybeans and alfalfa sprouts that grow in abundance along those blessed shores, when a gale blew up from the northwest, threatening to toss our ship on the unpredictable bars that lurk in the waters off the coast in those parts.

“Our captain was a wise old veteran who had seen many a storm before. He trimmed and folded the sails in certain patterns known to sailors as ‘kirigami,’ the better to withstand the onslaught of the storm; and he applied all his skill to keeping the ship safely in deep waters, and away from the dangerous shallows.

“Lightning flashed all around us, and the thunder was terrible; but you may imagine our greater terror when quite suddenly, out of the driving rain and foggy darkness, there appeared the ghostly outline of an enormous ship, glowing from stem to stern with a bright unearthly light, and headed straight toward us.

“Our panic terror gave us something like superhuman strength as we turned the wheel and swung the booms about. We lurched to port just in time; instead of colliding with the ghastly apparition, we passed by the ship so close that we could nearly reach over the starboard rail and grasp its anchor rope. Shadowy figures marched to and fro on the glowing deck, a sight that filled us with a nameless dread. But just as we had passed halfway along the length of the enormous ship, a brilliant flash from the heavens illuminated the scene as bright as day; and in that brief illumination, gentlemen, I saw a sight that will haunt me as long as I live, though I should live as long as the antediluvian patriarchs. For every member of that ghastly crew was not a human being, but an animated skeleton.

“I am not a timid man. I have spent my entire adult life on the sea, and have experienced more than my share, perhaps, of perilous adventures. But I bid you dread that death ship more than the entire Iberian navy; for myself, I had rather die cleanly by a Spanish harquebus than wander for eternity as a living skeleton with only the demons for my horrible company.

“Needless to say, the story of our encounter with the death ship spread quickly in sailors’ gossip. Since we returned, no one has dared sail the equatorial route, and the people of the Macadamia Coast, poor blighted devils, are starving amidst abundance for lack of good manufactured nutcrackers.”

There was a brief silence; then Admiral Blanderson spoke again.

“And now, Captain Hornswoggle,” he said quietly but distinctly, “I imagine you have a rather accurate idea of what your next assignment will be.”

 

Proceed to the conclusion.

No. 5.—The Lost Axe, concluded

(continued from Part 1).

THE REST OF the voyage toward the Horn was uneventful; a light typhoon off Madagascar did not dampen our spirits, and the few pirates we encountered treated us with the utmost deference, apparently under the impression that we were the Ghost Galleon of the Maldives, a legendary apparition noted for its extraordinarily colorful sails. We reached the port of Cor Anglais in better time than we had expected, and we immediately made contact with a man who, we had been told, was the best guide in the French Horn.

Our only difficulty was in communicating with the gentleman. He did not speak our language, so I tried a few words of French, describing in the simplest possible language the monastery we hoped to find. His face lit up with recognition, and he immediately informed us, with perfect French pronunciation, that his aunt’s pen was on his uncle’s table. This, however, was not the information we had been looking for, and it seemed to be useless to attempt any other form of conversation with him.

Fortunately, however, we were able to secure the services of an interpreter, whose only detriment was that he suffered immoderately from agoraphobia. He had no difficulty in performing the functions for which we had engaged him in the small rooms we had hired in Cor Anglais, but as soon as he came out into the outside world, even in the narrow streets of this ancient port, he was overcome by terror and flung his cloak over his head. For our journey, we had to construct a portable tent; and whenever we had need of his interpretive services, we retreated to the dark interior of the tent, where our interpreter felt secure enough to perform his duties. This made our progress rather slow, as we had to set up the tent whenever we needed to communicate with our guide. The rest of the time, our interpreter kept his cloak over his head, and my junior officers carried him.

I shall not weary you with the details of our progress overland. We settled into a tedious routine of stopping at every fork in the trail, setting up our tent, posing our questions to the interpreter, waiting for him to pose them to the guide and receive his responses, listening to his translation, and then folding the tent and following the directions we had received until the next time we needed guidance.

At last we came within sight of a curious flat-topped mountain, on the top of which we could see a few ancient constructions and one tall spire.

“Voilà!” our guide shouted excitedly, without waiting for our interpreter. “Voilà la Plume de ma tante!” He pointed toward the top of the mountain. “C’est vraiment comme je vous ai dit! La Plume de ma tante est sur la Table de mon oncle!”

Here we made a rather embarrassing discovery. Our guide indeed spoke perfect French; we had simply misunderstood him the first time we spoke to him. The mountain, from its extraordinary flat top and sheer sides, was called “My Uncle’s Table” by the locals, and the monastery at the top of it was known as “My Aunt’s Feather.” (The words for “feather” and “pen” are the same in French—a fact I had not considered back in Cor Anglais.) I must admit that I felt rather silly about all the effort we had put into maintaining our interpreter; but what’s done is done, and the important thing was that we had reached our destination.

That is to say, we had nearly reached our destination; but there still remained the nearly insurmountable problem of climbing the sheer rock face of the mountain. We agreed that it could not be done without a rope. I therefore went up to the top and tied our rope to a stout stump, and then came down, letting out the rope as I came. Once I had returned to the base, we began our laborious ascent, clinging to the rope; and indeed I was grateful that we had thought to bring it, since without our rope the climb would have been clearly impossible.

At the top we were greeted by the abbot, who made us welcome with signs and gestures, and shared with us the simple fare that was the monks’ daily sustenance. We were grateful enough to get it, and once our stomachs were full I made signs that I should like to see the interior of the church. The abbot was glad to show me, and once my eyes adjusted to the dim light in the cavernous nave, I saw, hanging behind the altar, the very reliquary that had been described to me in Admiral Blanderson’s chambers.

This was the thing I had sought; but how to get my hands on it? I was a determined young man, but I was not a monster; nothing could induce me even to show disrespect for the holy monks who were the relic’s keepers, let alone to turn my strength against them in a contest over the relic.

I decided at length to make a simple honest appeal to the abbot’s better nature. By elaborate signs I indicated how much better and more virtuous we were than the Spanish, and that the power of the relic behind the altar might do much good in the world if it were placed in the custody of a nation so strictly moral as our own; and, on the other hand, that it might be the cause of much evil if it fell into the hands of the perfidious Spaniards. Needless to say, the effort of communicating all these ideas by gestures was exceedingly fatiguing. I was disappointed, therefore, to discover that the abbot seemed not to understand anything I had attempted to convey to him. He only understood that I wanted to take the reliquary, and he did not want to give it to me. I had no choice but to call on the services of our interpreter once more.

The interpreter was brought into the church; but having briefly glanced out from under his cloak and seen the vast dim space within the church, he let out an unearthly howl and flung the cloak over his head again.

This howl caught the attention of the abbot. He turned, and, in the dim light, beheld the spectral figure of our interpreter stumbling toward him, his cloak over his head, looking very much like a shapeless spirit from the other world. The abbot gave voice to an unearthly howl of his own, and immediately took down the reliquary and gave it to me, pleading with me by animated gestures to depart as quickly as practicable and take the horrible specter with me.

This was as good an outcome as could be expected under the circumstances, and I gladly accepted his gift of the reliquary.

The journey back to Cor Anglais was a good bit easier than the journey thence had been, as we were now able to communicate with our guide directly; and the long sea voyage was interrupted by few incidents, the only one of any note being our meeting with the real Ghost Galleon of the Maldives, whose spectral crew merely congratulated us on our taste in fabric.

Thus I was in good spirits when I returned home, and it was with a jaunty step that I entered Admiral Blanderson’s chambers to present him with the Axe of the Apostles. He received me warmly and congratulated me on my success; then, very carefully, he set the ancient reliquary on his capacious desk and delicately pulled the pins out of the latches. Slowly he opened the lid of the reliquary to reveal, nestled amongst the costliest jewels and gold filigree, a four-string banjo.

This was not quite what we had anticipated, but we decided to make the best of it. I suggested that we could give the banjo as a goodwill gift to the Spanish ambassador. And so we did; the ambassador was much pleased, and soon taught himself to play “I’ve Been Floating Down the Old Green River” on the instrument in a rather aggressive ragtime style. This ambassador later became his country’s foreign minister; and I flatter myself that the good relations we established with this gift were in no small measure responsible for the cordial understanding that currently obtains between our nation and the Spanish. I consider, therefore, that my mission was on the whole a success.

No. 4.—The Lost Axe, Part 1.

CERTAINLY THE MOST unusual of my assignments as captain came shortly after the end of the Spanish War. The successful conclusion I had brought to that conflict had increased my reputation enormously in the admiralty, and it was decided—by whom I do not know to this day—that I was to be trusted with a great secret, a mission of such importance that it could well change the history of the world. So, at any rate, I was told when Admiral Blanderson spoke to me in his private rooms.

“Captain Hornswoggle,” he said gravely, “what I am about to reveal to you is a great secret. The mission on which you are to be sent is of such importance that it could well change the history of the world. I must remind you, therefore, that nothing you hear within these walls may ever go beyond them.”

I swore the most powerful oath I knew, which as I recall was “cross my heart and hope to die,” that I should never reveal what I heard in this chamber; and indeed if the details of the mission had not long since been published far and wide under the Freedom of Information Act, thus releasing me from my oath, I should have taken the memory to my grave.

“It is not often,” the Admiral continued, “that the naval forces are sent in search of holy relics; but such indeed is your mission, which you may regard almost as a kind of crusade.”

The Admiral reached for an ancient manuscript bound in crusty leather. Opening it to a marked page, he turned it to face me. There was a good bit of writing in the old Gothic style, and a remarkably vivid illumination of a jewel-encrusted double-bladed axe.

“This,” the Admiral explained, “is the Axe of the Apostles. It is said to have been blessed by St. Thaddeus himself, whose blessing endowed it with such potency that with it any good Christian, no matter how weak or infirm, will be able to chop enough wood to keep a family of four moderately well supplied through the winter, provided they are not too prodigal with it.”

He looked both ways, as though, even in the privacy of his private chambers, he could not trust that we were unobserved. Then he leaned closer and continued.

“Although your prompt action in the Battle of Batter Bay brought peace with Spain on very advantageous terms (in addition, you must recall, to saving my own life), I need hardly tell you that vigilance is necessary to keep the peace. Were the Spanish to possess this remarkable instrument, there is no telling how they might turn it to their advantage. With so much wood at their disposal, they might perhaps even be in a position to reverse our victory, and dictate to us the terms of the peace.”

This, I agreed, would be a catastrophe for us, and I was willing to do anything in my power to keep the perfidious Spaniards from forcing paella down our throats. The voyage, the Admiral told me, would not be without danger; but in those youthful days I laughed at danger. (Since that time my sense of humor has become more refined.) I assured the Admiral that, wherever the Axe of the Apostles might be hidden, I was the man to find it. The Admiral assured me, in turn, that he had complete confidence in my abilities.

The Axe, he explained to me, had been lost since the time of the Apostolic Fathers; but recent research in ancient records suggested that it had been transported to the Horn of Africa by Abyssinian converts. The Horn in my youth, you may recall, was divided between English and French territories; and it was unfortunately in the French Horn that the Axe of the Apostles would most probably be found. A certain ancient monastery was said to have been its last known location, and a recent visitor to that monastery had reported seeing a large reliquary directly behind the altar which, from its form, most probably held either a double-bladed axe or a banjo.

No time was to be lost. I was assigned a merry frigate, the Indifferent, which was outfitted with everything necessary for a voyage around the Cape—for such was to be our route, in hopes that the Spanish and other unfriendly powers might assume that we were merely another ship bound for the Cape Colony. To make that assumption even more plausible, we brought with us a considerable cargo of silk capes, the profitable trade in which with the fashion-conscious natives gave the colony its name. There was no time for long goodbyes: we set out within two days after my meeting with Admiral Blanderson, and it was just as well that I had no family to speak of, or at least none that would acknowledge me.

We encountered no trouble until we came near the Cape Colony. Then a vicious storm arose from the south so suddenly that we had no chance to prepare for it. The Indifferent was a brave ship and could hold her own in nearly any seas, but no one on board had ever suffered through such a storm as this. The waves appeared as so many Alpine peaks capped with snow, and our ship, which had seemed so generously large when we left port, looked hardly bigger than a dinghy as it was now tossed up to the highest peak, now with dizzying rapidity plunged into the deepest valley. The sturdy crew did what they could to furl the sails; but the howling wind tore the ropes out of their hands, and shredded our sails like excelsior.

By the mercy of heaven we made it through the storm with no loss of life. Our ship, however, was dead in the water, every last one of our sails reduced to tatters, and most of the tatters carried off by wind and wave to parts unknown.

Although we gave thanks for our delivery from the storm, we were in danger of exchanging a quick death for a long and unpleasant one. We had provisions for a while, but without our sails we would drift aimlessly until they ran out.

At this point I bethought myself of our cargo. Inquiring amongst the crew, I found one young sailor whose mother had sent him off to sea with a sewing kit, in case he should damage his fresh uniform during the occasional bouts of vigorous activity which are common to the nautical life. With gratitude and the promise of a speedy promotion, I commandeered his sewing kit, and I put the entire crew to work sewing the capes together into sails. I had to teach most of them to sew, but within a few days we had the most colorful ship in the fleet; and, more to the point, we were moving again, continuing once more our voyage toward the French Horn.

Proceed to the Conclusion.