Hearken to me tale, ye dastardly deck-apes!
So, last night I was sailing a sloop with my youngest son, who is 11. We were delivering some chickens and a pig for the Merchants, and our destination forced us to sail into a storm. A really bad storm. It were a helluva blow, lads!
The bilge was slowly filling with water, between the driving rain and the waves washing across the deck. We were getting tossed about like a toy ship in a washing machine! The wheel was fighting me every second, I could barely keep us on course as we climbed up one side of a swell and plummeted down the other. The compass was spinning madly, and I had to navigate by sight, barely able to make out the lights of the distant island through the gloom and sheets of rain.
At one point, lightning struck the deck of our ship and I was knocked off my feet, the wheel spinning like a windmill as I scrambled to steady our course. Then I heard the sickening sound of a hull breach, and we started taking on water quickly.
The words to an old song ran through my head "...does any man know, where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
I started to panic. I screamed "Bail! BAIL!!!" as loud as I could, as my words were muffled by the roar of the gale and the crashing waves. I could hear the water gushing in, the ship beginning to founder. "BAAIIILLLL!!" I bellowed. Leaving the wheel and grabbing a bucket, I took my own advice. Patching the holes, and bailing enough water to feel safe, I ran back to the wheel, wrenching her hard over and back on course.
During all of this, my son was nowhere to be seen....and I also noticed that our prize pig, a fat, golden striped beauty bound for some merchant's table I shouldn't wonder, was missing.
"Where are you?!" I hollered, still caught up in the intensity of the circumstances. My son calmly answered "Dad, I bailed! You told me to bail!".
I were confused, lads...had I drank those brain cells away? The ones that should understand what is happening?
"You didn't bail anything, and where are you?" I said, more puzzled by the second. Then he appeared on the ship. "I'm right here, dad. I bailed, like you said! Then I swam to the mermaid and here I am!"
You see lads, to an old sea-dog like meself, bailin' means tossing the water out of a ship to keep her from swampin'. But to my son, "BAIL!" means jump off the ship with our prize pig, and do it NOW! Since younger generations use the term "bail" from the old expression "bail out" of a plane, as in with a parachute, to generally mean "Leave or get out".
I'm sad to say, our prize pig is now most likely in the belly of a shark, as the poor little piggy drowned when the mermaid's magic transferred my son back to the deck of our sloop.
So then, lads. The moral of the story is, if'n you want to know the age of your shipmates, yell "bail!". If they grab a bucket, they're old. If they jump over the side, they're young.
As easy as downing a tankard of grog.
GULP!
