Charming

No more than a week had passed since our visit to mr Pelagius, he-of-the-watered-wine-and-polio-ravaged-stride. Ernest and I were bound for Oslo (stowed uncomfortably into the captains quarters of a leaky chartered fishing scow), seeking the next connection in our Franco-cult-hunting quest. Seemingly Mr Pelagius primary source of intelligence relating to the cult was one Mme. Lundqvist from Oslo’s fishmonger’s district. We disentangled ourselves from Mr Pelagius backwater villa and made straight for the coast. Ernest knowing something of the land was able to secure us passage on our host vessel, the unfortunately named Ojo Negro. The captain of our vessel, a man with the unlikely moniker of Saul (humorously pronounced Sah-ool, with that silly Portuguese accent) proved to be a man of high character if not hygiene. Capitan Saul was in fact a fair sailor, claiming to have ridden the waves with no less than Farragut the 3rd and Admiral Weynon himself, in his final quest for the southern pole. Of course, this unliklely tale would make our capitan at least eighty years old, but we were clearly in no position to argue, as we were well out of sight of land by evening of our first night at sea, and were slated for a one week voyage north, ever north.
I cannot say much about the cuisine de table served by our capitan and his slovenly crew. Mostly it was some amalgam of a rum-based-stew, containing clearly the lowest cuts of the pig, a few bits of celery and some obscure form of locally grown potato. When I inquired as to his brandy selection, the capitan merely scoffed, and filled my mug with the same vile rum that Ernest was already so enamored with. Poor Ernest. He did so love his grog. I remember one time in, oh it had to be…thirty five at the latest that Ernest got involved in a love triangle with some obscure Mongolian headman and his third wife. The only solution available to our poor Ernest that didn’t involve the horseman’s blade in his belly was to survive an odd drinking contest. The game was based on the rapid consumption of rum, a short stick and the backside of the smallest dog in the village. It was quite strange to hear Ernest tell of it, and in fact to this day, I think he got many of the details wrong owing to the vast quantities of rum he had imbibed. Small dog indeed...
Well, back to our poor misguided capitan. It was one the fourth day of our voyage that we developed engine troubles, seemingly unassisted by Ernest’s insistence of mixing a bit of his grog and the engine’s diesel- “to give it more kick, damn you Vidal” he would say. The problem of course was that Ernest couldn’t drink alone, and thus insisted that the power plant join him in a few rounds of his rum-fuel cocktail (dieselitos he called them). The resulting temperature increase from the combustion chamber’s non-rum-considered design played havoc with the cooling system, and a variety of pumps and gaskets had to be replaced. Poor Ernest, I cannot remember the last time I saw a man weep so at the illness of a drinking partner. He clearly had little faith in our capitan’s ability to weather the storm, and restore his amigo to full function. A promise of vast sums of pesos were also required to prevent the capitan from tossing Ernest to the sharks, which had been following us since the second day when the capitan dragged one his men across the keel owing to a misunderstanding over the rules of mumbletypeg. We all carried the knowledge of choosing “first-thrower’s primacy” the rest of our days, having heard that poor sailor’s screams during that bloody event.