Conched Out
All you ladies can stop sending in links to your photos now. Right after Nelson's last post, a wave turned a crack in the Lucky Sue's hull amidships into a crevice. Within a minute, both halves of her lay on the sea bottom. Nelson got whacked in the noggin in the process. Luckily, the current took safely him ashore (along with this computer).
The bad news, far as Nelson's concerned--or will be, when his head gets better and he regains what senses he had--is that the woman who won the Miss Coconuts pageant on Mocha responded to his invitation and showed up for her date with him. When she learned that he was in the hospital in a drooling stupor, she was overcome by grief and rushed up the mountain to comfort him. When she got to him and learned that his diamond ring had sunk with the Lucky Sue and was lost, she decided to go hit a party on Guava instead.
As you may've figured from the fact I'm blogging again, I survived the explosion. What's left of the crew (sadly, Thesaurus's mighty heart has beat its last and Sybil's missing) and me are patients at Conch General Hospital--a thatched roof, bamboo building no bigger than a barn. Along with the forty-some survivors from the royal army, it's so overcrowded here that it's two men to a bed. I'm bunking with Flarq. More worrisome than my wounds (mostly burns and a couple busted ribs) is he insists on keeping a harpoon by his side, and he rolls over in his sleep.
Most worrisome is the mob of whale worshipers now massed outside the hospital calling for the rest of my bones to be broken.
P.S. Two things I will write in the future, if I make it there, are a remembrance of Thesaurus and some new thoughts I have on the mystery of the two whales killed in California. In the meantime, here's a scrimshaw of the convalescing Bob:
