Arrrh!!! Welcome back, Mateys! Old Looooooooooooooong John needed a cup o' grog an' his shipmates come ta supply it!!

Mighty fearsome things, the colossal squids and the giants are. 'Course, we never called 'em those names. Nay, we had our own names fer 'em.

I remember on time, when I was ghostin' on the old "Thundermug." We was bound for Pago-Pago and Alma Alta with a load of cheap tin tray, we were. Oh, the Mate had told the owners that there was no market fer cheap tin trays in the South Pacific, that ye had ta take 'em to England, but they wouldn't lissen to 'er, so there we were, fightin' the spray, out of Maui 'round the Horn.

Now, I know what yer thinkin'. But our Mate, name o' Mary Reed, was bettern' any other I've ghosted under. She'd knock a man down fer lookin' cross-eyed, and ol' Cross-Eyed Jack spent the voyage black and blue. Half the crew "fell on their cutlass", an' it weren't no accidents that she was holdin' the cutlass they fell on.

Cap'n Chance was in charge, we called 'im "Fat Chance" an' not because of his weight, either. We sailors, we figgered that was the chance we had to drop the hook in Alma Alta, seein' as how it's landlocked. And our route there and to Pago Pago didn't make us any more confident in the Cap'n, either.

'Nother grog, but with more rum and less water. Aye, thankee.

Well, like I was sayin', we was riding the horses o' the sea, as the poets say, when we saw this fish, a shark we thought, about 24 meters long, like in the news articles. The crew took a right fright, tellin' the Mate an' the Cap'n to turn about, but the Mate coldcocked White Tom, gouged out a coupla eyes, bit off an ear, and sent all hands aloft, with or without their owners. Oh, she was a tough one!

Cap'n Chance looked ahead an' said, "Sail On! And on! And on! And on!"

Well, we hit that fishy square on, right in the middle of its belly. An' it reared up an'....

Will ye excuse an old salty ghost fer a moment? This grog is passin' right through me, an' I have ta go see a man about a dog er shake the ectoplasm from the ol' lilly er somethin'. I'll be right back, an' don't any o' you swabbies touch me grog!