Belay that talk, matey, or I'll be takin' a marlinspike to yer head.

I've always wanted to say that. But seein's as how I can't hold a proper marlinspike, and the ones I can hold wouldn just pass right through ye, it don't make any difference now, does it?

In the same way, missy, ye've learnt that I can't hold me likker. So I'll just sniff the fumes, sort of the spirit of the spirit if ye like. So set a cask by me here and I'll snort up that, and not a wet spot in a hold full.

Ah, that smells right, that does. Puts me in mind of the time we was makin' fer El Pueblo de Nostra Senora de los Angeles, a little spit of a port south of Monterey, with a cargo of bricks that were supposed to go to New York, but the captain had made a slight navvygational error and there we were, right off the coast of Californy.

'Twas fair weather all the way, too, even 'round the Horn. Now, you're askin' yerself, how kin that be, 'tis always foul weather round the Horn. Well, ye see, a great whaleship, the "Exeunt Humvees", was returnin' from the Pacific Grounds, full of oil, when she stuck a rock and nearly tumbled over. All of her cargo washed out, and the oil cast upon troubled waters calmed them for the next year and half all over the Pacific. This was the time when Balboa first saw the Ocean and named it "pacific" because it looked so peaceful. And it was, until all that whale oil dispersed and it was back to its usual self. Now ye know the truth of that, anyway.

Anyway, mateys, the old ocean was dead calm, and the breezes were just right. We were doin' twelve knots with the main skys'l set, when the skipper -- 'twas Olaf O'Donnell as I recollect, the famous Norwegian-Gaelic -- gave an order to do somethin' or other. Ye see, him being half Norse and half some sort of Gaelic, ye couldn't understand one word after another.

So we all did what we thought he'd said. The helmsman put it hard ta starboard, the first mate had all the sails run out, the surgeon went to his battle station, the chaplin started baptizin', and the cook ran around riggin' fer silent runnin'. Me, as the Ship's Haint, was busy splicin' the mainbrace.

Ye know what happened, I'm sure. We hit the shore such a lick that we drove up 'er miles and miles and miles, all the way the ship slowly wearin' away under us until at the very end only the bricks were preventin' us from sinkin' entirely.

Finally they too wore away, and the good ship finally erased herself, so ta speak, up in what was later called Utah and Wyomin'. Yes, mates, I tell ye, that's the real reason for the Gulf of California and the Colorado River itself. Why, ye should have seen the sparks flyin' from the nailheads when we driv through the rocks and created the Grand Canyon -- 'twas like fireworks and illuminations!

But Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong John is here now, all safe and well, or as safe and well as a ghost kin be, and he'd like another whifter of good brandy, or, barrin' that, meths.