Picture 133.  The Captain Makes Himself A Glass of Grog


Picture 133. The Captain Makes Himself A Glass of Grog

Despite the hurricane and the sea monster following his ship, the Captain prepares his well-deserved refreshment, or at least tries to do so. The cabin boy stares in disbelief at the chaos in the galley.

Stefan Mart's story about Captain Flint is a fairy tale only in the sense: 'Don't try to get me to believe fairy-tales!', in other words, it's a real sailor's yarn. It also belongs to the genre of the anti-climax story, a mock horror story in which the tension breaks down at the climax, culminating in ridiculous triviality: the sea monster which almost destroyed ship and crew had in fact meant no harm. It simply wanted to return the knitting bag to the captain's jealous and quarrelsome wife who accompanied her husband on all his voyages - the bag that he had thrown overboard into the Indian Ocean in a rare fit of rage.


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