Return Of The Rose

The mainland ferry, the Licoco Rose, finally returned to port in Licoco Town today, two weeks late.

The ferry was first spotted by Mr Bill Aegeus, as he was walking along the clifftop at High Palms. He was so shocked at her appearance that he fell off the cliff. "It was the sails, I tell you," he explained to a packed press conference. "They was always white normally. I ain't been used to seeing them in black."

Mr Aegeus said it had been quite an ordeal. "I was only saved by me beard. She just snagged on a tree root as I went over the edge. All I had to do then was grow her a bit longer, just enough to abseil down to the beach."

Captain Scarfy O'Gruggles, of the Licoco Rose, later gave the reasoning behind the change of livery on the sails. "Aye. We just covered them in tar, see. Seal them up, so to speak. They catch the wind much better like that, and they're waterproof besides, so we could sail in the rain. We being a bit behind schedule by then, see."

Pressed further on the causes of the delay, he said: "We left about on time, as I recall. The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, merrily did we drop. Below the kirk, below the hill, below the lighthouse top. At length did cross an albatross, through the fog it came, as if it had been a Christian soul, we hailed it in God's name."

At this point Bill Rook of the Licoco Island Mariners' Union accused Capt. O'Gruggles of being drunk, but the captain brushed this aside: "Water, water everywhere," he admitted, "nor any drop to drink."

"Why look'st thou so?" asked Licoco Island News reporter Vobiscum Jeroman.

"With my crossbow," the captain replied, crestfallen, "I shot the albatross."

Without the albatross's ventilatory benefits, Capt. O'Gruggles said, the ferry's progress was substantially hindered. "And I had done an hellish thing, and it would work them woe, for all averred I'd killed the bird that made the breeze to blow. Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down, 'twas sad as sad could be, and we did speak only to break the silence of the sea. Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion, as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

The captain then recounted the wild and mysterious series of adventures that followed: "Four times fifty living men, I heard nor sigh nor groan, with heavy thump, a lifeless lump, they dropped down one by one." This statement was later denied by the ship's crew.

Capt. O'Gruggles was becalmed for many days, but finally the wind returned. "And the coming wind did roar more loud, and the sails did sigh like sedge, and the rain poured down from one black cloud, the moon was at its edge," he explained.

The Licoco Rose's eventual return to port was widely attributed to a miracle. "The loud wind never reached the ship, yet now the ship moved on," Capt. O'Gruggles agreed. "Beneath the lightning and the moon, the dead men gave a groan. They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, nor spake nor moved their eyes. It had been strange, even in a dream, to have seen those dead men rise."

Ferry operator MachuaStar later said in a statement that normal service on the Licoco Rose will resume this weekend.

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