Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

For the last two or three days, there had been a steady effort by the Shellbacks to exaggerate the various tortures that would be inflicted on the lowly pollywogs when we crossed the equator. Among our pollywogs, who composed most of the crew, were some apparently made of fairly stern stuff. One obnoxious character, calling himself the Little Gray Fox, attempted to foment a rebellion. He posted signs reading “Pollywogs arise” and “shellbacks take heed and surrender while you may.” And King Neptune’s crown, the equipment for the Royal Barbers, and the painstakingly made shillelaghs for the chastisement of the guilty pollywogs mysteriously vanished. A thorough investigation by the Shellbacks uncovered the information that their paraphernalia had disappeared permanently through the garbage ejector.

I remembered vaguely having given permission to flush the garbage disposer while we were cruising about the Rocks, and I suppose I had been an unwitting accomplice to a foul deed.

At a few minutes after eight in the evening, we hit the equator. There was a grinding jolt from somewhere forward (which sounded suspiciously like a torpedo tube full of water being fired, which, of course, I knew it was, having given the required permission to shoot it). A confused report, broken off unfinished, came over the ship’s announcing system, and shortly after, I received a note that King Neptune and his Royal Court had arrived on board and desired my presence in the crew’s mess hall.

Buckling on my sword and putting on my cap for the occasion, since undue informality would, of course, have been unseemly—and possibly would have resulted in even sterner measures being visited upon the unworthy pollywogs, for whom I felt the deepest sympathy indeed—I headed for the appointed place.

Neptune, when I met him, looked suspiciously like Loyd Garlock, who had crossed the line with me in the Trigger eight years before. The Royal Queen, half a head taller than he, with brilliant red lips, long stringy curly hair (which was not surprising since it came from a floor mop), and smoking at all times a long black cigar, might have been Torpedoman Second Class Wilmot A. Jones.

The Queen’s bosom (which some of her friends seemed to think ought to be pronounced “buzzoom”) looked to me like a pair of strategically slung grapefruit, but of course my imagination was probably working overtime and I knew I should resolutely put aside such unworthy thoughts. Someone considerately handed me a piece of paper containing a typed and smudged script, with the assistance of which, and with a little ad-libbing, the following colloquy ensued: