600 words

[Canrider]

Just about the best 'It was a dark and stormy night' beginning I've ever encountered. Just watch how complete incomprehensibility is merged with understandable within the language choice..



They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway. The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat.
It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put Turner together again. They cloned a square meter of skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides. They bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green. He spent most of those three months in a ROM-generated simstim construct of an idealized New England boyhood of the previous century. The Dutchman's visits were gray dawn dreams, nightmares that faded as the sky lightened beyond his second floor bedroom window. You could smell the lilacs, late at night. He read Conan Doyle by the light of a sixty-watt bulb behind a parchment shade printed with clipper ships. He masturbated in the smell of clean cotton sheets and thought about cheerleaders. The Dutchman opened a door in his back brain and came strolling in to ask questions, but in the morning his mother called him down to Wheaties, eggs and bacon, coffee with milk and sugar. And one morning he woke in a strange bed, the Dutchman standing beside a window spilling tropical green and a sun- light that hurt his eyes. "You can go home now, Turner We're done with you You're good as new."

 

[craigwend]

How you doin'? I picture things a certain way then go back to it another day the green mind said it’s okay. Cause you know where they’re gonna be all’s you have to do is come with me it’s cool, they’re probably asleep. On the outside that’s where they always hide come to my side and I’ll introduce you to some of their kind I know you’ve always tried and now it’s your time to take in their point of view it’s nothing new. I've been bouncing off the walls I can’t hang with them for long they’re cool, but I need you on a certain level I think they’re great but on another I can’t relate to anything they do. On the outside might be with them tonight unless you decide to call then I’ll check out you, babe Hangin’ heavys such a routine I’ve just begun to forget why I seldom n' try to break out of their scene And now I Gotta work on you so the frogs 'll hang and they’ll always be hangin’ now we’re here, what do we do? I’ve been sortin’ through the pros and cons of your eyes, they’re webbed toes can’t you help move it along? I been pickin’ through my thoughts it’s a shame my judgement rots and I sure feel where I belong. On the outside well it’ll be a while I gotta unfry ’fore I pick it up with you, help me Do I need that stable care? don’t I know that they’ll be there does that cut now you’ve appeared? Or do I need that stable core? or do I jump for something more? are you all that I fear?, tell me I been pickin’ through my thoughts it’s a shame my judgement rots and I sure go where I belong. It’s a call that’s tough to make it could be a big mistake can’t you help move it along? If I keep stewin’ ’bout how I feel eventually you'll split, then I won’t have to deal sounds like a plan. But it’s kind of lame to let it slide knowin’ either way I haven’t tried can’t figure out where it all stands in the green mind.

There's a way I feel right now
Wish you'd help me, don't know how
We're all nuts, so who helps who
Some help when no one's got a clue
Baby, why don't we
Baby, why don't we
There's a place I'd like to go
When you get there then I'll know
There's a place I know you've been
Here's a wagon, get on it
Baby, why don't we
Baby, why don't we
Baby, why don't we
Baby, why don't we
Why don't we
You won't see me
You won't see me
There you are and here I stand
Tryin' to make you feel my hand
You won't see me
You won't see me
I ring the doorbell in your mind
But it's locked from the outside
You won't see me
You won't see me
You don't live there anyway
But I knock on it all day
You won't see me
You won't see me
There's a place I go
But you're not there
And I'm supposed to know
How to get to where
You're gonna be
But you don't even know
So I'm flakin'
While you're shakin' it
With every stone you fly
Without a mind, without a spine
What is it that you wanna find
There's a place I go
But you're not there
And I'm supposed to know
How to get to where
You're gonna be
But you don't even know
So I'm flalin'
While you're sailin' off
Without a course in mind
Without a mind, without a dock
What is it that you wanna find
There's a place I'd like to go
When you get there then I'll know
There's a place I know you've been
Here's a wagon, get on it
Baby, why don't we
Baby, why don't we
Why don't we
You won't see me
You won't see me
There you are and here I stand
Tryin' to make you feel my hand
You won't see me
You won't see me
I ring the doorbell in your mind
But it's locked from the outside
You won't see me
You won't see me
You don't live there anyway
But I knock on it all day
You won't see me
You won't see me

 

[swee'pea99]

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

 

[Tigerbiten]

Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume1 Prologue from Baka-Tsuki

"Gokigenyou."
"Gokigenyou."
The clear morning greeting travels through the serene, blue sky.
Today, once again, the maidens that gather in the Virgin Mary's garden smile purely to one another as they pass under the tall gateway.
Wrapping their innocent bodies and souls is a deep-coloured school uniform.
Walking slowly so as to not disturb the pleats in their skirts, so as to not toss their white sailor scarves into disarray... such is the standard of modesty here. Running here because one is in danger of missing class, for instance, is too undignified a sight for students to wish upon themselves.
Lillian Private Academy for Women.
Founded in Meiji 34, this academy was originally intended for the young women of nobility, and is now a Catholic academy of prestigious tradition. Placed in downtown Tokyo, where you can still see traces of Musashi Field's greenery, it is protected by God, a garden where maidens can receive tutelage from pre-school to university.
Time passes, and even now, in Heisei, three era-names past Meiji, it is a valuable academy, where nurtured ladies raised in greenhouses are shipped out in carefully packaged boxes after 18 years of schooling - an arrangement that continues to survive.
She-, Fukuzawa Yumi (福沢祐巳), is just one of those ordinary ladies.

 

[Tigerbiten]

Sword Art Online:Volume 1 Chapter 1

From Baka-Tsuki

Chapter 1

A grey sword cut my shoulder.
The thin line at the top left corner of my field of vision shrank slightly. At the same time a cold hand passed over my heart.
The blue line —called the “HP bar”— is a visual rendering of my life force. There was still a little over 80% left. No, that phrase isn't appropriate enough. Right now, I was about 20% closer to death.
I dashed backwards before the enemy's sword even began its attacking motion.
“Haaa...”
I forced a huge breath to steady myself. The «body» in this world didn't need oxygen; but the body on the other side, or rather the body lying down in the real world, would be breathing heavily. My limp hands would be soaked with sweat, and my heartbeat would be off the charts.
Of course.
Even if everything I see right now is nothing more than a rendering of a 3D virtual reality, and the bar being reduced was nothing more than a bunch of numbers that showed my hit points, the fact that I was fighting for my life didn't change.
When you think about it like that, this fight was extremely unfair. That's because the «enemy» in front of me —a humanoid with dully shining arms covered in dark green scales and a lizard's head and tail— was not a human, nor was it really alive. It was a digital lump that the system would replace regardless of how many times it was killed.
—No.
The AI that controlled the lizardman was studying my movements and enhancing its ability to respond to them with every second that passed. However, the moment that this unit was destroyed, the data would be reset instead of being passed on to the unit that would regenerate in this area.
So in a sense, this lizardman was also alive, a single being unique to this world.
“...right?”
There was no way that it would have understood the word that I had muttered to myself, but the lizardman (a level 82 monster called «Lizardman Lord») hissed and smiled, showing the sharp fangs that protruded from its long jaw.
This is reality. Everything in this world is real. There's no virtual reality or fakery of any kind.
I shifted the one-handed long sword in my right hand to waist-height and watched the enemy.
The lizardman moved the buckler in his left hand forward and drew back the scimitar to his right.
A chill breeze blew into the shadowed dungeon and the flame of the torch shook. The wet floor softly reflected the flickering torch-light.
“Kraaah!!”
With a tremendous scream, the lizardman leapt. The scimitar drew a sharp arc as it flew towards me. A blinding orange light lit its trajectory; a high-class one-hit sword skill of the curved sword «Fell Crescent». It was a formidable charge-type sword skill that covered a distance of 4 meters in 0.4 seconds.
But, I was already expecting the attack.
I had slowly increased the distance to lure the AI into creating this situation. I closed in on the lizardman, my mind registering the burning smell that the scimitar left behind as it sliced through the air merely centimeters before my nose.
“...Ha!”
With a short shout, I swung my sword horizontally. The sword, now covered in sky-blue light, cut through the thinly protected stomach and bright red light scattered instead of blood. There was a low scream.
However, my sword didn't stop. The system assisted me through the programmed movements and chained the next slash with a speed that would normally have been impossible.
This is the most important element in battles in this world, «Sword Skill».
The sword sped off right from left and cut into the lizardman's chest. In this state, I spun my body in a full circle and the third strike stuck the enemy more deeply than before.
“Raarrgh!”
As soon as the lizardman recovered from being stunned briefly because it failed to hit with a big skill, it screamed with rage or perhaps fear, and raised its scimitar high in the air.
But my chain had not ended. The sword that had been swinging right suddenly sprung, as if forced by a spring, left and up and hit its heart—a critical point.
The sky-blue rhombus drawn by my four consecutive hits flashed then scattered; a horizontal, consecutive 4-hit skill, «Horizontal Square».
The clear light shone strongly in the dungeon and then faded. At the same time, the HP bar above the Lizardman's head disappeared without even a single dot left.
The huge body fell, leaving a long trail, then suddenly stopped awkwardly—
With a sound similar to breaking glass, it broke down into infinite polygons and disappeared.
This is the «Death» of this world. It is instantaneous and short, a perfect destruction, not leaving even a single trace.
I glanced at the virtual experience points and drop items I received, appearing in a purple font in the center of my vision, and swung my sword right and left before sheathing it in the scabbard on my back. I backed away a few steps and slid slowly down with my back against the dungeon wall.
I spat out the breath I was holding and closed my eyes. My temple started throbbing, perhaps from the fatigue due to the long fight. I shook my head a couple of times to get rid of the pain and opened my eyes.
The shining clock at the bottom right of my field of vision showed that it was already past 3PM. I should get out of the labyrinth or I won't make it to the city before dark.
“...Should I get started?”
There was nobody here to listen, but I just spoke and got up slowly.
I was done with making progress for the day. I somehow escaped the hand of death again today. But after a brief rest, tomorrow will come with more battles. When fighting battles without a 100% chance of victory, however many safety nets you prepare, there's going to be a day when you fall out of lady luck's favor.
The problem is whether this game will be «cleared» or not before I draw the ace of spades.
If you value your life above all else, staying in a village and waiting for somebody else to clear the game is the wisest route to take. But I go to the front lines every day solo. Am I just simply an addict of VRMMO who keeps increasing his stats through countless battles, or—
Am I an idiot who insolently believes that he can win the freedom of everyone in this world with his sword?
As I started walking towards the labyrinth entrance with a slight smile of self-scorn, I thought back to that day.
Two years ago.
The moment that everything ended and began.

 

[dellzeqq]

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary
part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has
pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus
between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash
payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of
the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade. In one word, for
exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the
man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money
relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the
brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists
so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful
indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can
bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has
conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses
of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all
earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois
epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and
opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all
that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face
with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind.

Communist Manifesto, Marx 1888

 

[dellzeqq]

Craig - the photograph is from 'Teenage' by Joe Szabo

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I got on a city bus and found a vacant seat,​

I thought I saw my future bride walking up the street, ​

I shouted to the driver hey conductor, you must slow down.​

I think I see her please let me off this bus​

Nadine, honey is that you?​

Oh, Nadine. Honey, is that you? ​

Seems like every time I see you Darling you got something else to do​

I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back​

And started walkin' toward a coffee colored cadillac​

I was pushin' through the crowd to get to where she's at​

And I was campaign shouting like a southern diplomat​

Downtown searching for her, looking all around. ​

Saw her getting in a yellow cab heading up town. ​

I caught a loaded taxi, paid up everybody's tab.​

With a twenty dollar bill, told him 'catch that yellow cab.'​

She move around like a wave of summer breeze,​

Go, driver, go, go, catch her balmy breeze. ​

Moving through the traffic like a mounted cavalier.​

Leaning out the taxi window trying to make her hear.​

 

[swee'pea99]

Ok, 276...but it is just one sentence...

And McFarland had crotch rot and Ellis malaria again and Cross worried about his feet and Samuels wet his bed and Trips sat all day in Ops reading The Mind Parasites where the flame-proof-suited pilots bearing stained mugs of bad coffee came and went, the metal buckles of their seat harnesses jingling like tiny bells and Sergeant Anstin ran through the hootches at night with a flashlight searching for bags of dope and Lieutenant Hand hadn't spoken to anyone for three days and Noll was out in the hangar trying to tattoo FTA on his arm with a bottle of ink and a hypodermic needle and the bomb craters on the film reminded Chief Warrant Officer Winkly of little pussies and someone cried himself to sleep and everyone hoped that Captain Fry would crash and burn and Hogan claimed he had never had this much fun in civilian life and hoped his home town was blown up so he wouldn't have to go back to it anymore and Feeny counted his money each morning and evening and the woman in Cage 1 wished the Americans would kill her today and Boswell, who was leaving, asked Griffin how many days he had left and when he heard the answer said, "Do trees live that long?" and out on the perimeter girls from the nearby village bared their breasts across the wire, tiptoed in among the Claymores, giggled on the bunker floors, and Wurlitzer dreamed of bald monks in maroon robes descending stone passageways in the far-off temples of Katmandu, and a pack of stray dogs roamed up and down the compound searching for someone to play with.

Meditations in Green, Stephen Wright

 

[Fab Foodie]

I'm indebted to my oldest buddy Chris D for turning me on to Billy Bragg, who in-turn brought this poem to my attention. It was the rawness, the 'get-up-up -and-do-it' approach of Bragg's (neither a great singer or guitarist, but good-enough polemic lyricist) that I liked rather than his brand of politics. This poem which I think of often ... seems in tune with so many other situations in life.​

Talking With the Taxman About Poetry - Vladimir Mayakovsky
[Translated from the Russian by Peter Tempest]

Sorry to bother you,
Citizen taxman!
No thanks...
Don't worry...
I'd rather stand.
I've come to see you
on a delicate matter;
the place
of the poet
in a worker's land.
Along with
storekeepers
and land users
I'm taxable too,
and am bound by the law.
Your demand
for the half-year
is 500 roubles,
and for not filling forms - 25 more.
My labour's
no different
from any other labour.
Examine these figures
of loss and gain,
the production
costs
I have been facing,
the raw material
I had to obtain.
With the notion of "rhyme"
you're acquainted, of course?
When a line of ours
ends with a word
like "plum"
in the next line but one
we repeat
the syllable
with some other word
that goes
"tiddle-ti-tum".
A rhyme
is an IOU,
as you'd put it.
"Pay two lines later"
is the regulation.
So you seek
the small charge of inflexion,suffix
in the depleted till
of declensions,
conjugations.
You shove
a word
into a line of poetry
but it just won't go -
you push it and it snaps.
Upon my honour,
Citizen taxman,
words
cost poets a pretty penny in cash.
As we poets see it,
a barrel
the rhyme is,
a barrel of dynamite,
the fuse is
each line.
The line starts smoking,
exploding the line is,
and the stanza
blows
a city
sky-high.
Where to find rhymes,
in what tariff list,
that hit the bull's eye
with never a failure?
Maybe
a handful of them
still exist
faraway somewhere
in Venezuela.
I have to scour
freezing
and tropical climes.
I flounder in debt,
I get advance payments.
My travel expenses
bear in mind.
Poetry -
all poetry -
is an exploration.
Poetry
is just like mining radium.
To gain just a gram
you must labour a year.
Tons of lexicon ore
excavating
all for the sake of one precious word,
But
how searing
the heat of this word is
alongside
the smouldering
heap of waste.
There are the words
that go rousing,stirring
millions of hearts
from age to age.
Of course,
there are different brands of poet.
Famed for sleight of hand
are quite a few.
Verses they pull,
like a conjuror,
boldly
out of their own mouths -
and others' too.
What can one say
of the poetry eunuchs?
They write
stolen lines in -
not turning a hair.
Thieving
like that
is nothing unusual
in a country
where thieves are enough and to spare.
These
contemporary
odes ans verses
which with rapt ovations
audiences greet
will go down
in history
as overhead charges
for the achievements
of a few of us -
two or three.
It takes
quite a time,
to get to know people,
smoke many a packets of cigarettes
till you raise
that wonderful word
you're needing
from the deep artesian
folk wells.
straightaway
the rate of tax
grows less.
Knock
that wheel-zero
of the total due.
I pay one rouble 90
for a hundred cigarettes
and one rouble 60
for the salt I consume.
I see your form
there's a host of questions:
"travelled abroad?
Or spent all the time here?"
What if
I've run down
a dozen Pegasuses
in the course of
these
fifteen years?!
You want to know
how many servants
I'm keeping,
what houses?
My special casee please observe:
where
do I stand
if I lead people
and simultaneously
the people serve?
The class
speaks
with the words we utter
and we
proletarians
push the pen.
The soul-machine
wears out,
begins to splutter.
They tell us:
"Your place
now
is on the shelf."
There's ever less love,
less bold innovation,
time
strikes my forhead
a running blow.
There comes
the most terrifying depreciation,
the depreciation
of heart and soul,
When
one day this sun
shall like a fattened hog in
a land rid of beggars
and cripples
rise,
dead by the fence
I'll
have long
been rotting
along with
ten or so
colleagues of mine.
Drae up
my posthumous balance-sheet!
I tell you -
upon this I'm ready to bet -
unlike
all the dealers and climbers
you see
I'll be
a unique case -
hopelessly in debt.
Our duty is
to roar
like brass-throated sirens
in philistine fog
and in stormy weather.
Paying
fines in cash
and high interest
on sorrow,
the poet
is always
the Universe's debtor.
And I
owe a debt
to the lights of Broadway,
a debt to you also,
Bagadady skies,
to the Red Army
and to Japan's cherry blossom -
to all
about which
I had no time to write.
Why
did I undertake
this burden?
With rhyme to shoot,
with metre anger to spark?
Your resurrection
the poet's word is,
your immortality,
Citizen clerk.
Read any line
a hundred years after
and it brings back the past,
as fast as a wink,
all will come back -
this day
with the taxman
with a glint of magic
and the reek of ink.
Come,you smug dweller in the present era,
buy your rail ticket
to Eternity
here.
Calculate
the impact of verse
and distribute
all that I earn
over three hundred years!
Not only in this
lies the power of a poet,
that it's you
future generations
will think about.
Oh no!
Today too
are the rhymes of a poet
a caress,
a slogan,
a bayonet,
a knout.
Five -
not five hundred -
roubles I'll pay
you,Citizen taxman!
Delete every nought!
As of right
I'm
demanding a place
with workers
and peasants
of the poorest sort.
But if
you think
all I do is just press
words other people use
into my service
Comrades,
come here,
let me give you my pen
and you
can yourselves
write your own verses!

 

[Fab Foodie]

here's an idea. Take something around 600 words from wherever you want and put them in a post. The intention is to charm, or to entertain. That's it...

Great idea btw, CC's own 'Readers Digest'

 

[oldfatfool]

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

 

[dellzeqq]

Ok, 276...but it is just one sentence...

...a mere 264

And then, as soon as he had left the house, not without returning to kiss her once again, because he had forgotten to take away with him, in memory, some detail of her fragrance or of her features, while he drove home in his victoria, blessing the name of Odette who allowed him to pay her these daily visits, which, although they could not, he felt, bring any great happiness to her, still, by keeping him immune from the fever of jealousy—by removing from him every possibility of a fresh outbreak of the heart-sickness which had manifested itself in him that evening, when he had failed to find her at the Verdurins’—might help him to arrive, without any recurrence of those crises, of which the first had been so distressing that it must also be the last, at the termination of this strange series of hours in his life, hours almost enchanted, in the same manner as these other, following hours, in which he drove through a deserted Paris by the light of the moon: noticing as he drove home that the satellite had now changed its position, relatively to his own, and was almost touching the horizon; feeling that his love, also, was obedient to these immutable laws of nature, he asked himself whether this period, upon which he had entered, was to last much longer, whether presently his mind’s eye would cease to behold that dear countenance, save as occupying a distant and diminished position, and on the verge of ceasing to shed on him the radiance of its charm.

 

[al78]

Sorry, this is quite a bit over 600 words:

SATURDAY-SUNDAY,OCT. 24-25 SHIP'S FINAL TRIP BEGINS
The final, fateful trip began in the Honduran port of Omoa on Saturday afternoon, destination Belize and the Barrier Reef for six days of diving and snorkeling. But the 100 passengers were shuttled in launches to the Fantome in driving rain that was ``like having a fire hydrant in your face,'' said passenger Anthony Moffa of West Chester, Pa.
Passengers were told not to worry. Those rains were the extreme outer bands of 98-mile-per-hour Mitch, a late-season Caribbean hurricane nearly 1,000 miles away, tracking northeast toward Jamaica. The Fantome would play it safe: Rather than sail north to Belize, it would hug the Bay Islands off the Honduran coast.
But around 2 a.m. Sunday, while passengers dozed, the Fantome changed course. At 6 a.m., passengers got with their Bloody Marys a depressing announcement from Capt. March that they were making a sprint to Belize City, where they and ``nonessential'' crew members would be dropped off. It would take all day.
The hurricane no longer appeared aimed for certain at Jamaica. Its path seemed erratically northwestward. It was now blowing at 127 mph, a strong Category 3, serious enough to scare a ship of any size.

MONDAY, OCT. 26 CORNERED BY THE STORM
The last sight that passengers had of the Fantome crew left haunting impressions.
``I talked with Capt. Guyan as we were waiting for the launches,'' passenger Moffa recalled. ``He was telling me that he had been on the Fantome for about a year and had sailed for Windjammer for 10 years.
''But you could tell he was pensive, his mind was elsewhere. He was talking and greeting passengers, but he was making a mental checklist of what he needed.''
Meanwhile, 10 crew members, about half of them women, joined the departing passengers.
Kevin Lewis, a Montserrat islander who had vacationed on previous Fantome cruises, got to know the crew members and said they were mostly Caribbean islanders like him.
''They all had families that they were forced to spend a great deal of time away from,'' he said. ``I got the impression that they weren't very well paid -- a few actually confided to me that they weren't -- but they loved their jobs and did it extremely well.
''I remember being struck by the engineer . . . a tall, dark, handsome guy from Trinidad, who during the day would be dressed in overalls, but would surface at night in an impeccable white uniform to dance with the passengers.''
But the party was over offshore of Belize City, and the crew looked all business, Moffa recalled. ``The crew was going through the rigging, securing stuff that wasn't needed below deck. They were preparing to do battle. They were literally battening down the hatches.''
Windjammer owner Burke agonized by satellite phone with his skipper. ``Our intentions were to go north past Cancun and Cozumel to get out of the area and avoid the storm,'' Burke said. ``This was really our only choice at the time, since the land locked us in on two sides. Puerto Cortes, just west of Omoa, is the only harbor in the area. It is open to the north and would not have provided any protection from a north wind.
``Fantome was boxed in a corner,'' he said, ``with the Yucatan peninsula to the west and Honduras to the south.''
By 3 p.m., the Fantome was under way, plowing past the Barrier Reef, headed north. If all went well, the Fantome would wait out Mitch in the peaceful Gulf of Mexico.
But within hours, ''the idea of running north was no longer a safe option,'' Burke said. Even under full sail, the Fantome could do no better than 9 mph. Burke and March feared the storm might catch the ship before it cleared the Yucatan.
Mitch was now blowing at monster strength -- 178 mph, the fifth most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. It was slowly bending northwest, as the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade had predicted. So March turned south. But forecasters also were issuing clear warnings: The atmospheric currents that help steer hurricanes were weak. Anything could happen.

TUESDAY, OCT. 27 A FRIGHTENING SURPRISE
Anything happened. Mitch stopped.
''Our computer models kept forecasting it to move northwest toward Belize and the Yucatan,'' said Max Mayfield, the hurricane center's deputy director. ''It didn't do that. It slowed. Basically, it stalled off the coast of Honduras.''
At that point, everything changed for forecasters. ``It is very unusual,'' said hurricane center director Jerry Jarrell. ``In late October, early November, they typically go northwestward or turn north.''
Forecasters constantly underlined the uncertainty of Mitch, but they stuck to probabilities and to their projection -- Mitch, like most hurricanes, would eventually drift northwest, then north.
''Realize that when you're making forecasts, you're thinking you're right,'' Jarrell said. ``It's the sort of thing you're almost psyched up about. You almost convince yourself this forecast is right. We had so much evidence going for the forecast we were making, we were actually pretty slow to give it up. I think, correctly. It pays off every other time. Certainly not this time.''
Aboard the Fantome, March was making for the lee side of the island of Roatan, which lies east to west, parallel to the Honduran coastline, staunchly perched between ship and storm, giving protection from large swells.
But around noon Tuesday, with forecasters still predicting that the storm would bend west and northwest, Mitch dipped south and then began churning directly toward Roatan.
Fantome's shelter suddenly looked like ground zero.
The ship set sail to the east, hoping to slip out as the eye passed above.
Instead, Mitch kept coming and coming, trapping Fantome between the dangerous coastline and the eye, the proverbial rocks and a hard place.
Forecasters know what happened now, Mayfield said. ``The steering currents just collapsed. The computer models didn't see that.''
Fantome's captain, Mayfield and Jarrell said, did what he could do with the information and options he had. The Gulf of Honduras sits in a triangle of coastline that turned into a deathtrap.
``If you imagine the guy's position: He's got two choices. He goes north or he goes east. He can't go any other direction,'' Jarrell said. ``He had to make a choice. He figures they almost never go south. He'll slip in underneath.
''This is pure conjecture on my part. I haven't talked to the guy, and I don't think anyone ever will.''
Around 4:30 p.m., the Fantome had moved east of Roatan, about 40 miles south of Mitch's 155-mph eyewall. March told Burke that he was fighting a 100-mph gale and 40-foot waves. And Mitch was taking dead aim at him.
Then the Fantome apparently lost its satellite antenna. Burke pleaded with ham radio operators to search their frequencies for a signal. There was none. Thirty-one souls were cut off from the world.

"The Ship and the Storm - The Loss of the Fantome"

 

[vernon]

William awoke and rubbed his eyes. It was Christmas Day—the day to which he had looked forward with mingled feelings for twelve months. It was a jolly day, of course—presents and turkey and crackers and staying up late. On the other hand, there were generally too many relations about, too much was often expected of one, the curious taste displayed by people who gave one presents often marred one's pleasure.

He looked round his bedroom expectantly. On the wall, just opposite his bed, was a large illuminated card hanging by a string from a nail—"A Busy Day is a Happy Day." That had not been there the day before. Brightly-coloured roses and forget-me-nots and honeysuckle twined round all the words. William hastily thought over the three aunts staying in the house, and put it down to Aunt Lucy. He looked at it with a doubtful frown. He distrusted the sentiment.

A copy of "Portraits of our Kings and Queens" he put aside as beneath contempt. "Things a Boy Can Do" was more promising. Much more promising. After inspecting a penknife, a pocket-compass, and a pencil-box (which shared the fate of "Portraits of our Kings and Queens"), William returned to "Things a Boy Can Do." As he turned the pages, his face lit up.
He leapt lightly out of bed and dressed. Then he began to arrange his own gifts to his family. For his father he had bought a bottle of highly-coloured sweets, for his elder brother Robert (aged nineteen) he had expended a vast sum of money on a copy of "The Pirates of the Bloody Hand." These gifts had cost him much thought. The knowledge that his father never touched sweets, and that Robert professed scorn of pirate stories, had led him to hope that the recipients of his gifts would make no objection to the unobtrusive theft of them by their recent donor in the course of the next few days. For his grown-up sister Ethel he had bought a box of coloured chalks. That also might come in useful later. Funds now had been running low, but for his mother he had bought a small cream-jug which, after fierce bargaining, the man had let him have at half-price because it was cracked.
Singing "Christians Awake!" at the top of his lusty young voice, he went along the landing, putting his gifts outside the doors of his family, and pausing to yell "Happy Christmas" as he did so. From within he was greeted in each case by muffled groans.

He went downstairs into the hall, still singing. It was earlier than he thought—just five o'clock. The maids were not down yet. He switched on lights recklessly, and discovered that he was not the only person in the hall. His four-year-old cousin Jimmy was sitting on the bottom step in an attitude of despondency, holding an empty tin.
Jimmy's mother had influenza at home, and Jimmy and his small sister Barbara were in the happy position of spending Christmas with relations, but immune from parental or maternal interference.

"They've gotten out," said Jimmy, sadly. "I got 'em for presents yesterday, an' they've gotten out. I've been feeling for 'em in the dark, but I can't find 'em."
"What?" said William.

"Snails. Great big suge ones wiv great big suge shells. I put 'em in a tin for presents an' they've gotten out an' I've gotten no presents for nobody."
He relapsed into despondency.

William surveyed the hall.
"They've got out right enough!" he said, sternly. "They've got out right enough. Jus' look at our hall! Jus' look at our clothes! They've got out right enough."

More William
Richmal Crompton