The Golden Hind sailed east around Greenland and up to Baffin Bay, unbelievably passing Devon Island, past the Arctic Circle in the Arctic Ocean. Past Alaska, where they saw an aurora borealis, which appeared to Gulliver and the crew as a ghostly glow in the sky; undulating gossamer curtains of green and reds and blues. This truly was a magical sight and prompted Drake to say that perhaps the gods hadn’t deserted this world after all. Drake told Gulliver that you could use auroras to forecast the weather and that the lights were known as ‘wind lights’ and ‘weather lights’.
Old Father Time said that if you whistled gently the lights would respond by drawing closer, almost as if they were a living breathing entity. Alice and Gulliver tried but all to no avail, Drake joked they should probably wet their whistle and then try again.
When Gulliver saw the aurora, to him it looked like the waves of the ocean, especially when the lights were blue. He could imagine a ghost ship sailing into this magical aurora and coming out in another world, the New World. Gulliver’s mind was hot-wired differently to other people, he knew that much. He could see colours in words and see patterns when he heard music, this apparently made him a ‘synaesthete’. However, Gulliver’s brain went one step further, turning these patterns into holographic images which he saw in his mind’s eye gathered from his subconscious and transferred to his conscious mind. At times, being dyslexic and a synaesthete made words appear to rise and fall on the written page like a wave upon the blue Pacific Ocean or the Red Sea.
Gulliver kept this gift to himself as he thought if he told anybody they would think he was round the twist, resembling a DNA strand. That and he couldn’t see any practical use for this so-called gift, other than keeping him entertained when there was no access to television. As of yet, John Logie Baird hadn’t invented his magical Pandora’s box of tricks, but give it time, just give it time.
Still, there was no point complaining, everybody had their Southern Cross to bear. Gulliver was lucky enough to have seen the Southern Cross when he was in the South Pacific seas. There he saw the Jewel Box, Musca, Triangulum Australe and the Crux jewels shining in the heavens above, which is how he described this sight in his travelogue, although the spelling of some of these jewels in the jewel box of the universe did leave a little\lot to be desired! Drake said he had once seen paintings on the bark of a tree in New Holland depicting the stars in the Southern Cross, one a shark and the other a stingray. Gulliver presumed these were painted by the indigenous population of the outback, which he now knew as the Aboriginal tribes. New Holland, Drake said, was a land of many riches where gold ran like a river. However the outback was the most inhospitable place on God’s earth, full of snakes, spiders, scorpions and other delightful creepy crawlies, giving the North and South Poles a run for their money, minus the creepy crawlies!
In his world, Gulliver perceived time as a river which flowed with great speed. While in this world the river of time had become becalmed to that of a mill pond. But was that the case? Only time would tell. If Gulliver remained forever young like Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s book The Picture of Dorian Gray having found the elixir of youth, he would know that time and its affects had ceased. This, in Gulliver’s mind, would be like a mammoth trapped in the ice, or like an insect caught in amber, except unlike the mammoth and the insect, he would still be alive.
The Golden Hind continued its voyage, sails billowing in the trade winds, through the Bering Seas past America, or at least what Gulliver knew to be America as of yet Columbus still hadn’t gotten his finger out and discovered it. Into the North Pacific Ocean and the Tropic of Cancer, past Hawaii, again, yet undiscovered as the Hind veered towards the coast of Mexico. Here Drake would have loved to have landed and filled the Golden Hind with gold but decided this would not only weigh the ship down but also slow their progress. Eventually the Golden Hind reached the Galapagos Islands, where the giant seahorse was laying down in the water as if asleep. Now Gulliver could see for himself why these islands were known as the Land of the Giant Seahorse.
On this epic voyage Gulliver had more time to think, and fishing in the sea of his imagination he caught several ideas in his net and this was one. What if while sailing on the seas of time, they ran into RMS Titanic? Answer, they would sink! This was because the Titanic was made of iron and the Golden Hind was made of wood and not gold as some of the Spanish people believed. But should they draw alongside the Titanic and shout to the captain ‘beware of icebergs off the starboard bow’? In this theoretical and moral discussion that Gulliver was having with himself, he seemed to have forgotten there were no waves in time to sail upon, not even gravitational waves, not in this world, and as such 1912 no longer existed. So this meant they wouldn’t be racing against the Comet, the first paddle steamer, in 1812 along the river Clyde either, or in 1712, 1612 etc. But no matter, with the time being as mixed up as it was, this still didn’t preclude the Titanic hitting an iceberg and sinking, it was just that the incident wouldn’t be recorded with a time or date. Once again this was Gulliver pushing the boat of his imagination out into unchartered waters so far that it was just a matter of time before they reached the cosmological oceans.
Gulliver, being the mine of useless information he was, knew that the first steam engine had been invented by a man called Newcombe in Dartmouth in Devon, and the line of the Great Western Railway, which the first steam locomotive ran along, reached Devon.
Drake thought that perhaps it would be better if this time they left the Golden Hind parked outside the ship in a bottle and used the long boats to transfer from the sea to the bottle. This would be more dangerous and could only be performed when the tide was at its highest point as falling any great distance in a long boat was never going to end well. At least in the confines of the ship, if you fell butter side up you may well be shaken and stirred but at least you were still alive!
When the Golden Hind finally reached the Land of the Giant Seahorse, they dropped anchor just off a cove in the largest island known as Isabella. A few members of the crew then rowed onto the island to replenish its bread fruit and coconut supplies. As the long boat rowed into the island it was flanked by several bottle-nosed dolphins which were in a playful mood, jumping over the boat in turn as if they were performing tricks in an aquarium or at Sea World. As one of the dolphins jumped over the long boat in an arc motion, Gulliver reached up his hand and stroked the belly of the dolphin, which produced a contented gurgling sound, as if the dolphin was talking to Gulliver, saying, ‘More please, I like having my belly stroked.’ Beagle also loved having his belly stroked but you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks, or a new dog old tricks, so Beagle was never going to be able to compete with the dolphins in the showboating department!
Then both dolphins arced over the long boat together, one coming from the port side and one from the starboard side as if somehow this was their party piece, which produced a long round of applause from all in the long boat. Both dolphins thrashed their flippers in the water in appreciation of their own efforts. Dolphins really were the Brains Trust of the oceans, they certainly were the think tank of the Antiquarium back in old Devon, of that there was no doubt.
The moon had done its stuff moving the tides to the exact positions where the changing of locks was possible and the long boat was able to slip into the bottle with relative ease (and no, the bottle-nosed dolphins didn’t follow the long boat into the bottle, that would plainly have been ridiculous!) That was the good thing about a long boat, it might well be long but it was a lot slimmer than a ship, and without God’s speed but with a lot of help from Newton’s laws of physics (what goes up etc. etc.), and as everybody onboard either prayed or shut their eyes, or shut their eyes and prayed, the long boat thankfully landed butter side up. In truth, the gap between the cork and neck of the bottle was so wide even the Titanic could have fitted comfortably through it, but why spoil a tall story with trifling-like things like the truth, for if one had done so it would no longer be a tall story!
Alice seemed to enjoy the whole experience, but then she was a child and children by and large enjoyed theme parks, roller coaster rides, etc. etc. rather more than adults did, even though Alice had never been on a roller coaster before. Gulliver rather less so, probably because he couldn’t swim, something he was determined to overcome sooner rather than later. Alice said when they had the time she would teach him to swim as she swam like a mermaid. Gulliver thought until time was restarted this would never happen, and he may well have been right, or he may well have been wrong, only time would tell!
Meanwhile, on board the Golden Hind Darwin had a question to put to Drake.
‘Do you mind if I go ashore, Captain; I could do with stretching my legs?’ the young Darwin said looking up at Drake as if he were some sort of Greek god.
‘By all means, lad, I’m sure the gardener could do with a hand. See what you make of the islands and then report back to me. Perhaps when we’ve got more time we can come back here, you never know, we might find untold treasures buried here. I quite fancy a bit of treasure hunting,’ Drake said with his spyglass firmly glued to his right eye before he had to remind himself there was no more time as the sands of time had run out some time ago.
‘Thank you, Captain, I won’t let you down,’ Darwin said enthusiastically and he didn’t, turning down all opportunities to play with Alice and Gulliver in favour of recording everything he saw in minute detail. Gulliver wrote in his travelogue that he liked Darwin even though he was a very serious boy, which reminded him of himself when he was a boy. Gulliver then had to further remind himself that he still was a boy, even if he was a boy of twelve going on thirty-five!
After the first long boat signalled that the island was free from cannibals, the second long boat, with the gardener and the new gardener’s assistant, namely Charles Darwin, in it made for the bottle which the island of the Land of the Giant Seahorse was encased in. After which Drake sailed out to the island in a third long boat, having no fear that he would end up surrounded by hungry cannibals with a spear to grind, or worse, end up in a large cooking pot full of garlic. The one thing Drake hated above all other was garlic, although he wasn’t that fond of French cooks or their cooking, especially if he was on their menu! All the long boats successfully navigated the procedure of changing from sea to bottle without too much fuss.
The only hiccup was Old Father Time, who got a bad case of the hiccups just as the long boat got to the neck of the bottle, like one sometimes does at the top of a roller coaster ride and which was probably down to nerves. This case of the hiccups lasted two days until Hamish crept up behind Old Father Time and scared the living daylights out of him by pretending to be a head hunter. Still, it worked a treat even if for some considerable time after, Old Father Time looked as white as a sheet!
Now perhaps I should explain that all the ships in the bottles which the gods had placed upon the antique globe with their fair hands, represented (if not resembled) large mountain ranges to the peoples of these lands. And that these mountain ranges were often scaled by mountaineers who placed flags on the top of the masts to signal that they had climbed these treacherous mountain peaks. Another thing I should probably explain is that as these islands were so close to one another, the ships in the bottles were considerably smaller than the ones in say Africa and America. This was only to be expected, Gulliver later wrote in his travelogue, or at least he was pretty sure it was only to be expected.
By the time they had left the Galapagos Islands, which to everybody but Gulliver was known as the Land of the Giant Seahorse, Darwin had begun to come out of his shell, or at least he did after Gulliver sketched a picture of him posing inside a giant tortoise shell! Gulliver wondered if the famous old giant turtle, Lonesome George, was alive and well on this island; he could well be a baby when in his world unfortunately he was as dead as a dodo! Gulliver then thought of Schrodinger’s cat in a box theory being both alive and dead at the same time, so perhaps Lonesome George the giant turtle could be both alive and dead at the same time, although as there was no longer any time in this world, that made the implausible theory even more implausible, didn’t it? Gulliver wasn’t sure, although he was sure this thought should be put into the box in his head marked Pandora which was never to be opened under any circumstances!
‘So what do you think?’ Gulliver said showing the sketch to Darwin.
‘Very good, Gulliver, you’ve got a good eye,’
‘Hopefully I’ve got two,’ Gulliver said breaking the ice, although they’d left the ice far behind them in the Arctic.
‘These shells would make a good shelter if you were backpacking around the world and you wanted to do it on the cheap,’ said Gulliver, which rather went over Darwin’s head like the dolphins had done a few days earlier.
‘Do you ever feel like things are preordained, that they’re meant to be?’ Darwin said with a slight frown on his face.
‘Undoubtedly,’ Gulliver said with a slight smile on his face.
This rather took Darwin aback as he wasn’t expecting Gulliver to agree with him on this point. In fact, he thought the point might go right over his head like the arrow did when it split the apple on the head of William Tell’s son.
‘Did you know that Leonardo Da Vinci thought that whatever nature could do, people could copy and the last word he ever wrote was “etcetera”? And did you know the Latin genus for seahorse is Hippocampus, which means sea monster?’ Gulliver said giving his cerebral muscle a work out.
‘The first thing I didn’t know, the second thing I did,’ Darwin said matter-of-factly in true Darwinian style. ‘Did you know that the male seahorse gives birth to its babies?’ said Darwin impressed by Gulliver’s knowledge for a boy, while showing he was no slouch in the geek department either. Darwin thought Gulliver was almost as bright as he was. Of course Darwin didn’t know that Gulliver was literally an overgrown schoolboy and had a photographic memory and had read and committed to memory the complete volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
‘Yes, as it happens I did know that the male seahorse gives birth to its young. I also know that seahorses communicate with one another by using clicking sounds, and that the biggest seahorse is the big-belly seahorse, which can grow to over thirty centimetres long, and that there are over fifty species of seahorse, and that when seahorses want to go to sleep they attach themselves to weed or coral so they don’t sleepwalk!’ Gulliver said doing his geeky best to outdo Darwin. ‘You know the biodiversity on the Galapagos Islands is quite amazing. To think Darwin spent five years here with the Beagle, it’s like stepping back in time,’ Gulliver said in wide-eyed wonderment forgetting for a moment that Darwin was standing right in front of him.
A puzzled expression appeared on Darwin’s face as he looked at Gulliver as if he’d lost his senses somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.
‘Bio-di what? And what did you say about me and your dog?’
‘Sorry, my mother told me I shouldn’t mumble! I said perhaps if you’ve got time you could keep an eye on Beagle for me while I do some more sketching, Darwin,’ Gulliver said covering his tracks.
‘But I’m sure I heard you say a word I’ve never heard before, “biodiversity”!’ Darwin said as the puzzled expression got deeper. That was the thing about this world, sooner or later a puzzled expression was likely to get etched upon all the members of the crew’s faces like carvings upon stone.
‘I might have mentioned biology,’ Gulliver said as he spun another fairytale. ‘You need to get out more, Charles, get some fresh air into those lungs of yours,’ Gulliver said as a smile the size of an upturned rainbow appeared on his face.
‘That and I need to get my ears washed out like Drake and Old Father Time,’ said Darwin as he scratched his head.
Another musket bullet dodged, Gulliver thought to himself. It was wearing at times trying to keep everything he knew about the outcome of people’s lives under his mad hat, especially when he wasn’t wearing one!
‘One day you’re going to be a great man, Charles Darwin,’ Gulliver said trying not to let the cat too far out of the bag as for the briefest of brief moments he pictured Darwin as a marble statue in the Natural History Museum in London.
‘Do you really think so, Gulliver?’ Darwin said innocently.
‘Aye, that I do, lad, that I do,’ Gulliver said mimicking the big man on board the Golden Hind otherwise known as Hamish.
‘In that case, so will you. You’ll become a great explorer and circumnavigate the world,’ said Darwin with an earnest look upon his face.
‘Aye, happen I might,’ Gulliver said mirroring Darwin’s expression.
‘Aye, happen I might too,’ Darwin said in parrot fashion.
Then both the boys fell about with laughter, so much so that Gulliver fell down a large rabbit hole nearly disappearing for good, until with the help of Darwin and Alice he managed to scramble out. Luckily this was one of those friendly islands that were often mentioned on documentaries on the Discovery Channel in his world. Later Gulliver joked to Alice that he swore he saw a rabbit in the hole that was carrying a fob watch in his waistcoat pocket! However, Gulliver did find something in his pocket when he crawled out of the rabbit hole, a ten pound banknote with a picture of Charles Darwin upon it and in the headshot he was old and as bald as a bald eagle with a long grey beard, which made him look not unlike a wizard.
Gulliver wondered if he should show young Darwin a picture of how he would look when he got old. This was one of those no brainers they talked a lot about in his world as he saw a picture of himself in his head raising both of his eyebrows towards the event horizon. This Gulliver took as a sign, a sign which read ‘No, under no circumstances should you show young Darwin a picture of old Darwin, not unless you want to see Darwin spontaneously combust in front of your eyes!’
One thing Gulliver didn’t have to wonder about was how he looked when he got old because he already had some idea. Not that thirty-five was old, although to a twelve-year-old boy I suppose it was.
Perhaps the whole incident had been another one of Gulliver’s vivid dreams. Like the one he had two nights ago of being encased inside a great big bubble which floated into the sky and into outer space, past the Hubble telescope where the dream rather turned into a nightmare when the bubble burst! Gulliver was thirty-five so he was used to people and life bursting his bubble; no doubt if he bumped into Sigmund Freud he would tell him his dream signified as much. Gulliver had already had a dream where he was lost in a forest of clocks of all shapes and sizes, although predominately the forest was full of large grandfather clocks, clocks which chimed so loudly they made his ears bleed. As time passed, Gulliver got more and more panic stricken as he couldn’t find his way out of this forest of clocks. He distinctly remembered thinking that if a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around to see it fall, does it make a sound? Gulliver thought about this question, although he didn’t want to lose any sleep over it, before he heard a voice echo through the labyrinth in between his ears ‘Yes, if you are in a forest of grandfather clocks it does!’
When Gulliver awoke from this dream-cum-nightmare he was given to think that if there was such a forest of clocks in this world then all you would be able to hear was an eerie silence. Gulliver then thought of the phrase ‘the silence is deafening’, which to him made no more sense than either his world or this one!
There was a plentiful supply or bread fruit and coconuts on the island as were there wild boars. Gulliver was amazed to find giant turtles which carried semi-detached houses around with them on their backs, or so it appeared to him. And the birds were every colour of the rainbow. This gave Gulliver plenty of opportunity to get his sketch book out and record all he saw. Something he’d rather not have seen were the volcanoes on this island; most of them were dormant but most was not all. Later the people of these lands and waters were to name these volcanoes ‘sleeping giants’ and to be honest, after the run-in with the volcano on Solomon’s Island, now known as Gulliver’s Island, Gulliver had pretty much had his fill of volcanoes, dormant or otherwise. Gulliver had recently watched a documentary on television about a recently discovered volcano in a little place in the Middle of Nowhere called God Knows Where, which had been called The New Galapagos. Actually in truth it was in Papa New Guinea but Gulliver liked the sound of the Middle of Nowhere and God Knows Where. Here, so many new species had been discovered it was untrue, even though it was true, the scientists had been flown into the volcano by helicopter and had set up camp in the volcano and was studying these new lifeforms. While Gulliver was on the Land of the Giant Seahorse he was picturing all this on the television set in his head, known to most people as their mind’s eye.
Gulliver had always wanted to go to the Galapagos Islands and here he was, he could barely believe it. Nowadays it would have cost him an arm and a leg to visit the Galapagos Islands, that’s if he’d even be allowed on the islands as the amount of people being allowed onto them was being restricted as it was such an important ecological site.
Gulliver saw several colourful chameleons on the islands, one as large as a cat and a dwarf chameleon no bigger than the head of a match. When he was at school he wished he could change colour like the chameleon to escape the school bullies. He also wished he’d had the chameleon’s eyes, which worked like 3D cameras in that the left eye worked completely separately to the right, which gave the chameleon 3D images. Its brain could send separate signals to each eye giving it a panoramic view of its surroundings. Mother Nature really was a marvel at genetic engineering. Gulliver later wrote this in his travelogue, along with another incident. This incident occurred one night when the night sky was lit with tiny moving pinpricks of light that weren’t shooting stars but fireflies dancing above their heads.
Gulliver had often seen people let off Chinese lanterns into the sky in his world. This magical sight reminded him of golden jellyfish swimming to the surface as the sunlight streamed through the water, images caught on film in wildlife documentaries he’d seen on John Logie Baird’s magic box of tricks.
These images had always made Gulliver want to travel but until now the only travelling he’d done was in his imagination. Now he was actually seeing these things for himself and at times he found it hard to believe this wasn’t simply just another one of his vivid Technicolour dreams in HD 3D.
*
The crew of the Golden Hind spent a week on the island of Isabella and when the time came, most were reluctant to leave. For a minute or two Gulliver wondered if Drake may have a mutiny on his hands like on the infamous mutiny on the Bounty. ‘Mutiny, Mister Christian. Hang him from the highest yardarm!’ Gulliver could recall Lieutenant William Bligh’s voice giving the master’s mate, Fletcher Christian, the instructions to do just that to one of the mutineers. This was of course from the film Mutiny on the Bounty as Gulliver hadn’t been in this world long enough to witness such an event. However, the thought had occurred that surely it was just a matter of time before he witnessed such an historical event. Gulliver wondered that if he did and he got involved and changed the outcome of the event, would that somehow have an effect on the timeline that no longer existed. Not only was Gulliver intent on giving Alice a run for her money in the wondering department but it also appeared he wanted to surpass her in that department too!
On the island, Gulliver and Alice enjoyed stretching their legs chasing wild boar or moreover being chased by wild boar. Darwin and Gulliver were amazed at the many different species of hummingbird, all the colours of the rainbow and some not much bigger than his thumb. One appeared to be wearing Joseph’s amazing Technicolour dreamcoat and another hummingbird was indigo violet, another’s emerald green coat looked rather oily in the sunlight, while another hummer had a shimmering fluorescent hue to it. Gulliver knew the hummers had poetic names like the Coronet and the Jacobean, which made Gulliver wonder how Shakespeare would have described them. Gulliver had little doubt he would have described them in the most glowing and poet of terms. The island of Isabella was like the enchanted garden he’d seen on a nature programme on the television filmed in Colombia, except bigger much, much bigger. On the programme on television Gulliver had seen hundreds of hummers drink from sugared waterfeeders, sucking the water through their large curved beaks as they hung in the air as if frozen in time; hummingbirds that could beat their wings at over fifty times a second and could fly backwards, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
For Gulliver, seeing the hummingbirds close up was even better than having a HD 3D television. The Galapagos Islands were like a giant enchanted garden, Gulliver was later to write in his travelogue. Darwin wasn’t so given to such poetic musings, rather being more prosaic and technical in his observations and writings about what he had seen and collected in specimen jars on the islands. However, he marvelled at the extremes he saw on the islands from the giant turtles with shells big enough to climb into, to the Tom Thumb-sized hummingbirds, this island truly was a paradise on earth. Gulliver had also seen a documentary on the Indian Ocean where certain countries were planning national parks in the seas to protect the environment and the life that lived in these environments, this was so fish could be protected from overfishing. Gulliver then thought of the game he played as a child with cardboard fish with magnets stuck upon them which you had to catch with a fishing line with a magnet attached to it, and as the globe in this world was metallic, then you could see why this thought came to mind, that and large fish often swallowed metal objects that were lying on the ocean bed.
‘Hold that thought,’ Gulliver said to himself under his breath as he remembered seeing a modern globe in a toy shop in Brixham in Devon which was made in an antique style with metal meridians and had physical cartography upon it, raised mountainous areas and ocean troughs. This reminded Gulliver of the globe he was standing upon as if he was a Lilliputian and if he wasn’t careful the globe would start spinning and he would have to run on the spot so as not to fall off as if he was running on a treadmill, a treadmill that was slippery! As this globe was antique, in theory this meant he should find the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World somewhere upon it, but only if he had a good map at his disposal. Did Gulliver want the gods or a master cartographer to draw him a map? You bet he did!
Gulliver let go of this curious thought as while sitting under the palm tree he recalled to mind the cave in Ecuador where there was supposed to be a mythical library full of golden books. However, that was in his world and the vision and the compass they had seen in the table made of ice hadn’t seemed to point in that direction. Gulliver didn’t want to send Drake and his crew on a wild goose chase, or an even wilder one than they were already on, anymore than he wanted to be chased by a pack of wild geese! So Gulliver, having given it much thought, decided to trust his instinct and the ice wizards and put it to the back of his mind. While sitting under this palm tree, a small coconut fell on his head, which reminded him of Newton’s laws of motion: what goes up etc. etc. must come down etc. etc. However in this particular case, he rather wished what goes up stays up, like space junk!
Just before they left the island, Darwin discovered what he thought was a new species which he named a flat fish because it was as flat as a skimming stone. When he first saw it lying in the shallow water by the shore, he went to pick it up only to get the fright of his life as it squirmed away. Darwin then found a school of flat fish, one the size of a large dinner plate, which Drake said would make a good addition to the Antiquarium. So several seamen that were able, including Able Seaman Able Drinkwater, went out in a long boat with a net and after much hilarity from the rest of the crew caught this rather large flat fish. As several seamen who appeared not to be so able fell overboard into the sea attempting to haul the flat fish into the long boat, a song broke out upon the shore. A chorus of a song Gulliver knew well: ‘One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then I threw it back again.’ This song could be heard all along the beach as the slightly inebriated rum-soaked crewmembers fell about with laughter!
When several of the fish were brought aboard they were stored in an old powder keg filled with seawater. Drake joked that if supplies ran out this new species may well end up in their bellies rather than in a tank in the Antiquarium in Devon.
Darwin was surprised to say the least that sea lions and penguins found a home in the Land of the Giant Seahorse, but that was the thing about these islands, they were full of hidden treasures, full of surprises.
So the Golden Hind’s crew rejuvenated and in high spirits after their week’s holiday on the Land of the Giant Seahorse set sail again this time for the continent of Africa.
By this time Gulliver was convinced that it was Africa that held the answer to the question of where his mythical bookshop was hidden away. Gulliver knew Africa was the cradle of mankind and where his ancestors had sprung from. He had read many books on Africa and on explorers such as Stanley and Livingstone. How he would love to meet them. Mind you, with this being a parallel world, perhaps they weren’t explorers, perhaps they were carpet makers and lived over a tiny shop in Cricklewood and had never travelled further than the end of their street. Of perhaps as this was a parallel world, it had been Livingstone who had said to Stanley, ‘Stanley, I presume,’ instead of in his world where Stanley had said to Livingstone, ‘Livingstone, I presume.’
As Drake was a sailor in this world and Darwin was well on his way to discovering and writing the Origin of Species, so it followed that there was every chance he’d get to meet his heroes. After all, why not? He’d gotten to met Francis Drake who, God willing (but no thanks to the gods), would one day get his knighthood, becoming Sir Francis Drake. Unless like Raleigh he fell foul of Queen Elizabeth I! Gulliver wasn’t sure he wanted to meet Queen Elizabeth I, by all accounts she could be a little fiery and unpredictable and he had grown rather attached to his head.
Gulliver had always wanted to meet Queen Elizabeth II in his world, but right now that seemed as unlikely as him ever getting back to his own time.
On their journey towards Africa they saw several Spanish galleons but wisely the Spanish gave the Golden Hind a wide berth. Drake had no time to get embroiled in a skirmish with the Spanish, that could wait for another time and place. Drake couldn’t afford to take his eye off the prize, which was The Last Bookshop in the world, which supposedly housed all the rarest books ever written, some were even said to be written in gold. On this part of the voyage Gulliver asked Old Father Time what he perceived to be a rather tricky question which was, ‘What was there before time?’ Old Father Time gave this question much thought, stroking his beard more times than Gulliver had ever seen him do before. After several sandglasses had been turned on their heads, he gave this studious reply, ‘Well, Gulliver, I’m afraid that was before my time!’ In truth, Gulliver probably should have seen that one coming.
*
Some time later, having sailed across the equator, through the Tropic of Capricorn in the South Pacific Ocean, passing New Zealand, or at least Gulliver knew it as New Zealand, past several small unnamed islands, around the foot of South America seventy degrees west of the Greenwich Meridian, passing Cape Horn and into the South Atlantic Ocean until finally the continent of Africa came into sight, which was a sight for sore eyes for all on board the Hind and after all that sailing and lack of sleep, believe you me these sailors had very sore eyes!
Now Gulliver didn’t want to tell Drake his business, after all the only boats he’d sailed were in his imagination or in his bathtub, but he had wondered why they hadn’t taken a short cut through the Panama Canal but instead had gone the long way round Cape Horn. Perhaps it hadn’t been built yet, or perhaps Panama hadn’t even been mapped, thought Gulliver. Gulliver had no wish to fall out with his hero or be thrown overboard for being a bigheaded know-it-all egghead geek who for once wasn’t Greek. And he didn’t want to incur the wrath of Queen Elizabeth I when they got back home to England for sailing too close to the wind either, so sensibly he kept his council on the matter. The truth was that Gulliver’s knowledge of Panama and its canal left a lot to be desired as the Panama Canal wasn’t opened until 1914. Still, one has to make allowances, after all Gulliver was only a boy of thirty-five! Drake later made a joke saying he hoped they didn’t sail too far off course and run into pirates in the Caribbean. It appeared that Drake had perfectly good reasons for not sailing through the Panama Canal besides it not being there! Gulliver wondered what Drake would make of the film Pirates of the Caribbean, he’d probably say it was a fairytale and nothing more!
So once again the Golden Hind had to go through the rigmarole of waiting for the tide to rise so it could sail out through the gap between the cork and the glass, and splash down in the South Atlantic Ocean as if it were an Apollo space capsule. This time the manoeuver wasn’t exactly plain sailing as one of the masts was damaged when the Golden Hind got wedged in between the cork and the glass. The sailors had to pull several of the planks from the Hind’s decking and slowly and carefully lever the ship until it was free.
Unfortunately, due to the unpredictable currents in this part of the world, the Golden Hind then had to freefall like a skydiver until it hit the water, where it rolled several times before righting itself. Eventually all the crew managed to get onboard and miraculously only one sailor was lost at sea, however, this may have been the sailor’s own stupid fault! And the reason for this being the sailor’s own stupid fault was that while his colleagues were in the business of freeing the Golden Hind from its unfortunate predicament, he was drowning his sorrows in rum!
‘Help, help! I can’t swim!’ Gulliver cried. However, luckily Beagle could and was coming to his master’s aid at quite a rate of knots. Beagle was of course doing the doggie paddle, which was only to be expected. Soon Beagle was at his master’s side and helped keep Gulliver’s head above water before a keg of gunpowder sailed their way, which they clung to for dear life until a long boat picked them up.
Alice, who could swim like a fish to such an extent that the crew nicknamed her ‘the Mermaid Girl’, rescued several sailors who couldn’t swim like a fish but could sink like a stone. One of the sailors said while he was in the water he swore he’d seen Alice with a large fish tail attached to her body. Drake said perhaps he needed to get his eyes tested!
But all’s well that ends well, and apart from some very wet sailors who looked like drowned rats, plus a few objects upon the Hind that were not properly tied down and which parted company with the ship’s company, luckily only one hand of the ship’s company was lost, although he probably didn’t think it was lucky! Gulliver wrote these exact words in his journal while adding that at least the sailor in question who was lost at sea was probably too drunk to know much about it!
Drake stayed onboard, as was the practice of captains; the last thing you wanted was your captain to end up being roasted on a spit over an open fire like a wild boar. However, it was fine if any other member of the ship’s company ended up as toast!
‘Land in sight, Captain!’ shouted the midshipman in the crow’s nest.
‘We’ll we’ve made it, Gulliver, but where on earth are we?’ Drake said scratching his chin vigorously and sounding like Magellan halfway around his circumnavigation of the globe.
‘Africa’s a big place, Captain. All I can say for sure is that Africa is on our starboard bow and we’re coming alongside it and once we’ve found the bottleneck it won’t be long before we’re in the heart of Africa,’ Gulliver said bluffing his way through his cobbled-together, less-than-compendious explanation of the patently obvious.
‘Yes, that sounds logical,’ said Drake as the sun started to dry the ship and its company out.
‘I think it’s best we sail along the coast until we reach North Africa, that’s where the vision appeared to be pointing us towards. Wouldn’t you agree, Gulliver?’ Drake said, looking at Gulliver to confirm his summation of the situation.
Gulliver was finding this all a little hard to believe; here he was standing upon the deck of the Golden Hind, one of the most famous ships of all time, and not the replica that stood in Brixham harbour, or the one docked in London either. And believe it or not Sir Francis Drake, no less, was asking his advice, even if he wasn’t a sir yet. It was bonkers there was no other word for it; he’d looked through his pocket dictionary and the only word that fitted this situation was the word bonkers, bonkers with a capital B; Bonkers, Bonkers, Bonkers, although mad with a capital M wasn’t far behind it!
The Golden Hind sailed along the coastline for what seemed like quite some time until it reached North Africa. Once at the tip of North Africa they sailed into shallow waters and the crew disembarked via the long boat, this time with Drake on board. Drake said to Gulliver as he climbed aboard the long boat, ‘Now is not the time for faint hearts.’ Later still, when the tide rose and was of equal height both inside and outside the bottle, they slipped from the sea into the bottle with the ship in it. Drake had said that perhaps it might be a might safer if they pushed the long boat off the top of the ship’s bottleneck and either dived into the water below or abseiled down the ropes, like they had in the snow dome. However this all took time, which they didn’t have, so in the end they took the waterfall approach and crossed all their fingers and toes. The fall wasn’t as great as it had been before and, although a few of the crew fell off the long boat into the water, they all managed to get back onboard relatively easily.
Gulliver noted that whichever country he came to the ship in the bottle took the shape of that nation’s national boat. In other words, a canoe in the Pacific Islands, a Viking long boat in Norway, a Spanish galleon in Spain, a junk in China, a giant lavish golden barge with oars to match in Egypt, a gondolier in Italy, and an ark in Israel, actually Gulliver was only yanking the reader’s anchor on that last one. However, if things ever got so bad and a flood occurred you could always scale the mountainous ship and hole up there until the floods passed!