This is the tale of castaways

who don’t know the value of Pi

They memorized it to several decimal places

yet how it goes on, they can’t say

Is this a seven or a five

an eight or twenty-two

What happens in position n

What happens after it, like when

n yields to n+1, and then

n+1 to n+2?

The rain did rain and sideways blow

The pirate ship was tossed

on billows towards stars that wouldn’t glow

in some kind of vertical do-si-do—

above them H₂O and lo!

there was H₂O below

And the parrot parlayed to the pirate, “Oh no!

We are entirely lost!”

“Put the futtock shrouds into the lubber’s hole! Drop the main-topmast jackstays! Yarely, yarely! Fall to’t.” (It was the pirate that exclaimed all that.) “Slack the bolins!”

“What’s the use?” said the parrot. “We’re lost.”

“Set the topgallants onto the paxil—I mean the fo’c’sle!” That was again the pirate.

“Tush. Phoey,” said the parrot.

“You can’t just abandon all hope, parrot,” explained the pirate. “Haven’t you heard of that experiment when they put two frogs into two glasses of milk and one gave up and drowned but the other kept swimming until the milk turned into yoghurt? Also, Descartes says that if you’re lost, you just need to pick a direction and stick to it, you’ll end up somewhere.”

“But what if you can’t end up there in a finite number of steps? Because I don’t do transcendental magnitudes,” complained the parrot. “I am only a bird.”

“Nonetheless,” said the Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi. “Go to’t. Watch the flying jibs!”

Their ship ran aground on the shore of a

deserted desert isle

with the Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi

and his parrot too

cracking a relieved smile!

There once was a pirate and a parrot

or rather, there once were a pirate and a parrot

who, after a shipwreck, ended up on a deserted island.

“This island is deserted,” said the pirate.

“No, it’s not,” said the parrot.

“Do you know something I don’t?” said the pirate.

“It can’t be deserted if we’re on it,” said the parrot.

poof-poofed the pirate.