"The ocean is a vast and beautiful thing. Taking a quick peak off the side of your boat you realize something strange. The tentacles slowly creeping up the hull aren’t your imagination and the captain’s nowhere to be found."
I do not believe those tentacles creeping up the side of the ship are in my imagination, but that bottle I I bought from the carpenter's apprentice an hour ago was not rum and it is proving difficult to tell what is real and what is my imagination. I am certain that my current state of mind contributed to the reasoning the crew had for binding me to the foremast and possibly why the captain is nowhere to be seen. I tried to yell to the nearby boatswain, to find as to why I was tied up and to determine if he was aware what was on the other end of the tentacle, but the crew apparently gagged me too. How could this happen? We were three days out from San Juan and, as navigator, they would need me to steer a course through the nearby reefs. I apparently blacked out, as I was nude. My wrists and ankles were tied tightly. As I struggled against the ropes, I watched a purple tentacle the size of my arm wrap around a stanchion near the port longboat, I saw a cooper who was looking over the side at what was below. His face blanched whiter than his neckcloth. Before he could give the alarm, a purple tentacle wrapped around his belly and pulled him over the side without a sound. I jerked at the bonds with new fervor and eventually loosened them enough to pull out my left hand. I tried to retrieve my rigging knife, but grabbed the skin of my thigh, as the knife was still in the pocket of my breeches which were Neptune-only-knows where. Whatever was in the rum bottle must have worked its way through my bowles, because, as I pushed my left hand down through the bindings to loosen the lines around my ankles, I felt a sudden need to relieve myself. I freed the bonds and began working on the knot at my wrist. The tentacle on the port side, was soon joined by another on the starbord, but I was only vaguely aware of the monster below, as my guts turned in my belly and I felt an impending explosion was iminent. The boat slowed to jib and the monster seemed to get a better grasp. I heard a creaking as the muscles of the creature gripped the hull. The brigantine would certainly be crushed within seconds, but all my mortal brain could concern itself with, was removing the final rope from my wrist and freeing myself of the poison within my innards. My fingers bled from the exercions, but I was able to free my right hand from the lashings. Thankful now for my nudity, I dashed to the starboard gunnel and thrust my bottom side over the rail. Before bowing over to release my bowels, I had the briefest of glimpses of a purple-grey being with black eyes and an orange beak the size of a man. I had little time to think of my impending fate. As I heard a low growl that grew into a roar, my bowels released their contents down toward the monster. Doubled over with the effort, a second waive of spasms gripped my intestines and an inhuman smell, either from the monster or from my own expulsions, wafted from below. With the relief from my body's discharge, I felt the sudden, paralyzing fear that I was about to be devoured by a sea monster while hanging -- naked -- over the edge of the vessel on which I was third ranking officer. As I cringed and waited to be dragged down into the depths by the beast, there was nothing to hear but the lapping of the sea against the hull. Standing up straight, I looked over the perch I had just inhabited to see nothing but blue water stained black by either my waste, or the monster's inky discharge. After retrieving a set of breeches and a shirt from my locker, I entered our position in the log, along with the information required to have the carpenter's apprentice flogged and report the loss of our cooper who jumped ship near San Juan.
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