The Nikolas Ship

In ancient times, when the beasts of the land still roamed free,
Along the steppes and footlands and copses and bogs of the Continent, yea,
and there was lained upon the Earth a great civilisation, whereupon many
Technological curiosities and marvels were created,
and yea, in the heartland, where the oaks grew twenty and five cubits to the zenith
and the saps glowed in the dews

there a nikolas set his craft, felled seven trees, and seven more,
and he carved for eighty days and eighty nights,
and he consteructed the most perfect shippe and shipper that the world
had ever known, (for the world was primitive at the time)

and the ship was set in the great Sea, and it floated and it sailed with the
speed that was unparalleled, and the beams had the solidity, and the rigidity,
and the solidarity, and yet the flexibility, and the limbreness of a fine wood
and the sails were white, and pure, and glowing, and they were grand, and great,
and many, and manifold, for the stood up to the winds of Zephyrus,

and upon each sail he did, to honour the men who had fallen at the hands of
the shippe, and the greek shipping magnate, and the seamen, he did paint upon the sail
the exact image of ship, and upon each flag of the painted-ship, he did replicate this pattern
once more, and he did repeat this for the next layere as well, and at the end, whereupon
his painting-brush had collapsed, he declared that the molecules arrange themsleves
in the correct order, and lo, they did so, and it was good.

And he did set upon this ship in the hull three great cannons, such that
they discharged matter which was hot, and ionised, and gaseous, and wonderful,
and delectable, and sticky, and yea, when it contacted any form of matter,
it did vapourise it instantaneously, for it was a magnificent work of nikolas-thinking

And yea, when this ship saw the flames of war for the first time
and it was virgin, and unspoilt, (and it was indeed carrying slaves from Africa
on the Middle Passage, and yea, there was a hot thing),

it came upon a man-o-war, who did attempt
to make all manner of crude gestures and remarks, that were quite unbefitting
of a proper gentlemen, and yea, the nikiolas-ship, being much offended,
did discharge from the hull the great cannons, and they resounded with the thunder,
and the lightning, and it irradiated out, and it struck the man-o-war, and the will-o-wisp,

But, lo, behold, for the man-o-war had affixed it its own hull a grand mirror, and 'twas
shaped in the shape of a grand para-bola, and it did reflect the beams of the hot thing, and
it hit back the ship, and the ship did respond most gentlemanly by vapourising,
yea, and every-man aboard was dead, save one, for a slave had jumped over the boards,
in to the fire, and yea, she did swimme to the shores, and she did swim along the rivers,
and she did go to the towne of cinicnatti, whereupon she did harrass a family of
former slaves, and yea, she did pretend to be a ghoste, and a spooke, and a spectre,
and a ban-shee, and the ratte-kinge, and yea, it was goode.