Captain Beware!

By the time the Captain made it to the upper deck to see what the ruckus was about, it was too late. The intruders had not only boarded the ship, but had taken the Skipper captive. He was soon in the same boat, so to speak. He blacked out.

When he came to, he saw that he and the Skipper had been strung up in the public square, and the crowd was out for blood. Well, really just the Wench and her Hench were out for blood, but they made a lot of noise about it. They were not so much joined as followed from a distance (and much less coherently) in their bloodthirst by a rogue slave who had managed to buy himself.

The rest of the folks seemed more interested in their cups of coffee than the rantings of the dastardly duo, while the Captain and the Skipper were hanging around, so to speak, wondering what would happen next. They were not at all surprised that it was the arrival of the Magistrate, who politely suggested, as was his custom, that perhaps there had been a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, a rather large man apparently averse to bathing wandered about the crowd asking for pictures, as was his custom.

There was no misunderstanding, shouted the Hench, speaking for the Wench, as was his custom. According to him, the Captain had committed all manner of unlikely invasions, and must be punished. The Skipper, he declared, was simply annoying, and that could not be permitted. The Magistrate, in his customary manner, did not doubt what had been said, nor did he not doubt it either.

Upon hearing the accusations against the Captain, one lady looked up from her book of crafts and said simply, "That's a load of hooey," as was her custom, although those were not quite her exact words. The Captain himself said little in his own defence, but he did point out that the Skipper had done nothing that the Wench herself had not done, to which the Hench replied by pointing out that the Captain was old.

In the end, the general consensus was indeed that there had been a misunderstanding, although nobody fully understood what it was, and the crowd went about its usual business. The strings that had held the Captain and the Skipper unravelled, and the Wench and her Hench went looking for their next misadventure.

Our heroes made their way back to the ship, where the Captain resumed crooning about his appetite for his guests, while the Skipper went about the omnipresent matter of keeping the Universe safe from stupid people.

Somewhere there is a universe where we are roaming the stars fighting whatever there is to be fought, like characters in a Heinlein novel.