wolfling: major rewrite. I suppose, just like Englehorn, I've started again. Annoying brain-malfunction blankthough, do they ever mention Englehorn's first name?

Disclaimer: well…thinking about it, it wouldn't be fanfiction if I owned it, would it?

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Chapter One

To Captain Englehorn, owning a boat was the greatest freedom a man could have. With a boat, you could sail away from your problems and indulge in everything that the open sea had to offer. Open skies and endless escape.

Of course, the sea had its problems too. Storms, sharks, invisible crops of rocks.

Mysterious islands containing beasts unseen for very good reasons.

He didn't particularly enjoy the thought of that last voyage. Indeed, afterwards he had almost sworn to himself that he would leave the sea for as long a time as possible, putting the heavily stressed Venture into a shipyard for three months before his desire for open water consumed him again, and he once more took the helm of The Venture as captain.

It hadn't been much of a confidence boost when he discovered that only five people from his original crew had turned up, thus causing him to delay the departure date and have a small nervous breakdown in his Ready Room, during which he broke a chair on a wall and got splinters in his thumb.

Facing his somewhat depleted crew again; he took them on board, and through various connections managed to hire at least thirty more men before the ship was scheduled to leave.

Anyone with vague links to the film industry was turned away immediately.

Sighing as he kept the ship steady at the helm, he remembered how…strange it was to have had to replace such memorable people as Lumpy and Choy. And, of course, Mister Hayes.

But to be honest, Mister Hayes couldn't really be replaced, none of them could. He'd become accustomed to seeing them- Lumpy, gutting fish he never saw in his food, Choy tending to animals and swearing at them in foreign languages.

Mister Hayes, spending considerable silences with his Captain on the bridge, knowing that there was no need to talk and scuttling around the ship with Jimmy in his spare time. It seemed unthinkable that the man had gone, and Englehorn had to admit, he was almost looking for him that first day back at the docks.

Not that his replacements weren't capable. He'd used Scruffy, an older member of the original crew to serve as a sort of Mister Hayes. Scruffy was, though, constantly on edge in his presence. He looked oddly out of place on the bridge, attempting to fill the shoes of a leviathan man.

He was trying though. As was his new Chef, a young Liverpudlian woman, with a near awful Scouse accent which was the constant amusement of many a crewman. Including himself. She could cook a good meal though, even if he wasn't necessarily used to having more than cold, questionable stew for dinner after a variably long day.

He'd decided that live animal capture, although it was their forte, was too messy, took too long, and that Chloroform was becoming too expensive. They used to be the best, which had given the Captain pride, but he'd soon realised that it wasn't worth the expense-or the stench.

What they did do get money was ship furniture and other goods from place to place. Someone had said 'why not people'. Why not people indeed. People infuriated Englehorn; he'd quite had enough of shipping people, most of which enjoyed complaining, from place to place.

Besides, more people meant more polite manners and less smoking. Not good.

He relinquished the helm to Scruffy, and walked out onto the deck alone. He watched the sun set below the dark clouds, giving way to the moon in the battle for rule over the skies.

Englehorn gazed out at the sea, and smiled with pride. Freedom truly was a b-

THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

"What's that?"

"It's not a…monster is it?"

"Monsters don't exist."

Must have been a new crewmember. Broken at an inconvenient time from his silent reverie, Englehorn went over to the small crowd of people around the lifeboat and angrily ripped back the tarpaulin covering it.

"Captain!"

Oh god.

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wolfling: yeah...it's a bit waffly isn't it? For some reason, I've always seen Englehorn as...rough but philosophical. Constructive Criticism would be appreciated. Thanks to the reviewers of the last time this was posted, Queen Of The Badgers, Kymmethy and smartykid.