Why the Fellowship Should Avoid Cruises
Aranel and Encaitarë, with Bethany, Josiah, and Morris
One day, the Fellowship of the Ring and Elrond were strolling along, not doing anything in particular, when a cruise ship happened to pass by. They decided to go on a cruise. They flagged the ship down, bought tickets, and boarded. As the ship embarked, they had to find out all the rules.
"There will be no running, no shouting, no sliding on the banisters, and no touching of the historical artifacts! And above all, there shall be no disturbing of the captain!" said an old lady with coke-bottle glasses. Merry and Pippin did not like rules. They said to themselves that they were going to break some of the rules later, but for now they were occupied with hurling over the side. After this, they all met a pirate. His name was…
"Quid, Quid, like the British money, ar! And I won't charge ye an arm and a leg like those thievin' charger boats neither!" He watched everyone swaying around the deck with green faces.
"Ar har har!" said Quid. "Looks like I got meself a boatload of old salts here, har har!"
"Yer just in time fer breakfast, mateys," announced the cook. The Fellowship sat on plank benches drawn up to rough wooden tables. Breakfast included hard-boiled eggs and "lard o' the rind" bacon, as well as mercilessly sour grapefruit and scorched screech owl.
Suddenly, the Fellowship looked up to see two people, namely Bart and Doris Rathbone. Doris was saying:
"Who wants pork rinds?" The captain and Bart replied:
"Oh, I do, I do!" Bart then filled his stomach before saying:
"I love dis! Da wind in your face! Da smell of de salt in de air! Da feel of da boat rocking back and forth, back and forth, to and fro, to and fro, fro and to, forth and back, to and back, forth and… oohhh, I'd better sit down. Blaaaahhhh!" The Fellowship had to turn their heads away at this point. But during all of this, Merry and Pippin had run off. Everyone was worried, but they decided that the two Hobbits could not get into that much trouble on a ship. That's where they were wrong.
Merry and Pippin had gone out the door and seen some stairs. Then, they decided to be very naughty. They became extremely excited and ran towards the stairs, shouting and yelling like maniacs. Then, they leapt upon the banisters and surfed down, overturning seven various statues of historic value on the way. The captain met them at the bottom and shouted:
"Keel-haul 'em all- if they survive walking the plank!"
"You'll never take me alive!" yelled Pippin. He ran over to the captain and bit his legs off.
"Yeah…oww…eh…ee!" shrieked the captain.
"Muhahahahaha!" Pippin laughed evilly.
"Catch that menace!" yelled the captain. "After him! After him! Kill him! Kill him! No, wait a minute! Bring him to me alive- and unspoiled!"
"Yes, sir!" said the crew collectively. They leapt after the fleeing hobbit. He ran back up the stairs and into the café. Then, he shrieked and climbed up the main support pole, where no one could reach him.
"I say we get a ladder!" said the first mate.
"I say, 'chop it down!'" said the captain irately.
"You're the captain!" they all said. Someone brought out an axe and chopped the pole down. That was a very stupid thing to do, as when they did thus, the entire roof caved in. (Luckily the main group of the Fellowship had already vacated the scene.) It squashed everyone but Pippin. The hobbit was so small that right before the roof collapsed, he had crawled down from the pole and escaped into the ventilation shaft that led to all of the staterooms on the ship.
As Pippin was crawling through the vent, he came to a stop outside one of the openings to a room. He peered inside and saw Gimli and Legolas arguing about having to share the room. Legolas had taken a role of gray tape and made a line that traveled down one wall, across the floor, up and over the table, and up the other wall. Legolas was standing on one side of the tape, Gimli on the other. Legolas tossed an outlandish duffle bag over to Gimli's side and said:
"This is my side, that is your side. I do not want to catch you or any of your detestable belongings on my side of the room. You understand?"
"That's not fair!" protested Gimli. "The washroom's on your side of the room!"
"So, you have that fancy box with a bunch of tiny men in it on your side!" said Legolas to make him stop complaining.
"Oh, right," agreed Gimli.
"It says 'TV' on it," pronounced Legolas. "But I've heard that if a dwarf turns it on, the little men will come out and eat that dwarf in his sleep!"
"Aaahhh!" said Gimli, "I'm not turning it on."
"Oh, then I will," offered Legolas. He reached over and snatched the remote. Then, he pushed the 'on' button.
"No!" shrieked Gimli, running out the door. Pippin and Legolas could hear Gimli shouting for the longest time.
"AHHH! The little men are going to eat me! Along with all of the Dwarves!" All of the Dwarves heard him and believed what he was saying. So they ran after him shouting:
"The Dwarves are for the Dwarves! The Dwarves are for the Dwarves!"
Gimli and the Dwarves ran through the hallways chanting psychotically:
"The Dwarves are for the Dwarves!" They all held picket signs that were inscribed with various messages like:
"Little men are evil!", "Kill the little men!", and, of course, "The Dwarves are for the Dwarves!" While going down the hall, they passed Frodo and Sam who were running from the captain, who now had two peg legs, a broken arm, and a bandage on his head. The captain was followed by his crew who were in almost as bad of condition as he was. Then, the captain said:
"After those shrimps!" When the crew finally caught up to the two Hobbits, they grabbed them and clapped them in irons.
"Put them in the dungeon," said the captain. "I will interrogate them about the whereabouts of their friend Pippin later!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" said the crew. They hobbled away, back to their duties.
Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam inspected their new surroundings. They were in a small and cramped brig cell with nothing but two swart bunks, a tiny hole for a toilet, a small window for a gloomy shaft of light, and a gaunt figure huddling in one corner whom they thought looked familiar but weren't certain.
"Well, Mr. Frodo," sighed Sam wistfully, "it appears we've gotten ourselves into a tight scrape. What do you aim to do?"
"Nothing, I suppose," replied Frodo in despair, as he sat on one of the dusty bunks.
In the meantime, Boromir, who was feeling mighty sea sick, was retching himself dry over the side of the twelfth deck of the ship. When he was finished, he pulled himself up.
"Get away!" he heard. Boromir turned around to see Aragorn chasing Elrond around the ship yelling:
"Daddy!" The two rushed right past Boromir in a flurry, knocking Boromir back precariously over the railing. He toppled down about 108 feet and into the shark-infested water. Aragorn and Elrond stopped and looked over into the water. They were shocked to see Boromir swimming faster than a speeding torpedo away from the ship. And every so often he would leap about ten feet into the air screaming while holding his rear.
In the interim, Frodo and Sam had been experiencing their own difficulties. Their other cell-mate, it turned out, was Gollum. He had been thrown in the brig for stowing away on board the cruise ship. And Frodo and Sam had a nightmare dealing with his shrieks of:
"It wasn't us! It wasn't us! It wasn't our fault! You must believe us!" After a day or so of staying in the cell, the Hobbits began to get a little hungry.
"What food have we got left?" asked Frodo.
"Well, let me see," said Sam. He began to rummage in his bag. After a good minute or two, he produced a small ornately carved box and handed it to Frodo.
"What's in this?" he asked.
"Just some seasonin' I was savin'," answered Sam. "It's the worst salt in all the Shire. I was thinkin' one night maybe we'd be havin' a roast chicken or somethin'!"
"Roast chicken?" questioned Frodo. "Sam!" Sam smiled and glanced over to Smeagol. His eyes went swirly and he began licking his chops.
"I see a fresh chicken right over there!" he slavered.
"No! No!" cried Smeagol in alarm. "You musn't eats us!" Sam pounced on Smeagol and began gnawing on his leg.
"Chew…chew…chew…slurp!"
"Yeow! Stupid fat hobbit! It hurts us!" whined Smeagol.
"Sam, are you mad?" cried Frodo. He gasped. "You're a cannibal!" Sam approached Frodo and said:
"Here, help me salt 'im!"
"Hmm…" said Frodo thoughtfully. As he stared at Smeagol, his vision blurred and the figure altered, transforming into a chicken.
"Alright," said Frodo, "I'll help you!"
The captain was on his way to the dungeon to interrogate Frodo and Sam when he thought he heard something strange like a yell. He picked up the pace a bit, feeling a bit frightened. Suddenly, there was a dreadful, "Fffffffff!"
"AHHH!" cried the captain. "Who- who's there? Show yourself!" He heard it again.
"AHHH! Come out and fight like a ma…"
"Fffffff!"
"Shriek!" he screamed, sprinting forward as fast as he could upon his two peg legs, into the dungeon. The captain was so terrified, he forgot to close the cell door. This allowed Frodo and Sam to escape rather easily. They slammed the door, locking the captain inside. Then Sam ate the keys.
"Good work, Sam!" congratulated Frodo. "And that chicken really was good. It's a shame there is no more."
During all of these happenings, Gandalf had been hiding under a large plaid rug in his stateroom, lest any of the crew should recognize his acquaintance with the infamous Hobbits who remained at large. After a day or so, he at last dared to venture out. He was instantly pursued by bizarre beasts in the pay of the captain. Unfortunately, they had recognized his rather identifiable hat, for it was a very distinctive object, and Gandalf hadn't, unfortunately, taken this into consideration. Now, these guards resembled extraterrestrials from another planet. The first possessed a rattle-snake body, a giraffe neck, and a human head. He also had six curly French mustaches, and was wearing a turban. The second was nearly the same except that he had the body of a caterpillar with an exceptionally large black stinger protruding from his tail. They began chasing him down the hall, and to make matters worse, they began to chant in the tune of the Siamese cats off of Lady and the Tramp:
"We are Saladin, if you please! We are Saladin, if you don't please!"
"WHAT IS GOING…ON DOWN HERE!" questioned Gandalf in his loudest scary voice. (He hoped to frighten them away.) When the creatures continued to advance and didn't appear to have any intention of halting, Gandalf produced his staff from somewhere and lowered it towards them.
"Well," he said, "I suppose I will have to make something useful out of you." He said a few magical words and made a motion towards them with the end of the staff as if he were going to throw it at them. They instantly turned into stone statues.
"Ah!" said Gandalf, pleased. "I've needed some bookends lately." He stooped down and picked them up, carrying them back into his room for that purpose.
In the intervening time, Merry had been in the Pavilion Night Club, dancing and singing the hours away to the tune of:
"You all everybody! You all everybody!" Pippin heard the noise from the Manhattan Restaurant and decided to join his friend. So he took Elevator 3 down to the lobby, took a look at a floor plan on the wall, and went back up to deck 7, where he arrived in front of the club.
"Hey, Pip!" called Merry happily. "Oh, good, you're just in time. I've heard about this drinking contest their having over next door. The prize for the winners is that green paper material."
"Sounds like a job for us," agreed Pippin. "But who cares about the prize! Free brew? Let's go!" So they ambled over to the Rendezvous Club and went to the bar. There, they signed up for the contest and waited for it to commence.
The barkeep explained the rules while they waited. Apparently, they had ten minutes to drink ten gallons. If they won, they received $10 thousand. If they lost, they had to pay for all of the beer. Finally, the man handed them each a ten gallon mug and filled it up to the top.
"You may begin," announced the bartender with a sly smile. The two hobbits began chugging as only a Hobbit can. They chugged and chugged and chugged until there were two gallons left for each and one minute remaining on the clock.
In an amazing finish, they downed the last sip with one second on the clock. You should have seen the looks on everyone's faces, especially the barkeep. It was classic. At first there followed silence. Then, one by one, people started clapping until the whole room was swelling with thunderous applause.
Merry and Pippin began to giggle in rather high pitched voices, as well as jabbering nonsensical things such as: "Reshpectobiggle!"
The barkeeper was furious! He had never believed anyone could accomplish a feat of this magnitude. The only reason he created the contest was so he could get rich off of the myriad of people who entered it and lost, subsequently being compelled to pay for the beer. Now, as it was, he had lost more money than he had made and he was very angry! In fact, he was so angry that he called security and complained:
"These bums won't pay their bills!" hoping that the Hobbits would be carried off and he would get to keep all of the money. But things didn't work out the way he wanted them to. As it turned out, several security guards had been in there cheering the Hobbits on and hadn't noticed any problems with 'bill-paying'. So they forced the bartender to pay the Hobbits their money. Then, they threw him in the brig, for things were getting ugly- and so was he.
The Hobbits took the suitcase of money and peered at it strangely.
"Oh," said Merry, laughing like a maniac, "so this was the stuff that Gandalf gave the captain when we came on this big canoe! Ha ha ha ha he ha ho ha hoo ha ha!"
"This it is," agreed Pippin in slurred speech amidst a couple of hiccups. Merry decided that he would go sit down, but he missed the nearest chair by twelve feet, fell on the floor, and started laughing. After this, Merry and Pippin paid the bathroom a visit.
Following their leave, the captain, who had finally released himself from the dungeon, went in and found that the two Hobbits had toilet-papered the bathroom stalls, left the water running after plugging the sinks, clogged the toilets with money, and signed their names in soap on the mirror:
"Merry and Pippin", with a smiley face.
The next morning, the captain was still trying to find the two Hobbits. He went door to door asking if anyone had seen them. It so happened that he knocked on Legolas' stateroom door rather early on.
"Who is it?" asked the elf indignantly. "I'm in the bathtub!"
"Have you seen Merry and Pippin, the two bothersome midgets who have been tearing up my ship?" asked the captain. Legolas, feeling highly inconvenienced, wrapped himself in a towel and opened the door.
"What?" he asked.
"Aha!" said the captain. "I recognize you! You're one of their friends! Tell me where-" The captain didn't get to say much more. Legolas had hit him over the head with a nearby vase and slammed the door. After the captain came to, he was furious, but he decided to get help. He rounded up five or so of his crew and went to get revenge on Legolas. First, they tried the door. It was locked. Then, they got a room key and tried it. The door didn't budge. Then, they resorted to more desperate measures. They grabbed a weighty oak bench out of the lobby and carried it to the door. Employing it as a ram, they backed up and ran it full force into the door with a mighty crash. But it was to no avail. They tried it again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Finally, they began to beg.
"Please, open the door!" pleaded the captain. "Pretty please? With sugar on top? And whipped cream? And a maraschino cherry? And coffee grounds? With chocolate curls? And a cinnamon stick? Please open the door?"
"Nope," came the muffled voice of Legolas through the door. "But it was a good effort." It was at this point that the crew gave up.
"Phew," Legolas sighed in relief. He stood behind his door which was barricaded with a bed, two chairs, two night tables, all of Gimli's luggage, and the TV. He had every possible entrance blocked and was as secure as if he were in a safe. That was when he felt it alright to return to what he had been doing before the attempted invasion. He restored the TV and switched it to the classics channel where reruns of Gilligan's Island were playing. Legolas hoped they would play the theme song again. He really liked it and had already memorized half of it.
Gimli led his "Dwarves are for the Dwarves" clan throughout the ship, smashing every accessible TV with their axes and eating all of the food in sight.
Legolas had, in the few days that followed the thwarted invasion, redecorated his stateroom. He gave it an elvish makeover, painting forest scenes on the walls, placing potted plants on each table, redoing the draperies to Mirkwood colours, and lighting candles everywhere. He decided that he wouldn't leave the room until the cruise ended, lest he run into the captain or any of his motley crew.
The captain searched high and low for the two drunk Hobbits, but he simply couldn't find them. It seemed that everywhere he looked, they had just been seen, but never apprehended. Captain Stephanos (That was his name. He was Greek) stepped into an elevator. As the door closed, he realized who was in the elevator with him. It was Merry and Pippin!
"Arrghh!" said the captain. "I finally caught you!"
"No…hiccup!" said Merry, brandishing duct tape in a convincing manner. "On the contrary. I believe it is we who have caught you!"
The elevator door soon reopened, and Merry and Pippin sauntered out, well-pleased. About five minutes later, a frail elderly woman stepped into the elevator and found the captain wrapped in what looked like a cocoon of duct tape. He was hanging from the ceiling of the elevator by his peg legs.
"AHHHH!" shrieked the old woman. She snatched the elevator phone and called security, but Merry and Pippin were already long gone. The captain couldn't be rescued for a long time because the two Hobbits had pushed all of the buttons in the elevator and it had to go all the way up to the 12th deck and back down to the lobby before the security could get to him.
But before the captain was rescued, the two Hobbits raced to the helm of the ship. They attacked the co-captain, Mr. Quigley, tied him up with duct tape, and threw him in the closet. Then, they took control of the ship. (They were still quite drunk, you see.) Merry and Pippin wanted to direct the ship to somewhere tropical so that they could knock back a few Bahama Mamas. (This seemed perfectly logical to the two Hobbits at that particular moment.) They wheeled the ship this way and that until they were certain they were headed south. (They were actually going north, and into the path of a colossal iceberg.) Merry excitedly drew several strands of curly hair from his eyes and exclaimed:
"We should, hiccup, be there by morning, Pip! Let's get some sleep."
"Hiccup!" said Pippin. "Alright, Merry. Pippin out!" He fell backwards to the floor.
Before the two Hobbits knew it, it was morning.
"Why is the floor tilting?" asked Pippin curiously.
"I don't know," replied Merry uncertainly." Let's have a look." They noticed as they went out that Mr. Quigley had escaped. As they traveled down the halls and to the elevators, they observed that there wasn't a soul to be seen. Not one person. No one.
"Very strange," commented Merry. They took the elevator up to deck 12, where they found the Fellowship. They were all huddling together, some wrapped in fuzzy red blankets. Gimli had obviously dropped his "Dwarves are for the Dwarves" nonsense. Not one of his raucous crew was to be seen.
"Where is everyone?" asked Pippin.
"They left with all of the lifeboats already," said Gandalf gravely. "I do not know what we will do."
"So…what's going on?" asked Pippin. "Why is the ship tilting?" Gandalf looked at him as if he wondered whether Pippin was blind.
"We're sinking, you dunce!" he scolded. "We hit an iceberg during the night."
"Oh," said Pippin. "That explains it."
The ship was sinking faster now, and in a manner that greatly resembled the sinking of the Titanic. When the stern was straight up in the air, the Fellowship and Elrond dangled from the railing in a human chain. Gandalf grasped the railing, Elrond held on to Gandalf, Aragorn to Elrond, Legolas to Aragorn, Gimli to Legolas, Frodo to Gimli, Sam to Frodo, Merry to Sam, and Pippin to Merry. (And if you're wondering what happened to Boromir, he swam to the Bahamas and spent seven weeks in the hospital sipping vintage rum.)
And then, something dreadful happened. It was so bad, I can scarcely find words to relate it to you, but I will make an attempt.
Anyhow, Gandalf was having a difficult time holding up all of the weight, so he began to protest:
"Elrond, if only you weren't so fat!"
"I fat?" asked Elrond indignantly. "How dare you! If I'm fat, you're an Orcish sumo wrestler from Mordor!"
"AHH!" cried Gandalf. "How dare-" It was then that he realized what he had done. He had let go of the railing to cross his arms, a bad mistake.
"SHRIEK!" they all screamed as they plummeted to the depths below.
"Go go Gadget Raft!" cried Gandalf. And a giant raft popped out of his pack and began inflating even as they fell. When they landed in the utter cacophony of the water, they all clambered into the raft and began paddling away as fast as they could from the sinking cruise ship. When they were a good distance away, they finally stopped paddling and turned…just in time to see the sleek stern of the shimmering ship sink into silence, leaving naught but a whirlpool of churning white water. Legolas began to shiver and sob. When the others inquired as to why he was behaving in this way, he informed them that his favorite hair brush had gone down to the depths with the ship. Quite suddenly, his hairbrush surfaced next to the raft with a light plop. Legolas instantly grinned from ear to ear and his eyes sparkled. He snatched up the pretty pink sequined brush in delight and began to stroke it fondly. He hugged it tightly to his chest and cooed:
"You're home now, Precious! You're back with your Daddy! And I'm never gonna lose you again!"
"That reminds me…" said Aragorn, glancing over at Elrond, who gulped in horror.
"Daddy!" cried Aragorn with joy. He grabbed Elrond and began squeezing him- tightly!
"Arwen- must have- gone- insane!" croaked Elrond with great effort as Aragorn squeezed him tighter.
Merry and Pippin began a burping contest, while Frodo and Sam grew quite seasick and began retching up the "roast chicken" that they had eaten a few days previous. It got even worse when Legolas taught them all the Gilligan's Island theme song. They sang it over and over and over and over and…
"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale- a tale of a fateful trip!" they sang again for the fifteenth time. Fairly soon, it became stuck in everyone's heads, and they couldn't get the song out for forty-five years.
And that, my friend, is precisely why the Fellowship was banned from all manners of cruising for the remainder of history. Well, that is, except for Captain Quid, the pirate. He still thought they were swell and offered to take them aboard anytime!
Finis