Dawn has just broken on the South China Sea. The only thing spoiling the tranquility of the calm tourquoise sea is the smoking ship on the horizon. It is the Nautilus. Along side her is the Nanki-Poo, pirate junk of the notorius Lady Marzipan and her band of nefarious evil-doers.Below decks there is evidence of intense fighting. Brigadier Rossaroni is being held hostage in the wardroom, tending to the still unconscious Lord Turnips, who was pistol whipped by a traitorous Nautilus crewmember. Lord Woodpecker-Smythe, still ostensibly prisoner of Marzipan, enters the room.
"W-S! What the devil are you doing here? This is duced odd, I didn't expect to be seeing you. What's going on?" exclaimed a visibly shocked Rossaroni.
"I'm here with Marzipan, man," replied Lord Woodpecker. "You wouldn't have any cigarettes, would you? I've been dreaming of them, man."
"Marzipan? Where is she? I need to speak to her," said Rossaroni.
W-S laughed. "Hey, man, you don't talk to Marzipan. You listen to her. The woman's enlarged my mind. She's a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes she'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to her, right? And she'll just walk right by you, and she won't even notice you. And suddenly she'll grab you, and she'll throw you ina corner, and she'll say do you know that if is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you -- I mean I'm no, I can't -- I'm a little person, I'm a little person, she's, she's a great person. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas -- I mean --"
"What's happened to you, Woodpecker? You're not making any sense." The Brigadier was getting very worried about his old friend. He was acting very much unlike his old self. "Just take me to Marzipan."W-S agreed and motioned Rossaroni to follow him from the wardroom, leaving the sleeping Turnips all alone. After climbing a nearby ladder they were soon in the Control Room, now transformed into a charnel house. The fighting had been fiercest here, and there were large numbers of dead Nautilus crew piled in heaps throughout the room.
Woodpecker looked nervously at the Brigadier. "The bodies. You're looking at the bodies. I, uh -- sometimes she goes too far, you know -- she's the first one to admit it!"
"She's gone crazy," said Rossaroni.
W-S bristled. "WRONG! WRONG! If you could have heard the woman, just two days ago, if you could have heard the woman! You're going to call her crazy?"
"Well, she doesn't seem to be here, where did she go?" asked the Brigadier.
"If she's not here, she's probably off with her people. She feels comfortable with her people. She forgets herself with her people. She forgets herself." Rossaroni was starting to think that Woodpecker-Smythe had gone crazy as well. He continued, "But you probably are thinking of how you can kill her, aren't you?"
"Why? Why would a nice guy like you wanna kill a genius? You know that the woman really likes you. She likes you, she really likes you. She's got something in mind for you. The woman is clear in her mind, but her soul is mad . Oh yeah. She's dying, I think. She hates all this, she hates it! But ... the woman's ... uh ... she reads poetry out loud, alright? ... And a voice! A voice..."
"She's got plans for you. Nah, nah, I'm not going to help you, you're going to help her, man. You're going to help her. I mean, what are they going to say, man, when she's gone, huh? Because she dies, when it dies, man, when it dies, she dies. What are they going to say about her? What, are they going to say, she was a kind woman, she was a wise woman, she had plans, she had wisdom? Am I going to be the one, that's going to set them straight? Look at me: WRONG! ... You!"
Brigadier Rossaroni was thoroughly confused now, "Have you been eating the Black Opium? You know your constutution can't handle Riding the Tiger. Don't you remember back in '59 when your boorish behavior single handedly started the Sepoy Mutiny? Come on man, get your head together. At least help me get some medicine to give to Lord Turnips." "Turnips? Turnips?," muttered W-S. "Yes, yes... we can do that... she has plans for him too, you know..."
