The next morning, everyone went down to breakfast (fish sausages, Kola Nut Hotel 's special tamarind sauce, flapjacks with sycamore syrup). Then the penguins, seals, sea-otters and the walrus spent the whole day playing in the pool, while Capt. Cookie and Lieutenant Temples, the co-pilot, went back to the airship to check everything. Skates, the bellboybird, took them in the hotel luggage cart and watched while they tested the instruments and tightened bolts etc. The captain had asked Miss Wu, the hotel manager, to order some catering-quality cooking oil from McCluskey, and they were expecting him to deliver it in the grocery blimp the next day. Wu had some high-octane extra virgin olive oil, but Capt. Cookie thought such rich stuff might spoil the engine.
Later on, in the afternoon, after the maintenance work was finished, Temples and Supervisor Singsong went for a walk in the hotel's exotic garden and got completely lost.
That evening, back in the hotel there was a bit of a commotion.
“Wildmouth, you monsterpiece!!” shouted Miss Wu. “You ate the harpsichord?”
“I was hungry - I thought it was a gazelle,” said Wildmouth. “Anyway, I only ate one or two legs.”
“Well, there are bite marks on the flank and neck too,” said Wu. ”And scratches all over the lid! It’s going to cost a lot to restore it to it’s former glory. Not to mention the trauma it must have suffered!”
“I’m sorry,” said Wildmouth. “I’ll pay for the restoration. Put it on my bill.”
Night fell, and Lieutenant Temples and Superviser Singsong were still wandering around in the exotic garden hopelessly lost. They spent the night in the garden, huddled together against the chill and lit by a bright moonlight.
The Moon was behaving eccentrically that night. It came down lower and lower, closer and closer, until it was just above the roof of the hotel, where the other two members of the airship’s crew were now sleeping. Capt. Cookie was fast asleep, but Commander Winterbottom, the steward, woke up and was shocked to see the Moon two or three metres above him. Squinting in the white light, he stood up. He could feel the Moon gently pulling him. It was irresistable. He jumped up and then he was on the surface of the Moon! He held tight as it started to rise up again. He called to Capt. Cookie: “Sir! Skipper!” The captain woke up with a start and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Winterbottom!” shouted the captain. “Jump!”
Winterbottom was now standing on the bottom of the Moon with Mother Earth ten metres above him. He tried to jump but he couldn’t escape the Moon’s gravity. The Moon continued to rise.
Zhulian Wildmouth made his name as a young tearaway lion actor, when he portrayed Sir Charlton Boniface, the cross-dressing, water-skiing philanthropist. He is not in the spotlight now apart from the occasional guest appearance in a magic lantern show. Although his celebrity aura is now dimmed, critics are frightened of him after what happened to Snodgrass Twit, who had given him a bad review. (Similar treatment should be feared by anyone suggesting he might have let himself go.) He's a permanent guest at the Kola Nut Hotel.
© David Severn 2012
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