Summeridyl Harald Slott-Moller

I’d had such a good time on the Pleasure Boat, that I felt like doing something similar. Summeridyl by Harald Slott-Moller looked like the perfect choice. Four beautiful women in a boat, and there was even a dog in the boat’s bow. What could go wrong?

Somehow I ended up on a small sandbar twenty yards from the boat. The dog noticed me, but the beautiful women did not. Or they pretended not to. “Hello there!” I called out. “Ahoy!”

The boat bobbed gently, the dog barked, and the women pretended I didn’t exist. “Ahoy there!” I tried again. “Avast.” To no avail. And then I noticed that I was sinking. The sandbar sand was dissolving beneath my feet. And the water was much colder than it had appeared. Icy.

I thought about diving in and swimming to the boat. And once there—maybe I’d tip it over. That would teach those stuckups. But I stayed on the sandbar, what was left of it, and the boat drifted away. Not the adventure I’d hoped for.

What’s more, for some reason I couldn’t get off the sandbar. I couldn’t return to the present day. About the only good thing was the sandbar stopped sinking. Only my toes were submerged. An hour or so later a ship passed. It was well out to sea, but not so far away that I wasn’t able to make out the little dog on the deck. I recognized its annoying yap. And then I noticed, up on the mast, the skull-and crossbones flag of the jolly-roger, and beneath it, billowing in the breeze, what was almost certainly the somewhat shredded gowns of those four ladies.