Peter: Susan, I know that thou wisheth to make use of our dream knowledge from otherworld.
Susan: Peter, I know that you're going overboard with the really bad impression of old style English and want to pretend that England is a dream.
Peter: Dear Madam--
Susan: Which, how does that work anyway? How can there be English without an England?
Peter: Now my high, but not as high as me, queen, I thinkest that we goeth off tracketh.
*Susan tries not to laugh; she fails*
Peter: We do not haveth this powder of the gun to put in the noncanonical cannon.
Susan: Perhaps if we fired a phoenix from a ballista then?
Peter: Aren't you supposed to be gentle!?
Susan: I think it was the Americans who said, "Speak gently, but wield tremendous firepower," or something to that effect.
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Some things don't require explanation.
Or maybe...
So they plan to be running away and yet are sure that they'll have no problem sinking enemy ships. Running away rules out ramming, sinking instead of disabling rules out a lot more things. So how exactly were they planning to sink the pursuing ships?
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I get hung up on the notion that English schoolchildren would know the right proportions of the right ingredients to make gunpowder, much less know how to make a functioning cannon.... ;-)
ReplyDeleteIn that era, it might well be something they'd looked up how to do for fun. (See also Bevis, the Story of a Boy.)
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