January 16th

    Today I awoke to a loud cry from the lookout which I missed, though the intent was clear from the yelling and screaming around the ship. We had hit land! Well, not really hit, more that we found our goal; it would still be a few hours before we reached our goal. Good thing too, for it gave the crew time to calm down from the loud yells.
   With the noise level down, it turned into a waiting game. Mr.X was most impatient and seemed eager to get to solid ground, Agent X seemed to want the same. Who could blame them? They had been seasick most of the trip. I had my own work to do, fixing the hole I had made back on my first day on this trip. The rats had been staying farther away from me, ever since I had learned to make objects spontaneously combust by writing on them. This was a fun trick to use by igniting the ends of paper slips and driving off rats. Darwin had his own Promethean matches, but they were made of glass and he broke them between his teeth. Still not knowing what to do with my large diamond, I asked Matikhara, and he responded by promptly asking me where I got it. I told Matikhara that I had found an old losing lottery ticket in a porcelain jar and rewrote the date so I could exchange it for my prize. He didnšt believe me, and then I explained that it came out of my portal-that-was. He nodded and told me, "conceivably," he said, "We could put force unto it to open a new portal."
   "I'm glad I thought of it!" I said as he gave me a strange look as if it was his idea. We then proceeded to cut the diamond down into smaller bullet like shells, within the time of about three minutes by writing on the sides of it. We now had five diamond bullets and Matikhara and I went into the storeroom to test our idea. He placed one of his coins against a barrel, and Fred helped me load and aim the shotgun. Matikhara backed away from the barrel and Fred pulled the trigger. The gun went off and the diamond drove the coin right into the barrel.
   "Well, we all make mistakes," said Matikhara. I put Fred in front of the gun. "What are you doing!" said Matikhara as I shot at Fred. This time though, the diamond broke upon hitting Fred, and a thin circular space opened up. "Well that was strange." responded Matikhara to the new portal.
   "Where do you suppose it leads to?" I asked.
   He explained that since the other rounds had not been fired off, it would lead to a void in which all items that had fallen of the face of the earth would go. While he was explaining this, I stuck my head into the portal and saw a pile of socks‹more like a mountain of left socks, which had fallen off the face of the existence, as socks tend to do. There were white two-dimensional holes throughout the void, out of which items spewed from one and other. I reached out and pulled a sock from the void, upon which I exclaimed, "I always wondered where this went!" and promptly put it on my foot.
   Matikhara and I resumed our task and opened portals, inside the longboat, inside the spirit room, the kitchen, and the captain's storeroom. With no further use for the shotgun, I proceeded in joining the poker game going on deck.
   "Two cards" I said to Mr.X, whom had given me two aces.
   "I'll raise you two chips," said Agent X
   "I appear to be out of coins," I said "But I would be happy to offer this shotgun at the value of 10 chips."
   "Išll call!" exclaimed Mr.X hastily adding most of his chips to the pile.
   "I've got a flush" showing my powerful hand of two aces, the king of hearts, the queen of hearts, and a jack of hearts. Smiling I saw a look of despair on Agent X's face.
   "I only have a straight" he said putting down his cards.
   "Straight flush!" exclaimed Mr.X pulling in his winnings.
   "But wait," said Agent X "Hilot forgot that aces are wild."
   "I believe I did," I said figuring out my hand, "it appears I have a royal flush."
   Mr.X seemed shocked. "But, butŠ" he said as I dragged away his pile.
   At that moment the lookout, whom had been looking at us this time proceeded to tell us, "He had already claimed his hand at a flush. So it should be Mr.X's game."
   Agent X had gone off to seek the captain, for his word is law. Captain FitzRoy, whose sanity was nearing its end, was confused, and called in the missionary to help decide as an impartial judge; for he was inclined in my favor due to the fact Mr.X had abandoned his job as a chronometer guard. The missionary had a similar problem, for he had also lost quite a sum to Mr.X. Calling in more people to judge, most of them had problems with Mr.X, though one or two didnšt like my pickles too much either. Eventually Augustus Earle was called up, for none of us had ever even seen him, and he didnšt even know the rules of poker. He proposed that we flip a coin to decide who won. As the coin spun though the air we called, and the coin landed on a crack, perfectly stuck vertical. Annoyed, both Mr.X and me took our sides of the coin and started blowing on it.
   With everyone watching this poker problem, the ship approached the island until a nearby ship yelled out to us that we were too close and would have to change course to avoid impacting the rocks. The captain raced up to the wheel and hastily spun the ship the west, forcing the coin out of its hold and into rolling across the deck. Darwin, whom had then come out of the hold to find out why the ship had arced like that, had stepped on the coin while running toward the side to vomit.
   The wide-eyed onlookers, slowly walked passed the puking naturalist, toward the now motionless coin. FitzRoy handed off the wheel to one of his navigators and came over to call the winner. The coin lay there as FitzRoy leaned down to look at it. Then to prolong the result, a sharpshooter from the other ship shot the coin tossing it into the waves. Surprised everyone looked up toward the other ship for the first time, and saw the flag blowing in the breeze. Now this wasn't a normal flag, it was not even a nice flag, it had a purple stain on it and was slightly wrinkled, however the flag got its point across, a point that I will stall from writing no longer, a point so grand that it would be grand in most eyes that could understand the point in question, So grand that I can not write the point without stalling it for an extended time. Yes, grand that people are getting annoyed at me for not writing it, so grand that it will fill a page in its stalls, so grand that it uses one hundred and thirteen words to describe. Yeah, ok, I get the point, you want to know, well by the time I wrote all that the pirate flag had come right next to our ship, unloading its crew, taken my watch, and other things that escaped me. During the confusion, I took the money from the game, and left Mr.X his gun.