When Damien tried to negotiate peace talks with them they punched him and tied him up!  I couldn’t believe it.  They were even white.  Well a few of them were but most of them were Latino and a few were Asian or African Americans from Brazil.  There was also an Israeli among them.  Such a band of pirates I had never seen before and it was most unusual.  The leader’s name seemed to be Manuel.  He ordered his men to keep guns on us but they didn’t tie us up.  I think they didn’t want to deal with the little children who would inevitably be needing frequent trips to the loo.  I was taking in my surroundings surveying our options when I realized that Sylvia’s father the Navy Seal wasn’t with us and I remembered that he had gone down to his cabin to change his clothes after working out on deck.  I kept an eye out and sure enough I saw him sneaking around taking inventory of the pirates and their weapons.  It was then that I knew we would survive. 

Still the pirates had control of the ship for four days before Peter made his move.  I wondered why he was taking so long but I reasoned that I wasn’t a Navy Seal and couldn’t possibly understand his methods.  By this time the pirates had rerouted the ship to South Africa after picking up a shipment of marijuana from a ship that met us from Venezuela.  During this time my days were filled with feeding Sylvia Damien and Peace No War trying to convince the fearsome pirates to untie Damien (which they never did) and teaching all the passengers how to play hopscotch.  I’m afraid the poor captain lost his mind because he kept singing “Clementine” so loudly and with such wailing that the pirates finally gagged him.  Then his loyal and angry crew began singing it but I’m afraid some of them didn’t know the song even after hearing Captain Cook sing it for 24 hours straight for they sang “Bingo” instead.  It was such a chaos of melodies notes and music with words in between that I couldn’t hear myself think much less teach the passengers the moves to the tango. 

Well on the fourth day Peter finally made his move.  It was during the breakfast hour and we were all chewing happily on our burnt pancakes when he came flying at the head pirate and slapped him silly with a big foam finger.  With one swift movement he cut all ten ropes that were wrapped around Damien multiple times and my gloriously buff husband began to find the pirates as well.  It was then that I saw why Peter had taken four days to take the ship back.  He had been setting up a trap.  After initially hitting the leader with the foam finger he ran back into the corridor and many of the pirates followed him.  When the first ran through the doorway a bucket of slimy sardines was dumped over him and the rest slipped and tripped all over him!  What ingenuity!  There were many other traps they fell into—many involving electrocution and molasses—all over the ship.  All of us then tied up the pirates and let the captain and his crew loose.  Captain Cook rushed up to Peter and shook his hand with pride.  “I and our country cannot thank you enough sir!  It is an honor to shake your hand Peter Panabaker!”  He said that he will recommend him for a medal when we get back to the states.

Since we were so close to South Africa already we stopped there to refurbish our supplies though we decided to keep the pirates on board so that we could turn them over to the American authorities since they had attacked an American ship.  Damien and I traveled around for a day trip before returning to the ship.  We went to see Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and oh what a magnificent sight!  We were just about to catch a bus in Johannesburg back to the port where the ship was docked when we noticed someone selling DVDs on the street.  It had been so long since we had seen a movie we thought that it might be nice to buy one to watch on my laptop on the way home.  So we approached the man selling them and asked what he would recommend and he showed us several.  We finally settled upon “Free Willy” and had just paid the man for it when another man ushered us into a very dark room.  Suddenly someone hit us over the head and the next thing I remember I woke up in a karaoke room in Beijing and someone had just tagged me to sing “My Heart Will Go.”  So in a daze I went on stage and sang the song.  I was beginning to cry because I didn’t know where Damien was and I wondered how someone had snuck me into this country and how long I had been unconscious since South Africa is a long ways from China.  The people loved my song so much that they begged me to do an encore and I couldn’t resist so I sang five more songs before I finally told them I couldn’t sing anymore.  When I left the stage the Asian man who had ushered us into the dark room in Johannesburg took my arm and took me out into the street.  It was nighttime and the city lights were bright.  I asked him what was going on but he wouldn’t tell me.  I begged him to tell me where my husband was but he still remained silent.  Finally he took me to a casino and forced me to play poker for a few hours.  I enjoyed the game as I always have but I was consumed with worry for Damien and my strange dire situation.  Finally the man took me to a back room where he forced me to give him all my winnings.  Then an old lady entered and she had Damien with her!  I was so relieved that I fell into his arms crying.  But then other brought in more people—mostly Americans—whom they then began to auction off as slaves!  It was a most dreadful situation!  They auctioned off Damien and me to a lovely rich young couple who needed people to do work around the house for them because they were so rich they had never learned any manual labor skills.  It was a strange thing.  All of us were bought by people who lived in the same area which was deep into the jungles of China.  They snuck us all out and we traveled together. 

They were walking us down the Great Wall of China and I took Damien’s hand.  I had always dreamed of doing this with him someday but I had never imagined doing it as a slave.  Suddenly one of the other slaves—a tall beautiful blonde lady from Los Angeles—did a spinny kick and knocked one of our slave drivers off the wall!  I hope he survived.  She then karate chopped the chain we were chained together with and threw our other guard rolling down the wall.  Then we all ran and eventually escaped into the jungle.  After awhile we came across some Chinese soldiers who had us expelled from the country immediately after they realized that we actually were not spies sent to obtain military secrets.  But there was a mistake and we ended up in Hong Kong rather than South Korea where they had originally intended to send us.  But the Hong Kong officials have been very kind to us and put us all up in a hotel for the night. 

Damien and I will have to somehow get in contact with Captain Cook about retrieving our puppy who had been left on board in the care of the crew.  But such an adventure we have been on and we are most grateful to be alive! 

I can’t wait to take that boat to South Korea tomorrow.  Perhaps our honeymoon will finally be over when we take that airplane from Seoul to Los Angeles.

May the force be with you.