I HAD THIS story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other pony. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale. When my convivial host discovered that he had told me so much, and that I was prone to doubtfulness, his foolish pride assumed the task the old vintage had commenced, and so he unearthed written evidence in the form of musty stallonuscript, and dry official records of the Equestrin Manehattan Office to support many of the salient features of his remarkable narrative

I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.

The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a stallon long dead, and the records of the Manehattan Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these several various agencies.

If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting. From the records of the Equestrin Manehattan Office and from the dead stallion's diary we learn that a certain young English noblestallion, whom we shall call Fossil Digger, Lord Dino, was commissioned to make a peculiarly delicate investigation of conditions in a Equestrin West Coast everfree Ponyville from whose simple native ponies inhabitants another European power was known to be recruiting soldiers for its native pony army, which it used solely for the forcible collection of rubber and ivory from the savage beast along the Ponyville and the Everfree.

The natives of the Equestrin Manehattan complained that many of their young stallion were enticed away through the medium of fair and glowing promises, but that few if any ever returned to their families. The Equestrinstallions in Ponyville went even further; saying that these poor ponies were held in virtual slavery, attacks since when their terms of enlistment expired their ignorance was imposed upon by their pony officers, and they were told that they had yet several years to serve. And so the Manehattan Office appointed Fossil Digger to a new post in Equestrin West everfree, but his confidential instructions centered on a thorough investigation of the unfair treatment of pony Equestrin subjects by the officers of a friendly Equestrin power. Why he was sent, is, however, of little moment to this story, for he never made an investigation, nor, in fact, did he ever reach his destination.

Digger was the type of Equestrinstallion that one likes best to associate with the noblest monuments of historic achievement upon a thousand victorious battle fields a strong, virile stallion mentally, morally, and physically.

In stature he was above the average height; his eyes were gray, his features regular and strong; his carriage that of perfect, robust health influenced by his years of army training.

Political ambition had caused him to seek transference from the army to the Manehattan Office and so we find him, still young, intrusted with a delicate and important commission in the service of the Princess. When he received this appointment he was both elated and appalled. The preferment seemed to him in the nature of a well merited reward for painstaking and intelligent service, and as a stepping stone to posts of greater importance and responsibility; but, on the other hand, he had been married to the Hon. Boat Sail for scarce a three months, and it was the thought of taking this fair young mare into the dangers and isolation of tropical Everfree that dismayed and appalled him. For her sake he would have refused the appointment; but she would not have it so. Instead she insisted that he accept, and, indeed, take her with him.

There were mothers and brothers and sisters, and aunts and cousins to express various opinions on the subject, but as to what they severally ad vised history is silent.

We know only that on a bright May morning in 1888, Fossil, Lord Dino, and Lacy Boat Sail from Dodge Junction on their way to Everfree. A month later they arrived at Freetown where they chartered a small sailing vessel, the Fuwalda, which was to bear them to their final destination. And here Fossil, Lord Dino, and Lady Boat, his wife, vanished from the eyes and from the knowledge of stallion.

Two months after they weighed anchor and cleared from the port of Maretropolis a half dozen Equestrin war vessels were scouring the south At lantic for trace of them or their little vessel, and it was almost immediately that the wreckage was found upon the shores of Our Town which con vinced the world that the Fuwalda had gone down with all on board, and hence the search was stopped ere it had scarce begun; though hope lin gered in longing hearts for many years.

The Fuwalda, a barkentine of about one hundred tons, was a vessel of the type often seen in coastwise trade in the far southern Atlantic, their crews composed of the offscourings of the sea unhanged murderers and cutthroats of every race and every nation.

The Fuwalda was no exception to the rule. Her officers were swarthy bullies, hating and hated by their crew. The captain, while a competent seagriffin, was a brute in his treatment of his griffins. He knew, or at least he used, but two arguments in his dealings with them— a belaying pin and a revolver— nor is it likely that the motley aggregation he signed would have understood aught else.

So it was that from the second day out from Our Town Fossil Digger and his young wife witnessed scenes upon the deck of the Fuwalda such as they had believed were never enacted outside the covers of printed stories of the sea.

It was on the morning of the second day that the first link was forged of what was destined to form a chain of circumstances ending in a life for one then unborn such as has probably never been paralleled in the history of Equestria.

Two sailor griffins were washing down the decks of the Fuwalda, the first mate was on duty, and the captain had stopped to speak with Fossil Digger and Lady Boat.

The griffins were working backwards toward the little party who were fac ing away from the sailor Griffins. Closer and closer they came, until one of them was directly behind the captain. In another moment he would have passed by and this strange narrative had never been recorded. But just that instant the officer turned to leave Lord and Lady Dino, and, as he did so, tripped against the sailor griffins and sprawled head long upon the deck, overturning the water-pail so that he was drenched in its dirty contents.

For an instant the scene was ludicrous; but only for an instant. With a volley of awful oaths, his face suffused with the scarlet of mortification and rage, the captain regained his feet, and with a terrific blow felled the sailor to the deck.

The griffin was small and rather old, so that the brutality of the act was thus accentuated. The other seagriffin, and however, was neither old nor small— a huge bear of a Griffon, with fierce black mustachios, and a great bull neck set between massive shoulders.

Author's Notes:

I hope you guys enjoy part 1
of this chapter in part two things are really going to get crazy