Summary Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing,
the dog Ahab, the boy Dooly, and Man of Science Artemis Wurzle set sail
from Twombly Town with a raftload of cheeses and an oboe-gun with whirl-gatherers.
The rafters encounter trolls and sandbars, goblins and elves, and find themselves
on the trail of a mysterious dwarf with a pocketwatch that stops time, rightfully
the possession of the Man in the Moon (no bad cheeser himself). There is
also an assortment of elf marvels: Twickenham's airship, the undersea device
and cloak of invisibility currently in the possession of the elderly pirate
Theophile Escargot, and the Lumbog Globe. "Things are abroad in the land."
An early draft of The Elfin Ship, called The
Man in the Moon, was published twenty years later, in 2002. |