(prompt: 'land' 6/9/19)

"SO... " said Baz "Gawd struth, I'm only on the river - not the sea - it's true. BUT - I've been seein' bottles wash up on beaches. Lots of times!"

"They're NOT beaches, you lily-livered landlubber. They're sand-spits." Joe leaned his head back and rolled his eyes in disgust. "Rivers have banks and sand-spits."

"Who're you calling lily-livered? AND a landlubber!" And Baz harrumphed loudly, spluttering "... never heard anything like it in me whole life. And here I thought we were mates, Joe." Baz's shaggy eyebrows met and near got knotted in the middle of his hairy brow.

"Well, we are mates," and Joe muttered, you stupid old sausage. "Mates for life. But you're talking to an old sea salt of more than a few highly significant ocean voyages, you know." Joe sniffed with some disdain, muttering old salt, new salt... whatever. Reckon river boat sailors should be pitied more than envied. Sad really, plying the same old, same old path, up and down. The worst they saw was a bit of choppiness when the wind came up... or the opposite, sometimes they'd be stranded for weeks in a backwater in drought times.

Out loud he said, "But look here, old chap. The bottles you're talking about are over-indulgence variety - NOT the historic message in a bottle types. Them fellers usually end up miles and miles away, years later. I tell you what, Baz. They're truly the flotsam and jetsam of life on the rolling waves."

Baz grunted, pretending he didn't agree one little bit. Deep inside however, he had to admit Joe was right. Come to think of it, never really seen a proper message bottle, Never! he thought (but he wasn't about to admit it for Joe to gloat over). "Silly old goat!" he said out loud.

Joe took another large shloop of their favourite Rum. With full confidence reinstated, he continued his best ever story about 'message bottles'.

"I remember the time coming around Cape Horn on a rare trip on a racing yacht with a crew of Russkies. Those lads were SO excited, I broke out a bottle of sparkling wine. They polished that off quick smart and launched it overboard with a message recording our triumph."

"S'pose now yer gonna tell me that's where 'on the rocks' comes from?" Baz nudged Joe exuberantly, nearly knocking him off his perilous perch.

"No!" Joe beamed with excitement. "That bottle of bubbly came from a South Australian winery called 'Jacob's Creek', some 17,000 kms. across two great oceans, and it finally landed... intact... on a beach just 4 hours away from where the grapes grew to produce it!" Now Joe nearly fell off his bar stool all by himself with excitement. "It took three years against currents, foul weather and all the stacked odds. But there it was."

"Well, well, well-ll-ll... " Baz was befuddled - but one thing was clear as crystal. "We gotta finish off this here bottle o' Rum, me 'earty. Courage now. Finish it and write our own bottle message. Right?"

"And say?"

"Ahh... it'sa pushover for a clear-thinking freshie like me," and under his breath he muttered, not all glugged up with salt like you! And Baz wrote -

'SOS... SOS...
before our spirits evaporate like the spirits of this here shrinking bottle of Sea Master Buckeye's Rum.
PLEASE rescue us from a liquid end!