Short Story Reaction 2

Fiction Packet 2: Prairie

From the sound of the story, it seems like it took place on a ship of some sort.  I get that interpretation from the term "Captain" being used frequently.  I could be wrong about this but it gives me a feeling of a ship at sea.  When I read this story I can see a crew of people who encountered a person who was severely injured.  It was said in the story that this person had pieces of skin flayed off his back.  This could be that he was tortured, I am only guessing though.  In the start of the second paragraph of the story there was a word that was unfamiliar to me.  That word was "paroch."  I looked up the word to see that it was a abbreviated form of parochial which is a religious term of relating to a church parish.  Then there was a assortment of words pertain to religion like: "baptizing, church, scrolls, Jesus and sainthood." This made me believe that this was more of a religious story than my first theory.  If so then it explains why I really cannot understand this story.  The beginning of this story really attracted me because of the description of the man with the rips and tears on his back.  Once I read that I wanted to keep reading more.  Truthfully I couldn't interpret the setting or the plot of the story, so I just made assumptions from what knowledge I could gather from it.