10 Minute Prompt: Use a randomly selected colloquialism to write...

"Man Up!"

In the fifteen foot skiff, rising and falling a good ten feet with every swell, waiting for the top of the next swell before grabbing the rope ladder, so as to climb to the deck of the ship I had traveled all day to get to, I hesitated.

"Man up!" the skiff's skipper stood beside me, a jolly laugh on his lips, hands on his hips, one foot against the gunnel like it weren't nothing. Resentment at his command balled a fist in my gut. The skiff rose, peaked and time slowed as I grabbed the closest rung of the rope ladder. In the next moment I was standing on the deck of the ship with no memory of climbing up two stories of swinging ladder.

"Woman on deck," I muttered to myself. The three men on deck nearby ignored me. Turning a circle I saw a woman coming toward me from a wall of indistinguishable metal features of pipes, valves, screw seals, and ladders. She held her arms open, smiled broadly and warmly, and said, "Go right through that hatch to the galley. There's hot chocolate and coffee to warm you up." I looked in the direction she gestured: all pipes, valves, and portholes.

"What hatch?"