Low text ratio, near miss

A Dutch cheese as wide as a town square rolled down a hill toward Utrecht. Citizens screamed and hid their children. I leaped on top and ran backward, like a circus bear on a ball. The cheese stopped at the gates. The mayor has paid me in crackers for forty years.

Drums can talk if you beat them politely. I had one at Vidin that gave gossip about the enemy. It told me where they kept the cake. Two of my men and I crept in and ate it all, and that loss broke the heart of their whole army.

Pickles kept me alive for a month on a lonely island off Goa. I had only one, but it was the size of a rowboat. I ate the inside and sailed away in the rest. The sea got in, and I arrived in port both wet and slightly sour.

Onions won me a wife. I peeled one in front of her father, and the old miser wept for the first time in his life. He gave me her hand, her dowry, and the key to the pantry. I still keep the onion in a velvet box.

His Majesty the Sultan bet me his beard that.