Greenbeard (9781935259220) (7 page)

Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo, with magnificent fortitude, managed to read to the end of the poem, but then could no longer keep control. He laughed until his eyes ran tears and his ribs hurt, slapping the folded broadsheet on his thigh, wheezing
and whooping trying to catch a breath. Captain Greybagges had sat back in his captain's chair and was watching Blue Peter with a smile. As he watched the grimness slowly departed from his face and the smile grew wider, until he too was laughing, a great booming laugh. This continued for some minutes, as each time one would try to stop he would catch sight of the other and so fall again into helpless merriment.

“Oh, bugger!” said Captain Greybagges, wiping his eyes and shaking his head. He pulled the black silk scarf, knotted pirate-fashion, from his shaven pate and blew his nose on it, which triggered Blue Peter into a further fit of laughter. Blue Peter was a giant, and Captain Greybagges was not a small man, so their combined laughter was very loud. Up above, on the deck and in the rigging, the crew were frozen, exchanging startled glances, only continuing with their work as the gales of rumbling hilarity from below subsided to inaudible giggles.

Captain Greybagges wiped his eyes and blew his nose again on the now-sodden black scarf, and managed to curb his mirth enough to take sips of coffee. After a while Blue Peter did, too, hiccoughing and spilling some.

“Oh, God! I needed that!” said the Captain, “I have been very mumpish of late, I know.”

“I was beginning to be concerned. Unremitting solemnity is unbecoming even in a preacher of Calvin's credo, let alone in a captain of buccaneers,” said Blue Peter, dipping a biscuit in his coffee and eating it swiftly, before it disintegrated.

“You know, when I gave you that paper I had not the notion that the wretched doggerel was so amusing. I was merely going to comment upon how the plain facts of the matter were so sadly misrepresented,” said the Captain, refilling his mug, and carefully selecting a biscuit from the plate.

“Yes, indeed. My Lord Mondegreen is a terrible buffoon, is he not? Do you think he paid that poet to write it? ... on second thoughts, no, let us please talk of other things, or I shall start again, and I feel that it would kill me.”

“You are right. We cannot sit here chortling like tom-fools, yet I am deeply loath to lose this pleasant lightness of spirit...” Captain Greybagges drummed his fingers on the desk-top for a moment, then roared for Mumblin' Jake.

“Look'ee, Jake! Makes you me a picnic-hamper! A great fine picnic-hamper!”

“A picnic-hamper, Cap'n, sor?”

“A basket o' wittles for a shore-goin' party o' two hungry fellows. Bread - the
soft tack and not the ship's biscuit, mind yez! - butter, cheese, cooked meats - if there be any left wholesome in this damned heat - boiled eggs, pickles, fruit, some bottles of beer, some sweetmeats. Tell Len to fill a water-bag from the pump on the quay. Put it all in the skiff. Smartly now, ye lazy hound!” Mumblin' Jake scuttled out of the door.

Captain Greybagges stood up, rubbed his hands together and started slamming the ledgers and account-books shut.

“Away, dull care!” he cried. “School is over! Out for the summer!” Blue Peter stared at him as he packed away the books, abacus, quills and inkpots, humming under his breath.

“He is a terrible ass, though, is Lord Mondegreen,” said the Captain, musingly. “D'you remember him singing in that church in New Amsterdam? That Christmastide? Getting all the words of the hymns wrong? What a jackanapes!”

“Good King wants his applesauce, at the feast this eve-ning!” sang Blue Peter in a rumbling bass, grinning hugely, showing his filed teeth.

“Kept by thy tender care, Gladys the cross-eyed bear!” sang the Captain, in a light tenor. The two buccaneers struggled against a new attack of mirth.

The Captain rummaged around in a chest and found a ragged straw hat, which he clapped on his head. Another rummage in a cupboard produced a brown canvas bag. On a whim, he pushed back the desk and rolled up the rug and threw it over his shoulder.

“A banyan day for the captain!” he roared. “Come, let us picnic, shipmate!”

 

 

Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges rowed the skiff across Rum Bay with long easy strokes of the oars. He ran the skiff onto the beach below Sruudta Point. The two freebooters hauled it ashore by its gunwales, then tied the painter to a long iron spike tapped into the sand with the butt of an oar. The day was calm and sunny and the waves mere ripples, but good seamanship is good seamanship and cannot be gainsaid, even by the most temerarious of buccaneers.

“Har! Place you your trust in Allah, but tie your camel to a tree, as the Moors are wont to say,” said the Captain. “Look! There is a capital spot!” He pointed to a knoll where the ground started to rise up before the tor on the point. They carried the things from the skiff. There were two stunted trees on the knoll,
Captain Greybagges unrolled the carpet on the coarse salt-grass and hung the canvas waterbag from a branch in the shade. A sailcloth fire-bucket, half-full of seawater, was hung from another branch as a beer-cooler, the basket was hung from yet another branch to preserve the food from ants.

“Not a sylvan glade, exactly, or even an Arcadian grove, but a small oasis or
caravanserai
at any rate, with a Turkish rug, too!” laughed Captain Greybagges. “Now, how about a game of cricket? Get an appetite for lunch, eh?”

“Cricket...” Blue Peter said softly, “I have long wished to play cricket. Surely it requires two teams of eleven men, though?”

“It does, but we shall play a practice game with made-up rules, as I did so often as a boy.”

On a flat stretch of beach the Captain put down the brown canvas bag and undid its straps.

“Here, Peter, this is the club, or bat,” he handed it to Blue Peter, “and here is a ball, and here are the stumps and bails. How much do you know of the game?”

“I have only read of it, so treat me as an ignoramus.”

“Firstly, the pitch is twenty-two yards long between the wickets.”

Captain Greybagges pushed three stumps into the sand and placed the two bails on top. He then counted twenty-two paces and put up the second wicket.

“The crease is a short step afore the wicket,” he said, using a bare toe to scratch a line in the sand by each wicket, “and the batsman stands thus.” He took the bat from Blue Peter and demonstrated. “The bat must stay touching the crease until the bowler starts his run. Opinions vary about this from cricket-club to cricket-club, but it is a good strategy anyway to cover the wicket, as the bowler is trying to knock it down.” He gave the bat back to Blue Peter, who tried the batsman's stance, having to bend and crouch to touch the bat to the crease. “I will bowl the ball, but I will bowl it slowly. Don't hit it hard, not at first, get the feel of the bat and just prevent the ball from hitting the stumps, for if a bail falls off then you are out.”

Captain Greybagges bowled slow balls to Blue Peter, then Blue Peter tried bowling slow balls to the the Captain. Occasionally the Captain would stop and explain a rule, or an aspect of the game-play. The
thwack
of the hard leather ball on the wooden bat was loud in the quiet of the beach, and echo'd faintly from the cliffs on the other side of Rum Bay.

“What-ho! I'm hungry,” said the Captain, “Time to pull the stumps! How do you like it then, Peter? The game of cricket?”

“I am intrigued. I think I could become enamoured of it. The over-arm bowling is more tricky than it looks, especially when there are two pistols and a cutlass in one's belt. I wish to practice it more.”

“One thing, Peter. When the game is finished the team captains must shake hands.” He offered his hand to Blue Peter, who shook it solemnly. “I am ever pleased to shake hands with you, Peter, but you must remember that the captains must
always
shake hands. If the other team's captain were to be a blackguard, your worst enemy, had boasted in the pavilion of swiving your sister, has beaten your team by bare-faced cheating, and was grinning at you like an ape, then you must
still
put a good face upon it and shake hands. It is the finest of games, but it is still a game, and not something to fight duels over. That is its greatest value, perhaps.”

They walked slowly back to the knoll, the Captain swinging the cricket-bag.

“Might I not kill the blackguard for abusing my sister
after
I have shaken his hand, Captain?”

“Why, of course! As long as it's not about the cricket, and doesn't inconvenience the cricket-club committee, then it would certainly be quite the right thing to do.”

 

 

Seated on the rug, reclining in the shade, leaning comfortably against the trunks of the trees, they cut the waxed string from the necks of beer-bottles, eased the corks out carefully and poured the cold beer into glasses.

“Oh, my! That is good!” said Blue Peter, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Captain, would you be good enough to pass me those crustaceans?” Mumblin' Jake's picnic-basket included a damp cloth full of boiled shrimps.

“Surely, Peter!” the Captain passed the shrimps and a pot of pepper relish, “but you may call me Sylvestre, or even Syl, as this is my banyan day.” He took a bite of a sandwich of cold roast pork and mustard, then took a gulp of beer. The grim cast which had darkened his face for a year had faded, and he looked at ease. They ate in companionable silence for a while.

“I will speak freely, then, Sylvestre,” said Blue Peter. “I suspect that you have
a hidden purpose in this, your banyan day, and that you wish to converse with me without the possibility of eavesdropping, yet to conceal that purpose within an apparent madcap lark, to prevent invidious or far-fetched conjectures among the crew.”

Captain Greybagges turned to look at Blue Peter.

“You should have been a lawyer, you scoundrel!” He took a draught of beer. “You are right, for the most part. The idea of the madcap lark came first, as I looked at those damn' ledgers, but I had been seeking such an opportunity anyway. Do not underestimate the roborative effects of a madcap lark, though. This day, my banyan day, has already taken a great weight from my oppressed spirits...”