In an Adventure With Napoleon (16 page)

Everybody clapped, and the Governor turned to the Pirate Captain, who tugged thoughtfully at his lapels. ‘My esteemed opponent makes an interesting case,’ he said, ‘but what you have to remember about tourists is that when they’re visiting an exotic island like ours they expect a bit of anthropological colour. So to this end I have bold plans for every St Helenite to wear those great big plate things in their lower lips. And maybe get some of those brass rings that make your necks go all long and floppy, like the hill tribes have. Finally, I’m all for stealing one of the big heads from Easter Island, if that’s what it takes.’

The audience applauded again and a few of the pirates
did their best impressions of Easter Island statues. The pirate with a scarf stopped chewing the tip of his scarf quite so nervously and breathed a sigh of relief, because the Captain seemed to be handling the situation much better than he had expected.

The Governor picked up another question. ‘St Helena has a reasonably stable housing market. However, if circumstances were to change, what fiscal measures would the candidates take to restore equilibrium? Mister Bonaparte?’

‘Well, Governor, as a man who follows the property market with great enthusiasm …’

As Napoleon began to drone on, the Pirate Captain realised he was in a bit of a fix. The problem was that several of his crew had recently hit that age where all they ever wanted to talk about over feasts were either having babies or getting mortgages. Eventually the Pirate Captain had found himself so busy having to run through pirates who started on these topics of conversation that he had banned any mention of them from the boat. And as a result he didn’t know the first thing about housing markets.

Fortunately, the pirate with a scarf had thought ahead. The Pirate Captain felt around in his pocket for the piece of paper that his loyal deputy had pressed into his hand that morning. ‘Please read this before the debate, Pirate Captain,’ he had said, ‘it will help you deal with any question thrown at you.’ The Captain really
had
intended
to read it beforehand, but he hadn’t quite got round to it, because instead he’d ended up playing a game with the crew that involved seeing who could fit the most marsh-mallows in their mouth and still say ‘big barnacles’. He had managed eighteen. So now, as surreptitiously as he could, he slipped on his reading glasses and unfolded the note.

The Captain was pleased to see that Jennifer had also kissed the bottom of the paper and left a lip print.

With Napoleon still in full flow, the pirate Captain decided to tackle the list in order. First of all he did his most winning grin, opened his eyes really wide and swept
his gaze across the whole audience, taking care to make lingering eye contact with every single person there. Several of the islanders flinched, two or three looked petrified and one old man fled the room. Sure enough, after his smiling teeth had been exposed for a full five minutes, his mouth was feeling quite dry, so he fished around in his pocket for the bag of peppermints and popped one into his mouth. Then he began to concentrate. This wasn’t really something the Pirate Captain had much experience of, but he’d seen other people concentrate, and he knew that it involved furrowing your brow and pursing your lips. So he furrowed his brow and pursed his lips, and was happy to find that concentrating was a lot easier than he had been expecting. In fact, the Captain was so pleased with how well his concentrating was going that he decided to treat himself to another peppermint.

Years of circumnavigating the globe had eventually persuaded the Pirate Captain that the world might be spherical after all, much like a peppermint. And as he held it between finger and thumb, a strange thought struck him –
what if this mint was a world itself?
What sort of world would it be? Probably the green stripes would be the habitable continents, covered with fields and tiny sugary forests, while the white stripes would be frozen wastelands, perhaps inhabited by savage creatures that looked like a cross between a polar bear and a centipede and fired electricity from their antlers.
The natives of Mintworld would live in cities lining the frontier between the wasteland and the habitable green stripes, with the streets covered with statues of their god, who would have a luxuriant beard and a pleasant, open face. Looking closer at the peppermint, the Pirate Captain felt he could almost see one of the biggest cities on Mintworld, a bustling hive of rogues and adventurers who hunted the polar-bear-centipede things in the wasteland for their fur and meat. Many crews would sail from the city in great mintships, which were captained by brave characters much admired by the citizens. A particularly dashing mintshipman was known for his daring and clean good looks. Female Mintworlders probably had posters of him on their walls and sighed when they thought about his broad neck and strong arms. But the mintshipman only had eyes for one Mintworld lady and that was a lovely princess who lived in a big tower on the other side of the wasteland, where her cruel father had imprisoned her for some mean reason that the Pirate Captain couldn’t think of right now, but it was probably something to do with a prophecy. The mintshipman would sail across the wasteland for many days, avoiding perils like mysterious gas, robots and potholes, all to spend some time gazing at the lovely princess, who had a nice singing voice and wore one of those flimsy frocks that go a bit see-through in the right light. After he’d done a spot of gazing, he’d get bored and sail off for
a while, but a couple of weeks later he’d be back to moon around and look all romantic.

At some point, decided the Pirate Captain, the mintshipman would get sick of mucking about and he’d pluck up the courage to go and talk to the princess’s father, the King. He’d have a big row with him and they’d use all kinds of insults, including swearing, like calling each other—,— and ——. Eventually, the King would decree that the mintshipman could meet his daughter only if he could make a gigantic fry-up to feed the whole of his nasty royal family. The mintshipman would pop down to the nearest shop and buy a ton of bacon, loads of eggs, mountains of black pudding and the biggest frying pan on Mintworld. Then he’d chip off some bits of peppermint and make a big fire, onto which he’d put the frying pan and cook everything. He’d serve the mighty breakfast up to the King and his family with a fried slice each and beans for those that wanted them.

After they’d finished their fry-up, the King would wipe his chops and say thank you, but he wanted him to complete another task, which was doing the dishes, even though it wasn’t his turn. The mintshipman would grit his teeth and do them anyway. Then the King would say that he quite fancied a cup of tea and oh, the kitchen floor needs cleaning too while you’re in there. And the mintshipman would grumble and get on with the job because he really wanted a chance to meet the daughter. Then the dog would run in and mess up the floor again
and the mintshipman would say oh for goodness’ sake does anybody in this place appreciate anything I do around here? Then the King would say OK, the mintshipman could meet his daughter if he was just going to moan all the time and he’d give him the key to the tower.

The mintshipman would climb the steps to the top of the tower and unlock the door. He’d be a bit nervous, but still extremely charming and handsome. But then, when he’d walk into the room, he’d see the princess was just a big puppet being operated by the King, who would turn to the mintshipman and say ha ha got you, it’s just a joke to get suckers like you to do all the chores, oh, the look on your face and soon. And the mintshipman would say it was a — liberty and not at all funny.

The Pirate Captain angrily flicked Mintworld into his mouth and crunched it up. He was furious at the way these Mintworlders treated each other and decided to be a vengeful god and get rid of the lot of them.

‘… and that’s why there should be legislation to stop buy-to-let landlords taking advantage of easy credit and tax breaks, because it simply prices first-time buyers out of the market,’ finished Napoleon.

‘Thank you for that,’ said the Governor. ‘A very illuminating and robust answer. Now, Pirate Captain, you’ve been uncharacteristically silent for the last hour. Can we have your rebuttal?’

It suddenly dawned on the Pirate Captain that perhaps
he wasn’t quite as good at concentrating as he thought he was.

He cleared his throat. Then he played for time by tapping his teeth. Then he whistled for a bit. Eventually it was pretty obvious that tapping his teeth and whistling would only cut it for so long, and that he was going to have to actually say something. ‘My rebuttal … Myyyyy rebuttal.’ He paused again and stared at the ceiling. ‘Well, you may ask, Governor. Oh yes. And it’s quite a rebuttal. It’s coming up right about now. Here it comes.’

Everybody looked at him expectantly.

‘My rebuttal,’ said the Pirate Captain, ‘is that Napoleon is so fat, whenever he swims in the sea they put out flood warnings all along the coast.’

The islanders, the Governor, Napoleon, and even the pirates gasped.

‘It’s because of the displacement of water, you see,’ the Captain continued. ‘Rather like a pirate boat, his grotesque obesity causes …’

He trailed off. From the look on everybody’s faces it began to occur to him that possibly the word ‘rebuttal’ didn’t mean exactly what he thought it did.

‘Pirate Captain!’ bellowed Napoleon. ‘You go too far!’ He stormed forward until they were nose to nose. The little general had turned the colour of an aubergine, and he was shaking from the top of his hat to the tip of his leather boots. For a moment, the Pirate Captain thought
he was in real trouble. But Napoleon just pulled off his glove and slapped him in the face with it.

‘Oh, that’s a relief,’ exclaimed the Pirate Captain, letting out a big sigh. ‘I thought you were going to do something
terrible
.’ Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the pirate crew had all turned ashen, so much so that he couldn’t even tell which one was the albino anymore. He waved to show them that there was no harm done. ‘Don’t worry, lads.’ He grinned. ‘I’m fine. Barely a scratch. In fact, I’ve been slapped with much worse things than a glove. Black Bellamy slapped me in the face with a dolphin once. Why are you all looking so distraught?’

‘We duel at dawn,’ said Napoleon.

‘Bother,’ said the Pirate Captain.

ell number two, it looks like I’ve done it again,’ said the Pirate Captain, reluctantly hafting himself out of his bath. Bleary-eyed he squinted at the clock above the sink. It was 7.30 A.M., which was a time that he hadn’t even realised existed until now. ‘No matter how often I mention learning from my mistakes, I always seem to end up slap bang in the middle of another life-or-death situation.’