The Pirates! (12 page)

The pirates' next plan was slightly less sensitive. ‘I once saw a man doing this in the Thames,' explained the Pirate Captain with a wink to his second-in-command, as a couple of the pirates rolled a barrel of gunpowder off the side of the boat into the sea.

There was a muffled explosion, and then a few dead fish floated up to the surface. The Pirate Captain looked a little put out. ‘But seeing as this is the ocean, which is a little bigger than the Thames, we might need a bit more gunpowder. Fetch us another couple of barrels, Number Two.'

A plume of water splashed across the deck and a shower of fish and lobsters crashed down onto the pirates' heads. The pirates looked about hopefully, but all they could see was a dying shark draped over the yardarm looking disappointedly back at them. ‘No whales there,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand. They rolled a few more barrels off the side of the boat. Another
huge wave crashed over the pirates, drenching them from head to toe, and another burst of creatures and seaweed rained onto the deck. The pirates prodded about in the mess.

‘Still can't see him,' said the pirate in green, a bit of tentacle wriggling limply on his hat.

Jennifer pulled a starfish out of her top. ‘It's fun though, isn't it?'

After the pirates ran out of barrels of gunpowder, the Pirate Captain had the bright idea of emptying all the
Lovely Emma
's lamps and pouring the oil out from the back of the boat, because he remembered reading somewhere that oil slicks were a great way of catching sea-creatures. But all they ended up with were a few rather sad-looking seagulls. The pirates felt a little guilty and scooped them up in big nets to give them a clean. The oil didn't come off very well even with lots of scrubbing, so the pirate in red suggested that the oily seagulls might make quite good candles instead. Everybody agreed
that this was a good idea, because they had run out of lamp oil.

There was an almighty ‘pop' and the pirate with a cauliflower ear disintegrated in an explosion of fireworks. The other pirates ‘oohed' and ‘aahed' as roman candles and rockets zoomed off into the sky. The pirate with a scarf crossed another item off his clipboard.

‘How many schemes is that?' asked the Pirate Captain.

‘Fifteen schemes,' said the pirate with a scarf. ‘Sixteen if you include the business with the pig.'

‘Aaarrr. Best forget that one.'

‘It's not going too well, is it, Pirate Captain?' said the scarf-wearing pirate, staring at the conspicuously whaleless sea. ‘I'm worried that perhaps this whaling business is a little more difficult than we thought. Possibly that's why Ahab said he'd been chasing the whale for years.'

‘Pish,' said the Pirate Captain, trying to sound upbeat. ‘What you have to remember is that Ahab never had my maverick sideways approach to problem-solving. It's all in hand.'

He waved that morning's post at the scarf-wearing pirate and started to flick through it.

‘Bill, bill, bill, cutlass catalogue, bill … Ah-ha! Here we go.' He held up one of the letters triumphantly. ‘This'll sort us out, Number Two! I took the precaution of writing to our old friend Scurvy Jake. You know what an outdoors type he is. He even took a job in Brighton Sea Life Centre for a bit whilst he was working his way through pirate academy. So he's bound to know a thing or two about catching fishes! Let's see now … “Dear Pirate Captain”,' read the Pirate Captain. ‘“Thanks for the letter. It's great to hear from you after our last adventure with the monkey wrestling. Since then I've been … blah … new job as a grill chef … blah blah … remember the old days … blah blah blah … might get a new hat … blah blah blah blah … the most beautiful sunset you can imagine” – good grief, man! Get to the point! Ah, here we
are: “About the whale. Interesting question … Have you tried dangling that albino chap over the side? Failing that, try magnets! Lots of love, Scurvy Jake”.'

The Pirate Captain sighed, and muttered a terrible nautical oath under his breath. He noticed that another of the envelopes had a Nantucket postmark and felt a sudden nasty queasiness deep in his belly. He considered hiding the letter under the astrolabe in his office without reading it, because that was the Pirate Captain's usual way of dealing with letters that he thought might contain bad news, but against his better judgement he opened it up. His salty face turned ashen.

‘Is everything okay, Pirate Captain?' asked the scarf-wearing pirate anxiously.

‘Aaarrr. Nothing to worry about. It's just a friendly reminder from Cutlass Liz,' said the Pirate Captain, attempting to shoot him a reassuring smile, but finding his mouth stuck in a sort of lop-sided grimace. ‘Look here, she's even included a helpful illustration.'

The scarf-wearing pirate looked at the picture
on the letterhead, which showed Cutlass Liz merrily dismembering a pirate. There was a speech bubble coming from the pirate's mouth. It said:

The Pirate Captain took a few deep breaths and tried to concentrate on calm things, like lapping waves and pan-pipes. But the vein in his temple was starting to throb, and he could feel a steady panic rising from the soles of his pirate boots.

‘I seem to be getting one of my heads,' said the Pirate Captain. And with that he walked very slowly below decks, pausing only briefly to screw Scurvy Jake's letter into a ball and throw it at a passing seagull.

The pirates lay miserably in their bunks. It had been the best part of a fortnight since they had decided to take up whaling, and they still hadn't seen so much as a blow-hole. For the first few days the Pirate Captain had simply glowered and stomped about a bit more than he usually did. But just recently he had started to behave in a more and more alarming fashion. He would spend the nights stalking the deck, muttering darkly to himself; and the days refusing to come out of his cabin. He had taken to bellowing bleak self-penned poetry through the
Lovely Emma
's speaking tubes. And he hadn't so much as brushed his beard in days. Right at that moment he was stood on the bow of the boat roaring and shaking his fist at the drizzling sky. Normally when the Pirate Captain was in a mood he would have been secretly pleased that the weather reflected it, because the
Pirate Captain's moods tended to be just for show. But this was an actual genuine mood, and he wasn't pleased at all.

‘Oh dear. He's started shouting at the ocean again,' said the sassy pirate, listening to the faint bellowing sounds that filtered through the porthole.

‘I think I prefer the shouting to all that relentless pacing about,' said the pirate in green.

‘Or the poetry,' said the pirate with a peg-leg.

‘Or the frowning,' said Jennifer.

‘Did you see him this morning? I've never seen the vein in his temple get that big before.'

‘He told me off for singing a shanty!'

‘I took him some beef for dinner. But he wouldn't even let me in. It was specially larded and everything,' said the pirate with a scarf.
²⁷

‘Larded?' said the sassy pirate, licking his lips.

‘Yes, glistening with specks of visible fat. I tried wafting the smell under his door, but it was hopeless.'

‘I thought I could cheer him up by riding up and down in the dumb waiter, but he just sat there with his arms folded.'

‘No grog. No laughing. Lights out at seven p.m. This isn't what being a pirate is meant to be about at all!'

‘We might as well be working in an
office
.'

‘I hate whales!'

The pirates all jumped up as their bedroom door was thrown open with a crash.

‘Up on deck, you swabs!' roared the Pirate Captain. A couple of the pirates had to fight back tears, because for once it really sounded like the Pirate Captain actually thought they were swabs, and wasn't just saying it to add some colourful nautical atmosphere. The crew all shuffled up the
Lovely Emma
's spiral staircase and out onto the moonlit deck. The Pirate Captain hadn't even given the pirates time to put on their overcoats and so they had to strain to hear him over their chattering teeth. He pulled a big ham out
from under his pirate coat. Not just any old ham, but the Captain's Prize Ham itself. The pirate crew gasped.

‘Silence!' shouted the Pirate Captain, even though the pirates weren't saying anything. ‘Do you see this ham?'

The pirates nodded.

‘This is my prize honey-roast ham. Do you see?' he repeated. The pirates nodded again. The Pirate Captain rubbed it with his sleeve to bring up the shine on the glaze and advanced towards the mast with the ham held high.

‘Whoever captures the whale, he shall have this ham!'

The Pirate Captain proceeded to nail the ham to the mast. Then he pulled an especially dour face and stormed back downstairs. The pirate crew were left on their own. They looked at each other in dismay.

‘His Prize Ham!' said the albino pirate, wide-eyed.

‘This is bad,' said the scarf-wearing pirate.

‘I don't think I've ever even seen it out of its case before!' said the pirate with gout.

A mixture of emotions ran through the crew. One of the emotions was ‘worry', because they realised that things must be pretty serious for the Pirate Captain to take such a drastic step as nailing his ham to the mast. And the other emotion was ‘being really hungry', because with its delicious glaze gleaming in the moonlight, the ham looked like just about the loveliest thing any of them had ever seen. So they fetched some blankets to keep warm and sat in a big circle around the mast. Jennifer handed out note-paper to all the pirates so that they could write down their best whale-catching schemes. Some of the pirates rubbed their foreheads really hard to get their brains going, but all it did was make them feel dizzy.

The sun had come up and the pirates were still all sat around in a circle staring at their blank pieces of paper. They had drunk the
Lovely Emma
's entire supply of coffee, but even that hadn't helped.