The Pirates! (14 page)

‘That Black Bellamy,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand. ‘You've got to hand it to him, he's pretty good at stuff.'

Jennifer clapped her hands. ‘Somebody go and get the Captain! He'll be over the moon!'

The pirate with a scarf ran down the stairs and came back a few moments later, followed by what the crew at first glance thought must be a dirty old tramp. The pirates all gasped when they realised that the shuffling, shabby mess wasn't a tramp – it was the Pirate Captain, wearing only a pair of grubby pyjama bottoms. His eyes were wild and staring, his face was anything but pleasant or open, and his beard was ratty and unmanageable. Blinking at the light, the Pirate Captain stared uncomprehendingly about. But as the
Barbary Hen
pulled up alongside the
Lovely Emma
, he spotted the whale and his mouth fell open.

‘The white whale!' he croaked. Then he saw Black Bellamy. ‘And you, you scoundrel!'

‘Pirate Captain!' said Jennifer crossly. ‘I'm so sorry, Mister Bellamy. He doesn't know what he's saying.' She turned back to the Pirate Captain. ‘You're being very rude to Mister Bellamy.'

‘No, no,' said Black Bellamy. ‘It's quite understandable.' He looked sadly at his shoes. ‘I know
we've had our ups and downs, Pirate Captain. And I know that I've not been entirely honest with you in the past. But I'd just like you to think of this as a favour from an old friend. Your men told me that you were having a tough time of it and this seemed the least I could do.'

The Pirate Captain was really very touched. It was all he could do to try to stop his voice sounding too emotional. ‘I don't know what to say,' he said.

‘Then don't say anything at all, Pirate Captain,' said Black Bellamy, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Except,' he added, ‘there is just one small matter.' Black Bellamy paused. ‘Obviously I went to the trouble of finding the whale for no more reward than to see my dear friend get back to his old self. But on my way here I happened to receive a heart-rending letter from some orphans. They need me to go and stop their orphanage being knocked down by greedy real-estate developers.'

‘That's awful!' said the albino pirate.

‘I know. I think of those orphans and I well up. I do,' said Black Bellamy, dabbing at the
beard below his eyes. ‘So, although I'd love to let you have the whale for nothing, I'd be grateful if you could just pay a nominal sum that I can then pass on to the orphans. To help them in their hour of need. I wouldn't even ask otherwise.'

‘We haven't got much,' said the pirate with a scarf. ‘Just the money we made from our Vegas show.'

Black Bellamy shrugged. ‘Well, I'm sure those cripples will be very grateful for anything.'

‘Cripples? I thought you said that they were orphans?' said Jennifer.

‘Ah,' said Black Bellamy, ‘orphan cripples, my dear. Terrible business. And some of them have the pox. Orphan cripple pox victims.'

The Pirate Captain felt so moved by Black Bellamy's devotion to the needy that he threw in the big stone coin and their few remaining limes as well. Black Bellamy grinned, pocketed the loot, and hopped back across to his boat.

‘Make sure you feed him three times a day or he gets a bit restless,' he said as the crew of the
Barbary Hen
finished heaving the white whale
onto the deck of the
Lovely Emma
. ‘And above all else, whatever you do,
don't get him wet
. Whales hate getting wet, Pirate Captain.'

‘But what about all that time they spend cavorting around in the ocean?' said the Pirate Captain. ‘They love getting wet.'

‘You'd think so, wouldn't you?' said Black Bellamy, laughing. ‘But it's an old myth. They're mammals, remember? Just the same as you or me. Or a cow. And how many times have you seen a cow go for a swim?'

‘I suppose you're right,' said the Pirate Captain. ‘I'd never thought of it like that.'

And so the two sets of pirates said their goodbyes and set sail in different directions, Black Bellamy to help the orphan cripples and the Pirate Captain to Nantucket to collect Ahab's reward.

‘That's a stroke of luck, eh lads?' said the Pirate Captain turning to the crew.

‘Are you feeling better now, Captain?' asked the albino pirate.

‘One of the advantages of having a temperament as unpredictable as mine is that you get
over things like stress and depression extremely quickly.'

‘Captain Ahab will be really pleased,' said the pirate with gout, giving the whale a pat.

‘The only thing is, it's not as big as I was expecting, Captain,' said the pirate in red, looking at the creature waggle its little flippers. ‘I mean, Ahab made quite an issue about it being a leviathan. But it's really more a sort of middling-sized whale.'

‘Aaarrr. He struck me as the type to exaggerate,' said the Pirate Captain breezily. ‘Didn't he tell us that he'd combed every
inch
of the sea? That's obviously impossible – especially since Black Bellamy found him after twenty minutes! And besides, how many white whales could there possibly be knocking about?'

The pirates nodded.

‘Now, I know I smell a bit ripe, so I'm off for a nice long soaky bath. You might want to air my duvets, Number Two.'

‘Take that, pirate boat! Now I, the terrible sponge, am master of this ocean!'

The Pirate Captain was sat in the bath, and as always he was putting on a bit of a show whilst the scarf-wearing pirate scrubbed him clean. He made a sort of glugging noise and sank the sextant that was doubling as a pirate boat once and for all.

‘It's a good job there aren't really gigantic sponge creatures about, isn't it?' he said, waggling the victorious sponge at his deputy. ‘Or us pirates would be done for.'
²⁹

‘You're right, sir. I often think just that.'

‘But it's a shame the sea can't be full of lovely bubbles like this.'

‘It
is
a shame,' agreed the pirate with a scarf sadly. His rugged brow was furrowed in concentration as he carefully soaped each delicate strand of the Pirate Captain's beard. He stood up and surveyed his handiwork.

‘I think we can rinse her off now, Captain.'

‘I hope she's going to be okay,' grimaced the Pirate Captain, gently supporting his soapy beard in his hands. ‘Can't remember a time when I've let her get into such a mess.'

The pirate with a scarf reached across to turn on one of the big brass taps, but nothing came out. Not even a drop.

‘That's not right,' said the scarf-wearing pirate. He tried to turn on the other tap, and nothing came out of that one either. The Pirate Captain looked horrified. He couldn't help but think back to their adventure in Tangiers when the water in the hotel at which the pirates were staying had given out and the Captain had been left in the same situation, completely unable to rinse out his beard except with seawater. Over the next couple of days it had puffed up into a ridiculous frizzy ball, and he had ended up
looking more like one of those hats that Russian spy ladies wear than a respected old sea-dog.

So the Pirate Captain leapt from his tub and bounded onto the deck to try and find out what was amiss, naked as a new-born baby, except a good deal hairier and with a few more tattoos. For those readers who may be interested, the Pirate Captain's tattoos included:

• A map of an island across his belly. This had a big ‘X' on it, which the Captain thought probably had something to do with treasure. Unfortunately, he had no idea where the island was, because like most of his tattoos, it was the product of an evening full of too much grog. He had just woken up in Portsmouth one morning and there it was.

• The Pirate King's face on his right biceps. He'd grown since it was done and now the tattoo was a bit misshapen, so that the Pirate King looked a little bit like he'd had a stroke.

• A picture of an anchor on his left forearm. This was to remind the Pirate Captain to drop anchor whenever they were leaving the boat. Otherwise it just tended to drift off, and the men would look at him accusingly.

• A shopping list on his shin, which had seemed like a good idea at the time.

• ‘I've seen the lions at Longleat' on his left shoulder-blade.

• ‘Left' on his left foot and ‘Right' on his right. A gift from his mother on his fourth birthday.

There the Pirate Captain stood, like a perfectly proportioned nude renaissance statue. He had always been extremely comfortable with his own naked body, but some of the pirate crew seemed quite overwhelmed by the sheer soapy spectacle. Looking about, hands on hips, it was instantly obvious to the Captain what the
problem was. Somehow the wily whale had managed to slip from its moorings, and was now flopping about on the deck, causing all sorts of mischief. There were bits of broken barrel and squashed pirate everywhere. Most of the flower beds in the ornamental garden were ruined, and there was a big plume of water coming from where the whale had managed to bash a jagged hole in one of the
Lovely Emma
's water pipes with a particularly vicious flick of its tail. The water that was meant for the Pirate Captain's beard was fountaining onto the deck, and raining down on the whale. The Captain watched in dismay as the creature began to change from a pearly white to a battleship grey. A great big puddle of paint collected around the base of the whale and seeped towards the Pirate Captain's toes.

‘Don't get it wet,' he muttered to himself. ‘That Black Bellamy. He's … he's …'

‘The living end?' suggested the pirate in red.

‘Exactly.' The Pirate Captain made a mental note to get a new tattoo that said something terrible about Black Bellamy's mother.

‘He didn't find the white whale at all! We've been duped! The cove probably just stole this regular whale from the nearest zoo!'

The Pirate Captain paced around the creature. ‘Well, lads,' he said. ‘We'll just have to slap on some more paint and hope that Ahab doesn't look at the thing too closely. You and you,' he pointed at the pirate in red and the new pirate with an accordion, ‘Come on, you cozening brace of dandies! You're on whale-painting detail.'

None of the pirates was particularly good at plumbing, so the Captain had to finish washing his beard off in the spray of water bursting from the broken pipe. Then he went downstairs and, after getting dressed, spending a few minutes tying ribbons in his beard and practising some victorious faces for the benefit of Cutlass Liz, the Pirate Captain strode back onto the deck to see how the whale painting was going. He was glad to see that they'd managed to paint about
half of the beast's great face a nice shade of ‘Orchid Haze'. The effect was only spoilt by the elegantly curled moustache and big bushy eyebrows that the whale was now sporting. The Pirate Captain had a pretty good idea as to whose handiwork this was.

‘You!' he said, pointing at the pirate in red. ‘What are you playing at?'

The pirate in red sidled guiltily along a flipper.

‘I just thought it gave him a bit of character,' he said. ‘I was going to paint a little top hat as well. To make him a gentleman whale.'

‘I'll paint you a new *@#*&!' roared the Pirate Captain. It wasn't often that he used language, but the pirate in red had been riding his luck for the whole adventure.

‘You're always saying we should express ourselves creatively,' whined the pirate in red.

‘Scrub it off! Right now, you cove!'

The Pirate Captain folded his arms and contemplated the whale. He looked across at his trusty deputy.

‘What do you think, Number Two?' said the Pirate Captain. ‘Not quite there, is it?'

‘Hard to say, Captain,' said the pirate with a scarf.

‘I mean – Ahab may be a monomaniacal old bore, but he doesn't look like he'd be easily cheated.' The Pirate Captain's eyebrows drooped a bit.