The Pirates! (5 page)

‘We do have that big stone coin, Captain. I think that's worth something on one of the more remote Pacific island economies.'
⁹

Whilst the crew busied themselves moving everything into the new boat, the Pirate Captain went and sat on the edge of the dock, next to the strips of gelatinous jellyfish bladders left out for salting. He whistled a little tune to himself and wondered where on earth he was going to find six thousand doubloons. A swarthy cove came and sat down next to him, and for one horrible moment the Pirate Captain thought he was going to be propositioned, because a surprising amount of that sort of thing went on amongst these sailor types. But rather than a saucy wink or a pinch on his seafaring behind, the man just offered him a swig of drink. He was a fearsome-looking fellow, with an ugly scar running the length of one cheek, and a stump of whale ivory poking out of his trousers instead of the more regular leg. But he was offering grog, so it seemed only right to be friendly.

‘Call me Pirate Captain,' said the Pirate Captain, shaking his hand.

‘Aaarrr,' said the stranger. ‘The name's Ahab.'

And with that the man went back to staring at the black waves, almost as if he was looking for
something. The Pirate Captain wasn't very good at sharing a comfortable silence with someone, unless it was a girl he had been seeing for a while. And even then, once the friendly feminine chatter had lapsed for too long, he tended to babble on about how much he liked the smell of their hair. So after a couple of awkward minutes he tried to kick-start the conversation.

‘So. Ahab. You off anywhere interesting?'

‘The whale,' the man murmured. ‘I'm going to find myself the whale. I've charted the course he takes, and I'll sail to the ends of the earth if I have to. Typhoons, hurricanes, craggy rocks … Why, if the sea itself rose up against me, Ahab would not be stopped in his ungodly quest.'

‘Wow. You must really like whales.'

‘Not exactly,' said Ahab, his gaze still fixed on the sea. ‘It was a whale that did this,' and he pointed at his ivory leg.

‘A whale made you a prosthetic leg?' exclaimed the Pirate Captain, a little incredulously. ‘But how? They don't have hands, do they? Just little flippers.'

‘I meant it was the whale that left me without
a leg. It was a man in Bedford gave me a new one.'

‘Oh. I got bitten by a mosquito once,' offered the Pirate Captain. ‘Look here – you can still see the bump. Well, you can't see it now, but a week ago it was the size of a golf ball.'

‘I've never forgiven the brute,' snarled Ahab. ‘And I mean to hunt him down to his watery grave.'

‘Well, I've never forgiven that mosquito. But you can't spend your life chasing after a mosquito, can you?'

‘He was white, Pirate Captain. White as snow. And monstrous big.'

‘Goodness. I'm not sure I can really remember what that mosquito looked like at all. I mean to say, I don't know if I could pick him out in some sort of identity parade.'

‘I'll have my vengeance!' spat Ahab, boiling with a tremendous fury. He looked as if he was about to hit something, but seemed to settle for just pulling an angry face. After a moment the strange man slapped the Pirate Captain on the back, stood up and turned to go.

‘Good hunting, Pirate Captain!' said the mysterious fellow.

‘Yes, and you,' said the Pirate Captain, a bit puzzled by the whole encounter. He wandered thoughtfully back to the
Lovely Emma
.

‘Are we good to go, Number Two?' asked the Pirate Captain.

‘Aye aye, Captain,' said the pirate with a scarf.

‘Tell me something. Do you remember that mosquito, attacked me near Mozambique?'

‘Erm, no. Not really, Captain.'

‘Aaarrrr, well, that will be because I was so stoic about it, I hardly made any fuss. Big brute he was. Might even have been a queen. Do mosquitos have queens?'

‘I think that's bees, Pirate Captain.'

‘This wasn't a bee. It was definitely a mosquito – sucked my blood right out, like a ghoul. Anyhow, perhaps I went a little easy on the thing?'

‘You've always been the magnanimous type, Captain.'

‘You don't think it makes me look soft?'

‘No, sir. Gentlemanly.'

‘It even comes with its own meat slicer,' said the pirate in green, flicking through the
Lovely Emma
's brochure. ‘Apparently it cuts ham so wafer-thin you can see through the slices! Imagine that! You could put ham all over your eyes and still see where you were going!'

‘And it has proper beds, with mattresses!' said the albino pirate happily. ‘No more falling out of stupid hammocks all the time.'

The pirates were all very excited by their new boat. Some of them thought the best thing about the
Lovely Emma
was its fancy on-board plumbing. Some of them thought the best things were the cannon covers made from ermine and pressed swans. Some of them thought the best thing was the ornamental garden. The Captain thought the best thing was probably the huge network of speaking tubes that ran around the length of the boat, because it meant he could talk to the crew or sing them a shanty whenever
he felt like it, even if it was in the middle of the night. But whatever the best thing about the boat was, the pirates all agreed that the
Lovely Emma
was brilliant.

In his brand-new office the Pirate Captain pressed a button under his brand-new desk and watched as a shiny mahogany cupboard slid open. A little wooden monkey poured out a cup of grog and then did a clumsy mechanical dance, before disappearing back inside the cupboard. The Pirate Captain chuckled, drank the grog and then pressed the button over and over again, so that it looked like the wooden monkey was having an epileptic fit. He had just finally broken the monkey when the pirate in green came in with his afternoon tea.

‘Tea, Captain,' said the pirate in green.

‘Lovely,' said the Pirate Captain. ‘Grog is all well and good, but it doesn't really beat a nice cup of tea.'

The pirate in green started to pour it out, but his hands were shaking and he ended up spilling most of the tea over the Captain's desk.

‘Sorry, Captain. I'm not myself,' said the
pirate in green, wiping the mess up with his sleeve.

‘Something on your mind?'

‘Don't get me wrong, Captain. It's great to have a nice new boat. It's just a couple of us pirates were thinking six thousand doubloons is an awful lot of money for us to come by in one adventure. And the getting cut to bits business … I don't much fancy the sound of that.'

‘You know something?' said the Pirate Captain. ‘For a moment there I would have agreed with you. It occurred to me that I might have been a touch rash saddling us with such a large debt. But sat here, looking at the way all this wood panelling brings out the russet hues of my beard, I've realised that
not
to have bought this boat would have been
false economy
. And you know what I'm always saying – the pirate's worst enemy is false economy. Even more so than the Royal Navy.'

Because the pirate in green didn't have the Pirate Captain's firm grasp of economics, he wasn't sure he understood the exact way in which false economy worked, but he vaguely
remembered that it tended to crop up a lot when the Pirate Captain was shopping for meat and fancied treating himself to something from the butcher's
Finest
range.

‘Besides, she looks a lot happier there, doesn't she?' said the Pirate Captain, nodding at his Prize Ham, which was now hung proudly in its case above the fireplace.

‘She definitely goes very well with the lush carpeting,' agreed the pirate in green.

‘Have I ever told you how I first came across the old dear?'

In fact the Pirate Captain had told the pirates his Prize Ham's origin story on several occasions, though it seemed to change every time. Depending on the Captain's mood the ham was either: an offering from a dying Aztec king; stolen from inside the tomb of a pharaoh; won in a duel with a samurai; the reincarnation of a gypsy princess; or a Christmas present from his Aunt Joan. The pirate in green was actually rather relieved that before the Pirate Captain could elaborate any further the sensible tones of the pirate with a scarf came wafting down the
speaking tube to tell them that there was something up on deck that they should see.

For a moment after bounding up onto the deck the Pirate Captain wasn't sure what it was that the pirate with a scarf had called him for, but then he looked up and saw the thing.

‘Oooh! An albatross! I think they're supposed to be lucky, aren't they?' said the Pirate Captain, squinting up at the majestic bird which was flying in little circles around the mast.

‘Actually, sir, the albatross is traditionally seen as a symbol of oppressive burden or hindrance,' said the pirate in red.
¹⁰
It was a credit to the Captain's self-control that the pirate in red didn't get a cutlass in his eye right there and then.

‘It has something tied to its leg, Captain.'

‘So it has. What do you suppose it could be?'

‘Perhaps it's a treasure map!'

‘Let's throw our cutlasses at it!' said the Pirate Captain.

A few of the pirates threw their cutlasses at the albatross, but it easily swooped out of the way, the cutlasses clattered back onto the deck and everybody had to scatter to avoid getting run through. Jennifer muttered something about how the Pirate Captain ought to think his plans through a little more. The Pirate Captain looked up at the albatross and narrowed his eyes.

‘We're going to have to lure it down here somehow,' he said, a wily look coming over his face. ‘One of you lubbers go fetch me some hens from the kitchen.'

The sassy pirate drew the short straw and he was soon rolling around in a puddle of pirate tar. Then all the other pirates took turns to throw some freshly plucked hen feathers at him, until he was covered from head to toe. He got a bit cross because a few of the feathers went in his mouth. Then the pirate who was good at origami folded his scarf into the shape of a beak, and they attached it with a rubber band to the sassy
pirate's face. Jennifer fetched her lipstick and drew a lovely pair of sexy lady albatross lips on the sassy pirate's new beak. The sassy pirate already had naturally long eyelashes like a girl, so they didn't need to do anything with those.

‘Make some sexy albatross noises,' said the Pirate Captain. ‘And flap your arms a bit.'

The sassy pirate clearly didn't know what a sexy lady albatross sounded like, but he did his best. ‘Caw! Caw!' he said through his origami scarf-beak. ‘I'm a sexy lady albatross!'

It did the trick, and the other – genuine – albatross flapped down towards him, a frisky look in its avian eye. But before the lusty bird could put any albatross moves on the sassy pirate, the Pirate Captain leapt forward and covered it with a big sack. A few cutlass prods and some squawking later and the albatross lay dead on the floor.