The Pirates! (6 page)

‘Look, Captain! It was a lady albatross all along!'

‘Well. Who's to say albatrosses can't enjoy a touch of the Sapphic?' said the Pirate Captain reasonably. The crew all crowded around as the
pirate with a scarf slipped a soggy piece of parchment from the bird's leg.

‘Here's a stroke of luck!' said the Pirate Captain. ‘It's a letter from Calico Jack, my old mentor at pirate academy.'

The Pirate Captain began to read the letter out loud:

‘Dear Pirate Captain,

I hope all is well and that you're not hanging in irons or anything. I'm writing to you from my sickbed, where I am suffering terribly with a kidney stone the size of a grapefruit. Such a common risk for us pirates, given our fondness for rich meats of all descriptions.'
¹¹

Several of the crew shook their heads sadly, and more than one made a mental note to cut back on the feasts.

‘I fear that my days of plundering and shouting things like “I am a pirate!” may well be drawing to a close. So I wanted to tell you one thing – Pirate Captain, you were always my favourite pupil. Certainly you were much better than the others in your class, whom I regarded merely as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. I especially liked your commanding voice, stentorian nose, piercing blue eyes and firm grasp of nautical matters.

‘Even as I write I can feel additional calculi agglomerating in my urinary tract, so I must be brief. Long story short, I believe that you, more than anybody, deserve to learn my greatest secret: for as a young pirate I discovered nothing less than the
ultimate treasure
, which I buried for safe-keeping on an island just off the Florida Keys. The map is enclosed.

Stay lucky,

Calico Jack.'
¹²

‘Does the letter really say all that about you having a commanding voice and piercing eyes?' said the pirate in red, peering over the Pirate Captain's shoulder. ‘I can't see that bit anywhere.'

The Pirate Captain glowered at the pirate in red, rolled up the letter and put it in his pocket. He turned to his second-in-command and grinned.

‘You see? You worry too much. I told you something would come up.'

The pirates were all excited by what the ultimate treasure might turn out to be. The albino pirate thought that it would probably be the world's biggest necklace, whilst the pirate in green thought it would be a diamond so massive you couldn't even fit it into your mouth, and a few of the others were convinced it would be One Million Pounds.

‘Whatever it turns out to be,' said the Pirate Captain, trying to calm his crew down a bit, ‘it's sure to be enough to pay for the boat, and keep us in hooks and buckles for years to come. And if there's any left over, well, you know me … I'll probably give it to charity. Amputee pirates. Or
maybe to some sort of creature sanctuary. You've got to give something back, haven't you?'

The pirates all nodded solemnly.

‘Don't just stand about, lads. Brace the jib and hoist the mainsail and – uh – do all those things that make the boat go,' said the Pirate Captain, striding towards his office. ‘With any luck, by this time tomorrow we'll be drinking champagne
¹³
from the smalls of ladies' backs! Except for Jennifer, of course. You can drink champagne from the small of a beefcake's back. Well, not just Jennifer, any of you can if you go for that sort of thing. I'm open-minded like that.'

The pirates had been digging for hours. Their muscles ached and the sweat streamed in torrents down their backs and faces. The stinging tropical sun rendered them speechless.

‘You're doing a great job, lads!' said the Pirate Captain, sat a little way away under a stylish skull-and-crossbones parasol. He washed down
a slice of ham with a swig of pirate grog. ‘I just wish I could help. But you know what happens when I get sand in my beard – I could be out of action for days.'

The pirate in red wiped a soggy neckerchief across his brow and leant on his spade for a moment. ‘Are you sure this is the spot, Captain?' he asked.

‘Yes. Can't be long now! Chop, chop!' said the Pirate Captain, trying to be firm.

‘You've got the treasure map the right way round this time?'

The Pirate Captain was a little annoyed that the pirate in red should have brought this up again.

‘Aarrrr. This is definitely the place – see, Old Jack marked that the treasure was next to a shrub which looked like the rude part of a lady.' He pointed at the map and then at the shrub that was shaped just like a woman's bare ankle. A couple of the pirates giggled and nudged each other.

‘I know it's hard work, me beauties, but it's going to be worth it!'

Much to the Pirate Captain's relief, before any further discussion could take place there came the unmistakable clank of spade against wood.

‘Hooray!' yelled the sassy pirate. ‘I found a treasure chest!'

With a new surge of energy, the crew hefted an antique chest up onto the sand.

‘The ultimate treasure!' said the Pirate Captain, a little embarrassed to actually find himself salivating at the prospect. He wiped a big bit of slobber away with his sleeve. ‘This is pay day, lads!' he added, after a suitably dramatic pause.

As the Pirate Captain forced the rusty hinges with his cutlass, the crew backed away a little just in case a mummy or a zombie pirate should jump out, because it wouldn't be the first time. But instead of a mummy or a zombie pirate there was just a solitary picture of a grinning child with a brief note scrawled on the back of it.

Isn't the ultimate treasure a child's smile? Isn't a drop of rain on the wing of a butterfly worth a million doubloons?

Yours, Calico Jack

‘Oh,' said the Pirate Captain, biting his lip. ‘Isn't that nice?'

Somewhere a parrot squawked.

‘Yes,' said the pirate with a scarf, who looked like he was about to burst into tears. ‘And it's so true. When you think about it.'

‘We've learnt an important lesson today about what's really valuable,' said the pirate in green through clenched teeth.

The pirates spent the next few minutes avoiding each other's gaze and saying how this was much better than the ultimate treasure turning out to be something predictable like jewels or gold. Calico Jack's message so impressed the albino pirate that he kicked the head off one of the baby seals that were mucking about on the beach. The crew reluctantly picked up their spades and hats and trudged silently back to where the
Lovely Emma
was parked.

Eventually the Pirate Captain couldn't help himself. ‘I'm not saying I'm not richer in spirit or anything,' he said, ‘but it would have been nice if there'd been a bit of booty in there as well.'

The pirate crew all started talking at once.

‘All that digging and not a single bloody diamond!'

‘The wing of a butterfly? A
butterfly
?'

‘Calico Spack, more like!'

‘Well, lads, you'll be happy to know I have a new plan,' said the Pirate Captain, striking his most businesslike pose. The pirate crew, who were all sprawled on one of the
Lovely Emma
's tennis courts awaiting their Captain's idea, gazed up at him expectantly.

‘We're going,' said the Pirate Captain, a glint in his eye, ‘to Las Vegas!'

The pirates all looked at each other in surprise. It wasn't exactly the announcement they had been anticipating.

‘Las Vegas?'

‘That's right. Las Vegas. The city of dreaming spires.'

‘But you're always saying how gambling is terrible, Pirate Captain. You said it was even worse than calling people names.'

‘But then we had that adventure where you wagered the whole boat and crew that nobody could beat you at thumb-wrestling.'

‘Which is it, Pirate Captain?' said the albino pirate. ‘Is gambling terrible or good?'

‘We are not,' said the Pirate Captain, ‘going to Vegas to gamble.'

‘Oh. Why
are
we going? Is it the women?'

‘No, it's not that either. Come on, you lubbers – what else is Las Vegas famous for?'

The pirate crew gave a collective shrug.

‘Showbusiness! You know how good I am at telling anecdotes. And we're always having adventures. It's just the sort of place an entertaining act such as ourselves could be a hit.'

The pirates wriggled uncomfortably from foot to foot. A couple of them tapped their heads meaningfully.

‘Come on!' bellowed the Pirate Captain. ‘It was bound to come down to this sooner or later. Why are you all looking so put out?'

‘It's just … I don't think we realised you had ambitions in that particular direction,' said the pirate with a scarf.

‘It's not just one of my fads, if that's what you mean.'

‘Are you sure about this, Captain?' said the pirate in red.

‘I do have a sensitive side, you know,' said the Pirate Captain with a pout. ‘I realise you lot tend to think I'm just about the hair and the grisly murder, but that's simply not the case. You might be surprised to hear that sometimes I enjoy taking a little time out to read Shakespeare, and make daisy chains, and artistic stuff like that. I've always felt a certain calling for the stage. In many ways I think that's why I got into piracy in the first place, because it's quite dramatic.'

‘Sorry, Captain,' said the pirate in green. ‘I hope you haven't felt too misunderstood all these years.'

‘Aaarrr, that's okay. It's a lonely job, being a Pirate Captain. I knew that when I signed on.'

The crew were pretty tired by the time the
Lovely Emma
arrived in Las Vegas,
¹⁴
because even though
this adventure was taking place in America, they still had to sail across Texas and half of Nevada. There was a hair-raising encounter along the way with a shoal of box jellyfish, which washed up onto the deck during a typhoon, and the Pirate Captain had to make sure the crew were all wearing their pirate shoes: ‘Something you should do anyway,' he pointed out, ‘because of verrucas.' The pirates had then spent an enjoyable afternoon running around the boat smacking the jellyfish with spades.

Luckily for the pirates the Las Vegas of those days was a lawless place, so just for once they didn't have to disguise themselves as washer-women or scientists or anything like that to avoid getting arrested. In fact, life in the American Wild West was really a lot like life on the High Seas. Obviously there were a few minor differences, but these were pretty superficial – it was mostly a matter of certain things being known by different names. The pirate with a scarf gave out a list to the rest of the crew, just to avoid any confusion whilst they were there:

The crew all dutifully memorised their lists, parked the boat in a lake next to some cowboy wagons, and went to have a look about the place. The pirates were very excited by the Las Vegas buildings, which were in the shape of buildings that you wouldn't expect to find in the middle of the desert. The Pirate Captain tried to look nonchalant, because he didn't want to undermine the world-weary been-there-done-that image he liked to cultivate, but it wasn't easy because he was almost as excited as the men.