The Pirates!

by Gideon Defoe

  ‘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.’

  Four

  A Slow Boat to Bloodshed!

  ‘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.

&n
bsp; ‘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.

  ‘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 champagne13 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!’

  Five

  Satan’s Fish Ate Us Alive!

  ‘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!’