‘Well done, Charlie!’ roared Captain Cutthroat. ‘It took some nerve, blasting Craik's ship like that.’
‘The man in the long black coat?’
‘Aye, lad. That was the notorious Joseph Craik, thief-taker extraordinaire!’
I sat down heavily as a prickling heat flushed through my body. The thief-taker had vowed to catch me. I was a wanted man.
‘Cheer up,’ said the captain. ‘Why, you're one of us now!’
As the town's defensive guns erupted with a roar, and cannonballs smashed into the water around us, the Jolly Roger was hoisted once again and we sailed out to sea and away.
And now, for the first time since boarding the Betty Mae, I'm writing up my journal, sitting in my smelly quarters with my DOOR UNLOCKED! I must have earned the pirates’ respect …
Is this a good or a bad thing? I wonder.
As soon as we had reached safer waters, the pirates celebrated their haul with an enormous feast. They sang songs of the sea and sailors, of treachery and death. They raised their hoarse voices to the wind in the night sky and sang of home with drunken self-pity.
‘We were poor little wives of black-hearted pirates,
Who left us at home, playing at mum,
But now we've become the scourge of the oceans,
So watch your backs and pass me the rum.
‘Rum, rum fresh, slimy gizzards)
Rum, rum (saltwater scum)
Rum, rum (don't spit in the wind, girls)
Rum, rum, just pass me the rum.
Our wake-up call is the roar of the cannon,
The bright, gleaming dagger is our best chum,
That's how we've become the scourge of the oceans,
It's all over for you, now pass me the rum.
‘Rum, rum (new golden guineas)
Rum, rum (head in the noose)
Rum, rum (over the side, girls)
Rum, rum, now pass me the juice.‘
At the end of the meal Captain Cut-throat called me over and gave me a goblet full of the black, spicy drink.
‘Raise your glasses to Charlie Small!’ she roared. ‘A true pirate and the latest member of our gang.’
The pirates drained their glasses, and amid cheers and belches I held my nose, raised my glass and took a glug … Aargh! The drink exploded in my tummy like liquid dynamite and I doubled up, clutching my guts.
‘Good old Charlie!’ the pirates laughed. ‘We'll make a pirate of you yet.’
Being a boy, I know I'll never be completely trusted by the pirates, but I have earned their respect and now have the freedom to explore the ship from top to bottom.
I'm still desperate to escape; sooner or later the thief-taker will come looking for me, and I don't want to be here when he arrives. So I've been searching the Betty Mae's dark, twisting corridors, looking for anything that I could use. So far I haven't found a single thing.
Tomorrow I plan to search deep in the murky hold where the pirates almost never go.
Today has been a day of marvellous discoveries! Down in the bowels of the ship I found a junk room packed to the rafters with stuff the pirates didn't want. Alongside all the boxes of soap there were odd bits of machinery, broken clocks and swords and bits of skeleton, most of it rotting in the stinking bilge-water that slopped around the bottom of the ship.
I rummaged through the piles of junk, trying to find something that I could use to help me escape. I had been thinking I could maybe build a raft like the one I began my adventures on, so I started collecting planks and sheets of rotted sail. Then, in a far corner, I saw something that had my heart leaping.
As the beam of my torch played across a pile of boxes, it picked out a label that read: Property of Jakeman's Works. The box had never been opened. Fantastic! I thought. Jakeman had built my dear old friend the steam-powered rhinoceros, which had saved my life on the great golden plain before I'd been made king of the gorillas. Excitedly I jammed the hoofpick on my penknife under the lid and heaved down; with a loud crack the lid leaped free of the box.
I hurriedly pushed aside some straw packing … and saw not one, but two astonishing inventions. A label on the underside of the lid read:
Jakeman's Powder-Propelled Jet Swordfish
(with clockwork limpet drills)
The swordfish looked like a grinning torpedo. Its articulated body of polished steel panels gleamed in the gloom of the storeroom. It tapered to a wide, flat tail at one end and a long, vicious-looking corkscrew nose at the other, and was every bit as impressive as the rhino.
I studied the instruction manual, full of intricate diagrams, and, oh boy, it was great stuff! There were two handles behind its head and two stirrups near the tail, and by using Jakeman's patented jet-powder for fuel, the swordfish could speed someone through the water at fifty knots.
The right handle was the throttle, like on a motorbike, and when you twisted it, a valve was opened, letting water drip into a tank and onto Jakeman's special powder. This caused a chemical reaction, making lots of gas, which was forced down an exhaust pipe at great pressure into the sea, thrusting the swordfish forward. It could dive, it could turn and it could leap; I could already see myself whizzing through the waves to freedom!
I have torn out the diagram of the swordfish to show what it looked like.
The clockwork limpets lay nestled next to the swordfish. I'd heard of limpets and knew they were small sea creatures with a conical shell that clung to rocks. These did the same: they were small metal domes with a rubber seal running around their base that you could stick to almost anything by pushing down a lever that created a vacuum inside. The domes contained three diamond-coated blades on the end of an extendable arm, and when wound up, the clockwork motor sent them spinning and slicing into whatever surface the domes were stuck to. They were some sort of drilling device, and although I couldn't see how they could possibly help me, I decided to take them as well.
I hope the jet-powered swordfish still works, for tonight, if I can retrieve my mobile and charger from Cut-throat, I plan to ride the swordfish across the sea to freedom, and this time tomorrow the Betty Mae, the pirates and the thief-taker will be far, far behind me!
DISASTER!
Am I free? Am I heck! I can hardly believe it myself, but I am now FIRST MATE of the Betty Mae, second in command to Captain Cutthroat herself! It seems the harder I try to escape, the more of a pirate I become!
Since my last entry in this journal we've sailed through raging storms in treacherous, shark-infested seas; fried under a blazing sun, hot enough to boil your eyeballs; and ploughed through frozen waters until our rigging was festooned with icicles. I've learned how to spit, eat raw fish and, best of all, to sword-fight.
I've had lessons every morning on the main deck with Sabre Sue, the pirates’ champion swordswoman, and she's taught me the finer points of ‘The Chop’ or ‘The Windmill’ while the rest of the crew gather round to cheer and laugh at my efforts. I've practised feinting and parrying, thrusting and sidestepping until I reckon I'm nearly as good as Sabre Sue herself. I can even skewer a ship's biscuit from a hundred paces with my cutlass!
How did all this happen? I keep asking myself. How did I end up the second most important pirate on the most feared pirate ship sailing the Pangaean Ocean? It's absurd! But it all started the very night I had planned to escape …
I had hidden the jet-powered swordfish under some sacking on deck and was waiting anxiously for nightfall. My rucksack was packed and ready and I was waiting for a chance to slip in and retrieve my mobile from Cut-throat's cabin. But as the sun dipped towards the horizon of a wave-scalloped sea, a call came from up in the crow's-nest.
‘Ship ahoy!’
I rushed to the ship's rails with the rest of the crew and, sure enough, there it was, emerging from the gloom off our port bow – a large naval ship of the line, bristling with scores of heavy cannon. And she was heading straight towards us!
Captain Cut-throat leaped to the poop deck and started ba
rking out orders. Sails were trimmed, ropes tightened and the arms store broken open. Swords, cutlasses, pistols and blunderbusses were passed quickly down the line until every pirate was armed to the teeth. Me included!
Pirates went clattering down to the gun decks to get the cannon ready for battle. A snarling Bobo was let out of her cage; she climbed onto the rails to scream across the water at the fast-approaching enemy. The closer the ship got, the more impressive she looked. She was fast, heavily armed and crewed by the navy's finest.
I peered through my telescope and my heart stopped. For there, craning forward over the bows, was Joseph Craik, and he was looking straight at me. He was too far away for me to hear him, but I could read his lips.
‘I spy you, Black-hearted Charlie, and I'll see you twitch on the end of a rope!’
What was I going to do? If I tried to escape now, both the pirates and Craik would be after me. I racked my brains for a plan. Then, as the enemy's cannon roared into life and cannonballs peppered the sea around us, I remembered Jakeman's clockwork limpets. Could they help? I rushed over to the hidden swordfish and threw back the tarpaulin.
Panting heavily, I dragged the steel fish over to Captain Cut-throat.
‘What's all this?’ she cried suspiciously, but I had no time to explain. I told her to lower the fish down to me and then jumped over the side. I hit the water with a splash, gasping with the cold. Seconds later the powder-propelled jet swordfish was lowered into the waves beside me.
As the steel fish floated on the water, its body flexing with the swell, I grabbed hold of the handles on either side of its head before the strength of the waves swept me away. Then, taking a cask full of Jakeman's special jet-powder from my pocket, I slid back a cover on the fish's head and poured it into a hole.
I gave the throttle a tentative turn, there was a fizzing noise from inside the metal fish, and as the gas bubbled out of the exhaust pipe, we shot across the surface of the sea in the shadow of the Betty Mae. The further I turned the handle, the faster we went: we sped through the water and the deadly corkscrew nose of the swordfish started to spin. Brilliant!
‘I'll be watching you, boy,’ cried Cut-throat from the deck of the Betty Mae. ‘So don't even think about escaping on that contraption.’
As soon as I rounded the Betty Mae‘s bows and was in view of the enemy ship, I pushed down the nose of the swordfish, took a gulp of air and we powered below the surface like a torpedo. As I headed straight towards the bows of the enemy, I could hear the boom of cannon from above the surface; I wobbled in the wake of cannonballs dropping through the sea around me. I opened the throttle, closed my eyes and hoped that I was going to reach the naval ship before it blew the Betty Mae clean out of the water.
The next thing I knew, the spinning corkscrew nose of the silver swordfish was grinding into the hull of the enemy ship, twisting itself into the wooden sides just below the waterline. It screwed in deep enough to hold us fast, but not enough to do the galleon any serious damage. I shut off the throttle and sat up. My head popped above the choppy surface and I was able to breathe again. Cannons and confusion roared above me as I unclipped the clockwork limpets from the fish and wound them up as far as they would go.
The water surged around me as the galleon sped through the sea, all guns blazing. Smoke billowed from its gun ports and the crack of musket shots filled the air. I had to hurry. Taking a huge gulp of air, I dived under the surface once again. I whacked a limpet drill against the ship and yanked the lever that would clamp it to the wooden hull. I did the same with the other drill. Then, flicking them on, I reversed the swordfish, freeing its nose from the hull, and sped back towards the Betty Mae. Both ships were firing round after round from their cannons and the Betty Mae was getting badly damaged. But if my plan worked and the limpets chewed through the naval vessel's hull, its crew would be too busy launching lifeboats to think about firing any more cannonballs at our boat.
I powered back through the waves, no longer worried about being seen.
‘Get that boy!’ I heard Joseph Craik shout, and the next minute bullets were zipping past my ears. I dived, letting the swordfish take me deep into the ocean, under the keel of the Betty Mae and up the other side to shelter in the shadow of her huge hulk. I gulped a deep lungful of air and looked up to the deck, where Captain Cut-throat was lowering a rope with a grappling hook to hoist me out. Then I heard a terrible gurgling noise, the sound of rushing water and splitting wood, and a huge cheer went up from the Betty Mae.
‘It's all over,’ cried Cut-throat. ‘Their ship is scuppered and they're taking to their lifeboats!’ But I knew that it wasn't all over, because now I'd sunk two of the thief-taker's ships and I didn't think he was going to forget that in a hurry.
The grappling hook was swinging just above my head and I reached up to grab it. But as I did so, I felt something grip my ankle and I was yanked under the surface with tremendous force!
Down, down I was pulled, through a sea boiling with bubbles, still sitting on the back of the silver swordfish. I tore at the thing gripping my ankle and felt a thick, suckered tentacle. I was in serious trouble. Another tentacle snaked up from the depths, wrapping itself around the swordfish, and we were pulled deeper into the ocean. As the bubbles cleared, I found myself staring into the eyes of a giant octopus. Some of its many arms, ten metres long, waved with the swell of the sea, while those wrapped around the swordfish and me moved us closer and closer to its vicious, sharp beak of a mouth.
Struggling to hold my breath, I put the swordfish on full throttle but it was no use – the octopus was just too strong. It pulled us right up to its beak, snapping off the front of the steel swordfish and shredding it as easily as industrial steel snips through cloth. I was next, and I shut my eyes as I was swept inside its mouth.
Suddenly the octopus shuddered and loosened its grip! Through the bubbles I saw Captain Cut-throat standing on the grappling hook that had been lowered from the deck of the Betty Mae. She had one hand on the rope that reached down from the ship; the other was stretched out towards me.
Looking back at the octopus, I saw a large whaling harpoon sticking out from between its eyes. Black ink poured from the stricken monster as I kicked off from the remains of the swordfish and swam over to the captain, my lungs burning for want of oxygen. As soon as I had Cut-throat's hand, she pulled on the rope and we were hoisted up through the sea.
I couldn't believe it! Captain Cut-throat had saved my life!
We broke through the surface and I gasped and spluttered and coughed, filling my lungs with the cool sea air. Then, as my ears stopped thumping with my racing pulse, I became aware that the whole of the pirate crew, except for Bobo, were peering over the deck of the Betty Mae, cheering wildly. I was a hero! And that's how I became first mate on a pirate ship!
I never wanted to be first mate, and I still dream of escape, but I must admit that life has been easier since my promotion. My duties as cabin boy have been handed to Bobo, who now has to leave her luxurious cage every morning and scrub the decks, clean the pans and perform all my other duties. Bobo is not a happy monkey and her hatred of me has grown – if that was possible. If she ever gets the chance to mess things up for me, I'm sure she will.
The poor old Betty Mae is in a terrible state. Her hull is full of cannonball holes and the top part of her mainmast has been shot clean off. The crow's-nest lies against the rails of the top deck, waiting for a time when the pirates can carry out repairs. But those repairs will have to wait, because Captain Cut-throat is bent on revenge.
‘How dare Craik attack us like that!’ she fumed. ‘Who does he think he is? He needs to be taught a lesson that he'll never forget.’
I thought that having to row all the way back to land with a hundred angry sailors was enough of a lesson for anyone, and I really didn't think the captain should go looking for Craik again, but I didn't dare say that to the pirates.
‘Aye, Cap'n. Let's teach him a lesson,’ the crew agreed. ‘What shall
we do?’
The captain didn't need to think. ‘Sail to Tortilla,’ she said. ‘It's the richest city in the region and it's where Craik lives. If we can plunder the town right under his nose, he'll be a laughing stock.’
So, as we've sailed through sun and snow and storms, we've been preparing for our latest, daring raid. I practised my cutlass skills and have been taught to yell with a ferocity that would have an enemy shaking in their boots. I've also kept my promise and spent many hours practising picking locks. If I ever find myself locked up again, I want to be able to escape without having to nearly blow my foot off!
Soon I found I could open the complicated locks on the pirates’ treasure chests in a matter of seconds and discovered that the perfect tool was the poisonous dart from the peculiar flying fish that had attacked me. Its strong, flexible shaft and double barbed tip was perfectly designed for the job: I decided I must never go anywhere without it.
I have no idea if I will get a chance to escape when we land at Tortilla, so I've decided I need a plan B. Whenever possible I've been creeping down into the belly of the ship to build a new getaway vehicle. I've had to be careful because Bobo has been watching me more closely than ever. But luckily she's been too tired after doing all my old chores to stay awake late into the night. And the creaks and groans of the ancient ship have covered up the noise of my hammering, sawing and glueing.
Using an old barrel as a shell, I've cut an opening in one side and fitted a plank of wood for a seat. Then, using some cogs and an old chain, I've built some pedals to drive two paddle wheels made from strips of wood. With nets filled with coconuts to act as floats, I've built a pedalo that I think even Jakeman might be quite proud of! Here's how it works:
Perfumed Pirates of Perfidy Page 5
