The Pirates! In An Adventure With Napoleon Part 3

'Are you sure that's not just a children's book?' said Jennifer.

'Absolutely. You see, it's very detailed about bee society, which it turns out is fascinating. The main threat to their livelihood seems to be grumpy gra.s.shoppers.'

Half an hour later, Jennifer was back on deck, glumly telling the crew about the Pirate Captain's lengthy description of bee society and how, for the duration of the voyage to St Helena, he planned to run the boat along bee lines, with him as the King Bee, half the pirates as the worker bees, the other pirates as soldier bees and the cabin boys as grubs. He wanted to label all the ham as 'royal jelly' and have them feed it to him while he lay in his hammock not moving very much, apart from getting up from time to time to judge the quality of their waggle dancing. Much as they loved their Captain, none of the pirates were particularly keen on this idea.

'Look,' said the pirate in green after a bit more deliberation. 'I think I know what will work. How would you go about catching a mouse?'

'A big net!' said the pirate with a hook for a hand.

'Dress as a cat and chase it with a knife!' said the eye-candy pirate.

'Shrink to mouse size and hide under the mouse's bed and then when they fall asleep jump up and bundle them into a sack,' said the pirate with a squint.

'Or,' said the pirate in green, who was quite enjoying the chance to be the one with a scheme for a change, 'you could set a mousetrap. Which I mean in a metaphorical sense. We give the Pirate Captain some bait and wait for him to go for it.'

'Oh, for pity's sake! How is that any different to my plan?' asked Jennifer, exasperated. 'Honestly, you lot are all as bad as each other.'

Back in his cabin the Pirate Captain stared out of his porthole, contemplating whether to replace his luxuriant beard of glossy hair with a luxuriant beard of glossy bees. On balance he decided that whilst there would be obvious styling advantages they might be a bit noisy to have on your chin all the time. His thoughts were interrupted by a rather unrealistic boat swinging into view outside the porthole. It floated oddly above the water for a few seconds, looking slightly two dimensional, before a voice eventually piped up.

'What hard work it is on this Royal Navy boat,' said the voice. 'It is a great worry to us sailors that we are here without any cannons and all this gold.' The s.h.i.+p jiggled up and down. 'Oh yes. I hope no brave pirates come to get us because we're pretty poorly defended I can tell you, oh yes.'

Another voice sounded more m.u.f.fled and said something like, 'Keep it still, you idiot! Mention the sails.'

'Oh woe,' said the first voice again. 'Here comes another boat. I hope it isn't pirates because as I said we're a sitting duck. What with our sails being missing too.'

A second boat swung in from the left. This one had a flag with a crude picture of a woman in a leotard drawn on it. 'Are you pirates?' said the first voice.

'No,' said a new voice, which was slightly more high-pitched. 'We are a boat full of Miss World contestants. We are looking for a pirate captain with a pleasant, open face. We would like to join his crew if at all possible. Do you know where we can find one?'

'We do not,' said the first voice. 'Thank the Queen, hoorah we don't.'

The two s.h.i.+ps bobbed about for a bit, seemingly lost for words.

'Ooh! Pirates,' said the first voice.

'My arms are tired,' said the other voice. Then they started arguing about breakfast cereal.

The Pirate Captain didn't take it personally when the crew underestimated his intelligence, because he was the first to admit that there had been times when he'd proved less than perceptive. There was the birthday party where he had spent two hours trying to chat up a pile of coats, having mistaken them for Lola Montez. He had only recently found out that lambs were baby sheep, rather than a completely different species. And he still got eggs mixed up with tomatoes. Never the less, he thought it might be a good idea to have a chat with the men to set a few things straight. He closed his book, tucked a roll of fabric under his arm and strode up on deck, where the crew were huddled together next to the mast. The Captain coughed discreetly.

'Wait! We're not ready!' said the pirate with encephalitis, who was the first to notice him.

'It's all right, lads,' said the Pirate Captain. 'I think we need to have a little talk.'

There was a frenzy of activity from the huddle of pirates, which then parted to reveal the pirate with a hook for a hand, who for some reason was wearing a greasy periwig, spectacles mended with a sticking plaster, and an anorak, zipped up to the top.

'h.e.l.lo, Pirate Captain,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand in a nasal voice. 'I hear you are famous for enjoying adventures in which you encounter notable historical characters. I am Charles Babbage and I'm trying to invent a mechanical engine that does sums, but an evil magpie has stolen all my cogs. Can you help me have an adventure to get them all back before greedy developers turn my orphanage into a death-ray factory?'

The Pirate Captain shook the pirate's hand, mainly because he was polite. 'I'm sorry, Mr. Babbage, but helping historical figures isn't really my line of work any more. I'm a bee-keeper now. We tend more towards sitting next to babbling brooks and indulging in quiet pastoral reflection, that kind of thing.'

The pirate with a hook for a hand looked disappointed. 'I think the magpie was working for Otto von Bismarck,' he added hopefully.

'What about me?' said a pirate in a tall top hat. 'I'm Isambard Kingdom Brunel and I'm being attacked by a sea monster.' He wrestled with a rubbery tentacle.

'Look, you scurvy knaves,' said the Pirate Captain as patiently as could manage. 'You're not going to talk me out of this. I know what you're thinking: "if we can invent a scheme to convince the Pirate Captain that it's worth being a pirate again, he'll forget this whole bee-keeping business and go back to what he's best at. Bee-keeping is clearly a fad."'

'That's sort of what we thought,' said Jennifer sheepishly, 'except we described the bee-keeping as a "pa.s.sing whimsy".'

'Basically, you're saying I'm fickle.'

'Just that you might be a bit better at starting projects than you are at following them through to a decent conclusion,' said the pirate in red with a shrug. 'It was only a month ago you got really into vivisection.' The pirate in green lifted up his s.h.i.+rt and pointed towards where he had a beak sewn a bit haphazardly onto his belly. 'But you seem to have forgotten all about that now.'

'That's because I hadn't found the right project. Beekeeping is my one true love.'

The pirates stared sulkily at their shoes.

'Stop staring sulkily at your shoes and look up there instead,' said the Pirate Captain, pointing to the top of the main mast. 'What do you see?'

'A seagull!' said the pirate with asthma.

'The sun!' shouted the pirate who was now blind.

's.p.a.ce! We're going to s.p.a.ce! I can't wait!' said the albino pirate.

'A bit lower,' said the Pirate Captain.

'Worrying signs of dry rot?' said the pirate with long legs.

'No I mean the flag,' said the Pirate Captain. 'The skeleton and bones flag, which has another name that I can't remember right now, but that's not important. In the past, whenever I've adopted a new career, I've never taken it down. Not once. h.e.l.l's teeth, most of my previous vocations were chosen purely on the basis that I could keep the flag. Remember when I was a poison maker? My osteopathy practice? The week I spent as a skeleton impersonator?'11 The Pirate Captain took the roll of fabric from under his arm and unfurled it. It was a flag, but instead of a skull and crossbones it showed the Pirate Captain sitting astride a bee, flying happily into a new future. The Captain smiled and flourished it at the crew. 'So to show you how serious I am about all this I want you to say h.e.l.lo to your new flag.'

'Why,' said the pirate in red, 'does it show you holding your crotch? Is that a bee-keeper thing?'

'I'm riding a bee,' explained the Pirate Captain. 'It's just you can't really see it because the bee is drawn to scale. Now come on, say "h.e.l.lo" to the flag. That wasn't just a figure of speech, it was an order, so hop to it before I keelhaul the lot of you.'

'h.e.l.lo, flag,' said the pirates, waving without much enthusiasm.

'What do we call you now?' asked the pirate with a scarf, scratching his scar ruefully. 'The Bee-keeper Captain, I suppose?'

'Aaaaar, no. I'll be sticking with Pirate Captain. Because whilst I'm definitely a bee-keeper and there's no going back, I don't want to have to change my headed notepaper again.'

10 In fact, as a Victorian Lady Jennifer would most likely be either dying in childbirth, or setting fire to herself whilst cooking, the two most common forms of death amongst women back in the nineteenth century.

11 Pirates usually designed their own flags. It's a toss up as to whether the best was Edward Teach's, which showed a demon stabbing a blood-red heart with a big spear, or Bartholomew Roberts', which showed a pirate having a friendly drink with a skeleton. But the worst was definitely Walter Kennedy's, who might have been a good pirate, but couldn't draw faces to save his life.

Five.

HEROES OF THE.

MYSTERY s.h.i.+PS.

m not much of one for adjectives, number two, because I think they're a bit effeminate,' said the Pirate Captain, surveying the rain-lashed landscape stretched out behind the little bay where they had parked the pirate boat. 'I've always been more of a noun man. Good solid reliable nouns. Nouns don't mess you about. But if I was to use adjectives to describe this island they would probably be ones like: "bleak," "bare," "dismal," "exposed," "stark," "windswept," "treeless," "defoliated," "joyless" and "parky". Which is strange, because Black Bellamy's brochure makes quite a point of using adjectives like "lush," "verdant," "warm," "balmy," "luxuriant," "thriving," "idyllic," "Elysian" and "paradisical".'

'Which are almost the exact opposites!' exclaimed the albino pirate.

'Yes. It doesn't make sense,' said the Captain with a frown. 'He might not have a vocabulary to match mine, but I can't believe he'd get them all quite that wrong. Still, I'm sure there must be a perfectly good explanation. Maybe there's an eclipse or something,' he added hopefully, squinting up at the slate-grey sky. They trudged on a bit further up the s.h.i.+ngle, but exotic parrots carried on failing to burst into colourful song, and winsome tropical ladies laden with garlands and ukuleles resolutely refused to pop out from behind the treeline. The only sign of life was a few miserable-looking goats, which s.h.i.+vered by some rocks and stared balefully back at the pirates.

'I don't like goats,' said the albino pirate. 'It's those strange alien eyes. They give me the creeps. Though I realise that's a bit pot-and-kettle.'

They'd almost made it to the top of a scraggy little hill when, through the relentless sheets of drizzle, the Pirate Captain suddenly made out a figure hurrying towards them.

'Oh, look,' he said, pointing. 'Here's a native. Quick, give me a bead or a comb, number two.'

The pirate with a scarf fished around in his pockets.

'I've got this old milk bottle top. Will that do?'

'Yes, that's the ticket.' The Captain nodded towards the native, who was waving and getting a bit closer now. 'Poor chap is probably labouring under the idea that this is the land of his spirit ancestors or some rubbish like that. But not to worry. Because in my experience the great thing about indigenous populations is that if you give them something s.h.i.+ny they'll happily sell you their sister.'

The Captain drew himself up to his full height, and waved back at the native, who had almost reached them now and appeared a little out of breath.

'h.e.l.lO THERE. I'M THE PIRATE CAPTAIN,' said the Pirate Captain loudly, striding forward. He pressed the milk bottle top into the native's hand. 'PLEASE DON'T MISTAKE ME FOR A G.o.d. WE GOT IN ALL SORTS OF BOTHER THE LAST TIME THAT HAPPENED, AND FRANKLY THERE'S ONLY SO MUCH SACRIFICIAL LAMB'S BLOOD A FELLOW CAN DRINK. ANYWAY, HERE IS A s.h.i.+NY MILK BOTTLE TOP. ALL THIS,' the Captain indicated the island with a sweep of his arm, 'MINE NOW. DO YOU HAVE A SISTER?'

The man blinked and looked confused. He was very well dressed for a native, thought the Pirate Captain. Usually they wore nothing at all, or, if you were lucky, they'd have gourds over their bits. But this one was wearing a nice warm duffel coat with a woolly hat pulled down around his ears, and he was carrying a sensible umbrella.12 'I'm not sure I really follow you,' said the native cheerily. 'But thank you very much for the bottle top.'

'PERHAPS YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF CHIEFTAIN'S HUT YOU COULD TAKE US TO? DON'T WORRY ABOUT HEFTING ME THERE ON YOUR SHOULDERS, WALKING IS FINE. IT'S JUST I'M QUITE KEEN TO GET OUT OF THIS RAIN BEFORE IT DOES SOMETHING TERRIBLE TO MY LUXURIANT BEARD.'

'Goodness me, of course,' said the native. 'You're hardly dressed for this weather. Come along.'

The pirates followed him across a landscape that seemed to be made mostly out of puddles and more scrawny goats, until they arrived at a battered but neat-looking village. A small row of houses huddled together around what the pirate with a scarf supposed was meant to be the village green, but would more accurately be described as the village grey, or best of all, he couldn't help but think gloomily, not described at all.

'This isn't so bad,' said the Pirate Captain. 'I think I'll probably call it New Pirate captain Ville. I was a bit worried it would be like our adventure with the Aztecs and all the buildings and furniture would turn out to be made of hearts.'

'Oh no, there's nothing like that,' laughed the native, ushering the pirates through the door of one of the houses and into an oak-panelled hallway.

'You laugh, but to be fair it's surprisingly comfortable, waking up on a pillow of ventricles. Sticky though.'

'Yes, I can imagine.' The native took the pirates' sodden hats and coats and went on looking a bit bewildered. 'Now then. There's a nice log fire in the study, if you want to warm yourselves up. I'll just get some tea. I say tea, it's more a sort of seaweed-salt.w.a.ter infusion, because it's rather hard to get hold of tea all the way out here. We did have a packet of digestives, but I'm afraid they ran out, and it's another six months before the next supply boat. I'm sorry I can't offer you more. It's not often we have visitors, you see.'

The native smiled. One of the pirates sneezed.

'Aaarrr,' said the Pirate Captain, giving the pirate a cuff around the head. 'Here's this fellow, being so polite, and with that one sneeze you've probably doomed the entire population of this island. Because they're not used to our germs.' The Pirate Captain turned back to the native and pulled a guilty face. 'Sorry about that, I do hope you won't have too lingering a death.'

'Dear me, no,' agreed the native, handing the pirates towels so they could dry themselves off.

'So, how can I help you?' asked the native, once he'd returned with a tray of murky tea.

The Pirate Captain pulled out the deeds that Black Bellamy had given him.

'The fact is I'm now the legal owner of this island.' The Captain spread the deeds out on the study's table. 'I think you'll find these explain everything.'

The native squinted at the deeds for a minute. Then he squinted at the pirates and looked uncomfortable.

'I've come here to raise bees,' added the Captain helpfully. 'I've heard you're famous for your bees.'

'In a way we are,' said the native. 'In so much as St Helena has some of the thin nest, rattiest bees in the world.' He smiled again nervously. 'Look, I don't really know how to put this,' he added after a couple of awkward moments ticked by. 'But I'm afraid these deeds are a forgery.'

'A forgery?' repeated the Pirate Captain, his heart sinking into his s.h.i.+ny black boots. 'But Black Bellamy gave me his solemn piratical word!'

'What makes you think they're a forgery?' asked Jennifer.

'Well, young lady, if you study them closely, you'll see that the picture of the Queen's head is really quite badly drawn. And, if I'm not mistaken, this wax seal is actually the casing from a novelty cheese. Also, if you take the first letter of each sentence it spells out "Got you again, love BB". Plus the whole thing appears to be written on the back of the drinks menu from somewhere called The Skull Island Paradise Tiki Bar.'

The pirate crew did a uniformly poor job of not looking delighted at the news. The Pirate Captain slumped into the armchair and pulled a face.

'St Helena belongs to the British Empire. I'm the Governor, you see. I realise it's not quite as famous as some of the other colonies, like India or Canada or Australia, and that you can pretty much throw a stone across the length of the entire island, and that we're mostly only notable for having the largest species of earwig in the world,13 but it's still a terribly important responsibility.'

'Pish,' said the Pirate Captain, because he couldn't think of anything more piratical to say. 'That's a bit of a blow.'

'Forgive me for appearing to think the worst of people, but is it possible this Black Bellamy character might have been playing a trick on you?'

'Truth be told,' said the pirate with a scarf, 'it wouldn't exactly be the first time.'

'Hey ho,' said Jennifer, trying not to beam too much. 'Them's the breaks. I suppose it's back to the sea for us. Thank you very much for the tea.'

Several of the pirates made to get up, but the Pirate Captain waved for them to sit down again. 'Not so fast, you scurvy lot.' He shot them an admonis.h.i.+ng waggle of his eyebrows, and beckoned the Governor over to one side.

'Listen, Governor,' he said. 'Just between us men, this leaves me in a bit of a fix. You see, the lads have been really excited about becoming bee-keepers, and I hate to disappoint them. So what if I made it three bottle tops, and threw in one of my more expendable pirates? That chap over there in red, he's a good hard worker.' The Captain did his most winning smile.

'I don't think Her Majesty really exchanges pieces of her empire for bottle tops,' said the Governor.

'Aarrrr,' said the Captain. 'But look at their eager little faces.' He indicated the row of pirate faces. 'And those big eyes. They'd be heartbroken.'

'Well,' said the Governor, pondering for a moment. 'They do have big eyes. And I suppose there is old Mrs. Blystone's place. She pa.s.sed away recently. Eaten by goats. Sad business. It's not a very s.p.a.cious house I'm afraid, and the roof leaks rather, but you could stay there if you like. After all, the island doesn't have a bee-keeper14 at present, so you'd be a welcome addition to the local economy.'