The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists Read online

  ‘I got a letter this morning,’ he said, ‘from our old enemy, Black Bellamy.’

  The pirates muttered a few oaths. Black Bellamy was the roguish rival pirate who the pirates had encountered during the Pirates’ Adventure with Buried Treasure, and the Pirates’ Adventure with the Princess of Cadiz. Somehow they weren’t surprised that they had not heard the last of him.

  ‘Black Bellamy has invited us to a feast onboard his schooner, the Barbary Hen, which is sailing just a few leagues from here.’

  ‘It’s Black Bellamy, Captain! You can’t mean to trust him!’ said the albino pirate. The other pirates nodded.

  ‘Perhaps he’s changed,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘He says in his letter that he’s changed, and that he wants to hold this feast to make up for all the trouble he and his villainous crew have caused us in the past.’

  ‘Oh, well. You can’t really argue with that sort of sentiment,’ agreed the pirate in green.

  ‘Yes, that seems really nice of him,’ said the albino pirate, feeling a bit guilty for being so harsh on Black Bellamy just a few seconds ago.

  ‘And it would be good to see how they prepare their hams on board the Barbary Hen,’ added the pirate in red.

  ‘So it’s settled, we’ll accept the invitation and set sail for Black Bellamy’s feast at once!’ said the Pirate Captain, picking a piece of ham from his immaculate beard.

  The moonlit waters were clear and calm as the pirate boat moored up alongside the Barbary Hen. The pirate crew piled into a launch – ‘Shotgun!’ shouted the sassy pirate who liked to sit up front with the Captain – and paddled across to where a rope-ladder had been hung over the other ship’s side. There were around forty head of hog wandering about the darkened decks, which was clearly Black Bellamy’s way of impressing his guests. Black Bellamy politely took the pirates’ coats and cutlasses. This showed he really had changed, because the Black Bellamy of old was famous for his lack of manners. But he was still a fearsome sight, with a beard that came up to his eyes, two pairs of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling, and a big knife held between his teeth.

  ‘Herro. Relcon ahord ha harrarry hen,’ said Black Bellamy.

  ‘What did he say?’ whispered the pirate in green.

  ‘I think he said “Welcome aboard the Barbary Hen”. It’s a bit hard to tell, because of that knife clenched between his teeth,’ said the scarf-wearing pirate.

  Black Bellamy made a few incomprehensible introductions, and then led the pirates into his feasting hall. Their old rival had certainly pulled out all the stops – there was roast veal, which had half a pint of melted butter poured over it, fillets of beef garnished with slices of lemon, a sumptuous pork broth, potato scones, stewed mushrooms . . . several of the pirates had to use their pirate neckerchiefs to wipe saliva from their mouths. It didn’t matter that they had already eaten a sumptuous feast earlier that day, because they often had adventures comprised of nothing but sumptuous feasts. Initially, because there was so much history between them, the two sets of pirates were a bit hostile, and conversation was understandably awkward, but after some pirate grog they were soon carousing with each other. Piratical conversation buzzed about the boat.

  ‘Diving. Have you ever tried it? It’s fantastic! We went and dived at the wreck of an actual pirate ship!’

  ‘My friend here thinks you should boil hams, but he’s an idiot.’

  ‘. . . ’twas the unmistakable tang of human flesh . . .’

  ‘. . . and I’m not making this up – he had a wooden leg!’

  Both Black Bellamy and the Pirate Captain were pleased it was going so well.

  ‘Why don’t we adjourn to my drawing room, for a spot of cards? Hmmm?’5 said Black Bellamy to the Pirate Captain. The Pirate Captain could have gone on eating mutton necks all night, but his host had been so gracious he thought it rude to refuse.

  The pirates were a bit annoyed by how nice the drawing room was, especially when Black Bellamy flipped open the top of a huge mahogany globe to reveal a little drinks cabinet. The Pirate Captain’s globe back onboard the pirate boat was made out of tin and about the size of a football, and he wasn’t even sure it had Africa on it, so it was difficult not to feel a pang of jealousy. Black Bellamy poured out some rum from a crystal decanter and suggested a game of Cincinnati High Low.

  ‘Oh, that’s a lucky man’s game,’ said the Pirate Captain, because he had heard someone say this before.

  ‘Well, what would you suggest?’ asked Black Bellamy amiably. ‘Crossfire? Seven Card Flip? Mexican Seven Card Stud?’

  He was just showing off, thought the Pirate Captain, but he was no slouch at cards himself.

  ‘How about,’ said the Pirate Captain, ‘Cat’s Cradle? Or Round the World? Or Walking the Dog?’

  ‘Those are yo-yo tricks.’

  ‘Ha! Of course they are. Well then, that one with the Mexicans.’

  They settled down to the card game. Pretty soon the Pirate Captain was down several doubloons, and pretty soon after that he had lost all the boat’s precious supply of hams. The trouble was that Black Bellamy’s beard, coming up all the way to his eyes as it did, gave him a perfect poker face. The Pirate Captain’s crew were starting to get worried, but then the Pirate Captain had a fantastic idea. He found himself with another useless hand but this time, instead of thumping the table and looking miserable, he gave a big grin, and whispered loudly to the pirate who wore a scarf, ‘We’ll be feasting on that forty head of hog, with this brilliant hand!’

  Black Bellamy heard this, and decided to fold. The Pirate Captain shuffled the pile of doubloons into his pockets. Black Bellamy saw his cards and gasped.

  ‘But . . . you had a terrible hand! Garbage!’

  ‘Yes. But I knew that if I looked pleased with it, you would think it was a flush or something like that!’

  ‘You’re confounded clever!’ roared Black Bellamy. ‘But listen. Give me back all those doubloons I’ve just lost, and in return I’ll tell you where you can find ten times that sort of loot.’

  The Pirate Captain thought about Black Bellamy’s offer for a second or two. Mathematics wasn’t his strong point – obviously pirating was his strong point – but you didn’t need to be Archimedes to realise that ten times the amount of doubloons he had just won was a good deal of cash.

  ‘Very well, Black Bellamy,’ said the Pirate Captain, taking the coins back out of his pockets. ‘Where can we find this treasure?’

  ‘I’ll need to show you on the nautical charts,’ sighed Black Bellamy, doing a sad face. ‘Me and my men had been planning to sail to the south seas, near the Galapagos Islands, where a ship belonging to the – uh – Bank of England is right this moment transporting . . . ooh, at least a hundredweight in gold bullion, back from the colonies. I’d been really looking forward to a spot of plundering, but I guess I’ll just have to let you set about the raid yourself!’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ said the Pirate Captain, his eyes narrowing. ‘That’s eight hundred leagues from here. It’s a little out of our way.’

  ‘I swear by the Pirate Code.’

  ‘Do you know the name of this ship?’

  ‘It’s called the Beagle. And it’s chock full of gold, mark my words. Can I have those doubloons back now?’

  As the pirates crossed back to their boat they could hear laughter coming from the Barbary Hen – it was good, thought the Pirate Captain, that they had left their hosts in such high spirits, even though he had got the better of Black Bellamy. And now he was pretty confident that they really were setting course . . . for adventure!

  Though he didn’t bother saying it out loud this time.

  4 The Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico were, and are, subject to devastating hurricanes. In 1712 Governor Hamilton reported that a storm had destroyed thirty-eight ships in the harbour at Port Royal and nine ships at Kingston.

  5 Captain Johnson’s General History of the Pyrates tells us that most pirate ships had a set of Articles, by which t
he crew had to adhere. Article 3 states ‘No person to game at cards or dice for money’, so Black Bellamy is showing his maverick colours here.

  Three

  PIRATE ISLANDS AND BLACKHEARTED MEN!

  ‘So, there’s two pirate boats sailing towards each other,’ said the short pirate with thick black spectacles, ‘and one of the boats is carrying all this blue paint. And the other pirate boat is carrying all this red paint. They crash, and you know what happened?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They were marooned! Ha-ha! You see?’

  The pirates had started telling each other jokes in an attempt to ward off the inevitable boredom between feasts, because there wasn’t much else to do on board a pirate boat. They had been at sea for a couple of days now, searching high and low for the Beagle. When the boat had first reached the tropical waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands the pirates kept themselves amused by capturing a couple of the giant turtles that frequented this part of the world, and then racing them about the deck.6 You could fit two whole pirates on each shell. They constructed an obstacle course from bits of old rope and rigging, but the turtles proved a lot less resilient than they had hoped. A few of the pirates then had the bright idea that if they caught enough of the huge diaphanous jellyfish that circled about the boat, they could construct a kind of bouncy castle. This kept them occupied for a few more hours, but it didn’t really work, and eventually they got tired of it, and found that they had jellyfish guts stuck all over their pirate boots.

  The pirate dressed in green went downstairs to get a glass of water because he was nervous and his throat was dry. There was a note stuck next to the ship’s sink, written in the Pirate Captain’s familiar bubble writing. It read:

  Will whoever keeps taking my mug STOP IT. It is very annoying. Have a little respect for other people’s property. The Pirate Captain.

  Life at sea was tough and unforgiving, and tensions could run quite high on board a pirate boat, especially when crockery was limited and people didn’t always do their washing-up, but generally the pirates all got along fine. The pirate dressed in green gulped down the tap water – it was much nicer than seawater – and tried to pluck up courage for the task ahead. He’d been putting it off for ages, but now seemed as good a time as any.

  There was a knock at the Pirate Captain’s door, and then the pirate in green came in.

  ‘Sorry to be bothering you, Captain,’ he said. The Pirate Captain looked up. He had a lot to sort out in preparation for their imminent and audacious attack, but he made a point of always having time for the men.

  ‘What can I do for you . . . uh . . . my fellow?’ said the Pirate Captain, who often found it difficult to tell his crew apart from one another. ‘Grog? Ham?’

  ‘No thanks, sir. I was wondering if I could ask you something?’

  ‘It’s what I’m here for. You don’t mind if I help myself?’ said the Pirate Captain, indicating the slices of ham. ‘Now, what is it?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking of getting a tattoo.’

  ‘They’re quite popular.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘But they don’t come off, you know.’

  ‘Yes, Captain. I’ve thought about that.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘I thought it might be good to get a Skull and Crossbones, like we have on our flag, but it turns out a couple of the men have already got that. So . . . I was wondering . . . that’s to say . . . would you have any objections . . .’

  ‘Spit it out man!’

  ‘. . . if I got your face done instead? I was thinking of adding a little speech bubble, with – ha – you saying “Scurvy knaves!” like you always do. It would be on my arm, if that’s all right.’ He indicated the patch on his upper arm where he was going to have the tattoo.

  For a moment, the Pirate Captain was speechless. The ham on his fork just hung in mid air.

  ‘Of course . . . I . . . ah . . . I don’t know what to say,’ he said.

  ‘Are you okay, Captain?’

  ‘Yes . . . it’s just this, um, ham. It’s very spicy, and it’s making my eyes water.’

  In all their many adventures, even the one where they had battled zombie pirates, the Pirate Captain had never been so touched by a gesture from any of his loyal pirate crew. His lip began to tremble, and the pirate in green was mightily relieved when at that point the pirate with an accordion, breathless with excitement, hurried into the Captain’s office.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but we’ve caught sight of a ship, and we think it’s the Beagle, because it has a funny-looking dog painted on the side. Should I get the men ready for boarding?’

  The Pirate Captain swiftly regained his composure, and started to bark out orders. ‘Get the cannons ready first, and remind the pirates not to stand right behind them this time,’ he bellowed. The Pirate Captain had explained basic Newtonian physics and the principles of recoil to his men more times than he could remember, but it just didn’t seem to go in.

  ‘And I want to hear plenty of roaring until we’ve secured the enemy vessel,’ he said, picking up a telescope and marching onto the deck, where several of the pirates were already gathered.

  ‘It’s just a ten-gun brig,’ said the scarf-wearing pirate, scratching thoughtfully at a livid scar that ran the length of his cheek. On most people a scar can be quite disfiguring, but several of the pirates thought that in the pirate with a scarf’s case it actually added to his rather rugged appeal.

  ‘A ten-gun brig? Really?’ said the Pirate Captain, frowning at the news.

  ‘I was expecting something bigger. Seeing as it’s carrying all this gold for the Bank of England,’ said his number two.

  ‘Perhaps they’re trying to keep a low profile,’ said the Pirate Captain, with some misgivings. ‘Are those cannons ready?’

  ‘This sort of makes us bank robbers, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Aaarrr. But you knew you’d be bending a few laws when you became a pirate. I’m not sure the ivory smuggling we were doing the other week was entirely respectable. Or all that trawling for cod, come to think about it.’

  ‘Cannons ready, Captain.’

  An eerie silence suddenly becalmed the pirate chatter, as the crew waited for the Pirate Captain to give his order to make good the attack.

  ‘Fire a cannonball at that boat!’ said the Pirate Captain.

  6 Nowadays Galapagos Giant Turtles often accidentally eat plastic bags left as litter by unthinking tourists, mistaking them for tasty jellyfish.

  Four

  WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE UNFORGIVING DEEP?

  ‘Confound it, man!’ said Robert FitzRoy, captain of the boat about to be attacked by the pirates. ‘I told you women and the sea were a mighty bad combination.’

  FitzRoy was young for a ship’s captain, just twenty-seven, but the man he stood back to back with was younger still, a full five years his junior. Yet neither bore the frisky demeanour that you would expect to find in people under thirty.

  ‘I can’t help myself, Robert,’ said his companion, Charles Darwin, cradling his big round head in his hands. ‘I love her, and I mean to marry her!’

  ‘But I love her too!’ said FitzRoy. ‘She drives me to distraction! You already knew that.’

  ‘Damn women, with . . . with their hair . . . and their faces . . .’ muttered Darwin.

  ‘I must demand satisfaction,’ said Captain FitzRoy. ‘You don’t leave me any choice.’

  The cabin was a little small for a duel, neither man quite being able to stand up properly without grazing his head, but needs must at sea.

  ‘Three years’ voyage . . . and it should come to this,’ said Darwin, shakily pouring powder into his pistol. ‘May the best man win.’

  ‘You’re a botanist.7 I’m a trained naval officer. I don’t fancy your chances much,’ said FitzRoy.

  The door was flung open with a crash that made Darwin wince, and in ran the breathless cause of the two men’s argument, the lovely Lady Mara. ‘P
lease stop!’ she said with her lovely mouth.

  ‘There’s—’

  But before Lady Mara could say any more, a cannonball splintered through the cabin wall at tremendous speed, and buried itself in the side of her pretty head, knocking her off her feet, and leaving her quite dead on the floor. Darwin and FitzRoy stood, dumbfounded.

  ‘Well. I . . .’

  ‘Should we . . . ?’ Darwin gestured at his gun.

  ‘Hardly seems much point.’

  ‘What a damned fool I’ve been!’ laughed Darwin.

  ‘Oh, I’m just as much to blame,’ said FitzRoy with a grin, pocketing his pistol, and slapping his friend on the back. They would have hugged right there and then, but were interrupted by a further crash as first another cannonball and then a pirate screamed in through the window. The two men stood stock-still.

  ‘Don’t make any sudden movements,’ whispered FitzRoy to his companion. ‘Remember – he’s more scared of us than we are of him.’

  ‘That’s bears, you idiot,’ hissed Darwin out of the side of his mouth. ‘I don’t think it applies to pirates.’

  At the doorway, a second pirate appeared, with a luxuriant beard and a pleasant, open face, all teeth and curls.

  ‘I’m the Pirate Captain. And I’m here for the gold!’ he said.

  Everybody froze. For a moment the only sound was the gentle roar of the ocean, and some wheezing from the pirate with asthma.

  ‘Well, uh, help yourself,’ said FitzRoy eventually, slightly perplexed. Darwin was too terrified to speak.

  ‘Not that there’s a great deal,’ continued the young captain. ‘I think some of the portholes might be made of gold, but then again they could be made of brass. Same sort of colour, so it’s difficult to tell.’