The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists Page 4

  FitzRoy frowned. ‘I think they just draw those on maps to add a bit of decoration. It doesn’t actually mean there’s a sea-serpent there.’

  The galley went rather quiet. A few of the pirate crew stared intently out of the portholes, embarrassed at their Captain’s mistake. But to everyone’s relief, instead of running somebody through, the Pirate Captain just narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

  ‘That explains a lot,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s also why we’ve never glimpsed that giant compass in the corner of the Atlantic. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed.’

  10 Plank-walking as a punishment was nothing like as common as TV and films would suggest, but there is one report from The Times of 23 July 1829 of Dutch sailors being compelled to walk the plank by pirates from Buenos Aires.

  11 Despite the fearsome reputation of sharks, more people are actually killed each year by pigs. Also, sharks have no bones – their skeletons are made entirely from cartilage.

  12 In 1865 FitzRoy committed suicide at his home in Upper Norwood. In 1862 he had published The Weather Book.

  Six

  PIRATES AHOY!

  After a brief encounter with some lovely but black-hearted lady pirates13 the pirate boat finally arrived in the sleepy seaside town of Littlehampton, on the south coast of England. Houses were still cheap there, compared to London prices, but of course there was always the risk of flooding. The beach was pretty good, and there was a lot of that seaweed which looks a bit like brains lying about. A couple of the pirates did impressions of the zombie pirates and said, ‘Brains! Feed me brains!’ and pretended to stuff the seaweed into their mouths.

  ‘We must make haste to London,’ said Darwin, fetching his suitcase up onto the beach, ‘to meet my fellow scientists at the Royal Society.’

  ‘Yes, quite right. Not a moment to lose!’ agreed the Pirate Captain. ‘Except a few of the men noticed an amusement arcade just along from here, and I promised them they could go. It has a gigantic slide and everything.’

  ‘But Erasmus! He could be in all sorts of danger!’

  The Pirate Captain’s eyes flashed red like hot cannonballs.

  ‘I’m sure your brother wouldn’t begrudge my crew a little entertainment after such a hard voyage,’ he said, a hint of steel in his voice.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ replied Darwin, sulkily.

  The pirate crew were excited to be visiting an arcade, but it proved to be a dilapidated affair. The only halfway decent machines consisted of an ingenious mechanical series of shelves, which all shunted backwards and forwards, each shelf laden with piles of silvery doubloons. By putting a doubloon into a little slot the hope was to knock several doubloons over the edge of a precipice, where they could be collected. The pirates spent ages on one of the machines, because there was an actual pocket-watch resting on the doubloons near the edge, but no matter how much of their treasure they fed into the gas-powered beast the loot wouldn’t fall down – it was almost as if the doubloons were stuck there with glue. A couple of the pirates got into trouble for trying to shake the machine, and they had to run outside and hide behind a man selling ice creams.

  ‘This is rubbish,’ said the pirate who was eating some candy floss, and the other pirates agreed, so they walked back down the beach to where Darwin and FitzRoy were waiting. Seeing them, Darwin leapt to his feet and gathered up his luggage once more.

  ‘So, are we ready? There is a locomotive to London that leaves in half an hour,’ said Darwin, eager to be off.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘We must hurry! Oh look – a nautical-themed crazy golf! Let’s have a go!’

  ‘But the train . . .’ said Darwin, with a touch of resignation.

  ‘Nautical-themed! Do you think that’s a genuine ship’s anchor? It’s very realistic. You and FitzRoy can play as a team if you want,’ said the Pirate Captain, handing him a putter.

  Darwin could see there was no point arguing with the Pirate Captain once he had made up his mind.

  The Pirate Captain swung his golf club, and the ball pinged away, only to hit the side of a big metal anchor and roll back to where it had started.

  ‘That’s lucky, it’s a free drop,’ said the Pirate Captain, picking up his ball and placing it about a foot from the hole. ‘Because I hit the anchor.’

  ‘Eh? Are you sure about that?’ asked Darwin, instantly wishing he had kept quiet.

  ‘Yes. Because I hit the anchor,’ repeated the Pirate Captain, this time in a menacing tone that spoke of rum and murder.

  The pirate with a scarf hit his ball, which bounced off a barrel, hit the anchor and rolled back again. He went to pick it up.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ roared the Pirate Captain incredulously.

  ‘My free drop. Because I hit the anchor.’

  ‘But you hit the barrel first!’

  ‘Erm . . . yes.’

  ‘So that invalidates any effect the anchor might have.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And by hitting the barrel and then the anchor, you’ve put the anchor permanently out of play for everybody else. So no more free drops, I’m afraid.’

  In all, they played three rounds of crazy golf and the Pirate Captain won all three, but everyone had a good time. As they ambled back along the sea front, the Pirate Captain told them all an exciting story about the time he lost a leg in a fight with a Great White Shark. FitzRoy remarked that the Pirate Captain seemed to have two perfectly good legs, at which point the Pirate Captain went a bit quiet and pretended to be very interested in a shell he had picked up.

  ‘We’d better be off to rescue my brother,’ said Darwin.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘We shall. Just as soon as we’ve paid a visit to that sweet factory to find out how they get the words inside sticks of rock. Aargh! I’m just pulling your leg. Don’t look so worried. I’ve sailed the seven seas, and I’ve never had an unsuccessful adventure yet!’

  ‘Really? You’ve sailed all seven seas?’ asked Darwin admiringly.

  ‘Every last one!’

  ‘What are the seven seas? I’ve always wondered.’

  ‘Aaarrr. Well, let’s see . . .’ said the Pirate Captain, scratching his craggy forehead. ‘There’s the North Sea. And that other one, the one near Mozambique. And . . . what’s that one in Hyde Park?’

  ‘The Serpentine?’

  ‘That’s the one. How many’s that then? Three. Um. There’s the sea with all the rocks in it . . . I think they call it Sea Number Four. Then that would leave . . . uh . . . Grumpy and Sneezy . . .’

  Darwin was starting to look a little less impressed.

  ‘Would you look at that big seagull!’ said the Pirate Captain, quickly ducking into a beach hut.

  13 Lady pirates were rare but not unheard of. A famous example was Anne Bonny, who became the lover of Calico Jack and was tried for piracy in Spanish Town, Jamaica.

  Seven

  TARGET: PIRATES!

  And so the pirates and their companions arrived in Victorian London. It was not the London you would recognise from nowadays – there was no Millennium Wheel or Tate Modern or Eurostar or Starbucks or Millennium Dome or Jubilee Line Extension or any of the other things you probably assume have always existed. There was soot and orphans everywhere, and gas-lit cobbled streets full of fog and sinister gentlemen out for a night of illicit murder. It was a strict and unforgiving society – looking at a piano, eating too much butter, dancing with elan – the sour-faced Queen Victoria forbade all these things. Also, it was always raining in the London of themadays – dirty grey slabs of rain that left everywhere shining and slippery.

  To Darwin’s continued dismay the Pirate Captain insisted they visit London Zoo before doing anything else. All the pirates agreed that it wasn’t as good as Berlin Zoo, which they had visited on a previous adventure to Germany, and that it had far too large a hoofed-animals section. ‘Who cares about hoofed animals? They never get up to anything!’ said the pirate in green, wisely. The chimps
were an especially sorry bunch – the chimps in Berlin Zoo had put on quite a display when the pirates had visited, shouting and weeing right in front of shocked tourists, but the London chimps just rocked back and forth, obviously suffering from zoo-psychosis. Mister Bobo stared sadly at them through the glass, a bit embarrassed on their behalf. The albino pirate noticed a sign which pointed to an exhibit of ‘The Most Destructive Animal in the World!’. Some of the pirates had bets on whether it would be a bear or a shark, but it turned out to be a big mirror. The most destructive animal in the world was mankind itself! Especially pirates! But to show they weren’t all bad, two of the pirates decided to sponsor a polar bear.14

  After that, even though Darwin kept on looking pointedly at his watch and rolling his eyes, the pirates went shopping in the West End. Several of them got themselves the latest pirate stylings from Carnaby Street. Apparently that year’s fashion could be summed up as ‘the more buckles the better!’, and the pirates now made a loud clanking noise as they walked along. They also all bought a few postcards and union jacks. The pirate in green who wanted to have the Pirate Captain drawn on his arm had managed to find a tattoo parlour in the Soho district, and now carried a bundle of pamphlets with titles like ‘Inky Skin’, which he said he’d picked up because he was now very interested in tattoos, and not because of the pictures of ladies wearing next to nothing, but the other pirates weren’t sure they believed him.

  As they trailed down Charing Cross Road, finally exhausted from their exciting day out in the Big Smoke, the Pirate Captain noticed a poster stuck to a pillar box. It said in oldendays writing:

  ‘That’s a lot of ladies’ nights,’ said the Pirate Captain thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Darwin. ‘It’s a peculiar thing. I heard from my cousin that ever since the Bishop of Oxford became the major shareholder in the circus – about seven or eight months ago – the number of ladies nights has risen dramatically, to at least five a week.’

  ‘I wonder if that foreshadows anything sinister?’ said the Pirate Captain.

  ‘We shouldn’t leap to conclusions, just because the unspeakable Bishop is our enemy,’ said Darwin reasonably. ‘After all, it may be that he feels sorry for ladies, and thinks they could do with some free entertainment.’

  ‘Why would he feel sorry for ladies?’ asked the albino pirate.

  ‘Well, what with so many of them going missing lately, and then being found washed up in the River Thames, all shrivelled and lifeless.’

  ‘How long has that been going on?’

  ‘Oooh, about seven or eight months, I should say.’

  The conversation was interrupted when the pirate with a scarf spotted a policeman coming along the street towards them. The pirates and their companions quickly ducked into Leicester Square.

  ‘It’s not safe on the streets for you pirates,’ said Darwin, still pushing Mister Bobo along in a pram so as not to draw any unwanted attention. ‘Upstairs in the Natural History Museum there is the Royal Society Gentlemen’s Club,15 where we might plan our course of action.’

  ‘Will they have grog there?’ asked the sassy pirate.

  ‘Yes. And cigars. But I don’t think they’ll let pirates in. And lord knows what my colleagues would think if they saw me associating with sea-dogs like you.’

  The pirates were a bit hurt by this, and Darwin was quick to try to save their feelings.

  ‘I mean, obviously, FitzRoy and I know that you’re stand-up fellows, it’s just the other members . . . they may be rather quick to judge.’

  ‘There’s only one thing for it then,’ said the Pirate Captain, a gleam in his eye. ‘We’ll have to disguise ourselves as scientists!’

  Holding pens and rulers, and with white lab coats covering their piratical paraphernalia, the pirates followed Darwin into the Royal Society Gentlemen’s Club. There were several famous scientists present, some sitting around smoking, some engaged in animated discussion about the latest scientific topic, and some just watching the dancing girls. The smell of opium hung heavily in the air.

  ‘Anyhow,’ one of the scientists was saying to another, ‘there simply isn’t room in the museum’s Fishes Hall, so we’ve decided to pretend to the public that a whale is actually a mammal without any legs. It’s patently ridiculous – I mean to say, just look at the thing, it’s a gigantic fish if ever you saw one – but mum’s the word! In my experience the public will believe just about anything, so long as you write it down on a little piece of card.’

  The Pirate Captain coughed.

  ‘Goodness! Look, everybody, it’s Darwin! Darwin’s back!’ exclaimed one of the scientists with bushy sideburns, and everybody crowded round Darwin and FitzRoy, slapping them on the shoulders and asking questions. It was a couple of minutes before Darwin could get a word in edgeways.

  ‘Uh, these here are some scientists I met on my travels,’ he said, indicating the disguised pirates. ‘I hope you’ll make them feel welcome.’

  ‘Sorry. We’re forgetting our manners. It’s just so good to see Charles back, alive and well. One hears such stories about life on the high seas. Giant squids and pirates and the like,’ said a genuine scientist, shaking the Pirate Captain’s hand. ‘What sort of science do you do?’

  ‘What sort of science? Well . . . it’s mainly . . . chemicals,’ said the Pirate Captain, thinking on his feet. ‘There’s a lot of stirring things together. And then writing things down, of course.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said the scientist. ‘And what about you? What’s your field?’ he added, turning to the pirate with a hook for his hand.

  The pirate with a hook for his hand didn’t know what to say, but the quick-witted Pirate Captain cut in deftly. ‘My modest colleague does a lot of work with minerals. He likes gold best. He heats it up, with matches.’

  ‘Surely, as a man of science, you’d use a Bunsen burner?’

  ‘Did I say matches? Yes, I meant Bunsen burner. It’s been a long day,’ the Pirate Captain shrugged apologetically.

  The pirates managed to do a pretty decent job of mingling with the scientists, nodding politely and saying ‘Really?’ a lot as they listened to them drone on about their latest inventions and discoveries, but the Pirate Captain soon found himself involved in a particularly awkward conversation about molecules, so he was relieved when FitzRoy interrupted him before it got to the stage where he had to say if he was for or against them.

  ‘As a fellow nautical man, there’s somebody I’d like you to meet,’ said FitzRoy, grabbing the Pirate Captain by the sleeve of his lab coat and dragging him over to shake hands with a fresh-faced young scientist.

  ‘This is James Glaisher, the famous meteorologist,’ said FitzRoy. The Pirate Captain wasn’t sure what a meteorologist did, but he suspected it was something boring.

  ‘James and I have long held the belief that the weather does not operate in some capricious manner, and that with sufficient information, it should be possible to give advance warning of storms at sea. Our voyage has only served to further convince me.’

  The Pirate Captain made sure he was doing his best interested-face whilst he wondered what time scientists tended to eat dinner.

  ‘So tell me, James,’ continued FitzRoy, ‘how have the experiments been going? Did you get a chance to make the modifications I suggested for your ship?’

  ‘What’s this?’ said the Pirate Captain, his ears pricking up, eager to find a topic he could make head or tail of. ‘You have a ship? Why, I have a boat myself!’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not that kind of a ship,’ explained the scientist.16 ‘For some time now, FitzRoy and I have pursued the idea of a motorised weather balloon. I believe it to be the world’s first lighter-than-air-ship. A dirigible, if you will.’

  ‘A lighter-than-air-ship?’ said the Pirate Captain, rubbing his hairy chin. ‘How many cannons does it have? My boat has twelve cannons.’

  ‘Cannons? It doesn’t have any cannons.’

  ‘You’re not going to be much cop when it
comes to plundering if you haven’t got any cannons!’ the Pirate Captain snorted imperiously.

  ‘Plundering? I’m not sure you understand. We’ve not invented the airship to go plundering.’

  ‘So what on earth is it for?’ asked the Pirate Captain.

  ‘For? What is all science “for”!’ exclaimed the scientist. ‘Pushing back frontiers! The thrill of discovery! Advancing the sum total of human knowledge and endeavour! And looking down ladies’ tops.’

  Over dinner Darwin told the story of his voyage, missing out the bit with the pirates, then he showed off Mister Bobo, who performed impeccably and proved excellent when it came to the after-dinner charades, making everybody laugh as he acted out Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. All of the scientists agreed that Mister Bobo was a breakthrough, but none of them knew what was to be done about the predicament of Erasmus. A glum gloom settled over the table, and even Darwin’s pet bulldog, Huxley, whimpered as it ate the scraps of ham surreptitiously fed to it under the table by the pirate with a scarf.

  It was time for action. The Pirate Captain slammed down his After Eight mint with a mighty crash.

  ‘It’s clear to me what must be done,’ he told the assembled scientists and pirates-dressed-as-scientists. ‘Darwin must go ahead and announce a lecture tour with Mister Bobo as if nothing were wrong. I’ll get my crew – my scientist crew, that is – to put up posters, and we’ll hold the first lecture in this very museum, tomorrow night.’