In an Adventure With Napoleon (6 page)

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 ship 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 muffled 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 ships 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.

‘Hello, 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 “passing 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 shirt 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.

‘Space! We’re going to space! 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. Hell’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 hello 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 “hello” 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.’

‘Hello, 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.’

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 shingle, 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 shivered 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?’