The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

'Exactly. It's time we had another pirate adventure!'

'I'll let the other pirates know. Where will we be heading for? Skull Island? The Spanish Main?'

'Oh, Lord, no! If we plunder the Spanish Main[2] one more time, I think I'll tear out my own beard,' said the Pirate Captain, trying on the ten-gallon hat and narrowing his eyes like a cowboy as he studied his reflection in the mirror.

'So what were you thinking?'

'Something will come up. It usually does. Just make sure we've got plenty of hams on board. I didn't really enjoy our last adventure much, because we ran out of hams about halfway through. And what's my motto? 'I like ham!''

'It's a good motto, sir.'

Back on deck, the other pirates had finished their shanty - which had been about how a beautiful sea-nymph had left her rich but stupid Royal Navy boyfriend for a pirate boyfriend

because he was much more interesting to talk to and could make her laugh - and now they were roaring. This was another common pastime amongst the pirates. 'Rah!'

'Oooh-Arg!'

'Aaaarrrr, me hearties!'

It didn't mean much, but it filled a few hours. They all stopped when they saw the pirate with a scarf had come back from his meeting with the Pirate Captain. He almost slipped in a pool of the cabin boy's blood that was left over from the fight.

'Can somebody swab these decks?' he said, a little tetchily. Left to their own devices the pirates tended towards the bone idle.

'It's Tuesday! Sunday is boat cleaning day!'

'I know, but somebody could get hurt.'

The diffident pirate gave a shrug and went off to find a swabbing cloth, whilst the remaining crew looked up expectantly from where they were sprawled. The scarf-wearing pirate gazed out across the sparkling water, and at the tropi­cal beach with its alabaster sands, and the forest

of coconut palms behind that, and then he noticed one of the pretty native ladies and so he quickly looked back down at his pirate shoes.

'Listen up, pirates,' he said. 'I know all this endless wandering up and down the beach . .. and our interminable attempts at trying to choose which sort of mouth-watering exotic fruit to eat. . . and all these wanton tropical girls knocking around... I know it's been getting you down.'

A couple of the pirates muttered something to each other, but the scarf-wearing pirate didn't quite catch what they said.

'So you'll be happy to know,' he went on, 'that the Pirate Captain has ordered us to put to sea, just as soon as we've collected some hams for the journey.'

A buzz of excitement ran around the deck.

'Perhaps we should cook the hams first, before setting off?' asked the pirate dressed in green.

'That sounds like a good idea,' said the albino pirate.

'Do you think roasting is best?' asked the pirate with a nut allergy.

The scarf-wearing pirate sighed, because he knew how seriously the pirates took their ham, and he could predict how this was going to end up. He tried to look hard-nosed, which involved tensing all the muscles in his nostrils, and with as much authority as he could manage he said, 'Yes, roasting is good. It allows the free escape of watery particles that's necessary for a full flavour. But we've got to make sure it's regulated by frequent basting with the fat that has exuded from the meat, combined with a little salt and water - otherwise the hams will burn, and become hard and tasteless.'

'Roasting?³ Are you sure?' asked the surly pirate who was dressed in red, barely concealing his contempt. 'What about boiling? I always find a boiled ham becomes more savoury in taste and smell, and more firm and digestible.'

3 In those days, roasting would have meant spit-roasting. A popular craze in the early part of the nineteenth century was to use a small dog fastened to a treadmill to turn the spit, freeing up the cook to prepare other dishes.

'Ah, but if you continue the process too long,

you risk the hams becoming tough and less succulent,' said the pirate in green.

'But the loss from roasting is upwards of 22 per cent of the ham! The loss from boiling is only about 16 per cent. More ham for us! That can only be a good thing.'

'We need to dust the hams with bread rasp­ings if we're going to boil them. And we should dress the knuckle bone with a frill of white paper.'

'A frill of white paper? What kind of a pirate are you? Rah!'

The pirates started to fight again, and it wasn't until one of them noticed that the Pirate Captain had come back from his cabin and was now leaning against the mast, drumming his fingers on a barrel, that they shuffled to attention.

'That's enough of that, my beauties!' he roared. 'Let's set a course...' at this point the Pirate Captain paused in what he hoped would be a dramatic and exciting fashion,'... for adventure!'

The crew just gave him a bit of a collective blank look. The Pirate Captain sighed.

AH right,' he said with a pout, 'south.'

Two

RETURN TO SKULL ISLAND!

'That was some hurricane!' said the pirate who was prone to exaggeration, emptying the sea-water that had collected in his pirate boots over the side of the boat. 'I don't think I've ever seen one like it! I thought the mast was going to crack for sure! And we must have lost half a dozen men, just washed away into the deep.'¹

'That wasn't a hurricane. It wasn't even a storm,' said the pirate in red.

'Well, gale then. That was some gale.'

1 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.

'Pfft!' said the pirate in red. He was fed up, because a whole day had gone by and they didn't seem to be any closer to actually starting an adventure.

'According to my Beaufort Scale,' said the albino pirate, waving a nautical pamphlet at the rest of the crew, 'a hurricane is number twelve, or 'that which no canvas could withstand'. As you can see, our canvases are fine, so it obvi­ously wasn't a hurricane. I should say it was somewhere between number six, a Strong Breeze - or 'that which will send a pirate's hat flying and muss up his luxuriant beard' and number eight, a Fresh Gale - or 'that which will make a pirate's trousers billow about so that it looks like he has fat legs'.'

Are you sure that's an actual Beaufort Scale you've got there?' asked the scarf-wearing pirate.

'Of course I'm sure,' snapped the albino pirate. 'The Pirate Captain wrote it out for me himself

All the pirates were too tired even to roar at each other, let alone sing a shanty, after their strenu­ous efforts in bringing the boat through the previous night's fantastic storm or fresh gale or strong breeze or whatever it