The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

a fast one on us, the boat's finances aren't looking too healthy, and this could be a chance to make a doubloon or two. Good deeds won't keep us in ham, you know. Secondly, a few of my pirate contacts might come in useful in figuring out just what this Bishop is really up to. And thirdly, I'm the Pirate Captain and I can do whatever the hell I please!'

Are you planning on wearing that hat to the convention?' asked the pirate in red. The Pirate Captain thought he could detect a certain amount of disapproval in his tone.

'Yes, I am. It happens to be my favourite hat. You may notice that the blue of the trim brings out the blue of my eyes,' the Pirate Captain pointed to the blue trim and then at his blue eyes to emphasise the point.

'Ah. Well, then. I'm sure you know best, Captain.'

Are you trying to say there's something wrong with my hat?'

'Not at all, Captain. It might not be the most up-to-date choice, but I'm sure there's nothing wrong with that,' said the pirate in red, sound­ing very much like he thought there was a great deal wrong with it.

'This is a perfectly good pirate hat. It's a tricorn.'

'Exactly'

'Your point being?'

'It's just... nowadays ... a more Napoleonic design seems to be the choice of the successful pirate. It's generally held to have a touch more .. . je ne sais quoi. I'm only saying, is all.'

'My hat has plenty of je ne sais quoi. Not to say joie de vivre.'

'If you say so.'

'Fine. Hands up who likes my hat?'

Most of the pirate crew loyally stuck their hands in the air. The pirate in red just shrugged and pretended to be reading a book. Satisfied that the mutinous swab had been put in his place, the Pirate Captain helped himself to another bowl of Coco-Pops.

Nine

ENTER THE PIRATE KING!

B

y twelve o'clock the scarf-wearing pirate and the pirate with an accordion were already sweltering under their multiple disguises. You could hardly hear the clanking of their pirate buckles beneath the layers of lab coat and lady's dress each man wore. They didn't know exactly what it was they were meant to be looking for at the sinister circus - the Pirate Captain had simply told them to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Looking through the glossy circus brochure the pirate with a scarf thought that it all sounded pretty suspicious - a man with no face, a lady with a phobia for tin foil, an out-of-control teen... he was worried that they wouldn't know where to start. The queue to get in stretched all the way down the Mall.

'That's a fetching eye patch. Is it just for show?'

It took the pirate with a scarf a few seconds to 109

realise that the question was being directed at him, and by the young lady just ahead of them in the queue. Looking up, he was so taken aback by how pretty she was he almost forgot to answer in a high-pitched voice instead of his normal pirate voice.

'It's ... that is ... I've got an astigmatism,' he stuttered. 'The optician says I have to wear the patch until it goes away.'

'You poor thing,' said the girl, with a look of real concern. 'Would you like a sandwich? It's Serrano ham.'

The pirate with a scarf gratefully took the proffered sandwich. He thought he had better make introductions. 'Thank you. I'm . . . Fran-cine. And this is, erm, Daphne,' he said.

'Jennifer. That's a very shiny accordion you have there, Daphne.'

The pirate with an accordion just grunted, because his lady voice wasn't particularly realistic.

'You're extremely ragged. For a girl,' said Jennifer, turning back to the pirate with a scarf. 'Thank you,' said the pirate, unconsciously

flexing the muscles in his back, and knitting his eyebrows together in what he hoped was a suave manner.

'Are you here to see the Mer-maid?' asked Jennifer. 'I've heard it's a bit disappointing. Just the top half of a monkey stitched to the bottom half of a fish.'

'Erm, no. That is, not in particular.'

'The albino then?'

Actually, one of our friends is an albino,' said the pirate brightly.

'Ooh! Is it true that if you ever look directly into their eyes, you turn into an albino yourself? And that they can only eat white things, like vanilla ice cream and Milky Bars?'

'I don't think so. I'm not entirely sure.' 'I wonder if they can eat mallow?' Jennifer seemed to be lost in her delibera­tions about albinos. If the pirate with a scarf had been more poetically minded he'd have thought that her eyes were like a thousand emeralds, glittering in a far-off pirate treasure chest. But he wasn't, so he just thought that she had really really green eyes, a bit like seaweed.

'What about you? What are you here to see?' asked the pirate quickly, anxious to keep the conversation going. 'The Elephant Man?'

'Not really. Between you and me,' at this point Jennifer put her mouth alarmingly close to the pirate with a scarf's ear, 'I think something sinister is going on at the circus. My sister Beat­rice visited it last week, and that's the last we ever saw of her.'

'I think you could be right,' said the pirate, completely forgetting the undercover nature of their mission because of the shape of her neck. 'In fact, we're here to investigate. I'm not even really a lady.'

The pirate with a scarf briefly raised his dress.

'You're a scientist!'

The pirate remembered to lift up his lab coat as well.

'You're a pirate!'

'Yes, but don't tell anybody.'

Half an hour later Jennifer and the two pirates were through the turnstiles and inside the circus itself. The pirate with an accordion pretty quickly

started to feel more like the pirate who was a gooseberry, so he wandered off to look at an exhibit that claimed to be 'the dog that wore sunglasses', and left Jennifer and the scarf-wear­ing pirate to their own devices. The circus was sprawled across St James's Park, and a blanket of thick London fog hung between the various tents. The pair decided to start their investiga­tions with the Elephant Man. He was sitting in the centre of a little hut looking a bit forlorn, whilst a man with a tuba played a few bars of 'Nellie the Elephant' over and over again.

'He doesn't look big enough to have eaten my sister,' said Jennifer. 'But he might know something.'

'We should try to gain his confidence by carry­ing on a pleasant conversation,' whispered the pirate.

'I'll have a go,' nodded Jennifer. She took a few steps towards the creature and cleared her throat.

'Wow!' she said. 'So you're the Elephant Man! That's some face!'

It wasn't exactly the opening gambit the pirate

with a scarf had in mind, but he bit his lip because the closest he had come recently to having any success with a girl was the time a few weeks before when he had drank too much ram, and ended up thinking he was in love with the pirate boat's figurehead. The boat's figure­head was certainly attractive, and extremely well carved, but it left him with nasty splinters when­ever he tried to give it a hug.

'I'd - uh - prefer it if you called me John,' said the Elephant Man, trying to crack a smile. 'My name is John Merrick.'

'Okay John it is. So let me get this straight.. I you got turned into an elephant man by being bitten by an actual elephant, is that right? Was the elephant radioactive in any way?' asked Jennifer.

'Ah ... no. I suffer from a rare genetic condi­tion. It causes the rapid growth of bony tumours. There are no