The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

'Why! It's my old friend the Pirate Captain!' bellowed the pirate.

'Scurvy Jake!' said the Pirate Captain, evidently glad to see his former comrade. 'I haven't seen you since that incident on Madagascar!'

'Aaarrr! I was sure they were girls!' said Scurvy Jake with an apologetic shrug.

'What are you doing here, you salty old dog?' laughed the Pirate Captain, giving his friend an affectionate slap on his oversized biceps.

'I'm in the nostalgia business!' said Scurvy Jake, indicating the convention buzzing on around them. 'I mean, after I hung up my eye patch I tried my hand at a few things, but what with the Industrial Revolution, it's all factory

work. I'm not cut out for all that fiddly business, haven't got the fingers for it.' Scurvy Jake indi­cated his fingers, which were the size of bananas.²² 'But then I found out how lucrative going on the Pirate Convention circuit can be. You sign a few books, tell a couple of stories, there's plenty of grog in return, and you get free board and lodging to boot. I'm actually a lot better at reminiscing about pirating than I ever was at doing it in the first place.'

Scurvy Jake helped the Pirate Captain to a complimentary glass of rum.²³

22 Edible bananas may disappear within a decade if urgent action is not taken to develop new varieties resistant to blight, according to recent studies published in New Scientist.

23 Rum is the oldest distilled spirit in the world. After he was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson's body was preserved in a barrel of his favourite rum. To make a good Mai Tai, you need 1 oz. Dark Rum, 1 oz. Light Rum, 1 oz. Triple Sec, % oz. Lime Juice, % oz. Grenadine, % oz. Orgeat Syrup. Garnish with a pineapple wedge and cherry. Serve in a High Ball.

'Let me show you the ropes,' the giant contin­ued. 'There's a panel quiz later on where fans can ask us a few questions, and everybody tends

to hit the bar after that. But right now I'm going to sign a few photos of myself. I charge a doubloon a time. Care to join me?'

As it happened the Pirate Captain had stopped off at a Victorian Snappy Snaps, and was clutch­ing a stack of black and white six-by-eights, in which he was doing a very debonair face indeed. He settled down at a table next to Scurvy Jake and pretty soon had a queue of asthmatic-looking kids and creepy middle-aged men lining up in front of him. He'd been sort of hoping that group­ies might prove to be a problem - girls who wanted nothing more than to annoy their respect­able families by throwing themselves at a handsome Pirate Captain, but it was immediately obvious that they were going to be in short supply.

'Could you sign it to Paul,' said the first fan to come shambling up. And maybe put something like 'Arrgh! Here be treasure!'. I was going to stick it on top of my money box, you see.'

'Certainly. That's very clever.'

'My money box is shaped like a pirate boat.'

'Even better,' said the Pirate Captain, handing him his picture with a grin.

'You're fantastic!' said another eager young boy.

'Ah, I don't know if I'd go that far ...'

'No, really, you are. I was even going to buy a resin model of you swinging on some rigging, but I only had six shillings, so I got Black Bellamy instead. Have you ever met Black Bellamy? He's my favourite pirate ever!'

'Is that a fact?'

'Oh yes. He's terrific. You're almost as good, though. But why are you wearing a hat like that?'

'This happens to be a very stylish pirate hat.'

'Black Bellamy has some brilliant hats. You should talk to him to find out where he gets his hats from.'

'How would you like to be run through by a genuine pirate cutlass?'

Ker-chunk!

Back in the Bishop's gloomy lair the pirate with a scarf was starting to realise the nature of his predicament. Every few minutes the massive

cog to which he was tied clicked on a few inches. It meshed with another gigantic cog, and he estimated that in a couple of hours he would reach this second set of metallic teeth and be crushed to a pulp of bone and gristle and bits of scarf. The only consolation was that he had found Erasmus Darwin, who was tied between two teeth a little further round, and would be crushed to death several minutes before him. And as the Bishop's monstrous contraption continued to chug away, Jennifer would proba­bly be worse off even sooner. Neither fact was actually much consolation at all.

Are you okay?' said the pirate to Jennifer.

24 There's no need to be frightened when your fingers shrivel up after being in the bath. Normally your skin is lubricated with a thin layer of sebum - an oil which acts to waterproof the surface of your body. With prolonged exposure to water the sebum is washed away, which allows water to penetrate into the epidermis by osmosis. The skin becomes waterlogged, resulting in a wrinkled appearance - rather like a monster or an old woman.

'My fingertips have started to shrivel up a bit. It's like I've been in the bath too long.'²⁴

'Listen. Assuming we get out of this, how would you like to come out to dinner with me?' The pirate gave what he imagined to be a sexy wink.

'Oh. Well... I've sort of got plans,' said Jenni­fer. Erasmus made a sound like a plane crashing. The pirate with a scarf shot him a bit of a look, and started to wonder why he had bothered getting out of his hammock that morning.

Just then there came the wheezy sound of an accordion. It was an odd little tune that, had he been alive exactly one hundred and fifty years later, the scarf-wearing pirate would have recog­nised as the first few bars from 'Theme to Bergerac'. Out from behind a gigantic bell stepped the pirate with an accordion. The others were unanimously glad to see him.

'Rescue!' cried Erasmus.

'Daphne!' said Jennifer.

'What took you so long?' asked the pirate with a scarf, in a bit of a strop.

'You two wandered off, so I went to the hall of mirrors,' said the pirate with an accordion defensively. 'It was fantastic! One of the mirrors made me look like a little dwarf, but with a big

long head! I laughed for ages! And then I got bored of that, so I played a bit of 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor?' on my accordion, which happens to be my favourite shanty. Then I tried to find you and your girlfriend.'

'She's not my girlfriend,' said the scarf-wear­ing pirate with a scowl.

'Bad luck. Anyhow, I noticed the pair of you going into that Special Exhibit For The Ladies, and when you didn't come out for ages I thought perhaps you were teaching Jennifer about tying knots.'

'Knots?'

'You must have noticed how whenever there's a lady onboard the pirate boat the Pirate Captain will always disappear into his cabin with her for a while and, afterwards, when any of us ask what they were doing, he tells us he was just teaching the lady how to tie knots, because most girls don't know much about nautical matters. Between you and me, I think he must tell funny anecdotes at the same time as showing them how to tie knots, because quite often I've heard a lot of giggling. But that's not to say the Captain doesn't take his knot