The Pirates! by Gideon Defoe Page A

Bellamy paused. ‘Obviously I went to the trouble of finding the whale for no more reward than to see my dear friend get back to his old self. But on my way here I happened to receive a heart-rending letter from some orphans. They need me to go and stop their orphanage being knocked down by greedy real-estate developers.’
    â€˜That’s awful!’ said the albino pirate.
    â€˜I know. I think of those orphans and I well up. I do,’ said Black Bellamy, dabbing at thebeard below his eyes. ‘So, although I’d love to let you have the whale for nothing, I’d be grateful if you could just pay a nominal sum that I can then pass on to the orphans. To help them in their hour of need. I wouldn’t even ask otherwise.’
    â€˜We haven’t got much,’ said the pirate with a scarf. ‘Just the money we made from our Vegas show.’
    Black Bellamy shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sure those cripples will be very grateful for anything.’
    â€˜Cripples? I thought you said that they were orphans?’ said Jennifer.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Black Bellamy, ‘orphan cripples, my dear. Terrible business. And some of them have the pox. Orphan cripple pox victims.’
    The Pirate Captain felt so moved by Black Bellamy’s devotion to the needy that he threw in the big stone coin and their few remaining limes as well. Black Bellamy grinned, pocketed the loot, and hopped back across to his boat.
    â€˜Make sure you feed him three times a day or he gets a bit restless,’ he said as the crew of the
Barbary Hen
finished heaving the white whaleonto the deck of the
Lovely Emma
. ‘And above all else, whatever you do,
don’t get him wet
. Whales hate getting wet, Pirate Captain.’
    â€˜But what about all that time they spend cavorting around in the ocean?’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘They love getting wet.’
    â€˜You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ said Black Bellamy, laughing. ‘But it’s an old myth. They’re mammals, remember? Just the same as you or me. Or a cow. And how many times have you seen a cow go for a swim?’
    â€˜I suppose you’re right,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘I’d never thought of it like that.’
    And so the two sets of pirates said their goodbyes and set sail in different directions, Black Bellamy to help the orphan cripples and the Pirate Captain to Nantucket to collect Ahab’s reward.
    â€˜That’s a stroke of luck, eh lads?’ said the Pirate Captain turning to the crew.
    â€˜Are you feeling better now, Captain?’ asked the albino pirate.
    â€˜One of the advantages of having a temperament as unpredictable as mine is that you getover things like stress and depression extremely quickly.’
    â€˜Captain Ahab will be really pleased,’ said the pirate with gout, giving the whale a pat.
    â€˜The only thing is, it’s not as big as I was expecting, Captain,’ said the pirate in red, looking at the creature waggle its little flippers. ‘I mean, Ahab made quite an issue about it being a leviathan. But it’s really more a sort of middling-sized whale.’
    â€˜Aaarrr. He struck me as the type to exaggerate,’ said the Pirate Captain breezily. ‘Didn’t he tell us that he’d combed every
inch
of the sea? That’s obviously impossible – especially since Black Bellamy found him after twenty minutes! And besides, how many white whales could there possibly be knocking about?’
    The pirates nodded.
    â€˜Now, I know I smell a bit ripe, so I’m off for a nice long soaky bath. You might want to air my duvets, Number Two.’

Twelve

I Fought the Sargasso Squid!

    â€˜Take that, pirate boat! Now I, the terrible sponge, am master of this ocean!’
    The Pirate Captain was sat in the bath, and as always he was putting on a bit of a show whilst the scarf-wearing pirate scrubbed him clean. He made a sort of glugging noise