Gideon Defoe: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

***

'Dear me! The actual Holy Ghost!' the Pirate Captain was saying to his neighbour. 'If I'd done any sins, I'd probably want to get them off my chest right about now. Like that time I kidnapped somebody. I'm really sorry about that. What about you, Bishop? Have you ever done any sins? Like kidnapping?'

'That's not the Holy Ghost,' snorted the Bishop dismissively.

'Yes it is!' said the Pirate Captain, a bit put out. 'Look how tall he is! He's a giant! And he's covered in a big sheet! Just like it describes him in the Bible.'

'The Bible says nothing of the kind. Where on earth did you get the idea that the Holy Ghost is a giant? He's the same size as Jesus. That's the point - he's just a creepier version of Christ.'

Are you sure?' frowned the Captain, wonder­ing if his research had let him down. 'Doesn't he fight Goliath at some point? I'm sure he does. He throws a leper at his face.'

'No. I've no idea where you've picked all this up from.'

'It's just after the bit where he hides in that gigantic wooden horse. Isn't it?'

'I think you're a trifle confused.'

'Ah well. Plan B,' said the Pirate Captain with a disappointed shrug. He whipped his cutlass out from under his lab coat and jabbed it in the Bish­op's ribs. 'I'm not really a scientist - I'm the Pirate Captain! Tell me what you've done with Erasmus!'

The Bishop didn't miss a beat. 'Why! Look over there! Is that a treasure chest?' he said.

Even though he knew better, the Pirate Captain looked over to where the Bishop was pointing. The villain took this opportunity to bolt from the lecture room. 'I just can't help myself,' thought the Pirate Captain irritably. 'Damn my piratical nature!'

He leapt to his feet, pulled off the cumber­some lab coat and, seeing the stricken look on Darwin's face, gave the scientist a reassuring thumbs-up to show he had it all under control. Then the Pirate Captain chased as fast as he could after the despicable cleric, pausing only briefly to give his card to a striking blonde sitting in the second row.

Darwin, having little option but to hope the Pirate Captain knew what he was doing, went on hamming it up as he pretended to be desper­ately trying to make a wrestling tag with Mister Bobo. After a great deal of gurning and grunting he slapped the monkey's hand, and Mister Bobo leapt into centre stage and swung a folding metal chair at the head of the Holy Ghost, who promptly collapsed in a heap. Darwin held up Mister Bobo's hand triumphantly.

'Hooray for science!' he shouted. 'Tell your friends! Tell your family! And don't forget that Mister Bobo merchandise can be purchased from the museum shop!'

And with that, the audience were on their feet, giving Darwin a spectacular thunderous ovation.

The Pirate Captain skidded to a halt in the museum's cavernous main hall, realised he had lost sight of the fleeing Bishop and said a terri­ble salty pirate oath. It occurred to him that the

Bishop might be hiding inside the gigantic Armadillo shell that was one of the Pirate Captain's favourite exhibits, but before he could check it out he was alerted by a scuffling sound from the balcony above, and so he began to charge up the marble staircase, four steps at a time, only to find an enormous slice of Californian Redwood 27rolling straight towards him. A full twenty feet in diameter, the Redwood came within a whisker of crashing the Pirate Captain flat, but he just managed to dive out of the way with an athletic leap. The monstrous Redwood still knocked off his pirate hat though.

'That's my favourite hat, Bishop! You're not doing yourself any favours!'

The Pirate Captain bounded to the top of the stairs and saw the Bishop disappearing into the Hall of Fossils. Waving his cutlass and roaring, for effect more than anything, he careered

inside, and almost found himself smashed in the face by a trilobite. The Bishop had a whole armful of trilobites and was flinging them at the Pirate Captain like prehistoric discuses. The Captain did his best to bat them away with his cutlass.

'Stop throwing trilobites at me!' shouted the Pirate Captain, because it was the only thing he could think of to say given the situation. Luckily for the Pirate Captain they were not having their climactic fight in Prague Natural History Museum, which is full of trilobites and not much else, and the Bishop quickly exhausted his supply of fossils. He dashed into the adjoin­ing room, and the Pirate Captain followed at full tilt, even though it contained the museum's collection of stuffed birds, which the Pirate Captain had always found especially creepy.

The Bishop swung a dodo at the advancing pirate, sending his cutlass flying. In return the Pirate Captain picked up an albatross and flung it squarely at the Bishop.

'Ooofi' said the Bishop, his mouth full of albatross wing. He clambered onto a balustrade

and leapt from the balcony. For a moment the Pirate Captain thought the Bishop had decided to end it all, but then he realised that the wily cleric had landed on the skull of the enormous brontosaurus that was the museum's centre­piece, and was now sprinting down its bony neck to safety. The Pirate Captain jumped over the balcony himself and decided to slide down the skeleton's neck like it was a banister on the pirate boat, a decision he pretty quickly regret­ted. It took a moment for him to get his breath back and for his eyes to stop watering, by which time the Bishop had fled into the Mineral Room. The room's curator was surprised to see anybody coming into the Mineral Room, arguably the most boring room in the whole museum, let alone the Bishop of Oxford hotly pursued by an angry-looking pirate.

The Bishop smashed open a display case, sending a cloud of dust into the air, and flung a hefty rock at the Pirate Captain. The Pirate Captain squinted - it looked like a piece of iron as it hurtled towards his luxuriant beard. Moving lightning fast the Pirate Captain scanned the

display in front of him, found a big chunk of nickel and hurled it back towards the Bishop. The nickel hit the iron and knocked it into a thousand splinters.

'Ha!' cried the Pirate Captain. 'Nickel! Atomic weight 58.71 - beats your iron, atomic weight 55.85. In your face, Bishop!'

'So let's see you deal with this!' shouted the Bishop, hefting a lump of Ruthenium at the pirate.

'Ruthenium! Atomic weight 101.07! Goodness me!' cried the Pirate Captain, though perhaps in slightly saltier terms than that. He barely found a slab of Osmium - atomic weight 190.2 - in time.

Several elements later they were still dead­locked, and fast running out of periodic table. 28'Give up, Bishop!' said the Pirate Captain, a nugget of Selenium whizzing past his ear.

28 Mendeleev is widely credited as being the first person to produce a 'periodic table of the elements' in 1865, but that, you'll notice, is a full thirty years after these events are supposed to be taking place. I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.

'Oh, give up yourself!' shouted the Bishop, unimaginatively.

The Pirate Captain was momentarily put off when he picked up a lump of what he took to be gold, before realising it was actually iron pyrite - fool's gold, the dreaded nemesis of pirates everywhere - and his pause gave the Bishop an opportunity to escape the Mineral Room and head into the Hall of Mammals. The Pirate Captain charged after him relentlessly, but the Bishop had managed to snap the tusk off a shabby-looking walrus, and as the two men grappled he slowly inched his makeshift weapon towards the Pirate Captain's neck. The Bishop was unexpectedly strong.