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

'Well. I...'

'Should we ... ?' Darwin gestured at his gun. 'Hardly seems much point.' 'What a damned fool I've been!' laughed Darwin.

'Oh, I'm just as much to blame,' said FitzRoy with a grin, pocketing his pistol, and slapping his friend on the back. They would have hugged right there and then, but were interrupted by a further crash as first another cannonball and then a pirate screamed in through the window. The two men stood stock-still.

'Don't make any sudden movements,' whis­pered FitzRoy to his companion. 'Remember - he's more scared of us than we are of him.'

'That's bears, you idiot,' hissed Darwin out of the side of his mouth. 'I don't think it applies to pirates.'

At the doorway, a second pirate appeared, with a luxuriant beard and a pleasant, open face, all teeth and curls.

'I'm the Pirate Captain. And I'm here for the gold!' he said.

Everybody froze. For a moment the only sound was the gentle roar of the ocean, and some wheezing from the pirate with asthma.

'Well, uh, help yourself,' said FitzRoy eventu­ally, slightly perplexed. Darwin was too terrified to speak.

'Not that there's a great deal,' continued the young captain. 'I think some of the portholes might be made of gold, but then again they could be made of brass. Same sort of colour, so it's difficult to tell'

'Rah!' said the Pirate Captain, with a frightful bellow. 'I know you're carrying a hundredweight in gold bullion!'

'Really?' said FitzRoy, genuinely surprised. 'I haven't seen anything of the sort.'

'Perhaps the bit of boat that's under the water is made of gold,' ventured Darwin, finding his voice at last. 'I mean, it could be made of anything for all we know. You never get to see it.'

The Pirate Captain's icy blade against his throat struck him silent.

'Search the hold, men, and bring me back some gold,' said the Pirate Captain, with a sneer reminiscent of Elvis.

The pirates were pretty slick by this stage of their piratical careers, and they had managed to overrun the entire ship in a matter of minutes. The only casualty on the pirate side had been the pirate dressed in red, who had twisted his ankle trying to do that trick where you slide down the face of the mainsail, cutting it as you go with your cutlass - which worked fine up to a point but still left a twenty-foot drop once he reached the bottom of the canvas.

'Ouch! My ankle!' he cried, but none of the other pirates had much sympathy for his reck­less showboating. A group of them headed into the hold - but instead of the clinking you would associate with gold, all they could hear was the chatter of creatures. One of the pirates tore at a tarpaulin, only to discover row upon row of cages, each containing some sort of monkey.

***

'The gold must be hidden inside these monkeys!' shouted a pirate. Several of the pirates put down their flickering lamps, picked up monkeys of various different types, and slit them end to end, but all that spilt out was monkey guts.

'Gold!' said the pirate with an accordion, holding something yellowish up hopefully.

'That's not gold. It's a kidney,' said the pirate with a hook for his hand.

Covered in bits of creature, and thoroughly dejected, the pirate crew tramped back to FitzRoy's cabin.

'Pieces of ape! Pieces of ape!' squawked Gary, the ship's parrot.

'Will somebody shut him up?' scowled the pirate in green.

'There's no treasure here, Captain. Just a lot of stupid creatures,' said the pirate with a scarf.

'Just like I told you,' said FitzRoy.

The Pirate Captain sat down and rubbed his eyes with a weary hand. It suddenly felt like it had been a very long day.

'But Black Bellamy ... he said you were carry­ing gold for the Bank of England.'

'The Bank of England?' said FitzRoy, grab­bing at a table as the Beagle started to list alarmingly. 'I believe I've heard there is such a boat. But it's sailing in the vicinity of the West Indies, from what I remember.'

'The West Indies? But that's where we've just come from!'

'That Black Bellamy!' said the pirate with a hook instead of a hand. 'He was just trying to get us out of the way, so that he could plunder it for himself! Why, he hasn't changed at all! We've been bamboozled!'

The pirates were all very disappointed with the way Black Bellamy had behaved.

'So, then. Um. What are you doing in these parts?' said the Pirate Captain to Darwin, trying to make a bit of light-hearted conversa­tion, and feeling more than a little awkward now.

'We're on a scientific expedition.'

'Searching for creatures?'

'I have a theory,' said Darwin, looking serious.

'I'm afraid it's proved to be rather controversial. We came here looking for proof

'What is this theory? In terms a pirate might understand.'

'It is not something to be taken lightly. It will make you look at the world with fresh eyes. Things may never seem the same again,' said Darwin, in a spooky voice.

'Go on,' said the Pirate Captain, his curiosity bitten.

Darwin gave a dramatic pause. , 'In short, I believe that a monkey, properly trained, given the correct dietary regime, and dressed in fancy clothes, can be made indistin­guishable from a human gentleman. I believe he would cease to be a monkey, and become more a ... a Man-panzee, if you will.'

A silence held the room. One of the pirates whistled.

'I... see. A Man-panzee?' said the Pirate Captain.

'But because of my outlandish theories I have made some powerful enemies - primarily, the Bishop of Oxford,' said Darwin, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

'He finds it offensive?'

'He most certainly does!'

'Because it contravenes his religious beliefs?'

'Oh no! Nothing to do with that, my dear pirate Captain. The Bishop of Oxford recently became the largest shareholder in P.T. Barnum's world-famous Circus of Freaks.' Darwin leant forward with a conspiratorial air. 'The circus has been making a killing of late, because all of London Town is entranced by its latest exhibit... the fantastical Elephant Man. Have you heard of him?'

'Aarrr. He was on show last time we were in England,' said the Pirate Captain. A real disap­pointment as I remember. Doesn't even have a trunk. The trick is not to treat him like a gentle­man, because he always starts crying if you do that.'

Anyhow, the Bishop of Oxford is clearly alarmed that my Man-panzee might steal his Elephant Man's thunder. So he denounced my ideas as blasphemous - he even said there was abit in the Bible about how it was a sin to dress a monkey up in a waistcoat, but when

asked for the page reference he claimed to have forgotten.'

Darwin was clearly on the verge of an angry rage.

'So I joined this expedition in an attempt to find a suitable specimen. Only now I have received word from England that my brother Erasmus has gone missing! I believe he has been kidnapped by the Bishop of Oxford as a means of safeguarding against my successful return. I fear the Bishop intends to do him some great harm unless I abandon my research.'

'Does that mean you've had some success?' asked one of the pirates.

'Come, let me show you.'

Darwin and FitzRoy led the pirates to an adjoining cabin. The pirates gasped, for though the room was dark and cramped, they could still make out its sole occupant. Sitting in a I leather-backed armchair was a monkey with the best posture any of the pirates had ever seen. Dressed in an expensive-looking silk suit, with a pipe in his mouth, the creature peered at

the pirates through a gold-rimmed monocle. He appeared to be sipping on some sort of cocktail - the Pirate Captain thought he could smell gin. The monkey looked as if he had been freshly shaved, but he was still recognisably a monkey, though if you squinted he might have passed for a wizened old man, or a gigan­tic walnut.