The Pirates! Read Online Free

I’m surprised there’s so much money in, what was it …? Zoological specimens?’
    â€˜Yes, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about that.’
    â€˜An honest mistake,’ said Black Bellamy holding his hands up with a cheeky shrug.
    â€˜You won’t be disappointed with her, Pirate Captain,’ said Cutlass Liz, giving him a playful tug on his beard. ‘How do you plan to pay? Doubloons or treasure?’
    The Pirate Captain paused. ‘Aaarrrr. Thing is, all my treasure is a little tied up at the moment. It might take me a couple of weeks to get my hands on it.’
    â€˜Didn’t you say it was all in treasure chests? On board your boat?’
    â€˜I did. That’s to say, it is. But, uh, I have about a hundred treasure chests,’ said the Pirate Captain, thinking on his feet, ‘and that means about a hundred different keys. Obviously, for security purposes, I don’t label either of them. So there’s no knowing which key fits which chest.’
    The Pirate Captain was quite pleased with this explanation, but Cutlass Liz just frowned.
    â€˜It shouldn’t take too long to open one chest?’
    â€˜You’d think that, wouldn’t you?’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘But – ah – you’re working on the assumption that I try the chests in some sort of systematic order. Whereas what I’ll actually do is try random keys in random chests, making no real note of which chest or which key I have already tried. It could take days.’
    Cutlass Liz gave the Pirate Captain a look. It was the same sort of look as Jennifer sometimes gave him when he said he hadn’t realised the boat’s shower was occupied.
    â€˜You’re not a time-waster, are you, PirateCaptain?’ said Cutlass Liz, turning a pretty shade of pink round her décolletage. ‘Because I save my most terrible cutlass work for time-wasters. Time-wasters and actors.’
    â€˜Can I just say,’ said the Captain, deciding to change tack, ‘that I’ve always approved of women at sea. A lot of pirates will tell you that the closest girls should get to nautical matters is making seaweed albums, or those boxes covered in shells. But I don’t think that at all.’
    Cutlass Liz tapped the blade of her cutlass.
    â€˜All right,’ said the Pirate Captain with a sigh. ‘I wasn’t being entirely honest with you. My boat isn’t actually full of bulging treasure chests.’
    The Pirate Captain was dimly aware that this was the point in the adventure where he had the opportunity to come clean, and at the risk of a slightly wounded pride he and the crew could spend the next couple of weeks just sitting about Nantucket, chewing opium and taking naps. But he looked at the smirk playing across Black Bellamy’s face and he looked at Cutlass Liz’s fantastic cheekbones, and somehow the confession stuck in his craw.
    â€˜The truth of the matter,’ the Pirate Captain found himself saying, ‘is that the treasure chests aren’t on my boat. Because they’re buried on one of the Cayman Islands. For tax purposes.’ 8
    Black Bellamy stifled a laugh, and Cutlass Liz puffed out her cheeks and weighed up the Captain and his rag-tag crew with a steely stare.
    â€˜I wouldn’t normally do this, Pirate Captain,’ she finally said, ‘but you have a pleasant, open face. And I like your little milk-bottle man.’
    Cutlass Liz disappeared into her office for a moment.
    â€˜Lovely girl, that Cutlass,’ said Black Bellamy with a wink to the Pirate Captain. ‘There’s something really irresistible about a woman who can kill a man with just a pork loin, don’t you think?’
    â€˜Haven’t you got to go and be diabolical somewhere?’ replied the Captain with a grimace.
    Black Bellamy grinned again and looked athis pocket watch. ‘I won’t take that to heart, because I know