The Pirates! Read Online Free Page A

you don’t mean it. And I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon. So, till next time then.’ With a bow and a wave to all the pirates Black Bellamy sauntered back down the dock, humming a cheery little shanty to himself as he went.
    When Cutlass Liz reappeared from her office she was carrying a stack of papers the size of a ship’s log. She handed them to the Pirate Captain.
    â€˜You’ll just need to sign this.’
    The Pirate Captain leafed through the contract as his crew crowded around. ‘This bit about cutting off my luxuriant beard if I default on the first payment. Is that really necessary?’ said the Pirate Captain, wincing.
    â€˜And the paragraph describing how you’ll hunt us down across the Seven Seas, and gut us like fishes. That seems needlessly graphic,’ said the pirate with a scarf.
    Cutlass Liz smiled sweetly, and waved at the array of skulls she had scattered about the boatyard. Most of them looked about the size and shape of the average pirate head.
    â€˜It’s all standard terms and conditions,’ she said, handing the Captain a quill which, if he didn’t know better, looked as if it had been dipped in blood.

Three

I Knifed My Way to a Diamond Pit!

    The Pirate Captain and the scarf-wearing pirate stood on the dock staring at a gigantic glass egg-timer. Cutlass Liz had been very helpful in supplying it to the pirates and making clear exactly what it was for. ‘Before this runs out, you boys bring me the full balance owing,’ she had said, ‘otherwise I’ll enact section six, paragraph four. But I will be using a harpoon instead of an axe, to add a bit of local colour.’ She had also taken great pride in letting them know that the grains in the egg-timer weren’t grains of sand, but pieces of ground-up pirate bones. On their way back to clear out the old boat the pirate with a scarf tried to make some small-talk about how you didn’t seem to find the same quality of cannonball about nowadays, but the Pirate Captain could tell he was just trying to take his mind off their predicament.
    â€˜Feisty lass, that Cutlass Liz, isn’t she, Number Two?’ said the Pirate Captain, packing away his portraits in an old wooden trunk.
    â€˜You could put it like that,’ said the pirate with a scarf dubiously.
    â€˜I suppose you noticed the frisson between us?’ added the Pirate Captain. ‘That was sexual tension. I think she was quite impressed by me.’
    The pirate with a scarf nodded. The Pirate Captain was a master of understanding body language, and he often detected things that nobody else would have picked up on.
    The Pirate Captain clicked the trunk shut and beckoned for a couple of the crew to take it across to the
Lovely Emma
. Then he began to flick through the boat’s inventory, to make sure that nothing got left behind. It didn’t make for jaunty reading:
    24 limes
    1 Prize Ham
    18 dry-cured hams
    2 boxes of ship’s biscuits (one set
custard cream/one bourbon)
    4 barrels of tar
    5 emergency doubloons taped to the underside of the teapot
    1 pirate with an accordion (deceased and subsequently electroplated)
    â€˜It
is
just possible I got a little carried away, Number Two,’ he said. ‘We don’t actually have any loot whatsoever, do we?’
    â€˜Not really, sir. We have several limes.’
    The Pirate Captain ran a concerned hand through his luxuriant beard. ‘I knew I was exaggerating our finances, but I had no idea things were in quite such a sorry state.’
    â€˜We do have that big stone coin, Captain. I think that’s worth something on one of the more remote Pacific island economies.’ 9

    Whilst the crew busied themselves moving everything into the new boat, the Pirate Captain went and sat on the edge of the dock, next to the strips of gelatinous jellyfish bladders left out for salting. He whistled a little tune to himself and wondered where