Read Online Pirate King by Laurie R. King - Free Book Online Page B

tempted to correct the man’s lecture, but decided that knifefights were not included in my job description, and made do with a gentle remonstration, pointing out that shedding First Class blood would be a sure guarantee of never working on a passenger ship again.
    Had I followed my initial impulse and stepped forward to demonstrate, Fflytte would no doubt have contrived to write a female pirate into the script.
    That demented attention to detail pervades the enterprise. Evenings on board the steamer began well enough, but as soon as the weather permitted use of the deck, Fflytte had a projector set up there, and my quiet evenings were taken over by screenings of at least three moving pictures a night, each of which had portions re-played at the demands of one or another member of the company: Our “Isabel’s” mother wished to repeat a scene in which her young daughter appeared—three times over; Mabel had many remarks concerning the actress in The Flapper; and in—why have I not seen this picture before?— Sherlock Jr , Buster Keaton climbs into a cinema screen and becomes a detective. Several of its scenes are now etched indelibly onto my mind’s eye, as our cameraman wished to re-examine the (admittedly clever) effects.
    Did I say that attention to detail pervades every aspect of the enterprise? That is not strictly true: rather, every aspect of it except those that might actually be of benefit.
    For example, might not someone have noticed early on that Portugal is on the brink of some kind of revolution? That its capital city might not be the ideal place to drop a film crew? That a movie about pirates does not require convenient access to bread riots and clashes between the Army and the National Guard? (Although should we be so fortunate as to experience an uprising as we go our way in the streets of Lisbon, you can be certain that the cameras of Fflytte Films will capture every moment of it.)
    Similarly, the cast. We have brought with us all the English characters, from Frederic to the Major-General, managing successfully to keep the daughters ( thirteen of the creatures—even W. S. Gilbert would have quailed) from falling overboard, or falling into bed with one of the sailors. Having hastily read Gilbert’s libretto before we left, I protested to Fflytte that since all the opera’s pirates turn out to be English noblemen fallen on hard times, we needed only hire Englishmen—and could even avoid sailing to Morocco altogether (yes, we are headed there next) by sticking to the original story, which takes place entirely in Penzance. I might have convinced him, had he not remembered that he was not making a movie about The Pirates of Penzance , but a movie about a movie about The Pirates of Penzance , and because his fictional movie crew goes to Lisbon to hire its pirates, so must we. (Is your head spinning yet, Holmes?) The logical next question being, if the fictional movie crew is, in point of fact, fictional, could not we adjust chosen elements of the fiction?
    No.
    (Did I say three weeks on a warm beach? A solid month, I think, will be required.)
    In my brief hours between being hired by Hale and leaping with my valise onto the departing steamer, I had no spare minute to hie me to a bookseller, and thus my choice was limited to the three books I had brought from Sussex, supplemented by offerings from some of the film company and some well-thumbed novels from the ship’s library. As one can only bear so much Ethel M. Dell, and even I cease to discover new revelations in the Holy Writ after an unrelieved diet of it, I seized on a Defoe title that I had last read as a child.
    And regretted having done so. I’d forgotten that the book starts out with Robinson Crusoe taken prisoner by the pirates of—yes—Salé. However, Crusoe managed to escape. Eventually. Perhaps I shall be as lucky.
    In any event. This morning we docked in Lisbon, half a day late, and scurried off to a borrowed theatre with Hale’s