Read Online The Pirates! by Gideon Defoe - Free Book Online

them. They braced the mainsail and fired the cannons and fixed their faces into terrible grimaces, did all the usual roaring and generally made for a fairly horrific sight. 21 The pirates were slightly disappointed that the boat turned out to be a leper ship. The lepers were really very understanding, and the pirates came away with some nice bells and a hefty stack of old leper parts, which they thought they might be able to sell to hospitals later on. 22 The second boat they attacked was full of children out on a school trip. The pirates made a few doubloons by selling the children some opium, and they all had a great time together building Frankensteins out of the bits of leper they had justcollected. When it was time to go home several of the children asked if they could maybe stay and be pirates too, but the Pirate Captain was adamant that they should get back to their mothers, who would be worrying about where they were.

    The pirate with a scarf picked up a telescope – making sure to check the eyepiece first, because on board the pirate boat the general consensus seemed to be that ‘the old gags were the best’ – and scanned the horizon.
    â€˜Ship ahoy, Captain.’
    â€˜Well, third time lucky,’ said the Pirate Captain, a little wearily. ‘It’s definitely not penniless refugees or a ghost ship or something like that?’
    â€˜Can’t quite tell, Captain. Bit small. Well weathered, but somehow … I don’t know … almost
noble
. And she’s covered with ivory, by the looks of it.’
    â€˜That sounds more like it. Ivory. White gold! Remember our adventure with elephants?’
    â€˜Does it have a name?’ said Jennifer, biting excitedly on a cutlass blade.
    â€˜The
Pequod
.’
    â€˜Funny sort of name for a boat.’
    â€˜Pirate Captain!’ cried the albino pirate, and he came hurrying up, all out of breath and anxious-looking. ‘We haven’t got any cannonballs! We used them all up on the lepers and the school kids.’
    â€˜Honestly!’ roared the Pirate Captain, ‘what sort of an outfit are we running here? How can we not have any cannonballs?’ 23
    â€˜Well, we haven’t got much of anything.’
    The Pirate Captain had the scarf-wearing pirate bring up the inventory to conduct a quick recap:
    20 limes
    1 Prize Ham
    2 dry-cured hams
    3 barrels of tar
    1 pirate with an accordion (deceased and subsequently electroplated)
    â€˜We’ve finished all the biscuits?’ asked the Captain in dismay.
    â€˜I’m afraid so, Captain.’
    â€˜We could fire a lime, sir,’ suggested the pirate with a scarf. ‘They’re sort of the right shape.’
    â€˜Aaaarrr. Fair enough,’ said the Pirate Captain.‘But dip it in tar so they think it’s a cannonball. Otherwise we risk looking stupid.’
    â€˜Can we wear those dinosaur masks we picked up at the Natural History Museum on our last adventure?’ asked the pirate who was always getting nosebleeds. ‘I really think they add to our ferociousness.’
    â€˜Why not?’ roared the Pirate Captain. ‘You know I’m always encouraging you lot to improvise. Express yourselves! Above all else remember that it’s meant to be fun – that’s the secret of good pirating.’
    So the pirates fired the
Lovely Emma
’s cannons a couple of times and drew up alongside the
Pequod
. The Pirate Captain grabbed hold of a hefty rope, swung across to the other boat – showing considerable athleticism, and not a little leg – and landed square in the middle of its deck. One of the
Pequod
’s men charged forward waving a dangerous-looking harpoon, but the Pirate Captain hacked at him with his cutlass and the man dropped to the deck, split right down the middle. Seeing this grisly spectacle, the rest of the
Pequod
’s crew backed off a bit,and the Pirate Captain was left face to face with a single brave