The Pirates! by Gideon Defoe Page A

crashed down onto the pirates’ heads. The pirates looked about hopefully, but all they could see was a dying shark draped over the yardarm looking disappointedly back at them. ‘No whales there,’ said the pirate with a hook for a hand. They rolled a few more barrels off the side of the boat. Anotherhuge wave crashed over the pirates, drenching them from head to toe, and another burst of creatures and seaweed rained onto the deck. The pirates prodded about in the mess.
    â€˜Still can’t see him,’ said the pirate in green, a bit of tentacle wriggling limply on his hat.
    Jennifer pulled a starfish out of her top. ‘It’s fun though, isn’t it?’

    After the pirates ran out of barrels of gunpowder, the Pirate Captain had the bright idea of emptying all the
Lovely Emma
’s lamps and pouring the oil out from the back of the boat, because he remembered reading somewhere that oil slicks were a great way of catching sea-creatures. But all they ended up with were a few rather sad-looking seagulls. The pirates felt a little guilty and scooped them up in big nets to give them a clean. The oil didn’t come off very well even with lots of scrubbing, so the pirate in red suggested that the oily seagulls might make quite good candles instead. Everybody agreedthat this was a good idea, because they had run out of lamp oil.

    There was an almighty ‘pop’ and the pirate with a cauliflower ear disintegrated in an explosion of fireworks. The other pirates ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ as roman candles and rockets zoomed off into the sky. The pirate with a scarf crossed another item off his clipboard.
    â€˜How many schemes is that?’ asked the Pirate Captain.
    â€˜Fifteen schemes,’ said the pirate with a scarf. ‘Sixteen if you include the business with the pig.’
    â€˜Aaarrr. Best forget that one.’
    â€˜It’s not going too well, is it, Pirate Captain?’ said the scarf-wearing pirate, staring at the conspicuously whaleless sea. ‘I’m worried that perhaps this whaling business is a little more difficult than we thought. Possibly that’s why Ahab said he’d been chasing the whale for years.’
    â€˜Pish,’ said the Pirate Captain, trying to sound upbeat. ‘What you have to remember is that Ahab never had my maverick sideways approach to problem-solving. It’s all in hand.’
    He waved that morning’s post at the scarf-wearing pirate and started to flick through it.
    â€˜Bill, bill, bill, cutlass catalogue, bill … Ah-ha! Here we go.’ He held up one of the letters triumphantly. ‘This’ll sort us out, Number Two! I took the precaution of writing to our old friend Scurvy Jake. You know what an outdoors type he is. He even took a job in Brighton Sea Life Centre for a bit whilst he was working his way through pirate academy. So he’s bound to know a thing or two about catching fishes! Let’s see now … “Dear Pirate Captain”,’ read the Pirate Captain. ‘“Thanks for the letter. It’s great to hear from you after our last adventure with the monkey wrestling. Since then I’ve been … blah … new job as a grill chef … blah blah … remember the old days … blah blah blah … might get a new hat … blah blah blah blah … the most beautiful sunset you can imagine” – good grief, man! Get to the point! Ah, here weare: “About the whale. Interesting question … Have you tried dangling that albino chap over the side? Failing that, try magnets! Lots of love, Scurvy Jake”.’
    The Pirate Captain sighed, and muttered a terrible nautical oath under his breath. He noticed that another of the envelopes had a Nantucket postmark and felt a sudden nasty queasiness deep in his belly. He considered hiding the letter under the astrolabe in his office without reading it, because that was the Pirate Captain’s