Blue Peter’s conscience prodded him; it was not just Captain Greybagges’s loyal and thievish crew, you did not yourself object when he didn’t share out the loot, it said. It is true, thought Blue Peter, but I felt that if I had, then I couldn’t be sure if he’d burst out crying, shoot me, or curse me with the evil eye.
The old plough-horse plodded on down the path to Porte de Recailles, with a thoughtful Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo riding bareback upon it.
Two of the smart-alecky voices that might be heard from the back of any assembly of the crew of the Ark de Triomphe were conversing companionably, sitting on the cross-trees of the frigate’s mainmast, high above the deck. Jemmy Ducks, keeper of the ship’s ducks, chickens, pigs and goat, and Jack Nastyface, cook’s assistant, both holding honorary job-titles in lieu of their real names, were skiving-off, and their idle discussion had been following the same path as Blue Peter’s thoughts; what was the Captain doing with the loot?
“Ay-yoop! ‘Tis the Blue Boy!” said Jemmy Ducks, “on his trusty charger.”
“Where away, cuz? Where is the dark knight on his Arabian steed?” said Jack Nastyface, whose eyesight was poor.
“End o’ quay. Just come round corner o’ timberyard,” said Jemmy Ducks, slithering from his perch onto the ratlines. The pair climbed down, warning the other foremast jacks of the Master Gunner’s approach and bickering, Jemmy Ducks averring that Jack Nastyface’s myopia was the result of onanistic practices, Jack Nastyface replying that he did indeed practice onanism but only once a day and only to spill his seed into Jemmy Duck’s morning porridge.
Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, sitting at his desk in the Great Cabin in the midst of a chaos of account-books and ledgers, heard the two still bickering as they went down the companionway, and heard his servant Mumblin’ Jake mumble at them to shut up and not disturb the cap’n, look’ee. Blue Peter will be here presently, he thought, knowing that the livestock-keeper and the cook’s assistant would not otherwise have ended their mid-morning smoke and yarn. He called to Mumblin’ Jake to make fresh coffee.
Blue Peter knocked and entered the Great Cabin, followed by Mumblin’ Jake with a tray bearing a steaming tin coffee-pot, mugs and a plate of biscuits. Jake set out the mugs and poured the coffee, placed the plate on the edge of the desk, and mumbled off to his lair in the Captain’s pantry. Blue Peter sat down opposite Captain Greybagges, who smiled a grim smile at him in welcome, his grey eyes far-away.
“Let me finish with these damn’ books, curse ‘em. I’ll be a whore’s half-hour, no more. Here, read this while I figure.” The Captain handed him a printed broadsheet, folded in the fashion of the stock-jobbers in crowded London coffee-houses to show only the article of interest. Blue Peter unfolded it to find the broadsheet’s name; the Tortuga Times. He refolded the broadsheet, and glanced at the Captain, who was in his shirtsleeves, checking entries in the ledgers, clicking an abacus and writing, scritch-scratch, with a quill, his face impassive.
Blue Peter turned his attention back to the newspaper. The article was a poem. Blue Peter read it through with mounting amusement, having to choke back guffaws of laughter as it was so bad. He looked at the Captain, but the Captain’s eyes were on the account-books, and his pen went scritch-scratch. Blue Peter could bear no more; he snapped the folded broadsheet to flatten it, cleared his throat and, in his deep voice, with an artful theatricality, read the poem out loud...
“CAPTAIN GREYBAGGES ALIAS ‘GREEN BEARD’
by Mungo McGonagall.
Sylvestre de Greybagges came from Recailles, and sailed from that port
On board the good ship Ark de Triomphe, in search of sport,
As Captain, long had he held that station,
And for personal courage he had gained his crew’s approbation.
‘Twas in the spring, Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges sailed to Providence
In the continent of America, and no further hence;
And in their way captured a vessel laden with flour,
Which they put on board their own vessel in the space of an hour.
They also seized two other vessels and took some gallons of wine,
Besides plunder to a considerable value, and most of it most costly of design;
And after that they made a prize of a large French Guinea-man,
Then to act an independent part Captain Greybagges now began.
But the news spread throughout America, far and near,
And filled many of the inhabitants’ hearts with fear;
But Lord Mondegreen with his sloops of war directly steered,
And left James River on the 17th November in quest of Green Beard,
And on the evening of the 21st came in sight of the pirate;
And when His Lordship spied Green Beard he felt himself elate.
When Green Beard saw the sloops sent to apprehend him,
He didn’t lose his courage, but fiendishly did grin;
And told his men to cease from drinking and their tittle-tattle,
To see to their dags and cutlasses and prepare for a battle.
In case anything should happen to him during the engagement,
One of his men asked him, who felt rather discontent,
Whether anybody knew where he had buried his pelf,
When he impiously replied that nobody knew but the devil and himself.
In the morning Lord Mondegreen weighed and sent his boat to sound,
Which, coming near the pirate, unfortunately ran aground;
But Mondegreen lightened his vessel of the ballast and water,
Whilst from the pirates’ ship small shot loudly did clatter.
But the pirates’ small shot or slugs didn’t Mondegreen appal,
He told his men to take their swords and be ready upon his call;
And to conceal themselves every man below,
While he would remain alone at the helm and face the foe.
Then Green Beard cried, ‘They’re all knocked on the head,’
When he saw no hand upon deck he thought they were dead;
Then Green Beard boarded Mondegreen ‘s sloop without dismay,
But Mondegreen ‘s men rushed upon deck, then began the deadly fray.
Then Green Beard and Lord Mondegreen engaged sword in hand,
And His Lordship fought manfully and made a bold stand;
And Green Beard’s cutlass clanged against the sword of Mondegreen,
Making the most desperate and bloody conflict that ever was seen.
At last with shots and wounds Mondegreen fell down in a swoon,
And his men thus dismayed laid down their pistols and spontoons,
Green Beard laughed grimly and marooned them all ashore,
And went back to Recailles to fritter his loot on rum and whores.
Green Beard derived his name from his long green beard,
Which terrified America more than any comet that had ever appeared;
But wicked pirates thank the Devil that in this age all be a’feared,
Of the mighty buccaneer who possesses the eldritch Green Beard!”
Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo, with magnificent fortitude, managed to read to the end of the poem, but then could no longer keep control. He laughed until his eyes ran tears and his ribs hurt, slapping the folded broadsheet on his thigh, wheezing and whooping trying to catch a breath. Captain Greybagges had sat back in his captain’s chair and was watching Blue Peter with a smile. As he watched the grimness slowly departed from his face and the smile grew wider, until he too was laughing, a great booming laugh. This continued for some minutes, as each time one would try to stop he would catch sight of the other and so fall again into helpless merriment.
“Oh, bugger!” said Captain Greybagges, wiping his eyes and shaking his head. He pulled the black silk scarf, knotted pirate-fashion, from his shaven pate and blew his nose on it, which triggered Blue Peter into a further fit of laughter. Blue Peter was a giant, and Captain Greybagges was not a small man, so their comb
ined laughter was very loud. Up above, on the deck and in the rigging, the crew were frozen, exchanging startled glances, only continuing with their work as the gales of rumbling hilarity from below subsided to inaudible giggles.
Captain Greybagges wiped his eyes and blew his nose again on the now-sodden black scarf, and managed to curb his mirth enough to take sips of coffee. After a while Blue Peter did, too, hiccoughing and spilling some.
“Oh, God! I needed that!” said the Captain, “I have been very mumpish of late, I know.”
“I was beginning to be concerned. Unremitting solemnity is unbecoming even in a preacher of Calvin’s credo, let alone in a captain of buccaneers,” said Blue Peter, dipping a biscuit in his coffee and eating it swiftly, before it disintegrated.
“You know, when I gave you that paper I had not the notion that the wretched doggerel was so amusing. I was merely going to comment upon how the plain facts of the matter were so sadly misrepresented,” said the Captain, refilling his mug, and carefully selecting a biscuit from the plate.
“Yes, indeed. My Lord Mondegreen is a terrible buffoon, is he not? Do you think he paid that poet to write it? ... on second thoughts, no, let us please talk of other things, or I shall start again, and I feel that it would kill me.”
“You are right. We cannot sit here chortling like tom-fools, yet I am deeply loath to lose this pleasant lightness of spirit...” Captain Greybagges drummed his fingers on the desk-top for a moment, then roared for Mumblin’ Jake.
“Look’ee, Jake! Makes you me a picnic-hamper! A great fine picnic-hamper!”
“A picnic-hamper, Cap’n, sor?”
“A basket o’ wittles for a shore-goin’ party o’ two hungry fellows. Bread - the soft tack and not the ship’s biscuit, mind yez! - butter, cheese, cooked meats - if there be any left wholesome in this damned heat - boiled eggs, pickles, fruit, some bottles of beer, some sweetmeats. Tell Len to fill a water-bag from the pump on the quay. Put it all in the skiff. Smartly now, ye lazy hound!” Mumblin’ Jake scuttled out of the door.
Captain Greybagges stood up, rubbed his hands together and started slamming the ledgers and account-books shut.
“Away, dull care!” he cried. “School is over! Out for the summer!” Blue Peter stared at him as he packed away the books, abacus, quills and inkpots, humming under his breath.
“He is a terrible ass, though, is Lord Mondegreen,” said the Captain, musingly. “D’you remember him singing in that church in New Amsterdam? That Christmastide? Getting all the words of the hymns wrong? What a jackanapes!”
“Good King wants his applesauce, at the feast this eve-ning!” sang Blue Peter in a rumbling bass, grinning hugely, showing his filed teeth.
“Kept by thy tender care, Gladys the cross-eyed bear!” sang the Captain, in a light tenor. The two buccaneers struggled against a new attack of mirth.
The Captain rummaged around in a chest and found a ragged straw hat, which he clapped on his head. Another rummage in a cupboard produced a brown canvas bag. On a whim, he pushed back the desk and rolled up the rug and threw it over his shoulder.
“A banyan day for the captain!” he roared. “Come, let us picnic, shipmate!”
Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges rowed the skiff across Rum Bay with long easy strokes of the oars. He ran the skiff onto the beach below Sruudta Point. The two freebooters hauled it ashore by its gunwales, then tied the painter to a long iron spike tapped into the sand with the butt of an oar. The day was calm and sunny and the waves mere ripples, but good seamanship is good seamanship and cannot be gainsaid, even by the most temerarious of buccaneers.
“Har! Place you your trust in Allah, but tie your camel to a tree, as the Moors are wont to say,” said the Captain. “Look! There is a capital spot!” He pointed to a knoll where the ground started to rise up before the tor on the point. They carried the things from the skiff. There were two stunted trees on the knoll, Captain Greybagges unrolled the carpet on the coarse salt-grass and hung the canvas waterbag from a branch in the shade. A sailcloth fire-bucket, half-full of seawater, was hung from another branch as a beer-cooler, the basket was hung from yet another branch to preserve the food from ants.
“Not a sylvan glade, exactly, or even an Arcadian grove, but a small oasis or caravanserai at any rate, with a Turkish rug, too!” laughed Captain Greybagges. “Now, how about a game of cricket? Get an appetite for lunch, eh?”
“Cricket...” Blue Peter said softly, “I have long wished to play cricket. Surely it requires two teams of eleven men, though?”
“It does, but we shall play a practice game with made-up rules, as I did so often as a boy.”
On a flat stretch of beach the Captain put down the brown canvas bag and undid its straps.
“Here, Peter, this is the club, or bat,” he handed it to Blue Peter, “and here is a ball, and here are the stumps and bails. How much do you know of the game?”
“I have only read of it, so treat me as an ignoramus.”
“Firstly, the pitch is twenty-two yards long between the wickets.”
Captain Greybagges pushed three stumps into the sand and placed the two bails on top. He then counted twenty-two paces and put up the second wicket.
“The crease is a short step afore the wicket,” he said, using a bare toe to scratch a line in the sand by each wicket, “and the batsman stands thus.” He took the bat from Blue Peter and demonstrated. “The bat must stay touching the crease until the bowler starts his run. Opinions vary about this from cricket-club to cricket-club, but it is a good strategy anyway to cover the wicket, as the bowler is trying to knock it down.” He gave the bat back to Blue Peter, who tried the batsman’s stance, having to bend and crouch to touch the bat to the crease. “I will bowl the ball, but I will bowl it slowly. Don’t hit it hard, not at first, get the feel of the bat and just prevent the ball from hitting the stumps, for if a bail falls off then you are out.”
Captain Greybagges bowled slow balls to Blue Peter, then Blue Peter tried bowling slow balls to the the Captain. Occasionally the Captain would stop and explain a rule, or an aspect of the game-play. The thwack of the hard leather ball on the wooden bat was loud in the quiet of the beach, and echo’d faintly from the cliffs on the other side of Rum Bay.
“What-ho! I’m hungry,” said the Captain, “Time to pull the stumps! How do you like it then, Peter? The game of cricket?”
“I am intrigued. I think I could become enamoured of it. The over-arm bowling is more tricky than it looks, especially when there are two pistols and a cutlass in one’s belt. I wish to practice it more.”
“One thing, Peter. When the game is finished the team captains must shake hands.” He offered his hand to Blue Peter, who shook it solemnly. “I am ever pleased to shake hands with you, Peter, but you must remember that the captains must always shake hands. If the other team’s captain were to be a blackguard, your worst enemy, had boasted in the pavilion of swiving your sister, has beaten your team by bare-faced cheating, and was grinning at you like an ape, then you must still put a good face upon it and shake hands. It is the finest of games, but it is still a game, and not something to fight duels over. That is its greatest value, perhaps.”
They walked slowly back to the knoll, the Captain swinging the cricket-bag.
“Might I not kill the blackguard for abusing my sister after I have shaken his hand, Captain?”
“Why, of course! As long as it’s not about the cricket, and doesn’t inconvenience the cricket-club committee, then it would certainly be quite the right thing to do.”
Seated on the rug, reclining in the shade, leaning comfortably against the trunks of the trees, they cut the waxed string from the necks of beer-bottles, eased the corks out carefully and poured the cold beer into glasses.
“Oh, my! That is good!” said Blue Peter, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Captain, would you be good enough to pass me those crustaceans?” Mumblin’ Jake’s picnic-basket included a damp cloth full of boiled shrimps.
/> “Surely, Peter!” the Captain passed the shrimps and a pot of pepper relish, “but you may call me Sylvestre, or even Syl, as this is my banyan day.” He took a bite of a sandwich of cold roast pork and mustard, then took a gulp of beer. The grim cast which had darkened his face for a year had faded, and he looked at ease. They ate in companionable silence for a while.
“I will speak freely, then, Sylvestre,” said Blue Peter. “I suspect that you have a hidden purpose in this, your banyan day, and that you wish to converse with me without the possibility of eavesdropping, yet to conceal that purpose within an apparent madcap lark, to prevent invidious or far-fetched conjectures among the crew.”
Captain Greybagges turned to look at Blue Peter.
“You should have been a lawyer, you scoundrel!” He took a draught of beer. “You are right, for the most part. The idea of the madcap lark came first, as I looked at those damn’ ledgers, but I had been seeking such an opportunity anyway. Do not underestimate the roborative effects of a madcap lark, though. This day, my banyan day, has already taken a great weight from my oppressed spirits...”
The Captain would have continued, but Blue Peter raised his hand.
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