by Gideon Defoe
‘That’s quite—’
‘Wait, I haven’t finished: so it spells out BYRON HAS SLEPT WITH WOMEN IN ALL THESE PLACES. Then I might go off and find a war to fight in.’
‘And how about you, Babbage?’ asked the Captain.
Babbage was back to looking like the happier kind of owl. ‘This adventure has finally convinced me that the heart is too unknowable for mathematical quantification, Captain. However, with Byron’s help I have formulated a new purpose for my machine.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You see, through the attachment of a simple mechanical arm, some chalk and a blackboard, I believe it will be possible for my difference engine to draw pictures of ladies in a state of near undress, in homes across the land. Indeed, I now foresee this as being the primary use for my invention for centuries to come.’
The Captain shook his hand as well. ‘Well, good luck with that. It sounds like a very admirable goal.’
Mary was the last to head down the gangplank. She and the Captain hovered for a moment, both trying to think what to say.
‘So you’ve definitely chosen Shelley then?’ said the Captain eventually, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Not too late to change your mind. Swap your pencil for a cutlass. I’d let you play with the astrolabe. It’s surprisingly fun.’
‘I’m sorry, Pirate Captain – my mind’s made up. Now Percy’s dropped the pretentious act, I can talk to him about monsters and he can talk to me about things besides poetry.’ Mary gently took his hand. ‘You’re lovely, but . . . well, you’re just not great boyfriend material. The fact is, you have absolutely no self-control whatsoever.’
‘Fair point,’ agreed the Captain. ‘Between you and me I’m no good at sharing either. Comes from growing up with a lot of brothers. Or being an only child. I can’t remember which. Anyhow, sorry about the business with the book, and burning your novel. In retrospect that seems quite rude.’
Mary smiled. ‘Don’t worry. As it happens Percy has encouraged me to start a brand-new one. It’s quite high concept.’
‘Ooh. What’s it about?’
‘There’s this sinister Doctor Frankenstein and he makes a monster out of people bits.’
‘Sounds good,’ the Captain said, nodding approvingly. ‘A “Frankenstein” is a great name for a monster.’
‘No, Captain, you’re not really listening again, the—’
‘The Frankenstein Who Walks Like a Man Because of His Man Legs! GRAAA! I’m a Frankenstein!’ The Captain mimed being a monster made out of people bits.
‘Frankenstein smash!’
‘Goodbye, Captain.’ Mary gave him a kiss on his hairy cheek. Then she turned and, without looking back, walked down onto the dockside.
Later that night, as the boat sailed through the calm Tyrrhenian Sea, the pirate with a scarf found the Captain sitting on the shoulder of the figurehead, gazing up at the sky.
‘Hello, Captain.’
‘Hello, number two.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Aarrr. Yes. Fine.’
‘That felt like a very successful adventure to me, sir.’
‘Of course, shame I forgot to bill them after all that.’
‘Don’t worry, Captain, something else will come up. It usually does. Anyway, I think you’ve taken the whole Mary thing very well.’
The Captain sighed. ‘Oh, well. You know. It’s not like it could ever really have worked out between us. I mean, can you imagine what the Pirate King would have said if I brought a lubber home to Skull Island for Christmas? It would have been a scandal.’
He leaned back, lit a cigar, and blew one of his smoke rings.
‘Still, it’s nice to think that somewhere out there,’ the Captain gestured vaguely at the great blanket of stars glittering above them, ‘maybe there really is a Phoebe and a half-seaweed, half-man mutant. And perhaps they’re sitting arm in arm on some strange alien beach and she’s stroking the gas-filled bladders on his ventral surfaces, and he’s brushing a curl of hair out of her face. Do you think that’s likely, number two?’
The pirate with a scarf didn’t really know anything about the probabilities of other worlds containing alien life, or about the idea that maybe there were an infinity of universes all nestling on top of each other, so he just shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.
And with that, the pirate boat sailed about some more.
Appendix – On Feelings
INT. SAUNA. ATHENS – DAY
Socrates enters and sees the young athlete Protagoras.
SOCRATES: Hello, Protagoras!
PROTAGORAS: Hello, Socrates.
SOCRATES: You seem far from your usual carefree self.
PROTAGORAS: Wise, observant Socrates! This is so.
SOCRATES: Here, let me give you a back rub.
PROTAGORAS: Thank you, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Gosh, I can really feel the tension in your shoulders.
PROTAGORAS: I am beset by worry.
SOCRATES: Is it the coming games? You need not be anxious! You throw that discus like Zeus himself. I’ve watched you practise. It’s quite a spectacle.
PROTAGORAS: It is true, the training progresses well.
SOCRATES: Anyone can tell you’ve really been working out just from looking at you. These biceps are like rocks.
PROTAGORAS: Thank you, Socrates.
Protagoras loosens his toga and stretches.
PROTAGORAS: No, it is not the world of sport but affairs of the heart that hang heavy with me.
SOCRATES: Sorry, what? I got a bit distracted just then.
PROTAGORAS: Perhaps you might help me, kind Socrates. You are familiar with the mysteries of women?
SOCRATES: Oh. Yes. Obviously. Good old women. Can’t get enough of them.
PROTAGORAS: There is a young Spartan maiden whose eye I wish to catch, but she seems oblivious to my very existence.
SOCRATES: Ah.
PROTAGORAS: I have tried wearing an interesting hat, but to no avail.
SOCRATES: Well then, young, fresh Protagoras, I suppose I must tell you.
PROTAGORAS: There is a solution to my problem?
SOCRATES: There is. Listen close though, for it is a secret only a few of the most noble born Athenians are privy to. The key to the human heart itself. Are you sure you wish to know?
PROTAGORAS: Tell me! Oh tell me please! I would do anything to know such things.
SOCRATES: You cannot unlearn this knowledge. It will change your world. Are you sure?
PROTAGORAS: I beg you, Socrates!
SOCRATES: In order to win the heart of the one you love, you must remember this.
Socrates pauses, and does a drum roll on an urn.
SOCRATES: First you must cultivate an air of General Disinterest. Then you must demonstrate Great Wit. And finally you must appear Distractedly Philosophical. It never fails, because it’s foolproof. Though, if it should fail, a further stage would be to pretend that you had a terminal illness.
About the Author
GIDEON DEFOE was born in 1975 and lives in London. He is also the author of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Moby Dick, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon. You could be forgiven for thinking he is a bit of a one-trick pony.
1 Although ‘Thou shalt not lean back on thy chair on two legs’ did not make the Ten Commandments, the first recorded injury caused by this reckless chair practice is in the Bible (Samuel, Chapter 4, Verse 18). Eli the priest fell backwards off his seat and broke his neck when he got some bad news about the Ark of the Covenant.
2 Aztec women used to stain their teeth bright red with the crushed bodies of cochineal beetles, to make themselves more sexually appealing. Until recently modern women could achieve the same effect using crushed mauve Smarties, which contained carmine or E120, a food colouring derived from the same type of beetle. Unfortunately this was recently replaced with a dye extracted from red cabbage, which is not so sexy.
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br /> 3 At one time or another, Michael Barrymore, Sandi Toksvig and Matthew Kelly have all had their names immortalised in specially made sticks of rock.
4 Numbering over 50,000 distinct types, the weevil family contains more species than any other group of organisms. The longest weevil is the Giraffe Weevil, which grows up to 80mm (0.044 per cent of a pirate) in length.
5 The first newspaper advertisement was placed in 1704, seeking a buyer for an Oyster Bay in Long Island. Contrary to popular belief, pearl oysters produce pearls by covering an invading parasite, not as a result of ingesting a grain of sand. Australian astronomers estimate that there are ten times more visible stars in the universe than grains of sand on the planet.
6 The Starbucks logo is probably today’s most famous siren. She is a double-tailed ‘baubo siren’, or a ‘cross between a mermaid and a Sheila-na-gig’. The etching from which the first logo was copied had a big unsightly belly button, but this was removed from the design on the assumption that people didn’t want to look at big belly buttons whilst drinking their morning coffee. Subsequently Starbucks have also covered up her breasts and obscured her split tail, which was felt to be too sexually suggestive. Though if you find yourself getting aroused by old Starbucks’ logos because you can see too much fish tail there are issues you need to address.
7 The Pirate Captain is exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled rate their ability much higher than it really is, whilst the highly skilled underrate their own abilities. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals assume others have an equivalent level of understanding.
8 In his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Errol Flynn claimed that the second most poisonous substance in the world is the human tooth. He knew this because while nude, he punched a Spaniard off his boat, got a tooth lodged in his fist and ended up in a coma for four days.
9 The poor weather of 1816 – known as ‘the year without summer’ – was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, an explosion so huge it could be heard over a thousand miles away.
10 An almost certainly apocryphal story concerning Lord Byron is that when told it was against regulations to keep a dog in his room at university, he got himself a pet bear instead.
11 In Hawaiian mythology it is thought that the Octopus is the sole survivor of an earlier, alien universe. In Marvel comics, it is known that Galactus is the sole survivor of an earlier universe from before the Big Bang.
12 Seagulls keep their feathers waterproof with ‘preen oil’, which oozes from a nipple-like protuberance near the tail. The seagull smears it around with his or her beak.
13 Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her father, William Godwin, who was a bit better at titles, wrote Jack and the Beanstalk.
14 The Inuit word for ‘a conical mound of ice’ is ‘pingu’. The episode of Pingu titled ‘Little Accidents’ was banned due to graphic images of penguin urination. There would probably be a thousand words for ‘yellow snow’ in Eskimo if Eskimo was a language, which it isn’t.
15 The finale of a bodybuilding competition is the ‘posedown’, when competitors line up and run through a series of muscle poses simultaneously. There are two approaches to winning at a posedown – you should either choose a pre-rehearsed routine of poses or respond to challenges with vigorous improvisation. Whatever you do, decide which route you’re going to take and stick to it.
16 Sailors’ tattoos often have particular meanings: a fully rigged ship shows they have sailed round Cape Horn, an anchor indicates they have sailed the Atlantic, a shellback turtle shows they have crossed the Equator, and a full back panel of Kate and Prince William shows they have questionable judgement.
17 In April 2011, a man in California was convicted of murdering a rival gang member at a liquor store when police noticed that he had a picture of the crime scene tattooed on his chest. The tattoo included the name of the liquor store and a picture of the victim being sprayed by gunfire from a helicopter (a visual metaphor, the man’s nickname being ‘Chopper’).
18 To save some time, instead of wasting ages reading a lengthy description of Babbage’s study, you can just read the description of the Pirate Captain’s cabin from An Adventure With Scientists and replace ‘pictures of the Pirate Captain’ with ‘pictures of equations’, ‘biscuits’ with ‘half-eaten sandwiches’ and ‘nautical accoutrements’ with ‘piles of slide-rules’.
19 In the 1860s Babbage became known as a notorious curmudgeon for his vigorous campaign against noisy children rolling hoops in the street.
20 If you like codes you should consider a visit to Bletchley Park, which has lots of interesting exhibits about code-breaking and spies, as well as a ZX Spectrum +2 that plays ‘Popcorn’ on a constant loop.
21 Bartholomew Roberts used to euphemistically refer to marooning as ‘being made a governor of an island’.
22 Byron’s wife, Annabella, coined the term ‘Byromania’ to refer to the commotion his presence would cause. Keenly aware of his image, Byron made sure that any portraits showed him doing dramatic things rather than writing.
23 The fourth – and fairly ineffectual – Bodleian librarian was Thomas Lockey, a man who died of a ‘surfeit of cherries’, one of the best ways to go.
24 Aristotle said more stupid things than Plato. Gems include the theory that rats spring fully formed from mud, and that eels are a type of dewdrop.
25 Motion sickness is probably caused by the body trying to expel neurotoxins. When the inner ear transmits to the brain that it senses motion, but the eyes tell the brain that everything is still, the brain concludes that it is hallucinating due to the ingestion of poison, and then responds by inducing vomiting to get rid of the non-existent toxin.
26 In the 1860s, California’s Wells Fargo posted rules for passengers of their stagecoaches. These included: ‘Don’t snore loudly while sleeping or use your fellow passenger’s shoulder for a pillow; he or she may not understand and friction may result’; ‘Forbidden topics of conversation are: stagecoach robberies and Indian uprisings’; and ‘If ladies are present, gentlemen are urged to forgo smoking cigars and pipes as the odor of same is repugnant to the gentler sex.’
27 Another interesting fact about bats: the Honduran white bat has a yellow nose and makes little tents for itself out of big leaves. Aw!
28 Before skinning any animal prior to stuffing, have patience – you need to ensure it is cold enough for the blood to coagulate.
29 If you’re a newborn chick, you’ll crouch in fear at any shadow flying overhead, but very quickly habituate to the shadows of harmless birds like geese and only crouch at the shadows of predatory birds like hawks.
30 If you’re mounting a deer’s head and want to use the natural skull, remove the eyes, flesh and tongue with a knife and the brain with a long spoon. If you have any problems, boil the head until the flesh turns grey and then remove. Be careful not to boil it too long, as the skull will separate into several parts.
31 Vampire squids look like they have teeth on the inside of their tentacles and a black ‘cape’ of webs between them. When threatened, a vampire squid tucks its tentacles under itself to look like a pumpkin. If bitten by a vampire squid, a normal squid does not turn into a vampire squid.
32 Presumably not with ‘preen oil’. Vampires’ anatomy may be a mystery, but they are unlikely to secrete a waxy oil from a nipple-like protuberance near their tail.
33 Byron, when pursued by love-struck Lady Caroline Lamb, described the experience as ‘like being haunted by a skeleton’. Prone to melodrama, she once wrote ‘Remember Me!’ in a book on his desk, which just prompted Byron to write a bitchy poem about her.
34 Certain sorts of people like to tell you that ‘left brain people’ are logical, linear and good at languages while ‘right brain people’ are cr
eative, open-minded and intuitive. The truth is that all brain functions involve both hemispheres of the brain. Anybody who says this kind of thing is probably stupid, trying to sell you something, or both.
35 Ship’s biscuits were not in fact infested with weevils as commonly supposed, but with the bread beetle, which is a relative of woodworm. The large white ‘maggots’ reported in ship’s biscuits were actually the larvae of the cadelle beetle. Some speculate that the latter preyed on the larvae of the former and kept those biscuits free from bread beetle infestation.
36 The Royal Navy stopped using cutlasses for boarding actions in 1936. The US Navy used them until 1949, the year the Soviets exploded their first atomic device.
37 Spiders’ webs are rich in vitamin K, although you’d have to eat loads to get your recommended adult daily intake of 120 micrograms a day.
38 Don’t be afraid to ask your friends and family for constructive criticism of your finished taxidermy. You can only improve by listening to honest opinion.
39 Shelley’s body washed up in Italy in 1822, possibly murdered by pirates.
First published in Great Britain 2012
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc