by Gideon Defoe
‘Dear me! The actual Holy Ghost!’ the Pirate Captain was saying to his neighbour. ‘If I’d done any sins, I’d probably want to get them off my chest right about now. Like that time I kidnapped somebody. I’m really sorry about that. What about you, Bishop? Have you ever done any sins? Like kidnapping?’
‘That’s not the Holy Ghost,’ snorted the Bishop dismissively.
‘Yes it is!’ said the Pirate Captain, a bit put out. ‘Look how tall he is! He’s a giant! And he’s covered in a big sheet! Just like it describes him in the Bible.’
‘The Bible says nothing of the kind. Where on earth did you get the idea that the Holy Ghost is a giant? He’s the same size as Jesus. That’s the point – he’s just a creepier version of Christ.’
‘Are you sure?’ frowned the Captain, wondering if his research had let him down. ‘Doesn’t he fight Goliath at some point? I’m sure he does. He throws a leper at his face.’
‘No. I’ve no idea where you’ve picked all this up from.’
‘It’s just after the bit where he hides in that gigantic wooden horse. Isn’t it?’
‘I think you’re a trifle confused.’
‘Ah well. Plan B,’ said the Pirate Captain with a disappointed shrug. He whipped his cutlass out from under his lab coat and jabbed it in the Bishop’s ribs. ‘I’m not really a scientist – I’m the Pirate Captain! Tell me what you’ve done with Erasmus!’
The Bishop didn’t miss a beat. ‘Why! Look over there! Is that a treasure chest?’ he said.
Even though he knew better, the Pirate Captain looked over to where the Bishop was pointing. The villain took this opportunity to bolt from the lecture room. ‘I just can’t help myself,’ thought the Pirate Captain irritably. ‘Damn my piratical nature!’
He leapt to his feet, pulled off the cumbersome lab coat and, seeing the stricken look on Darwin’s face, gave the scientist a reassuring thumbs-up to show he had it all under control. Then the Pirate Captain chased as fast as he could after the despicable cleric, pausing only briefly to give his card to a striking blonde sitting in the second row.
Darwin, having little option but to hope the Pirate Captain knew what he was doing, went on hamming it up as he pretended to be desperately trying to make a wrestling tag with Mister Bobo. After a great deal of gurning and grunting he slapped the monkey’s hand, and Mister Bobo leapt into centre stage and swung a folding metal chair at the head of the Holy Ghost, who promptly collapsed in a heap. Darwin held up Mister Bobo’s hand triumphantly.
‘Hooray for science!’ he shouted. ‘Tell your friends! Tell your family! And don’t forget that Mister Bobo merchandise can be purchased from the museum shop!’
And with that, the audience were on their feet, giving Darwin a spectacular thunderous ovation.
The Pirate Captain skidded to a halt in the museum’s cavernous main hall, realised he had lost sight of the fleeing Bishop and said a terrible salty pirate oath. It occurred to him that the Bishop might be hiding inside the gigantic Armadillo shell that was one of the Pirate Captain’s favourite exhibits, but before he could check it out he was alerted by a scuffling sound from the balcony above, and so he began to charge up the marble staircase, four steps at a time, only to find an enormous slice of Californian Redwood27 rolling straight towards him. A full twenty feet in diameter, the Redwood came within a whisker of crushing the Pirate Captain flat, but he just managed to dive out of the way with an athletic leap. The monstrous Redwood still knocked off his pirate hat though.
‘That’s my favourite hat, Bishop! You’re not doing yourself any favours!’
The Pirate Captain bounded to the top of the stairs and saw the Bishop disappearing into the Hall of Fossils. Waving his cutlass and roaring, for effect more than anything, he careered inside, and almost found himself smashed in the face by a trilobite. The Bishop had a whole armful of trilobites and was flinging them at the Pirate Captain like prehistoric discuses. The Captain did his best to bat them away with his cutlass.
‘Stop throwing trilobites at me!’ shouted the Pirate Captain, because it was the only thing he could think of to say given the situation. Luckily for the Pirate Captain they were not having their climactic fight in Prague Natural History Museum, which is full of trilobites and not much else, and the Bishop quickly exhausted his supply of fossils. He dashed into the adjoining room, and the Pirate Captain followed at full tilt, even though it contained the museum’s collection of stuffed birds, which the Pirate Captain had always found especially creepy.
The Bishop swung a dodo at the advancing pirate, sending his cutlass flying. In return the Pirate Captain picked up an albatross and flung it squarely at the Bishop.
‘Ooof!’ said the Bishop, his mouth full of albatross wing. He clambered onto a balustrade and leapt from the balcony. For a moment the Pirate Captain thought the Bishop had decided to end it all, but then he realised that the wily cleric had landed on the skull of the enormous brontosaurus that was the museum’s centrepiece, and was now sprinting down its bony neck to safety. The Pirate Captain jumped over the balcony himself and decided to slide down the skeleton’s neck like it was a banister on the pirate boat, a decision he pretty quickly regretted. It took a moment for him to get his breath back and for his eyes to stop watering, by which time the Bishop had fled into the Mineral Room. The room’s curator was surprised to see anybody coming into the Mineral Room, arguably the most boring room in the whole museum, let alone the Bishop of Oxford hotly pursued by an angry-looking pirate.
The Bishop smashed open a display case, sending a cloud of dust into the air, and flung a hefty rock at the Pirate Captain. The Pirate Captain squinted – it looked like a piece of iron as it hurtled towards his luxuriant beard. Moving lightning fast the Pirate Captain scanned the display in front of him, found a big chunk of nickel and hurled it back towards the Bishop. The nickel hit the iron and knocked it into a thousand splinters.
‘Ha!’ cried the Pirate Captain. ‘Nickel! Atomic weight 58.71 – beats your iron, atomic weight 55.85. In your face, Bishop!’
‘So let’s see you deal with this!’ shouted the Bishop, hefting a lump of Ruthenium at the pirate.
‘Ruthenium! Atomic weight 101.07! Goodness me!’ cried the Pirate Captain, though perhaps in slightly saltier terms than that. He barely found a slab of Osmium – atomic weight 190.2 – in time.
Several elements later they were still deadlocked, and fast running out of periodic table.28
‘Give up, Bishop!’ said the Pirate Captain, a nugget of Selenium whizzing past his ear.
‘Oh, give up yourself!’ shouted the Bishop, unimaginatively.
The Pirate Captain was momentarily put off when he picked up a lump of what he took to be gold, before realising it was actually iron pyrite – fool’s gold, the dreaded nemesis of pirates everywhere – and his pause gave the Bishop an opportunity to escape the Mineral Room and head into the Hall of Mammals. The Pirate Captain charged after him relentlessly, but the Bishop had managed to snap the tusk off a shabby-looking walrus, and as the two men grappled he slowly inched his makeshift weapon towards the Pirate Captain’s neck. The Bishop was unexpectedly strong.
‘Do you work out?’ asked the Pirate Captain through gritted teeth.
‘A little,’ said the Bishop, his face turning red. ‘And yourself?’
‘When I have the chance.’
‘What do you bench-press?’ hissed the Bishop.
‘Around a hundred and ten pounds. How about you?’
‘Oh . . . a hundred and twenty . . . hundred and twenty-five . . . or thereabouts.’
‘Damn.’
The trouble, reflected the Pirate Captain, was that the pirate boat’s gym was covered in mirrors, so whenever he worked out he would glimpse himself pulling a ridiculously strained face, which just made him laugh and not be able to take it all that seriously. As a result he had failed to keep up with the weights regime which had been set out for him by the pirate who was a jock. But he was paying for it now. The Pirate
Captain genuinely thought he was done for. The tusk pressed against his throat, cutting off his pirate breath, and as consciousness began to slip away the Pirate Captain felt like he was starting to hallucinate – it seemed as if the very exhibits behind the Bishop were writhing and coming alive! Then he realised that the exhibit behind the Bishop really was moving. A hairy arm reached out, there was the distinct sound of monkey fist smashing into bishop skull, and the Bishop of Oxford collapsed in a daze. The walrus tusk clattered to the floor, and the Pirate Captain looked up to see that what he had taken to be part of the stuffed chimpanzee display was actually Mister Bobo!
‘Thanks for that, Mister Bobo,’ said the Pirate Captain breathlessly, shaking him by the hand.
‘Aaargh! Me. Beauties!’ said Mister Bobo with his cards, laughing a monkey laugh.
25 There are roughly eight pints of blood in the average human. Blood contains red cells, white cells and platelets suspended in a proteinacious fluid called plasma. The first dog biscuit to be made entirely out of blood was invented by Tamsin Virgo, a young woman from Stoke, England.
26 Wrestlers today are highly trained professionals, and obviously you should never try smacking people about the head with chairs or throwing them through tables at home. Even the best wrestlers get injured – Mick Foley, three times WWF champion, has broken most of the bones in his body during his career, lost several teeth and even an ear.
27 The California Redwood is the biggest and most majestic tree in the world. Some of them can grow as high as 367 feet (13 London buses) and as broad as 22 feet in diameter (4/5 of a London bus). Their flowers are cones and they can live for over 2,000 years.
28 Mendeleev is widely credited as being the first person to produce a ‘periodic table of the elements’ in 1865, but that, you’ll notice, is a full thirty years after these events are supposed to be taking place. I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Twelve
SWINGING FROM THE YARD-ARM!
Darwin helped the Pirate Captain to his feet, and gave him back his hat.
‘It’s a good job I cut that question and answer session short,’ he said. ‘Looks like me and Mister Bobo only just got here in time.’
‘No need,’ said the Pirate Captain, gingerly rubbing his neck. ‘I had the fiend just where I wanted him.’
‘You’d started to turn blue.’
‘Aaarrr. It’s an old pirate trick,’ said the Pirate Captain defensively. ‘Not something lubbers would understand. But enough about me – how did the lecture go?’
‘It was fantastic!’ said Darwin with a big grin. ‘I got five phone numbers from pretty girls! Five!’ He waved some scraps of perfumed paper at the Pirate Captain. ‘They couldn’t get enough of Mister Bobo! And you were right, when he smashed that chair over the Holy Ghost’s head, they almost jumped out of their seats! I’m sure they’ll go home and tell everyone how shocking it all was, and how science is in the infernal pocket of Lucifer, but secretly they loved it. I’ve been invited to do a tour of the American universities! And Mister Bobo is going to appear on the cover of Nature.’
Mister Bobo gave a sheepish shrug, but you could tell he was pleased.
‘Look, shall we grab a coffee?’ asked Darwin. ‘My shout. I’ve got to tell you all about the bit when I thought Scurvy Jake was actually going to sit on my head!’
‘I rather think we should find out what this wretch has done with your missing brother first,’ said the Pirate Captain, giving the Bishop a quick kick in the gut.
‘Erasmus!’ Darwin slapped his uncommonly large forehead with his palm. ‘In all the excitement I’d clean forgot!’
The young scientist knelt down and shook the dazed Bishop by his bushy sideburns. ‘Where is he? What have you done with my brother, you brute? I’ll cut your pretty face!’
‘No! Not the face!’ cried the Bishop, holding up his hands to protect his beautiful skin. ‘He’s tied to a big cog inside Big Ben! But you’re much too late – as soon as Big Ben chimes midnight, he’ll get another cog right in the chops!’
The unlikely trio hurried down to Parliament Square.
‘Look! Only twenty minutes to go! How are we ever going to reach them in time?!’ wailed Darwin.
‘Aaarrr,’ said the Pirate Captain, because he couldn’t think of anything more helpful to say.
Darwin tried to look resolute. ‘Climbing! It’s the only way. One of us will have to climb up there!’
Big Ben loomed forbiddingly out of the fog. The Pirate Captain craned his neck, and felt a bit ill just looking up at the towering clock.
‘Oh, well,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m afraid us pirates are notoriously rubbish at climbing up tall buildings. It’s like that old shanty says . . . if a-climbing you need to go, leave those pirates down below, they’re no good at it yo ho ho . . .’
It sounded to Darwin suspiciously like the Pirate Captain was making this shanty up as he went along.
‘What about monkeys? They’re always climbing up tall buildings! How about it Mister Bobo?’ said the Pirate Captain, giving him an encouraging slap on his hairy back.
Mister Bobo chose his flash cards carefully.
‘No. F*!$%ng. Way.” signed the monkey.
‘Well, Charles. It is your brother.’
Darwin squinted at the distant clock face, and shivered.
‘Ah . . . you know, me and Erasmus were never that close. He was a very solitary child. Not much of a brother at all.’
But Mister Bobo was holding up his cards again. ‘What. About. FitzRoy. And. His. Airship?’ he spelt out.
‘Ah-ha!’ cried the Pirate Captain. ‘The little pan-pongidae fellow has it! We could steal the airship, pop it with my cutlass, and fashion a big rope from all the silk!’
‘Or we could float up there in the airship. Because it’s an airship.’
‘Yes. Yes, we could do that instead. Either way’s good. I’m not bothered.’
They hailed an oldendays taxi – which back in those topsy-turvy times used horses instead of electricity – and hurried back to South Kensington as fast as they could. Sprinting into the Natural History Museum the Pirate Captain quickly grabbed his men, who he found in the gift shop buying dinosaur masks and roaring at each other.29
‘Raagh!’ roared a pirate. ‘I’m a triceratops!’
‘Grraagh! I’m a brontosaurus!’
It was like the usual pirate roaring, but even better. They all stopped and paid attention when the Pirate Captain burst in.
‘Stop mucking about, pirates!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got a bit of traditional pirate boarding to do!’
The pirates all flung off their scientist disguises, but several of them kept on their dinosaur masks because they figured it made them look even more fearsome than they already were. Into the gentlemen’s club they charged.
‘Dino-pirates!’ cried a scientist, dropping his pipe in surprise. ‘It’s my worst nightmare!’
The Pirate Captain waved his pirate cutlass at FitzRoy and Glaisher, the airship scientist, who were sitting in a corner arguing over what the best bit about being a meteorologist was.
‘It’s the clouds,’ FitzRoy was saying. ‘Clouds are easily the best bit about meteorology.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Glaisher. ‘It’s the barometers.’
‘We’re boarding your airship!’ bellowed the Pirate Captain. ‘Prepare to be overrun! By pirates!’
FitzRoy and his friend reluctantly took the pirates round the back of the museum, to where the airship was parked. Its enormous gas-bag billowed in the wind, attached by a series of sturdy ropes to a luxurious-looking gondola. The pirates all clambered aboard.
‘I think this may be a first. We’re taking pirating into a whole new era. They’ll probably put us on stamps,’ whispered the Pirate Captain to the pirate dressed in green.
‘How does it float?’ asked Darwin, turning to FitzRoy and Glaisher and pulling a face to show how sorry he was to be responsible for the pirates stealing their beloved airship.<
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‘Initially we used helium as the lifting agent,’ replied FitzRoy with a grimace. ‘But it turned out to have a terrible and dangerous flaw.’
‘Which was?’
‘The pilots were always so busy larking about with the gas cylinders, making their voices go all squeaky, that they kept on smashing into trees and buildings.30 So now I’ve switched to hydrogen. I can’t see any sort of dangerous flaw when it comes to good old reliable hydrogen,’ said the young captain, moving several boxes of fireworks out of the way so that he could get to the steering wheel.
‘It’s certainly impressive. You can tell no expense has been spared. I like what you’ve done with that roaring log fire next to those spare cylinders of hydrogen in the lounge,’ said the Pirate Captain politely as they wandered about the gondola.
FitzRoy, busy throwing out ballast and letting loose the anchor rope, though annoyed to find himself being hijacked by pirates for the second time in the space of one adventure, still appreciated their compliments nonetheless.
‘Be sure to check out the splendid smokers’ gallery,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it affords tremendous views of the billowing bags of hydrogen gas. And help yourself to the chops which are cooking on the airship’s flaming barbecue.’
After some chops, the pirates all helped to shovel coal into the blazing furnace that powered the airship’s engines.
‘It’s a lot quicker than a boat,’ said the pirate in green appreciatively, once they were airborne.
‘And that scientist is right. You can see down ladies’ tops. Look!’ exclaimed the albino pirate excitedly.
‘I think I like this better than sailing. You don’t get wet, and I haven’t been sick once,’ said the pirate who chain-smoked, lighting his cigarette and tossing away the match.
‘It does have its drawbacks, mind,’ cautioned FitzRoy. The albino pirate was just about to ask what sort of drawbacks there could possibly be, when a low-flying crow smacked right into his face. FitzRoy sighed and shook his head sadly.