The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: A Novel
Gideon Defoe
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 0375423214
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Not since Moby-Dick...No, not since Treasure Island...Actually, not since Jonah and the Whale has there been a sea saga to rival The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, featuring the greatest sea-faring hero of all time, the immortal Pirate Captain, who, although he lives for months at a time at sea, somehow manages to keep his beard silky and in good condition.
Worried that his pirates are growing bored with a life of winking at pretty native ladies and trying to stick enough jellyfish together to make a bouncy castle, the Pirate Captain decides it's high time to spearhead an adventure.
While searching for some major pirate booty, he mistakenly attacks the young Charles Darwin's Beagle and then leads his ragtag crew from the exotic Galapagos Islands to the fog-filled streets of Victorian London. There they encounter grisly murder, vanishing ladies, radioactive elephants, and the Holy Ghost himself. And that's not even the half of it.
means of ascertaining the whereabouts of Erasmus until the evil Bishop of Oxford showed his face. By announcing the lecture tour with Mister Bobo they would force the Bishop’s hand, and he would be sure to turn up in order to try threatening Darwin into backing down. The Bishop would be expecting scientists. What the Bishop wouldn’t be expecting were pirates! At this point the plan got a bit hazy, but Darwin felt confident in the Pirate Captain’s abilities nonetheless. He propped himself up on
the name ‘Jolly Roger’ would lead you to expect a picture of a happy-looking man, it is actually a scary skull above two crossed bones. Nine Enter the Pirate King! By twelve o’clock the scarf-wearing pirate and the pirate with an accordion were already sweltering under their multiple disguises. You could hardly hear the clanking of their pirate buckles beneath the layers of lab coat and lady’s dress each man wore. They didn’t know exactly what it was they were meant to be looking for
quite noisy, and there was a distinct smell of seaweed about the place. Scanning the room, which read like a Who’s Who of the nautical underworld, the Pirate Captain recognised a familiar figure. He threaded his way through the crowd. ‘Raagh! You lubber!’ roared the Pirate Captain. ‘What’s that? Lubber! Who’s calling me a lubber! You cur!’ said the pirate, spinning round angrily. He must have been a good seven feet tall, with hands the size of the hams the Pirate Captain usually ate for dinner.
Captain had made an honorary pirate, reckoned it was a bit on the creepy side, but pirates were a superstitious bunch.32 Darwin, Erasmus and Mister Bobo had come down to wave them off. Darwin was almost unrecognisable from the callow youth the Pirate Captain had first met on this adventure – he had started to grow a little beard, his clothes were of the best Savile Row cut, and he had his arms round two vivacious-looking brunettes. ‘Good luck then, Charles. I hope all the science goes well,’
the size of a football, and he wasn’t even sure it had Africa on it, so it was difficult not to feel a pang of jealousy. Black Bellamy poured out some rum from a crystal decanter and suggested a game of Cincinnati High Low. ‘Oh, that’s a lucky man’s game,’ said the Pirate Captain, because he had heard someone say this before. ‘Well, what would you suggest?’ asked Black Bellamy amiably. ‘Crossfire? Seven Card Flip? Mexican Seven Card Stud?’ He was just showing off, thought the Pirate Captain,