Out With Idiots When She Could Do A Great Deal Better For Herself. The pea-soup fog was starting to make their eyes sting, so Jennifer and the pirate ducked inside a tent that was simply marked A Special Exhibit For The Ladies'. It didn't seem very special - it was just an empty and badly lit tent as far as the pirate with a scarf could make out.
'It's very dark in here. I can't even see what we're meant to be looking at,' said. Jennifer, slipping her hand through her companion's arm. The pirate with a scarf's heart skipped a beat. He couldn't believe how well it was going. Usually by this point with a girl he'd have said something idiotic, or spilt drink all down his front, or chewed with his mouth open, but he'd managed not to do any of those things so far, and he even seemed to be impressing her with some of his nautical anecdotes.
'It must mean a good deal of responsibility, being the first mate on a pirate boat,' said Jennifer, shivering at a sudden breeze that seemed to blow through the tent.
'It's not easy. But I try to look after my crew,'
said the pirate. 'I saved a man's life the other day. He got attacked by a huge jellyfish, and I neutralised the sting by pouring a bucket of wee all over him.'
He instantly wished he had instead told her about the time he fought a monstrous manatee, because it cast him in a slightly more heroic light, and didn't involve big buckets of wee. Jennifer had gone very quiet, and looking up from his shoes - he was terrible at making eye contact with girls he liked - the pirate with a scarf was surprised to see her slumping unconscious to the floor. For one frightened moment he thought his conversation might have sent her into a daze, so he was pretty relieved when he felt a chloroform-soaked rag press against his mouth, and blacked out himself.
The pirate with a scarf opened his eyes groggily. His vision seemed to go cloudy, but then he realised it was just his breath condensing on the inside of the massive glass tube in which he now
found himself trapped. The tube was attached to some kind of improbable contraption, fashioned of wood and brass and covered in cogs, pipes and hissing gaskets. Looking to his left, he saw that Jennifer was held in an identical predicament. With a sinking feeling, he realised that yet again a date with a pretty girl had gone horribly wrong. He could just make out that they were in some kind of big square room, with what looked like gigantic stained-glass windows for walls. He gave a peevish sigh - he certainly wasn't enjoying this adventure as much as, say, the Pirates' Adventure On The Island Of Rum And Amazons.
'So, young scarf-wearing lady! You and your pretty friend are awake!'
The room was so dingy, and so cluttered with menacing-looking bric-a-brac, that the pirate hadn't noticed a figure dressed all in black robes[5] busying about in the corner. It was the
iniquitous Bishop of Oxford himself! The pirate! with a scarf could tell it was the Bishop because he was wearing a bishop's hat, just like the chess pieces that he had seen the Pirate Captain play with on occasion. The pirate with a scarf preferred Ludo or Snakes and Ladders himself.
'What's all this about, you beast?' asked Jennifer from inside her big glass tube. The Bishop fixed her with a beady stare.
'How old would you take me for?' he asked, as if by way of explanation. Jennifer had never been particularly good at estimating this sort of thing, but she hazarded a guess anyhow.
'Mid to late forties?'
'Hah! I'm actually fifty-one years old.'
The Bishop gazed at the pair of them expectantly. Jennifer and the pirate with a scarf just looked blankly back at him. He seemed a bit annoyed that he had to explain things further.
'I keep myself so fresh-looking by using this devilish machine to distil the very life-essence from young ladies such as you!' he added impatiently.
'So you're responsible for all these grisly murders! I had my bets on it being a member of the Royal Family. Or maybe gypsies,' said Jennifer, wide-eyed and fuming. 'You villain!'
'I must say, Bishop,' said the pirate with a scarf - remembering to keep up his lady voice - 'the sack and the drugs. It's not the sort of behaviour I'd expect from a man of the cloth.'
The diabolical Bishop looked almost sheepish.
'I realise that my methods leave a lot to be desired,' he replied with a rather forlorn sigh, 'but you have to appreciate the climate I'm working in. Anyone will tell you how difficult it is to meet a nice girl in a big city like this. So you can understand that in my case, where I need to meet about a dozen nice girls a week in order to synthesise my ghastly concoction ... well, it's virtually impossible.'
'I can see why you're not a girl's first choice,' said Jennifer with a sneer. 'If a lady is looking for anything to be planted on her mouth at the end of an evening, it's a kiss, not a dirty old cloth soaked in chloroform. The least I'd expect of a fellow who intends to drain the youthful
life-force out of me would be flowers and conversation.'
'Yes, it's a bit much. Do you really need the sinister circus and the swirling fog and the kidnapping? Have you tried a nice coffee shop? I hear that they're great places to pick up us women,' said the pirate helpfully.
'Of course I have!' replied the Bishop with an air of despair. 'But it just never works out. I meet a girl, I laugh a booming maniacal laugh at their anecdotes, just like I've read you're meant to, and I make sure to pay them a compliment -"you've got a lovely hairline, I won't need to shave your temples when I attach you to my nightmarish device" - something like that. But more often than not it's a swift peck on the cheek, thanks for a lovely evening, and I'm home alone in my macabre lair. I just don't have time for it! I'm not getting any younger, you know. Well, I suppose in a manner of speaking I am, but you see my point.'
'I doubt that funny little moustache is doing you any favours,' said Jennifer with an arched eyebrow.
'It's an evil moustache, not a gay moustache,' replied the Bishop with a pout.
'That's why you're so bothered by Darwin's Man-panzee!' exclaimed the pirate. 'You're worried that if Mister Bobo is a roaring success then all the crowds will forget about the Elephant Man, and they'll flock to see him instead! Without a constant supply of young ladies visiting the circus for you to kidnap, you wouldn't be able to fashion your evil elixir!'
'It's not really an elixir. It's more a sort of facial scrub,'21 said the Bishop. 'But listen, I'm not about to let you gab your way out of this. On with the show!'
| 21 The Bishop of Oxford was widely known as 'Soapy' Sam Wilberforce. However, if you look this up on Google, chances are it will ascribe the nickname to his 'slippery ecclesiastical debating skills' rather than because he turned ladies into bars of soap. |
The Bishop threw an enormous lever, and his horrific machine roared into life. Sparks bounced off the walls, pistons smashed up and down, lights flashed and bells rang. But just as
the contraption seemed to be building to a crescendo there was a sickening metallic gurgle, a belch of acrid black smoke, and everything fell silent.
'Oh, for pity's sake!' moaned the Bishop, giving an apologetic look to his captives. 'Honestly, this has never happened before.' He spent the next few minutes trying fruitlessly to find a fault with the various gears and pulleys and bits of wire that made up his machine. The pirate with a scarf took this opportunity to attempt a bit of romantic small talk with Jennifer, but she seemed a little preoccupied and he could sense that the moment might have passed.
'There's no reason why this shouldn't be working. It's brand new,' said the Bishop tetchily. 'Unless ... one of you isn't really a lady!'
The pirate with a scarf gulped, and tried to do his most winning lady smile, but then he realised that this just showed off more of his gold teeth.
'There's only one way to find out,' said the Bishop, a nasty reptilian grin playing across his
Forty minutes later, the two of them reluctantly handed the Bishop their completed psychometric test papers. He pored over the results, and then pointed an accusing finger at the pirate. The scarf-wearing pirate hung his head in dismay - his skill at spatial awareness and numerical pattern identification compared with his comparative weakness at colour differentiation and verbal reasoning had given away his secret.
'You're no lady!' said the Bishop with a scowl. 'In fact, these test results suggest you're a pirate! Goodness knows what you've done to my machine. It's only designed to work with ladies aged nineteen to twenty-six. You've probably invalidated my warranty, you lousy bum.'
The Bishop unhooked the pirate from his infernal apparatus, and rolled him in his tube over
to what looked for all the world like a massive metal cog. Then he opened up the top of the tube, slid the bound pirate out and fastened him to one of the notches between the cog's gigantic teeth. The Bishop looked at his watch irritably. 'I've got an appointment with a man and his monkey,' he said, turning his attention to Jennifer. 'But I expect you to be a lifeless husk by the time I get back, young lady. No funny business.'
With that, he pulled the big lever again, and went off whistling a show tune. The pirate with a scarf looked on in horror as the life started to drain from what was the first girl in ages who looked as though she might actually have put out for him.
Ten
A DEAD MAN'S CHEST!
| H |
alfway across town the Pirate Captain strode along with big piratical strides. He didn't stare down at his feet and scuttle through the sudden downpour like the sorry rubbernecks who shared the narrow streets with him; he held his head high and seemed almost to be snarling at the sky, willing it to do its worst - he was the Pirate Captain, and he wasn't bothered by a bit of rain.
lust a few minutes later - he walked at quite a pace, and had been known to swing his cutlass at ditherers who blocked his way - the Pirate Captain arrived at the Hotel Metropolitan where, according to his letter, the Pirate Convention was being held. The concierge, a slight and sweaty man, greeted him in the swanky lobby.
'You must be here for the Pork Convention,' he said with an exaggerated wink.
'Pork Convention? Are you mad? I'm here for