'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.
| 29 To this day one of the best things you can buy in the Natural History Museum gift shop is a lenticular dinosaur ruler. When you waggle it back and forth, the dinosaurs appear to attack each other in an exciting fashion. |
'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. 'If s the barometers.'
'We're boarding your airship!' bellowed the Pirate Captain. 'Prepare to be overran! 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.
'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?'
| 30 Much like bananas, supplies of helium may also run out within the next twenty years. Helium is not just used in party balloons, it is also important for the manufacture of superconductors. |
'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.