Part 3 (1/2)

'Nothing like that,' said Engels, who was getting a bit impatient. His ice creams were melting and starting to make a little pink, yellow and brown pool on the floor.

'You're not being cooked in a pot by cannibals, are you?'

'No, Captain. There has been a series of terrible incidents of late. And it always seems to be us who get the blame. I believe that sinister forces are at work, and that Dr Marx's life may not be safe here in London. The atmosphere in this country . . . it's become something of a witch hunt.'

'Oh dear.'

'Oh dear indeed, Captain,' said Engels.

'But you're not witches? There's some way of telling which I can't really remember. I think it's if you can dive to the bottom of a swimming pool and successfully retrieve a brick whilst wearing a dressing gown, then you're a witch. But it might be the other way round.'

'We're not witches,' said Engels firmly. 'So, will you help?'

'To be honest, I've been thinking of an adventure more along the lines of pearl-smuggling in the South Seas or discovering a lost continent. We're being sponsored, you see, so it's got to be full of glamorous locations and scantily clad women. Carting a couple of communists over the Channel is a bit pedestrian for us.'

'Please, Captain! If we don't get to the safety of the Paris Commune, who knows what might happen! We can pay you well.'

'Oh, bad luck,' said the Pirate Captain sympathetically. 'If you'd said that in our last adventure, I'd have bitten your arm off.'

Engels didn't have a chance to try and persuade the Captain further, because the bell rang for the second half of the lecture and Dr Marx tramped back to his lectern with a heavy book.

The second half of the lecture wasn't much better than the first. The pirates were soon playing games of hangman and scratching their names into the benches. The pirate with a hook for a hand and the pirate with long legs entertained themselves by throwing little b.a.l.l.s of rolled-up paper into a communist's collar, whilst the pirate with an earring pa.s.sed notes to the pirate in green about the other pirates.

'. . . and that concludes why the latest Prussian censors.h.i.+p instruction is entirely symptomatic of the antiquated feudal-absolutist system. Now any questions? I need to be certain that you've understood every single one of my arguments.'

Dr Marx looked slightly disappointed that the majority of the questions concerned themselves with less highbrow issues, such as whether it was true that Dr Marx habitually ate bourgeois babies in their cradles (it wasn't) and what hair products he used to create his magnificent mane of hair (Perkins' Radical's Pomade). One or two pirates chipped in and asked how he proposed to deal with the das.h.i.+ng Pirate Captain and his nefarious band of buccaneers, but Dr Marx claimed to have never heard of them, before launching into a boring answer that drew an a.n.a.logy between piracy and slum landlords. Eventually, an especially serious-looking statuesque blonde stood up at the front of the audience.

'I just wanted to congratulate Comrade Marx on his fine oratory,' said the statuesque blonde. 'And also to say that I've got your kittens.' She held up a soaking-wet sack.

'I beg your pardon?' said Marx, squinting down from his lectern.

'Your kittens.' The statuesque blonde paused and raised her voice. 'The ones that you asked me to drown in the ca.n.a.l.'

The audience gasped.

'I really don't know what you're talking about,' protested Marx, looking fl.u.s.tered.

'But, Comrade Marx, you must remember! Of course you do. Why, it was only this morning you were saying to me how reactionary their TINY b.u.t.tON NOSES and BRIGHT s.h.i.+NY EYES were. And when you saw them innocently playing about with a ball of yarn, batting it back and forth between their ADORABLE LITTLE PAWS, you said that the only thing for it was to bundle them into a scratchy sack, ignoring their HEART-RENDING MEWLING CRIES, and then go and drown them in the nearest ca.n.a.l.'

By this point, even the loyal communist audience was in an uproar, but the statuesque blonde went on shouting above the din. 'Anyhow, I just wanted you to know that I'd done it. And I stoved their heads in with a brick as well, just to make sure. You mentioned how you wanted the SAD, LIFELESS BODIES back for use as paperweights to keep your important philosophical notes together. So I'll just leave the sack here, shall I?'

This seemed to be the final straw for most of the audience, and they barged out of the room muttering that if Dr Marx proposed to bring about a world where decent folk feared for their kittens, then he could take his Communism and do something unmentionable with it.

'I've no idea who that statuesque young lady is!' Marx went on protesting from the podium. 'I've never seen her before in my life.'

A half-finished carton of ice cream sailed through the air, and he had to duck to avoid it. Soon it was followed by bra.s.s stuff from the ceiling, bits of seat and various pieces of taxidermy.

'Poor baby kittens!' said the albino pirate. 'I don't like these communists at all.'

'I'm more of a dog man, myself,' said the Pirate Captain. 'But even so. It's a bit much.'

Marx picked up the dripping sack and emptied it out on to the floor. Several of the pirates jumped back and covered their eyes, because they were worried that the skeleton kittens would give them nightmares, no matter what vestiges of adorableness remained. But all that spilled out was a pile of old fruit.

'You've turned the kittens into old fruit!' exclaimed the pirate in green. 'That's an amazing trick! Can you get the fruit to turn into doves?'

'No, you seem to be missing the point,' said Engels. 'That young lady was just trying to make Dr Marx look bad. Somebody stop her!'

Chasing sinister characters was all in a day's work for the pirates, and a group of them set off in hot pursuit of the mysterious blonde, but before long they traipsed back into the pub looking despondent.

'We did our best,' said the pirate with a hook for a hand, a little out of breath. 'Only she leapt into a waiting hansom cab, which clattered off atmospherically into the fog. But we caught a glimpse of the driver. He was a giant! Swathed in a billowing cape, and with demonic glowing eyes!'

'He was bigger than Scurvy Jake!' exclaimed the albino pirate. Scurvy Jake was the biggest pirate any of the pirates had ever met. 'Or even two Scurvy Jakes, with one Scurvy Jake standing on top of the other Scurvy Jake's shoulders!'

'If he was a font,' said the pirate in green, 'he would be about a hundred point! If font size goes up that far. And if he was a type of cheese, he'd be one of those big wheels of Cheddar that they roll down hills.'

The Captain grimaced, and gave Marx an apologetic shrug. 'I'm sorry about this. The lads have an unfortunate tendency to exaggerate. I think it's because there's too much sugar in their diet.' He turned back to his crew. 'I've warned you about this before; exaggerating things might seem like fun, but it can be very dangerous. Remember the time I asked if we had enough milk onboard, and you all said, ”Oh, yes, there's loads of milk left, Captain,” but there wasn't, and I had to spend half the voyage eating my Weetabix with b.u.t.ter?'

'Honestly, Captain, we're not exaggerating this time,' said the albino pirate, his lip trembling.

'It hardly matters now,' said Marx, dusting himself down. 'It's clear that we cannot stay in London a moment longer. What with this and the claims that I put up the entry price at the zoo, I fear we need to get out tonight.' He pulled a stuffed sparrow out of his mane.

'So, Pirate Captain, you see our predicament. Will you help?' asked Engels.

The Pirate Captain thought for a moment. Engels and Marx looked at him pleadingly. He sighed, and despite himself felt his craggy heart melt a bit. 'Aaarrrr,' he said. 'Maybe it's not quite as exotic an adventure as I was hoping for. But I can't say I approve of these sinister characters' methods. And besides, what are us pirates famous for?'

'Scurvy?' suggested Engels.

'Roaring?' suggested Marx.

'Being good at tying knots?' suggested the pirate in green.

'No, we're famous for our p.r.o.nounced sense of fair play,' said the Captain cheerily. 'But don't worry. That was what they call a rhetorical question, so I'm not surprised you didn't get it.'

13 Catholics used to argue that the barnacle goose, Branta leucopsis, came from barnacles rather than eggs,because this meant they would be cla.s.sified as fish instead of birds and so could be eaten during Lent.

14 While at university, Engels held a 'moustache evening' in which he invited all 'moustache-capable'young men to outrage philistines by growing moustaches and toasting their facial hair.

Five.

THE CRUSTACEAN CARNIVAL OF FEAR.

'It's taken me years to realise it, Pirate Captain, but you are actually the best at pirating.' Black Bellamy looked at his drink and frowned.

'And?' said the Pirate Captain.

'And the best dancer, the most debonair and the best at knowing about cuisine. I'm just a big loser with a beard that goes all the way up to my eyes.'