No. 15.—Falsebeard the Pirate, Part 2.

(Continued from Part 1.)

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IMMEDIATELY I ROUNDED up my men, ignoring for the moment the stench of bubble gum on their breath, and brought them all back to the Mary Livingstone as quickly as our launches could carry them. But how would we prepare for an attack by the notorious Falsebeard? With other pirates, it would simply be a matter of manning the cannons and directing the ship’s orchestra to play something lively by Wagner or Liszt. But Falsebeard relied on infiltration rather than overt violence in his depredations. I will not say that my heart sank—the heart of a ship’s captain must necessarily be unsinkable—but it was definitely taking on water as I reflected that, even now, Falsebeard was most probably already aboard my ship, employing one of his devious disguises to conceal himself, perhaps even under the form of one of my own men. Indeed, the more I considered the matter, the more certain I was that one of my crew, no matter how apparently innocuous, must be the crafty pirate Falsebeard.

My first step, therefore, must be to interview every member of my crew. It was a tedious process, but one by one I called each man into my own quarters and asked him a few probing questions, which I had devised expressly for the purpose of unmasking any impostor among us. My first question was quite direct, since there was no time for circumlocution: “Are you Falsebeard the pirate?” A positive answer to this question would, of course, have terminated my investigation; all but one of my crew, however, answered in the negative. Higgs, the boatswain, at first thought he might be Falsebeard, but on some reflection decided that he probably was not, and became quite certain when I attempted to remove his face to see whether it might be a mask.

Since everyone answered the first question in the negative, it was necessary to move on to the second question, viz., “Are you positively certain that you are not Falsebeard the pirate?” Receiving negative answers to this one as well, I was compelled to think up a number of other questions, such as “Are you lying right now?” and “How much are seventeen and twenty-three?” (pirates being notoriously bad at ciphering, a skill at which all true navy men excel). I thoroughly interviewed every man on board until it was well past nightfall. I even interviewed the ship’s cat, whom the men called Maisie; I did not recall her as being ten feet long from nose to tail and standing nearly four feet high at the shoulder, but then it was true that I normally had little interaction with the creature. Finally, to leave no stone unturned, I interviewed myself, standing in front of the full-length mirror in my quarters. My answers, I must confess, were disappointingly evasive. I did nothing but repeat my own questions like a Rogerian therapist; and I was beginning to grow deeply suspicious of myself, when suddenly an alarm was raised outside.

“It’s Falsebeard the pirate!” I heard voices shouting. “We’ve found him!”

I dashed out on the deck, where most of my crew were gathered, shouting and gesticulating in a confused and agitated manner.  At first I was unable to comprehend anything they were saying, but at last my boatswain Higgs managed to silence the rabble and make himself understood.

“Thar he be, Cap’n,” said Higgs in his colorful nautical vernacular. “Bald pate shinin’ like the moon, just like you told us.” He pointed to the horizon, where a nearly full moon had just risen above the scraggy palms of Palmes Jaunes.

Patiently I explained to the men that, in the description we have been given by the Admiralty, the words “a bald pate that shone like the moon” were not to be interpreted in the literal sense, but rather in the allegorical sense, reminding them of the hermeneutical instruction I had given them on previous occasions when questions arose about the meaning of orders from the Admiralty. I commended them for their vigilance, but advised them to limit their search to the terrestrial sphere. Having encouraged them with a few more words of inspiration, I retired once again to my quarters, where my reflection in the full-length mirror greeted me with a few derisive remarks.

That my own reflection should be so ill-bred as to treat a captain of Her Majesty’s fleet with contempt renewed my former suspicions, and I reached into the mirror to grasp the offending image by the lapels. That no glass stood in my way was, upon reflection (so to speak), even more suspicious.

The image fought back manfully as the ship’s orchestra struck up the lively central section of Les préludes, and I was not at all surprised when my moustache and eyebrows—or rather the identical moustache and eyebrows on my reflection—fell away, revealing the hitherto unseen face of Falsebeard the pirate. I soon gained the upper hand in our contest, and with a mighty thrust sent my opponent reeling back into the closet from which he had sprung.

Reduced to desperation and obviously cornered, Falsebeard had recourse to his usual expedient, pelting me with eggs. Here, however, I was truly one step ahead of him: knowing as I did his propensity for resorting to egg-throwing as a last resort, I had taken the precaution of replacing all the eggs in the ship’s larder with egg-shaped stones; so that, instead of covering me with a runny, sticky mess, Falsebeard merely pelted me black and blue.

Even so, I know not what the outcome of our contest might have been, had not Maisie, the ship’s cat, chosen that moment to amble through the door. Seeing Falsebeard moving in a lively and animated manner, her interest was attracted. With one vigorous sweep of her paw, she knocked the wicked pirate senseless; and she might well have done him even more mischief, had I not admonished her severely.

Little remains to be told of Falsebeard the pirate. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a course in Investment Banking for Beginners at the Community College of the Antipodes. Maisie was awarded the Order of the Silver Whisker, the highest com­mendation a ship’s cat can receive in Her Majesty’s navy. I must add, for the benefit of any young captains who may be reading this narration, that the breed of cat found along the Bengali coast, where my crew informed me they had acquired Maisie, is a loyal and useful addition to any ship’s crew; and that, furthermore, the animal’s unusual orange coat, with its striking pattern of vertical black stripes, makes it an ornamental as well as useful acquisition for any ship.

No. 14.—Falsebeard the Pirate, Part 1.

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THE SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION of the Spanish war gave Her Majesty’s navy the leisure to address the vexing problem of piracy. With no Spanish warships to distract us, we put our backs into the work, and in quick succession captured Black­beard, Redbeard, Brown­beard, Bluebeard, Blond­beard, Strawberry­blond­beard, Auburn­beard, Flaming­magenta­beard, Herman, and Greybeard, packing them all off to our Antipodean colonies, where I understand they have all reformed and become successful investment bankers. Only one of the pirates remained at large: Falsebeard, the wiliest and most devious buccaneer who ever sailed the seven seas.

My ship, a jolly brig named the Mary Livingstone, was assigned to the difficult job of capturing Falsebeard and bringing him to justice. It was an unenviable task:  every captain who had attempted it so far had ended up with egg on his face—quite literally, since eggs were Falsebeard’s weapon of choice when he was cornered.

I knew little of this Falsebeard, though I was better informed on the subject than most of our officers. This Falsebeard was a crafty fellow who employed a remarkable array of clever disguises. It was said that no one living had seen his real face, and the dead men who had seen it were curiously reticent. No accurate description of the man was to be had. In the Admiralty’s files, to which I was given privileged access before our departure, he was described as a man, or possibly a woman, of a height in the range of three feet six inches to eight feet four inches; missing one or more limbs, or endowed with a number of superfluous limbs; and with flourishing long hair in black, or brown, or gold, or green, or a bald pate that shone like the moon; speaking with a pronounced Lancastrian, or High Dutch, or Milanese, or Punjabi accent. This description, therefore, I gave to my men, so that they would know what to look out for. We then set off for the tiny and lawless Caribbean port of Palmes Jaunes.

Our journey across the Atlantic was uneventful; indeed, I believe the Mary Livingstone still holds the record in the fleet for uneventfulness of an Atlantic crossing, although it is, I regret to say, an unofficial record, since we had no official naval historian aboard to attest to it. When at last we arrived at Palmes Jaunes, I gave my men shore leave, though with a strict admonition to stay far away from bubble gum and other vices to which sailors are notoriously addicted.

We arrived at Palmes Jaunes in the hot and lazy middle of July, when the town was mostly inert; although a good bit of the inertia (I say with pride) might be attributed to the exemplary activity of Her Majesty’s navy, piracy having been formerly the mainstay of the town’s trade. The inhabitants of the town were beginning to feel the pinch, as the boys in the rigging say, and many of them were desperate to find some substitute for the income they had until recently derived from the now-transported pirates. Since the rumor of an expedition to capture Falsebeard had preceded us, the more entrepreneurial citizens had quickly deduced that information on the location of Falsebeard, who was a known frequenter of the port, was their most valuable commodity. As I marched down the dusty main street, I passed numerous scruffy-looking men carrying hand-lettered signs advertising “KNOWN LOCATION OF FALSEBEARD, 3s” or “FALSEBEARD’S LATEST WHEREABOUTS, 2/6.” At last I came to a disreputable-looking tavern or public house, whose owner had hung out a bedsheet painted with the words “YOUR FALSEBEARD INFORMATION SUPERSTORE.” This, I decided, would be my first stop.

I entered the place to find it silent, hot, and still. A few of my sailors were sitting at tables, and from the corner of my eye I could see a few of them discreetly spitting out bubble gum; but I decided not to be severe upon them. Instead I walked straight to the bar, where the master of the house had placed a number of banners reading “BIG FALSEBEARD INFO SALE” and “ONE STEP AHEAD OF FALSEBEARD.”

“I understand you may have information about the whereabouts of Falsebeard the pirate,” I said to the man, who was as scruffy as the rest of the townspeople I’d passed.

“Aye, and better than that,” he affirmed. “I can tell you which ship is next on his list of victims. You’ll be one step ahead of the man, just like the sign says. That’s got to be worth something, hasn’t it?”

“And what will it cost me to find out?”

“Well, let me see. Regular price is five shillings, but of course you get your threepenny discount for officers in uniform, and then there’s the information excise tax and the entertainment tax—it would make Her Majesty very sad if we forgot the taxes, wouldn’t it?—so altogether, in toto, it comes to thirty-eight pounds three shillings tuppence halfpenny.”

I immediately handed over the money in gold specie, which he accepted with alacrity and a bit of Worcestershire sauce.

“And now,” I said, “you may tell me which ship is next to be attacked by Falsebeard.”

“Certainly, cap’n. Got it right here.” He produced a little wad of paper from his grubby pocket and unfolded it into quite a broad sheet. “The next ship on Falsebeard’s list—let me see now—yes, here it is—the next ship to be attacked by Falsebeard is a brig, I believe, called the Mary Livingstone.”

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Continues in Part 2.