ARTICULATE JIM

A SEARCH FOR SOMETHING

By Ben Croshaw

"Bloody stupid colour for a whale, anyway."

- Captain Ahab

"Aharrr!" went Mad Jack.

"Aharrr!" agreed Loony Steve.

"Ahahaharr!" added Batshit Jeffrey enthusiastically.

"Aharr," I muttered.

Steve paused in mid-chug, put down his flagon of frothing grog, and gave me a quizzical look through his bushy black beard. The sudden tilting movement had shifted it over his eyes. "Somethin' getting ye down, boy?"

I sighed heavily, elbows leaning on the balustrade that ran alongside the top deck of our mighty vessel as it noisily carved a swathe through the tarmac far below. I had only been with the land pirates a week and I was already sick of it.

The recruitment ad in the newspaper had made it seem like such a glamorous job. And it was, for the first few days; sailing up and down the motorways of the country, swinging from ropes onto passing lorries and service stations with daggers between our teeth and draining them of their booty. But we hardly ever had a really good haul - the last two boardings had left our hold full of a shipment of rapidly thawing frozen beef and several boxes of TV listings magazines. Since the ship didn't have a TV, nor indeed any Yorkshire pudding, the other crewmen were discussing the possibility of finding a nice traffic island to bury it all under.

"Speak up, Jim lad," said Steve.

I turned to face my colleagues and gave them a long, hard look. They were career pirates - life on the open road was in their bones. Some of them even had genuine false limbs, while I had had to make do with coating my left leg in woodstain. I could tell they rather liked me, but I never felt easy in their presence. They insisted on calling me 'Jim lad', which I had gathered was sort of the pirate equivalent of John Doe.

"I'm just having doubts about this job," I confessed, adjusting my ruffled shirt.

The three land pirates gave each other knowing looks. "'Tis a rare cabin boy indeed 'oo can jump straight into land piratin' just like that," said Batshit Jeffrey as the others nodded and 'aharr'ed in agreement. "Takes a while for the tarmac to really get in a boy's blood."

"But we never seem to get anywhere," I protested. "Just sail up and down the motorway stealing cargo and burying it in traffic islands. Where's it all leading?"

"Everyone gets into piratin' for their own reasons," said Mad Jack, swallowing his mouthful of grog. "For some, 'tis the booty. For others, 'tis the wenches. For a small minority 'tis our stock options package and competitive dental plan. What brought ye to land piratin', lad?"

I turned and leant on the railing again. Below me a school of Minis bumped playfully against the ship's hull. "I joined for adventure," I said wistfully. "To see the world, battle resilient foes, far away from the hustle and bureaucracy of everyday life." I watched as the minis detached from the ship's bulk and sped away, honking merrily. "But all we do all day is sit around reading TV listing magazines and play Hungry Hungry Hippos."

"Arr. Sport of kings," said Loony Steve. "And don't forget drinking grog."

"GROG!" barked everyone in earshot simultaneously.

"You mean Carlsberg," I said flatly.

"CARLSBERG!" went the pirates again.

I rested both elbows on the rail and allowed my face to sink into the cradle they formed. "Plus the noise is doing my head in," I said, referring to the constant grinding noise as the ship ploughed through the road, leaving a wide trench in its wake. "And this eyepatch is starting to hurt."

"Aye, you need to sterilise the paddin'." He caught my dirty look. "And aye, if you want constant non-stop adventure then ye're in the wrong place, Jim lad. Land piratin's become a much more sedate trade. Ye get the occasional pitched battle with rival land pirates and articulated lorries but most land pirates think that that excitement is more than enough."

"Don't call me Jim lad, my name isn't Jim."

"Well, I'm not callin' ye by that bloody stupid name ye gave us."

"It's a nice name!" I protested.

"Ye be wantin' to join the army, or somethin'".

I didn't even dignify that remark with a reply.

"Ye don't wanna let Cap'n Scar hear ye, 'e don't like 'earing 'is men moanin'."

"'E'll make you walk the plank."

"Then ye'll have to jog along behind the ship until we stop next and ye can hop back on."

"As long as the Yamahas don't get ye first."

There was a shudder among the trio, the very name of the dread fleet striking fear into the hearts of even the toughest of grog-swilling land pirates.

A call came down from the crow's nest as I was about to continue airing my doubts, and a great cheer went up among the pirates that idled variously on the deck and rigging. The aforementioned Captain Scar emerged from his cabin, took his spyglass, and surveyed the horizon. A great grin stretched across his features, revealing his black teeth. He turned to address his crew. "Where's the lad?" he rumbled in the thickest pirate accent on board.

"Thar's ye cue, matey," said Batshit Jeffrey as I was shepherded over to Captain Scar's side.

He pressed a yellowed piece of paper into my palm and handed me a cutlass. "Why does it always have to be me who does this?" I complained.

"Ye're our most articulate man, wit' your fancy-pants posh accent, laddie," said Captain Scar. "Any more lip and I feed ye to the Yamahas. Now get going."

*

I dangled by one hand from one of the portholes along the side of the ship's hull so that my mouth could be level with a small grille built about three feet above the ground. My left arm waved the cutlass in a half-hearted menacing fashion as I spoke.

"Yeah, so that's fifty large big mac meals ... no, fifty. Fif-teee. Twenty-five with Coke, twenty-five with Fanta. Yes, twenty-five each. And ten large McChicken Sandwich meals, all with coke..."

There was a cry from the impatient crewmen above.

"Sorry, nine large with coke, one medium with coke," I added.

There was another cry.

"I haven't forgotten, I haven't forgotten!" I shouted upwards, then returned my attention to the grille thing. "And one veggie-burger meal. With strawberry milkshake."

There was a burst of static from the two-way radio, and a series of barely recognisable syllables came through. I swept my hair back behind my ear with the end of my cutlass, and called upwards again. "Kevin, the milkshake machine's down!"

Another cry.

"No, I don't think murdering them all will help," I ventured.

*

As always the hardest part of the operation was threatening the woman at the drive-thru window with the cutlass until she agreed to waive the cost, then transferring the huge quantity of little paper bags from the window to the deck above me one by one with the point of the sword. By the time I had clambered back on deck, the ship was moving again and most of the crew were sitting around stuffing their faces. One of them registered my presence and jabbed a ketchup-stained thumb towards the cabin door.

"Cap'n wants to see ye," he said in a slightly broken pirate accent.

I roughly snatched the little greasy paper bag one of the crewmen had been keeping on side for me, and gave the spokesman one of my looks. "What for?"

"Ye know, I didn't think to ask."

I sighed the deepest sigh that day, causing a school of nearby Minis to break away startled from the hull and drive off, and headed for the door.

*

Captain Scar was, as always, a fearsome sight. A great hulking brute of a man with not only a genuine big bushy black beard but also a genuine rusty iron hook for a hand. His eyepatch and pegleg were both false, but there's a fine line between being fearsome and being seriously mutilated. He always wore a black tunic with blood red lining, and a matching hat that even had a skull and crossbones badge on the front. That's how serious a land pirate Captain Scar was.

As I entered his office he was sitting at his desk, an MFI self-assembly affair apparently acquired many years ago from a van belonging to a chain of catalogue shops. It was no marvel of engineering - it wobbled alarmingly when leant on and a stuffed beaver replaced one of the legs - but no-one was going to point anything out to the man.

Captain Scar wasn't his real name, of course. His surname was originally Scarlet, but this had left him open to some quite creative mockery, and there were only so many crewmen he could execute for loudly humming certain theme tunes when they thought they were out of earshot, so he'd changed it to something appropriately fearsome and piratey. Unfortunately he had had to drag his hook across his face before the name could be lent any credibility, but it was a small price to pay to stop his crew walking around in a curious wobbly puppet-like manner when he wasn't looking.

As I entered he had exchanged his hook for the special one with the pencil nib on the end and was filling in a crossword puzzle in a TV listings magazine, his great big booted feet on the desk. He motioned towards a swivelly office chair, which the crew had also acquired from the catalogue shop van, and I sat upon it, whereupon the seat immediately descended to ground level.

"Arr, it does that," he said through a mouthful of burger and fries. "Use yon stick."

I picked up the length of driftwood nearby kept for this purpose and used it to fix the seat at about two feet above the floor, then sat upon it once again. The magnificent captain swallowed, and tapped his paper thoughtfully.

"'Rob's dome is badly lit'. Seven letters," he said.

"Boredom," I said promptly. His quizzical look spurred me to continue. "Another word for 'badly lit' is 'dull', and 'rob dome' is an anagram."

He 'aharr'ed shortly, and filled in the spaces. "Ye're a good boy, Jim lad. You've got it in yer to be a great addition to my crew. We 'aven't had a token posh boy pirate in a while."

I nodded shortly, and tried to give an appreciative smile. He laid the magazine aside, took his feet off the desk and clasped his hand around his hook. "And yet, Batshit Jeffery was just tellin' me that ye're not very 'appy with us."

That's it, I thought. As soon as the ship stops and I can hop back on board I'm soaking Jeffrey's bandana in white spirit again. "A bit," I muttered.

He sighed. "Look, Jim lad, I know I seem like this great big evil unapproachable pirate sometimes," said the huge hairy man with the black outfit and matching teeth. "But I was a cabin boy like ye once. And back then I sometimes doubted that land pirating was what I really wanted to do. That was until ... the incident..." He fingered the hook, staining his already well-stained fingertips with graphite, and for an instant a flash of red hatred went through his eyes. I thought it prudent to keep quiet.

There was an awkward pause, and our eyes met. "I just ... don't feel I'm getting what I want out of the position..." I said meekly.

"What is it ye want out of the job, Jim lad?" he said, snapping out of his trance.

"Adventure," I said sheepishly. "It's been kind of interesting, but it gets samey really fast. And my name isn't Jim."

"I know, but yer real name's bloody stupid, let's face it." I glared at him unappreciatively, but only briefly, considering the man. "An' I agree. I was well and truly bored stiff by the time of ... the Incident..." he tapped his hook against the desktop sadly. "When that great beast took my hand ... Ol' Ben 'imself, the killer of the A417..."

I watched awkwardly as he got up from his seat and went over to the porthole. He glared at the rough-hewn ditch the ship left in its wake, into which unwary motorists fell and were left honking indefinitely. "I knew I couldn't rest until I got my revenge on that monster," he said flatly. "So I clawed my way up the ranks until I was cap'n of me own ship, then devoted my life to tracking 'im down. And one day I'll choke that evil to death wit' me own 'ands."

I coughed politely, and he seemed to register my presence, taking his seat again. "But I see ye don't 'ave the same sort of motivation," he said.

I shook my head. He continued. "If adventurin' is what ye're after, then I don't think land piratin' is for you. Land piratin' is based on profit an' personal fulfilment. But there are other branches of piratin' you might want to consider, much more fast-paced. 'Ave you thought about sea piratin'? Sky piratin'? Computer piratin'?"

I interrupted. "Sky pirating?" He nodded. "What's that?"

"Oh, that's a real up-and-coming new branch of piratin', sky piratin'. I've got a cousin oo runs a ship operating round Europe. They'll be touchin' down in Sahthampton on Thursday. Wanna give it a try? I'll give you a glowin' reference."

This was certainly a fascinating development. "And that's more fast-paced? More adventurey?"

"My cousin told me ye 'aven't lived 'till ye've boarded a private business jet at forty thahsand feet."

I thought about it. "Alright," I said after one second. "I'll give it a go."

He was about to say something when there was a roar among the pirates outside. I exchanged slightly baffled looks with the great captain, then Loony Steve burst in, waving his cutlass and wearing an excited expression on his face. "Cap'n sir!" he yelled. "It's 'im! It's ol' Ben 'imself off the port bow!"

"Ye're sure? If this is a wind-up I'll 'ave ye're toes for tea -"

"P569 JHR!" reported Steve breathlessly.

Captain Scar gave me a look of delirious excitement, and leapt suddenly to his feet, causing his chair and the entire desk to collapse. A glint of joy was in his eye. "C'mon laddie!" he barked, and ran after Steve. I followed rapidly. This was something I didn't want to miss.

When we got back on deck, the pirates were all clustered around the portside rail, clamouring to get a glimpse of Old Ben. Captain Scar fought his way through the throng and I followed, eager to see the legendary beast. I elbowed Mad Jack aside and craned over the rail, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun to try to make out the dark shape a few hundred yards ahead. It was smaller than our ship, and apparently painted blue, and soon recognition struck.

"That's Old Ben?" I asked incredulously.

"Aye, lad," said Captain Scar hungrily, standing by my side.

"But it's a camper van!"

"Thar's not any ol' camper van," said Mad Jack nervously. "Thar's Ol' Ben. Cap'n Scar's brother-in-law's camper van."

I shook my head and rubbed my temple, unnoticed in the bustle all around me.

"Right!" said the captain. "Jack, Steve, Kevin, Jim lad, man the portside cannons!"

The four of us fought our way out of the crowd and tramped down the stairs to the lower deck, where we flung open the cannon holes and pushed the nozzles of the ship's huge iron armaments into open air. From this position we could still hear the shouted commands of Captain Scar as well as the excited cries and 'aharr's from the rest of the crew. We heard the great captain order his men to lower the fore and aft sails in order to speed up and draw alongside Old Ben.

"Jack," I asked my cannon partner as we waited for the camper van to come into range. "How did Captain Scar lose his hand to Old Ben?"

"Arr, I think he was helping push it with his hand on the steerin' wheel and someone closed the window afore he could get it out," said Jack distractedly, eyes fixed on the road.

We drew level with the van, and from this angle we could see the driver double-take as the gigantic pirate ship hoved into his view. "Fire one, lads!" called Captain Scar maniacally.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Loony Steve yank the firing rope of the cannon next to mine, heard the massive bang, and saw a slightly scorched pile of TV listings magazines spread themselves across the road just behind Old Ben. Undeterred, Captain Scar called again. "Fire two!"

I pulled hard upon my rope and the cannon fired fifteen pounds of rancid British beef at the van, splatting wetly against the powder blue side and causing it to wobble alarmingly. A cheer went up among the pirates above us, and we heard the scrape of a cutlass leave its sheathe.

"Shall we reload, captain?" I shouted.

"Nay, Jim lad!" called Scar. "He's MINE!"

Immediately I saw the great musclebound black-clad figure leap atop the unsuspecting roof of Old Ben. It skidded left and right with great screeching noises that served only to make the assembled pirates cheer even louder for their captain, who was not to be thrown off his prey.

Captain Scar dug his feet into the roof rack and delved his existing hand into his waistcoat pocket, producing something that he held aloft for all to see. The cheering of the crew reached a crescendo as we saw what it was.

It was a banana.

The captain, encouraged by his crew, dangled himself upside-down from the rear of the van, and put his hook around the rear bumper. With a theatrical flourish he stuffed the banana right into the exhaust pipe, then launched himself from the vehicle back onto the ship, clinging by his fingers to the cannon hole at which I stood. Mad Jack and I helped pull the huge man into the ship, whereupon all five of us raced up to the top deck just in time to see Old Ben crash into a black unmarked security van just behind him and explode in a shower of twisted white-hot metal. The cheer was deafening.

Quite unexpectedly Captain Scar then gave me a bone-crunching hug and kissed me on both cheeks as the crew banged their cutlasses together in appreciation of a great stunt.

"Ol' Ben is dead!" cried the captain, throwing his arms wide and allowing me to collapse upon the deck. "Bosun, drop anchor! Roll out the grog! Tonight this crew parties like it's 1999!"

"Great," I muttered, unheard.

*

The next day, when we were all holding ice packs against our heads and the 'aharr's were becoming noticeably muted, the captain gave me his reference, written with a quill pen on a yellowing vellum scroll tied with a silken red ribbon, and gave me details on where and when the sky pirates' ship would be touching down exactly. Then he made me walk the plank for appearance's sake, but he was very good about it, and dropped a life belt on my head when I'd landed.

As the land pirates disappeared over the horizon and the 'aharr's were already fading, I found myself sitting in a small cafe in a nearby service station, sitting behind a sugary jam doughnut and a Coke, turning over the reference in my fingers.

Well, I thought. Kept a job for a whole week this time. That's got to be a record.

I'd start a new endeavour, like land pirating, or archaeology, or demon slaying, and then after a while it'd all get too samey and I'd get bored and get back on the road.

What my problem was, I decided, was that I was just too single-minded.

I was on a quest, you see. I'd been on it my whole life. It was because of this quest that I'd left home and become a nomadic adventurer wandering up and down the country. This quest that couldn't let me rest anywhere for five minutes at the thought that I was getting distracted. And what made this all the more insane was that I didn't even know the point of my quest.

I was searching for something. But I didn't know what it was.

Hence the subtitle.

All I knew was that I was searching for something that would make me finally feel my life was complete. Whether this something would be a person, or an object, or a job or a place to live I really didn't know. I just figured I'd know it when I found it.

I'd searched for it in the Sussex downs, the Scottish highlands, among the werewolves in the wildernesses of North London - and hadn't that been a mistake - and most recently as the cabin boy on a pirate ship on the A417.

Maybe sky pirating would be it, or at least give me the opportunity to find it. Sounded like the kind of affair that would lead to adventures taking me all over the world.

As I sucked morosely on the straw and tasted the sugary nectar, one eye rotated in the direction of the couple energetically copulating four tables away, the other eye still concerning itself with the interior of my eyepatch, I recited the details of my meeting with the sky pirates over in my head again. Ship touching down by Pier 14, round about 10 of the Thursday morning clock, ask for Captain Black.

I finished my doughnut as the people nearby screamed their orgasms, adjusted my eyepatch, and left, trying not to seem jealous.

"What fools these mortals be."

- Bill Gates

I was standing by the side of the motorway, thumb out pointing in whatever direction I assumed Southampton lay in (south, presumably), feeling an utter berk. I had hitch-hiked before and had usually been able to do it with dignity, but not while wearing a pirate outfit with one leg coated in woodstain.

There is an art to hitch-hiking, and I'm not talking about flashing your thighs as a vehicle approaches. The whole idea is to appear appealing to drivers. You have to look bright and cheerful, but not too much or they'd think you a lunatic, and yet also a little bit pathetic, but again not too much because no-one likes sharing a car with a miseryguts. You also have to be just scruffy enough to be endearing, but not scruffy enough to make a vehicle look untidy. Some peculiar element that your prospective taxi might be curious about can also help. A pirate outfit is a good example, but in the past I had also used, on various occasions, a giant inflatable banana, a hat shaped like a duck and a stuffed tiger carried under one arm.

It's also sometimes wise to be choosy with your ride. Hitch-hikers are easy prey for kidnappers, rapists and serial killers disguised as ice cream men. I had sworn to myself that I wouldn't fall for that again.

Anyway, I had been standing by the road for almost an hour before I could get a lift. Which is not to say that my methods don't work, there just wasn't any traffic. Well, there had been one - an ice cream van - and it had stopped, but I wasn't going to be fooled, so I pretended not to notice it.

When my ride eventually did arrive, I could hardly miss it. I could hear the noise of the engine from a mile away. My jaw dropped slack as it rounded the bend and trundled towards me.

It was an enormous General Sherman tank painted black with a skull and crossbones motif.

It rattled to a halt in front of me, the caterpillar tracks gouging huge grooves in the tarmac, and I gazed at it for several seconds before remembering to withdraw my thumb. I stepped cautiously towards it, and as I did so a hatch in the roof opened. I could faintly hear some kind of electronic buzz coming from within as the head and shoulders of (presumably) the driver emerged from the hatch: a rather short but heavily bearded pirate in a captain's hat wearing spectacles over his eyepatch.

"Where be ye headin'?" he asked rapidly. He seemed to be vibrating slightly.

"Er, Southampton," I said.

"Ah," he replied.

There was utter silence, during which we both stared at each other expectantly. Eventually, I felt it was up to me to continue the discourse.

"Can I have a lift?" I asked.

This question seemed to throw him. "Don't think so, matey. We're full to burstin' down here."

"Why did you stop, then?"

"Yer know, I can't remember." He called downwards into the tank. "Why did we stop?"

There was a round of muffled voices while an ongoing background noise which sounded an awful lot like fingers tapping upon computer keyboards stopped for a second. The penny dropped.

"Computer pirates," I realised aloud.

This was the modern age, after all. A small and rather right-wing branch of land pirates had some years ago decided to move with the times and create an organised faction of pirates who shunned leaping across moving tarmac on ropes with blades between their teeth in favour of hacking into computer systems and draining booty from the bank accounts of the great and good. It was certainly a lucrative trade, but being locked in a small confined space with fifteen other pirates and as many computer monitors tended to pale the skin and addle the brains a little. As such, more traditional pirates - like myself - tended to frown upon the practise. As Captain Scar had once said on the subject, if you can't master the art of holding the right end of a cutlass and jabbing the other into people, then you have no business calling yourself a pirate.

I frowned upon the computer pirate as a note was passed to him from his crew below. He adjusted his spectacles as he read, then realisation dawned in his eyes. "Do you 'appen to know the way to an 'ospital?" he asked. "My wife's about to give birth."

I found myself wincing, but I seized my opportunity. "There's a great hospital in Southampton, why don't I hop in and direct you?"

There was a very curious noise from down below. "Oh," said the captain after a second. "Seems 'er waters just broke." He called into the tank again. "Don't ye dare get any of that stuff on the network 'ub, woman, or ye'll taste the cat!" He turned to me. "Southampton, ye said?"

"Yes, but the traffic's awful this time of year, I'll have to come along and show you the short cut -"

At this juncture the head of a second computer pirate appeared next to the captain, a bandana patterned with Windows logos upon his head. "Captain, sir!" he said. "We've cracked the firewall at MI6, what do we do now?"

"Dammit, Leroy, me son's about to be born down there!" replied the captain. "Ye deal with this feller, and I'll go loop a worm into the main database fer the time bein'."

He disappeared into the tank, and I was left with the apparent Leroy. "I was just telling your captain that Southampton has a lovely hospital," I said.

Leroy's brow furrowed as he attempted to adjust to reality. "Does it 'ave a website?"

"Oh yes," I improvised. "If you'll just let me in I'll show you."

"Couldn't fit yer in, matey," said the pirate. "Shame, really, 'cos Southampton's where we're headin'. We're meetin' someone on Pier 14."

"That's exactly where I need to be!" I said.

"Well, maybe we'll see yer there, er … what did yer say yer name was?"

I briefly considered telling them my real name. Briefly. "Just call me Jim lad," I said. "Couldn't I ride on top of your tank or something?"

"We like to call it the Microsoft Engine, not a tank," he said. "It looks pretty but 'as a tendency to crash when we least expect it."

I had a feeling he had just told me what his people considered a very funny joke, although it was hard to tell. "Whatever, could I ride on it?"

He scratched his bandana. "Well, I dunno," he said with some difficulty, before immediately adopting the strategy all subordinates take when faced with awkward questions. "I'll go ask the cap'n."

When he was gone, I clasped my hands behind my back and rocked upon my heels. I whistled jauntily, desperately trying not to listen to the very strange noises emerging from the open hatch. Eventually the captain reappeared. His spectacles were skewiffed and he seemed very agitated. "Do yer know anythin' about midwifery?"

I seized my chance. "What I don't know about midwifery isn't worth knowing," I said. It was technically true. I can't think of any subject more boring than midwifery.

"Right," he said. "Sit on the top and we'll call ye if we need ye. What's yer name?"

"Jam lid," came the faint voice of Leroy.

"Jim lad," I corrected.

As the captain disappeared back inside the tank and mercifully slammed the hatch shut, I climbed up onto the roof of the vehicle and sat myself down upon the big rotary turret most tanks seem to have. There was a slight jolt as the Microsoft Engine started trundling along the motorway again, and I soon found myself wholeheartedly regretting putting myself in this situation.

I sat there for an ungainly amount of time, hugging my knees, watching the scenes of the motorway trundle by. The noise of the engine was quite rattling, but at least meant I didn't have to listen to whatever was going on inside. As time passed, I decided to take a look at the reference Captain Scar had given me.

"'Dear Cap'n Black,'" I read aloud, briefly wondering what sort of devotion to piracy one would need to actually write in a pirate accent. "'Pleafe employ Jim lad, or whatever 'e callf 'imfelf. 'E might 'ave a ftupid name and he might complain all the time but he'f good with a cannon an' fair to middlin' with a cutlafs, and 'e'f got the pofhest accent I've ever 'eard, and I know ye 'aven't 'ad a token pofh-boy pirate in a while. Love, Fcar.'"

Well, I thought, it's sort of positive. As far as I could tell.

I was just returning the scroll to my pocket when the hatch flew open and Leroy appeared. "Hey!" he shouted, as if to get my attention, apparently oblivious to the fact that I was two feet away and looking straight at him. "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. How're ye doing?"

"Did you come up here for a reason?" I prompted.

"No. That is, yes. Cap'n told me to ask yer … ask yer … fergotten it now."

"Something to do with the birth?" I asked cautiously.

"Oh yeah! Er, which bit's the baby?"

I wondered how to phrase this best for the benefit of the computer pirates. "It's generally small, pink and fleshy with arms and legs," I said. "It probably won't be any other colour, and probably won't be made from plastic."

He patted my foot gratefully. "That's exactly what we needed to know, matey." With that, he disappeared back inside again.

I hugged my legs and continued to admire the scenery, which is why I noticed that my tank suddenly wasn't the only heavily armoured vehicle on the road. A second tank of the same model was coming level with it, two lanes away. This one was painted red with a white Dixons logo along the side, and there was a man sitting on top in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat, clinging to a black briefcase and matching umbrella. That is, the man was clinging to the briefcase and umbrella, not his hat. Our eyes met, and I gave him a friendly nod, as between equals.

"M-Morning," he said, white-faced. He was clearly new to riding on tanks.

"Morning," I replied in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. "You're a businessman, aren't you?"

"I'm an accountant, actually," he said. "And you're a pirate?"

"Yep. A land pirate. Well, a sky pirate. Well, I'm a sort of intermediate stage of pirate, at the moment."

The conversation nosedived from there. Well, what could a land pirate on a computer pirate tank say to an accountant on a Dixons tank?

"Nice tank," I said eventually.

"It isn't mine," he replied. "Some Dixons employees are giving me a lift."

"It was computer pirates with me."

He nodded understandingly. "My name's Penfold, by the way," he said, proffering a hand. I held my hand out as far as it could go, and we both shook empty air. I told him my name.

"Strange name," he said. "Mind if I call you Jim lad?"

I was just about to reply, probably with an insult, when the hatch next to me flew open. The captain appeared in a small eruption of paper streamers, wide of eye and big of smile, clutching a bottle of some kind of energy drink in one hand and a football rattle in the other. He was wearing a conical party hat on top of his traditional big black captain's hat.

"It's a boy!" he cried. "We've cracked the MI6 archives and I've got a son! It all got really confusing when the umbilical cord got lost in all the network cables, but we worked it out! Ye were so helpful we're gonna name him after yer, matey! We're gonna name 'im Jam!"

He wouldn't have listened to me even if I had dignified him with a reply. He had seen the Dixons tank, and his happy mood transformed instantly into one of great seriousness. "Dixons!" he hissed, derisively speaking the name of his organisation's greatest foe. There were cries of horror from below, which ended abruptly when the captain slammed the hatch shut again.

"He's a little highly strung," I said to Penfold. "He's just become a father."

I suddenly found that I no longer had to crane my neck around to speak to him, as the turret on which I sat seemed to have rotated to face the other tank. Penfold was about to speak when the gigantic gun fired, rocking the tank below me. An explosion in a meadow beyond signalled a 'miss'. Penfold flattened himself against his own turret, clinging white-knuckled in fear as it began to rotate towards me.

A shell fired from the Dixons tank exploded far too close to the rear of my tank for comfort. I jumped forwards in reflex and found myself clinging to the gun barrel with all my arms and legs.

"Boy or girl?" asked Penfold nervously.

"Boy!" I called back.

"Tell him congratulations!"

I felt the barrel fire, and the Dixons tank skidded left and right for a few seconds before getting back into a comparatively straight line. When I could open my eyes again, Penfold was hanging from his tank's barrel by his hands. Looking back, I admire how he was able to hold onto his briefcase and umbrella with his feet.

"Where exactly are you from, by the way?" I shouted.

"I'm from the Superglue accounting firm!" he explained.

"Superglue?"

"Yes!"

"I thought they only made glue…"

"That's a mistake a lot of people make!"

Another explosion right in front of the computer pirates' tank caused it to jolt violently, leaving me dangling upside-down by my legs. Seeing this, Penfold brought his legs up and let his hands go so we could continue talking face-to-face.

"Where are you heading?" he asked.

"Southampton!" I said, blood rushing to my head uncomfortably. "I've just got a job over there!"

"Me too!" he replied. "I have to meet a client over there to-"

That, I'm afraid, marked the end of our conversation. I had noticed I was having to crane my neck to look at Penfold again, as the pirate tank was accelerating and had moved in front of its enemy. Penfold's speech was cut off as a shell from the Dixons tank blew out the caterpillar tracks of the Microsoft Engine, which suddenly found it had lost acceleration rapidly. The Dixons tank ploughed into its rear, and both tanks went off the road.

Then a blue tank with 'POLICE' written over it appeared over the horizon, and everything sort of went downhill from there.

*

Penfold and I both agreed that it was a spectacular battle, once we had both been thrown off. We couldn’t agree who had won, of course, as we both felt somehow moved to be on the side of whoever had been giving us a ride. Both tanks were now useless piles of smoking metal, so we eventually decided that both tanks could be considered losers and dropped the matter.

After the police had realised we were innocent bystanders and had put their truncheons away, they had taken our statements and buggered off while we helped the paramedics with picking through the wreckage for survivors. The only one they were able to find was a single pirate who refused to go on the ambulance without his computer, and had demanded a second stretcher for it.

Both Penfold and I decided to abandon hitch-hiking for the time being, and the pair of us set off south along the side of the motorway.

*

"And that's basically why I'm on the road," I told Penfold, as night was falling and we were sitting around the campfire we had built in the middle of a roundabout. He had given me one of the sandwiches from his briefcase, and while I loathed egg and cress with a passion, I decided to allow hunger to trump personal taste.

He stared at me. "You're searching for something that you can't even identify?"

"Yep."

"But … how would you know it when you found it?"

I shrugged. "Just figured I would," I said.

"That's the most ridiculous life's ambition I ever heard."

"Right, so shut up, then. You wouldn't give people tips on buying a car if you only owned a bicycle yourself, would you."

"I suppose not," he said jadedly. "Must you chew with your mouth open?"

"Yes," I said immediately. "I'm a pirate."

"I thought you were one of those posh boy pirates," he said. "The sort who agonizes about killing people and gets annoyed by the big rough salty pirates having bad manners."

"I'm a sort of mixture of pirate," I explained. "When I'm chewing with my mouth open, that's the big rough salty pirate." I pointed to the napkin in my lap. "That's the posh boy pirate."

There was a gurgle from the little bundle beside Penfold. He put down his dinner and took the newborn computer pirate into his arms, rocking it gently. "Good thing this little chap survived, this chapter would have been so tasteless otherwise," he said dreamily.

I shrugged. "What kind of future has an orphaned baby born to insane computer nerds got to look forward to?"

"I dunno, but I can't just leave him here... maybe we could leave him on a doorstep when we get to Southampton."

"Least we can do, I suppose," I considered. "His name's Jam, by the way."

"Jam," murmured Penfold. "What a nice name."

I took in the rather soppy expression on Penfold's face, and sighed. I had never been a great fan of small children. In fact I recalled a time when I had found myself trapped in a disused mine for four weeks with a coachload of primary school children. In the end I was so hungry and desperate I did something truly drastic, which I sometimes look back on and regret.

You'd be surprised how much junk they put in their packed lunches these days.

"Look at that crocodile! Can I pet him, mummy, can I, please?"

- J. Hook, West Midlands Safari Park

We eventually arrived in Southampton on Wednesday evening when the sun was just dropping below the horizon at the end of another tiresome trek across the sky. We had eventually managed to get a lift from a white van, in the back of which Penfold had gone while I took the front seat with the driver. Our small companion lay between us.

"Is that baby yours?" asked the driver at one point in a rather hollow voice.

"Nah, we rescued it from a crash," I said nonchalantly, and changed the subject quickly. "What do you do, by the way?"

He seemed quite startled by the question. "Me? Er..."

As the ellipsis extended to the third full-stop I felt I should elaborate. "Painter and decorator?" I hazarded.

The driver looked down at the enormous red stains covering his grey jumpsuit. "Er, yes, that's right. Just got back from a job."

"I thought so. You're still wearing your splash guard."

He fingered the hockey mask that covered his face, then returned his hand to the steering wheel. "Where can I drop you off?"

The nice man dropped us off in a suburban area of town not far from the coast. Penfold seemed rather pale and shaken after he emerged from the van's rear, but when I asked him about it he started to hyperventilate so I felt it best not to pursue the matter further. He obviously had a problem with paint fumes.

I placed the baby Jam into his hands and he seemed to calm down a bit. "This looks like a nice enough neighbourhood," I observed. "Find a nice doorstep to leave him on, then ring the bell and run. I'll be in that corner shop getting us something to eat." I pointed.

"Righto."

I eventually decided on some of those delicious individually wrapped chocolate muffins corner shops always seem to have and a couple of bottles of Lucozade. I was kept waiting outside the shop for a good half hour before Penfold reappeared. As I offered him his own meal I noticed he was still holding the baby. "What happened?" I asked, with a sense of dread.

"Well, I went around, but all the houses had signs in the windows saying 'no foundlings please', so I couldn't leave him there."

I hit him gently over the head with a bottle. "You're a complete wuss, aren't you," I said, and sighed. "So now what?"

He looked up from making little goo-goo sounds to the baby, and gave me a hopeful look. "Can we keep him?"

I hit him again. Harder. "Look, tomorrow morning I'm being picked up by my new pirate crew and you've got to meet your client. Neither of us are in any suitable position to look after a baby. Just leave him with the corner shop woman or something."

"I think you and your pirate friends should take him."

This time I dispensed with the bottle and just used my fist. "Are you completely simple? We're pirates! We don't even know where to buy rusks!"

"Look. Just hear me out. If Jam grows up to be an adventurous drifter or something and finds himself winning the heart of some upper-class girl who's been sheltered her whole life by an overbearing father, he'll have an interesting backstory he can use to woo her over with his manly charms."

If there was a convincing argument to go against that logic then I couldn't think of one. "No way," I said, regardless. "I know I speak for piratekind as a whole when I say we can't stand kids. You take him. Do what you like with him. I'm going to find a nice park bench to sleep on."

I left him standing there with a hurt expression on his face, the baby in his arms, as I stormed off into the night. I have to admit I felt the tiniest pang of guilt as I went out of his visual range. But it went away when I stood on a nail.

*

I woke up on Thursday morning absolutely exhausted, with my overall emotions wavering somewhere between nervous excitement and shame.

Penfold was an OK bloke. A little nervous, and perhaps the biggest wuss I'd ever met, but he didn't really deserve being left abandoned in the middle of Southampton holding the baby. Alright, so neither of them were my responsibility and at least one of them was probably old enough to look after himself, but I still felt that I'd been a little abrupt with him. I wondered briefly if I should try and find him before heading for Pier 14, but abandoned the idea, as finding him in a town as big as Southampton would be nigh impossible, and he was probably with his client by now. Whatever I did it seemed that Penfold and I had parted ways for good, on rather poor terms, too.

I felt kind of guilty about that. Then I felt good about feeling guilty about it, forgot the matter entirely and began making my way towards Pier 14 with a spring in my step.

So you can imagine how put out I was when I found the man himself leaning against a rail at the end of Pier 14, minus his umbrella and hat and still clutching a gurgling bundle in his pinstriped arms. He caught a glimpse of me as I approached, pulled off an expert double-take, and let his jaw go slack.

"What the hell are you doing here?" we both asked simultaneously.

"This is where my new crew are supposed to pick me up..." I said.

"Well, this is where my client said he'd meet me!" he replied.

I felt it was time to ask a pertinent question. "Who are your clients, exactly?"

"Sky pirates," he said, somewhat predictably. "They need me to go over some problems they've been having with their booty records."

I smacked my forehead. "So we've both been heading for the same place all along..."

Behind his eyes, the penny dropped. "You're joining the Sky Pirates?"

I nodded, and leaned against the rail next to him. "Guess we're stuck with each other," I said, in what I hoped was a friendly tone.

"Guess so," he said, shortly. He seemed a little gruff.

There was a long pause before I spoke again. "You're still holding the baby, I see."

"Some of us actually have a sense of morality," he sniffed, rocking the child gently.

I shuffled my feet. "Look, I'm sorry I shouted at you and hit you last night."

He answered with only a little 'hmph' sound, so I continued. "I was just a bit tired. But you have to realise that we pirates don't make good parents. He'll probably be an alcoholic by the time he's 6 and be gutting things with a cutlass by the time he turns 8."

Penfold sighed. "I don't think you can speak for pirates as a whole," he said weakly.

I answered his sigh with a defeated one of my own, and rolled my eyes heavenwards. It was there that they caught a glimpse of a shadowy shape silhouetted against the bright morning sky, descending towards us at a nice gradual pace. I poked Penfold in the ribs and pointed towards it, and his eyes took to rolling heavenwards too.

The Sky Pirates' ship in many ways resembled that of the Land Pirates, with some rather obvious differences, which I shall detail now. Where the ship of the Land Pirates had had a huge pair of cylindrical grinding thingies at the front of the keel, used to push their way through the tarmac as it went on its merry way, the Sky Pirates just had a huge rotating propeller at the rear and an amusing sticker reading "WE BRAKE FOR SEAGULLS". Also, where the Land Pirates' ship had merely had sails, the Sky Pirates' ship also had a series of large balloons, each about five yards across and apparently made from enormous quantities of sewn-together condoms, which the ship dangled precariously from.

Aside from that, it was pretty much identical to the Land Pirates ship. It even had a series of scurvy dogs standing along the side of the main deck waving their cutlasses going 'aharr'. Penfold and I watched, suitably impressed, as the ship descended gracefully until it was about ten feet above the ground, whereupon the engine cut out and it suddenly hit the pier with a splintering crunch. I leapt back out of reflex.

"Aharrr!" aharred one of the bigger pirates. "Ye wouldn't happen to 'ave seen an accountant and a scurvy grog-swillin' Land Pirate 'round here fixin' to join our crew?"

"We would be them," I called upwards.

"Which one's which?" shouted someone. The pirate crew laughed uproariously for several seconds before it all descended into 'aharr's again.

I sighed. "I'm the Land Pirate, alright?"

"Posh boy pirate, aye?" called the original shouter. "We don't like posh boy pirates round 'ere, laddie."

"You should really get with the times," I said. "You should always have minority representation in your workforce."

There was one of those awkward pauses.

"We don't like minority representation round 'ere, either," said my tormentor, sparking off a new wave of 'aharr's.

"Excuse me?" said Penfold, who up until this point had been silent, clutching his briefcase in a white-knuckled hand. "I can see you all have a lot of pirate banter to be getting on with, could you point me in the direction of your accounts?"

"Aye, ye're the accountant? We don't like accountants round 'ere, matey." Short pause. "Or their babbies."

"Is there anyone you like around here?" I asked.

"David Bowie," said another, as yet unheard of pirate, after a thoughtful pause. There was suddenly a lot of head-nodding and 'aye's amongst the crew. "We like David Bowie."

"And Patrick Stewart."

"And that nice man from the off-licence -"

"Alright, alright, get back to your drinking, everyone," said a new voice, female and bereft of pirate accent. The pirates suddenly shrank in awe of the woman who had fought her way to the front of the throng and was now gazing down upon us. She was quite attractive, as pirate queens have been known to be, with the usual black captain's hat, frizzy red hair and a blue and white stripy shirt.

"Sorry about them," she said, addressing me. "You're Captain Scar's lad?"

"Yes. Aye."

She gave Penfold a disarming smile. "And you're the man from the Superglue accounting firm?"

"Er, yes," he said, nervously as always.

The female captain turned slightly and shouted something we didn't quite hear to someone we didn't quite see, and a gangplank extended from the top deck to the floor in front of us. It seemed to be made from one of those big yellow rubber slides they have on aeroplanes, scrunched and tightened up to be climbable. I exchanged a quick glance with Penfold, then scrambled aboard with him bringing up the rear.

"Captain Rose Black," said the captain by way of introduction, shaking first my hand then Penfold's. "Some call me Black Rose, but only if they like having their noses cut off."

She laughed. I laughed, briefly. Penfold gave one of those polite little laughs you give when you don't really get the joke. But then, he wasn't a pirate like us. Captain Black turned to him. "The account books are in the bilges," she said. "Wretched Joseph will show you to them."

As Penfold was led below decks by an enormous hairy creature with two legs coated in woodstain, I felt moved to start a conversation with this undoubtedly delectable young lady who, upon closer inspection, seemed to be about the same age as me.

"I went to school with a Rose Black," I said nonchalantly. "She was about your height, with lots of big red hair like yours."

She gave me a quizzical look and asked me my real name. I told her, and she gave me a pleasant smile, and seemed about to say something.

"Right tomboy, she was," I continued, oblivious. "I went out with her for a couple of weeks, but then she nicked all my Red Dwarf videos and ran off with my best friend Mike."

"Yes, and incidentally -"

"In fact, if I ever see her again I'm going to put my hands around her neck and squeeze until she stops making noises, then squeeze some more until liquid comes out of her mouth. Even if she was, say, the captain of a pirate ship surrounded by toadying lackeys who would strike me dead as soon as I was finished. Because I would die with the knowledge that I had got my revenge for that terrible insult. I curse the name of Rosemary Witherspoon Black. Curse it, I say!" I spat colourfully over the deck.

Captain Black gave me a slightly startled look, then closed her mouth.

"Sorry," I said, "I just tend to run off at the mouth about these things. What were you saying?"

"Nothing!" she said rapidly. "Nothing at all!"

I shrugged, and looked over the side of the rail at the slightly cracked hull sitting upon the pier. "Why did you land like that?" I inquired.

"How would you have suggested we land?"

"Well, in the water, perhaps?"

"If this ship was watertight do you think we'd be flying it?" Something seemed to occur to her. "You haven't seen a team of computer pirates around, have you? They're supposed to meet us here and set us up with a database for the booty records."

I kept my big stupid gob shut.

"Can't wait all day," she said, frowning. "Oh well." She made a curious hand movement, and an unnamed pirate began winding up the anchor. The ship gave a sudden lurch, and within seconds had left the ground, leaving behind a few pieces of splintered wood. I watched with some awe as the town of Southampton unfolded below me, the Sky Pirates' ship gradually gaining more and more height.

"OK," she said suddenly. "Welcome to the exciting new world of sky pirating."

"Isn't there supposed to be some sort of interview process?"

"Not usually, no. We're a fairly new ship. We need all the men we can get."

"Don't you want to see my reference?"

"Thankfully -" she began.

"- that won't be necessary," said a new but familiar voice belonging to a large figure emerging from below decks. It was a grizzled voice hardened slightly through chain smoking and strained through a big bushy black beard, and the owner was an enormous man clad in a big black and red tunic.

"Captain Scar!" I said, as if it wasn't yet obvious enough.

"Arr, it's First Mate Scar now, laddie," he said, pointing proudly to the bandana that had replaced his big black captain's hat. "Ye arrived then, I see."

"What are you doing here?"

"Well, after I finished off Ol' Ben, I realised I didn't 'ave any reason to stay in land piratin', so I thought I'd get my ol' crew to drop me off 'ere so I could see what all the fuss was about wit' sky piratin'."

I was about to say something along the lines of how good it was to see him again, when something else occurred to me. "So the ship was going to Southampton but you let me hitch-hike my own way here anyway?"

He gave me a guilty look. "It sounds so negative when ye put it like that, Jim lad."

I returned his guilty look with an angry one of my own. "I'm going to my hammock to sulk," I said shortly, and headed below decks.

A little while later I came back on deck. "Which one's my hammock?"

"Second deck down, fifth one on the left, with the pink spots."

"Ah."

There was even a little chocolate mint on the pillow. I would have appreciated the gesture if it hadn't melted.

*

I couldn't sleep that night, so I headed up to the top deck and stood at the ship's prow, watching the clouds flutter past and listening to the cries of horny birds. Some other salty dogs had apparently had the same idea, all slumped against masts and each other, snoring fitfully.

So this was sky pirating. And I had to admit, there was one hell of a view. Not much but stars and clouds at this point, but there were certainly a lot of them, and it was all rather humbling.

Captain Black had mentioned that the ship wouldn't be touching down for another month, so I had better like this one. There was no easy way to drop out after a week this time, and I had plenty of time to find out if this was what I wanted.

Briefly the indeterminate Something I had devoted my life to finding flicked into my mind's eye. Since I still didn't actually know what it was it took the form this time of a gigantic wooden armadillo controlled by a series of levers in the head section, in which a mysterious cackling man with wild grey hair sat. It was flying towards the sky pirates' ship on a pair of gigantic wings made from several tarpaulins stitched together, and as it passed us I saw one of the eyes wink robotically.

I hurriedly dismissed the mental image before it became too surreal. The point was, I thought, would sky pirating help me find it?

My thought processes were interrupted by the clicking of sensible shoes upon a wooden deck behind me. Penfold had come on deck, the baby Jam in his arms, looking around him with an expression of some awe.

"How did they react to that?" I asked conversationally. He frowned until I cocked a head towards the bundle in his arms, and he reacted to it as if seeing it for the first time.

"Oh ... er, Captain Black said it should be alright to keep him here for the time being ... until they find someone else who could take him off their hands ..."

I nodded, then returned to gazing at the clouds. Penfold eyed me quizzically, then took to gazing in the same direction.

"What are we gazing at?" he asked.

"Destiny," I said, distantly. "Mine is out there somewhere. I just won't know it until I find it."

There was a long pause, but not particularly awkward this time.

"What does this scenery say to you, Penfold?" I said.

"It says ... that we're airborne..." he said, his voice indicating that he'd just realised something important.

"Well ... yes ..."

He looked over the side. "Airborne ... over sea ..."

"We're going to be doing some pirating over France, apparently."

"The ship's moved on!" he shouted suddenly, stirring the sleeping pirates. "I was only supposed to be here for one morning to sort the books out! I'm supposed to be back in the office tomorrow!"

As he unceremoniously dumped Jam into my arms and ran below decks, I felt a curious smile cross my features. The baby gurgled and offered me the slightly manic look only babies born to computer pirates can give.

"Prat," I muttered.

"Where does it all go, eh?"

- R. Van Winkle

"I reckon," said Ruthless Dave one morning in spring, "that the entire world is surrounded in a layer of astronaut piss."

Insane Simon and I exchanged the old 'someone's drunk' look.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and the three of us had taken the opportunity to cling from the rigging while waving our swords and go 'aharr'.

I had been with the Sky Pirates for just over ten years now, and I was still enjoying myself immensely.

It wasn't just the adventures, the travel or the looting. A lot of it was the grog. This crew had our own special recipe for the stuff, we didn't just bung Carlsberg in a pewter tankard until the foam dribbles down the side and quaff it over games of Scrabble and Happy Families. This was a heady mixture of home-brewed beer, spices and a few select industrial chemicals. This was manly grog, drunk over manly games like Blackjack and Cluedo. We also found it was good for cleaning the drains.

But I digress. I was happy as a Sky Pirate. Over the years I had been educated well in the arts of looting, swordplay and grog-drinking, and could command considerable respect as a grizzled salty sky sailor alongside any of my fellows. My career had eventually seen me rise to the dizzy heights of Second Mate. The original - Unpleasant John, a man who had once cut off an enemy's hand with his beard - had long since retired to the South Downs with a nice pension in booty and a carriage clock.

And here I was, ten years after it had all begun, a seasoned twenty-nine-year-old sky pirate with an entirely natural designer stubble, hanging with the comrades I felt so close to, talking complete bollocks on the rigging.

"Yeah," elaborated Ruthless Dave. "'Cos, satellites and space shuttles and things 'ave been goin' up into space fer years, and what do ye think 'appens to all the astronaut piss? They shove it out the airlock, mateys. And where do ye think it goes from there?"

"Stevenage," said Unholy Bill, who was slightly higher up. "My mum told me that astronaut piss once came down from the sky in a big block of ice and hit the off-licence."

"Was it alright?" I asked.

"Oh aye, lad. But the owner lost his dog and four bottles of Absolut were never seen again."

We considered this, and bowed our heads in remembrance of departed alcohol.

"JIM LAD!" shouted someone from on deck, interrupting our reverie. I looked to see that it was Penfold, his hands cupped around his mouth and his accounting briefcase still slung over his shoulder on a makeshift leather strap.

"AYE?" I shouted back.

"CAPTAIN WANTS TO SEE YOU," he responded.

"COMING!" I yelled in a pseudo sing-song fashion, before clamping my cutlass blade between my teeth and clambering down the rigging. Unlike Ruthless Dave I had so far been able to stave off scurvy and my teeth were still suitable for this purpose. I noticed him look at me with sorrow in his eyes so I made a sort of apologetic grunting sound, only the smallest speck of drool escaping from my mouth, and swung off the rigging onto the deck in front of the accountant.

Exactly why Penfold had decided to stay with us was still a matter for debate among the pirates. He was still nervous and jumpy and a definite fish out of water on board, but he didn't like to talk about it.

There were three popular theories abound as to his continuing employment with the Sky Pirates. The first theorised that Captain Black had persuaded him to stay on the promise of the Golden Calculator, the holy grail of the accounting world, which she was pretty certain they'd happened upon in a street market once but couldn't quite recall which.

The second theory went along the lines that after that first short voyage in the sky he had seen the emptiness in his current life and the sheer richness of the sky pirating lark, and had dumped his old gig there and then to become the world's first sky accountant.

The third theory, which I personally subscribe to, isn't as popular as the others among the crew but is backed up by solid evidence. Namely, Penfold's diary, which I had laboriously snuck a look in. After calling his office at Superglue from a public phone box in Calais two weeks after he was supposed to be back, they had politely but firmly told him that he needn't bother turning up at all any more.

So that was that.

"What's this about?" I asked him.

"I dunno."

I rolled my eyes and headed for the cabin like a schoolboy bound for the headmaster's office. Oblivious of my fate, I just hoped this wasn't going to concern the incident involving the Crow's Nest, Loathsome Nigel, a wooden cutlass and a spider in a matchbox.

As I entered the cabin it became clear that both Captain Black and First Mate Scar were present, looking slightly out of place in the nicely wallpapered and carpeted manager's office the captain had decorated her cabin to look like. The captain took up position on the seat we had stolen from a passenger jet some years back, while Scar was perched unsteadily on the window sill.

Neither of them had changed much in the last decade I had lived and worked with them. In fact, I had it on good faith that Scar was still wearing the exact same outfit he had on when he first joined the crew. He had once decided to acquire a parrot to wear on his shoulder, but he hadn't been prepared to shell out the price most pet stores demanded for a suitably colourful bird. Now a small garden thrush sat upon his great shoulder, trained to occasionally turn on a dictaphone onto which Scar had painstakingly recorded the phrase 'Pieces of eight!' several times in a high-pitched voice.

Rose had changed only slightly - from a beautiful pirate queen of 19 to a staggeringly beautiful pirate queen pushing thirty. She'd filled out and matured a little here and a little there, and had been persuaded to wear a fake hook by her first mate, but on the whole was still the same pirate captain I had pledged allegiance to all those years ago.

"Ah, Jim lad, take a seat," she said primly. I looked around for somewhere to sit, and found only an elephant-foot umbrella stand. I parked myself inelegantly upon it.

"Now then -" she began.

"If this is about Loathsome Nigel, I had no idea he had a heart condition -"

"No, this is not about Loathsome Nigel. How old are you now, Jim lad?"

"Twenty-nine years, four months, nine days," I said promptly. I knew this for sure, as I had recently counted all the tally marks chalked onto the wall near my hammock.

"We've been thinkin'," said First Mate Scar in his usual piratey growl. "That maybe we should stop callin' ye Jim lad."

My heart leapt. "You're going to start calling me by my real name?"

The slightly pained expressions on their faces told me this was not the case. I endeavoured to look disappointed.

"It's not that it isn't a nice name -" said Rose tenderly.

"So what is it then?" I asked.

A pause.

"Alright," said Scar, "It is that it isn't a nice name."

"Bloody stupid name," said Rose, nodding.

"Tweet," added the thrush.

I sighed with grudging acquiescence. "So what am I going to be called?"

"Well, laddie, ye're nearly thirty now ... we should really stop callin' ye 'lad', lad. Young Jam is nearly 11. Time we started callin' 'im 'lad', instead of 'boy'."

I nodded a little. "I see. I'm too old to be the ship's 'lad' anymore."

"Quite. We want to give you a proper pirate name," explained Rose.

My heart leapt again. This was the moment I had been waiting for for years. To finally shed the stigma of being called 'Jim lad' everywhere I went, or 'Jam lid' when the speaker was drunk, and become a true pirate with a true pirate name.

A true pirate name comes in either two forms. Firstly there's what is colloquially known as the 'Salty dog' name - one's first name preceded by an adjective that best describes the salty dog in question. The other kind of name is called a 'Dog the Salty' name, in which the pirate's first name is followed by a 'the' and a suitable word.

"We were thinking of a nice 'Salty Dog' name," said Rose. "I suggested either Thin Jim or Lanky Jim -"

"- and I thought maybe Posh Jim," said Scar, looking pleased with himself.

A grimace of disgust briefly flashed across my features. "None of those quite do it for me," I admitted.

They seemed quite exasperated, as if they'd been thinking about this for hours. "We've been thinking about this for hours," confirmed Rose. She jerked a thumb towards a nearby whiteboard, on which was written the following:

Clever Jim Virginal Jim

Well-scrubbed Jim Thin Jim

Pleasant Jim Fairly-good-at-swordfighting Jim (crossed out)

Posh Jim Tall Jim

Hazardous Jim Murky Jim

Scruffy Jim Jim and tonic (crossed out several times)

Lanky Jim Middle-class Jim

I winced as I read. "None of those really do it for me either."

Rose and Scar sighed in unison. "Perhaps you would like to come up with something?" said my captain.

I fingered my bandana thoughtfully. "How about Deadly Jim?"

"Jim, accordin' to Christian teachin's, lyin' is a sin," said Scar. "As such, if ye insisted everyone call ye that, ye would be damning this entire crew to Hell."

"Let's have a little brainstorming session, shall we?" suggested Rose.

*

Two and a half exasperating hours later, Scar and I left the Captain's office with rather pale complexions to find we had missed lunch. Scar set off below decks, muttering something that sounded a little like 'choosy git', and Penfold came up to me as I slumped down against the main mast.

"What'd she want, Jim lad?" he asked.

I gave him an extremely weary look. "It's Articulate Jim, now."

He winced. "Can I just keep calling you Jim lad?"

I shook my head and wiped the crust out of my eyes. "I'm too old to be the ship's lad anymore. Jam's going to be the ship's lad. I have to be called Articulate Jim."

"Was that really the best name you could come up with?"

"Yes," I said, dropping the subject down a very deep hole. "Where is Jam, anyway? I should pass on the good news."

"He's manning the crow's nest with Camp Gareth."

I thanked him and headed for the rigging, bade Ruthless Dave and Insane Simon the time of day - mentioning in passing my new name, which induced a fit of laughter that sent Simon tumbling into one of the open barrels of grog we kept on deck - and clambered up to the very peak of the vessel. As the fluttering Jolly Roger overhead hoved into view I heard the unmistakable voice of the boy Jam, and the equally unmistakable voice of Camp Gareth.

I pulled myself upwards with a strength known only to career pirates who do a lot of hanging around on the rigging waving cutlasses, and the occupants of the crow's nest became visible.

Camp Gareth was his usual self, clad today in a blend of silks and satins dyed in pink and purple. An enormous brimmed hat of similar colour with a feather in the band sat jauntily upon his head, and he bore the special glittery silver eyepatch he had rather foolishly tried to sew sequins on while wearing. Consequently he was one of the few pirates onboard with a genuine need for the thing. He was a strange one, that much was clear; what more can one say about a man who actually did read Cosmopolitan for the articles?

Now, a word on Jam.

The last time these memoirs had touched upon Jam he was but a newborn child, clad in swaddling clothes and cradled in Penfold's arms. Now he was ten years of age, and looked exactly as you'd expect a young man raised around pirates but with an accountant as a father figure to look. He wore traditional posh boy pirate cabin boy garb - a ruffled white shirt, slacks, knee socks and sensible shoes - as well as a plain white bandana and a plastic training hook.

His personality was in many ways similar to that of his adopted father. He had been taught to read and write with the only reading matter on board - the ship's log, selected personal diaries, and the papers in Penfold's briefcase - and as such was quite well-spoken, though his vocabulary lacked many words, his spelling needed some work and I often heard him slip a little 'aharr' or 'me hearties' into his sentences. He had a nervous manner but seemed quite comfortable around even the most grizzled of crew members, all of whom seemed to also be very fond of Jam. I suppose even evil vicious corsairs can be sensitive around small children, and things hadn't changed as the boy had grown up.

Right now, he was using the spyglass kept in the crow's nest for its most popular purpose, not playing with it idly as a normal child his age would, but concentrating purely on what he saw with grim determination.

"Well, look who it is, Jammy," said Camp Gareth as I appeared.

Jam immediately turned to face me, and I found myself staring down the lens of the spyglass. I smiled in what I hoped was a disarming fashion, and a few awkward seconds later, the spyglass went away.

Being brought up by pirates had left a mark, of course. Jam wore the mask of a cherubic child, but there was something else there, something in the eyes. A steely spark of ruthlessness that could surely allow him to win a staring competition with any other child you'd care to name. He was also the only ten year old boy I had ever known who occasionally needed to shave.

"Hiya, Uncle Jim lad!" he said brightly. He called everyone onboard with the prefix 'uncle'. No-one seemed to mind, except the captain. "Have you found it yet?"

"No, I haven't found it yet, Jam."

He also served as an unofficial ship's confidant. There was something about his bright and adhering nature that made one want to spill one's guts in his presence. This I found particularly useful, as I found that with just a few minutes alone with him, a packet of jelly babies and a notepad and pencil I had enough blackmail material to get anything I wanted. In his above statement he was of course referring to the eponymous Something I was still laboriously searching for, which in my recent private thoughts had taken on the appearance of a stick of celery inserted through the core of an apple sitting atop a Mexican Aztec pyramid. Every time we'd met since I'd mentioned this fixation of mine he had asked me if I'd found it, and after five years it certainly wasn't growing old, no sirree.

"Uncle Rose was telling me that she was planning on giving you a proper pirate name," he said, formal introductions over.

"That's right, Jam. Articulate Jim. You can just call me Uncle Jim now."

"Does that mean you're not the ship's 'lad' anymore?"

"Yes, Jam."

"Does that mean I'm the ship's 'lad', now, matey?"

"Yes, Jam."

That was another slightly unnerving thing about the boy. He picked up so much gossip on board ship that nothing you could tell him surprised him, but he always ended up telling you that he already knew in a way that made you think you had told him.

Sort of.

"About time too," said Camp Gareth, now wielding the spyglass with hips cocked. "I've felt really silly calling you 'lad' ever since I joined this crew."

Camp Gareth, for lovers of explanatory exposition, had been on this planet for four years less than I had and joined the crew just two years ago, but I'd have thought in all that time he'd have been able to decide on a sexuality and stick to it.

"Does dad know?" asked Jam.

"He's not your dad," I said automatically.

"Yeah, well ... my real parents are long gone ..."

"I was just saying, it's such a shame about your real parents," interrupted Gareth. "Jim was telling me just yesterday what fabulous pirates they were, scourges of the seven skies and all that."

"Arr, did they really die from being crushed under the enormous mountains of booty they had collected while fending off two enemy pirates each?" asked Jam, looking at me with those big innocent wide eyes of his. I coughed politely.

"I swear to you that I haven't not completely avoided to refrain from telling untruths about your parents," I assured him. This seemed to satisfy him, and he took the spyglass from Camp Gareth once again. Gareth gave me a look which said 'I deciphered that sentence properly', and I returned it with a look that said 'Keep your mouth shut or I'll tell everyone what you told Jam about the incident with the stirrup pump and Dave's copy of Battlefield Earth'. He nodded in understanding, and gave me a look that said 'Would you care for a game of Travel Scrabble?'. I gave him a look in the affirmative, and we both sat down on the floor of the crow's nest to play.

It was such a glorious day to be alive and airborne. Gareth and I played several games just for the sheer love of the sport, while Jam dutifully surveyed the horizon. A little after three in the afternoon Insane Simon appeared to hand around mugs of grog shandy, and we paused for a few minutes to savour the sun and the drink. It was testament perhaps to Penfold's upbringing that Jam wasn't a hard grog drinker like the rest of us, but we did allow him the occasional glass of the non-alcoholic version (dishwater with a slice of lemon).

In fact, it wasn't until just before teatime and just as I was laying down 'MAINBRACE' which would have won me the game that Jam did a little double-take, lowered his spyglass, and began ringing the 'booty bell' enthusiastically.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's another Sky Pirate ship!" he yelled excitedly down to the upturned faces below. Sure enough, a sleek wooden vessel similar to our own was anchored to a nearby cloud. It was currently a little too far away to see much in the way of detail, but I could tell that it was painted black with red streaks here and there. A lot of the crewmen down below were cheering and 'aharr'ing in anticipation as the bosun steered our ship towards the other.

The sky pirating community is a complex one indeed. There are many hundreds of ships at large all over the world, some on friendly terms, others mortal enemies. I wondered idly whether this new ship was on good or bad terms with us. If it was on bad terms then the ships would pull alongside each other and both crews would swarm all over each other's ships and there'd be a massive fight until one captain was killed or made to surrender, whereupon all the losing team's booty went to the winners. If we were on friendly terms with them then the procedure was exactly the same, but everyone was very good about it and tried not to leave mortal wounds if possible, and everyone was invited to a big grog-swilling party on the losing ship.

We hardly ever had the former variety of skirmish anymore. Captain Black seemed to find it very easy to make friends.

The captain herself was making her way across the top deck followed closely by her first mate. The pirate crew was silent as it parted to allow for her to reach the railing, whereupon she took a scroll from one pocket and a pair of reading glasses from another. She began to read from the paper, just as she had done every time this had happened for the last ten years of my employment.

"'Attention fellow pirates,'" she read. "'I am Captain Rosemary Black and this is my ship. I challenge thee to a duel. Whoever is defeated by either extermination or surrender shall hand over all their booty to the victor. If you do not consent to these conditions, say 'ARR' now.'"

There was a pause, and no sound came. From the point of view of Jam, Gareth and I, it gradually became clear as we neared the other ship that there was a peculiar lack of activity about it.

"Very well," said Rose. "'By the power invested in me as captain of this vessel, I hereby declare this pillaging -'"

"Captain, wait!" I shouted. "Something's not right."

All eyes turned to me, some quite balefully. No pirate liked being deprived of a pillage. "What do you mean?" shouted Rose.

"I don't see anyone on deck, in the crow's nest, at the helm, anywhere," I continued. Gareth nodded affirmatively.

"He's right," he said, pointing a limp wrist. "Looks deserted."

For a while no-one spoke as our ship drifted ever closer to the other. When it became clear to those down on deck that what we said was true, everyone fell silent. That was until a little voice somewhere among the crowd piped up.

"Well, that was easier than usual," it said.

"Arr, it's a good thing they weren't around, or I'd 'ave stuck three o'them at once wit' one swipe of me blade," said someone else. As more of those present got into the swing of things, a lot of the conversation turned to the subject of how lucky the non-existent crew were.

Rose, meanwhile, was frowning. I saw her beckon to me, so I clambered back over the side of the crow's nest and made my way back down to the deck, followed closely by Jam and Gareth. As the crowd of pirates around us continued with their muttered conversation, I found myself grouped tightly with the captain, the first mate and my two companions.

"I don't like the look of this," said Rose quietly.

"Arr, come on," said Scar. "The crew are prob'ly all below decks sleepin', or drinkin', or engaged in a vicious an' brutal fight to the death." His tone of voice indicated that he didn't quite believe that himself, and was in no small measure disappointed.

"Yeah," said Gareth suddenly. "Why assume the worst just because there's no-one around? More likely they've gone down to the surface in lifeboats to do some shopping."

"What if it's the legendary ghost ship of Merrick the Murky?" piped up Jam.

"Oh, come on, laddie," said Scar.

The legend to which Jam referred was one of the most notorious in the whole history of dubious sky pirating legends, traditionally told around flickering fires. Although not anymore as naked flames on a wooden ship loaded with this crew's speciality grog don't mix well. Or rather they did, and that was the problem.

Merrick the Murky was the pioneer for sky pirating. He led a secret double life - ruthless pirate by night, fishmonger to the aristocracy by day - who one day found himself in a certain tavern in France while one Jacques Montgolfier was shooting his mouth off drunkenly about balloons that could carry man into the heavens. Most people were ignoring the poor idiot, but Merrick was intrigued. As the young man continued obsessively on his favourite subject the pirate concentrated on every word, formulating a vision that became sky pirating. Oh sure, you won't find Merrick's name in any history book, but he was nonetheless the secret mastermind behind the hot air balloon project, disappearing back into the shadows of obscurity as soon as it was completed, taking with him the schematics and his dream of taking pirating to the sky.

But about the ghost ship - this was a few years later. Merrick and his crew had been flying around the sky endlessly and were fast running out of food. Booty was rare as, at this time period, there weren't any other flying machines at all. Just when the murky one was beginning to wonder if perhaps he'd been a bit of an old arse in pioneering the whole sky pirating thing, he saw a strange shadowy shape in front of him. To his surprise, it was another airship - black and sleek with red highlights, held aloft not by balloons but what appeared to be, upon closer inspection, an enormous flock of seagulls, each individual member tethered to the ship by a length of rope. There didn't seem to be anyone on the ship - no man or beast. The thing was deserted.

(Scholars of pirate history were mystified by the legend of the deserted ship until some bright spark found an entry in the diary of an eccentric German inventor from that period which read as follows: "I'd just worked out how many seagulls are required to lift a sailing boat when some bloody car came round the corner and scared all the buggers away! Blast, buggery, damnation, hellfire [continues for several pages]". So that was that.)

Curious, Merrick ordered his crew to pull alongside the vessel, then decided to board it on his own, to make sure it was safe. This he did, with the big plank of wood reserved for boarding that the crew hadn't had an opportunity to use yet. Merrick searched the deck, but found no-one. Still determined, he found a trapdoor leading below decks, and followed it.

No-one knows exactly what happened down there, nor what Merrick found, as at that point his crew exchanged glances, realised this was their opportunity to rid themselves of the madman who had ruined their lives for the last few years, hauled in the boarding plank and took off, singing happy songs. They then touched down in Newquay, sold the vessel for a not inconsiderable sum of money, then drunk themselves stupid until every last man died of liver failure.

Legend has it that Merrick still haunts the deserted ship, walking up and down the empty deck, constantly making up new and exciting swear words with which to describe his old crew.

"This can't possibly be Merrick's ghost ship, Jam," I said patiently. "That one's somewhere over Tierra Del Fuego."

"Aye," said Scar. "We all went there for a day out when ye were just two, Jam lad, remember, Jim?"

I smiled in wistful memory. "I remember I got a stick of rock from the gift shop," I said. "And the cafe did these lovely cream teas -"

"If we could get back to the matter at hand," said Rose loudly, "I think we should board the ship just to investigate. But not the whole crew. Just us. Me, the first and second mates," she nodded at Scar and me, "and Gareth, since he's here."

"Can I come, Uncle Rose?" asked Jam, tugging on her sleeve.

She thought about this. Of course it could be dangerous, but we'd never let that stop us bringing Jam with us on our endeavours. It was all educational, after all. "Alright," she sighed. "But your dad has to come. I don't want to be responsible for you."

Jam trotted off below decks to fetch Penfold, while something seemed to occur to Gareth, whose hands had strayed to his hips. "I don't see how we're going to stop the rest of the crew following us."

"Good point," I said.

"LADS!" bellowed First Mate Scar, cupping his hands around his mouth. "I THINK READY STEADY COOK IS ON!!"

I'd seen the trick done many times, but I always marvelled at how quickly a full pirate crew can vanish below decks. Just the captain and her assigned scout party remained in the sunshine, now with the addition of Penfold, being led by the hand by his small adopted son, looking as exasperated as parents always do in these situations.

Scar and I nodded to each other, picked up the boarding plank from its special position nearby and laid it perpendicular between the two vessels. The special clamps locked into place, and we were ready to board.

"The Bermuda what?"

- Unnamed sailor

"Coo-ee?"

We all jumped at Camp Gareth's exclamation, as it was the only sound we had heard so far on the mysterious ship, apart from the soft creak of wood and the cawing of birds. This was all becoming rather spooky, and I could tell the others felt it. Scar's thrush was tweeting nervously, and Jam was clinging tightly to Penfold's hand. Even Rose seemed wary. The only one who showed no sign of fear was Camp Gareth, but that's probably because he was an idiot.

"Well, this is not exactly a party ship, is it," he said authoritatively, standing with feet apart and hands on hips.

Scar, meanwhile, was investigating things at the steering wheel area. "The anchor's raised," he called to us.

"The ship must have been drifting 'til it got grounded on this cloud," thought Rose aloud. "The question is, for how long?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling I wasn't taking a big enough part in the proceedings. "And why'd the crew abandon it in such a -"

I put my foot on something that squished unpleasantly, and stopped abruptly. The others turned when I didn't finish my sentence, and caught me looking warily down at my foot.

"Be careful," advised Penfold. "Who knows what you just stepped in."

"Thank you, Penfold, I feel better now."

Slowly, and to the horror of the accountant, I raised my boot and looked at the underside with infinite slowness, the way you do when you can smell dog poo and you just know it's on one of your shoes, but you'd rather remain ignorant.

Thankfully, what was now squashed up against my sole was not dog poo, but some kind of curious yellow mush which oozed semi-transparent liquid. There was also what looked like a cocktail stick clinging to it.

"What is it?" asked Rose, as the scout party gathered round.

I sniffed cautiously, then wrinkled my nose. "Smells like rancid cheese." I sniffed again. "And pineapple."

Recognition materialised in Gareth's eyes. "It's one of those cocktail party nibbles," he explained to those among us who didn't go to many cocktail parties. "You know, they put a cube of cheese and a bit of pineapple on a stick and you eat them and stuff ..." he tailed off embarrassed.

"Something tells me that this crew weren't 'aving a cocktail party when they decided to jump ship," said Scar, speaking on behalf of our kind.

"Must have been here for quite a while to get to this state," I said astutely.

"Look," said Penfold, pointing. "There's another one."

Sure enough, another cocktail stick with yellow gunge attached was visible lying innocently on the deck not a few feet away.

"And another," said Jam, trying to be helpful, and pointing towards the base of the mast where another party snack lay.

Now we knew what we were looking for, we could see them everywhere. I counted twenty just casting a look around. Some of them were in small groups of three or four.

"Has anyone here seen The Birds?" I asked. Only Penfold and Gareth nodded. "'Cos that is what I'm reminded of at the moment."

"What are ye drivelling about, Jim?" asked Scar. I was beginning to miss being called 'lad', I discovered to my own surprise.

"Well, does anyone else feel that these snacks are ... watching us?"

There was one of my famous awkward pauses.

"Now that you come to mention it -" began Rose.

"- yeah..." finished Jam.

"- maybe," added Rose, then seemed to pull herself together. "This is silly. Let's split up and explore the ship."

"Split up?"

"Split up?"

"Split up?"

All the men were looking at her in disbelief. "What?" she asked.

"Haven't you ever watched those films where people split up?" said Gareth.

"No," she said firmly, and that was the end of the argument as far as she was concerned. "Scar and I will explore the top deck. Gareth, you check out the crow's nest. Jim, Penfold, Jam, look around below decks. There must be some clue as to what happened here somewhere."

I exchanged glances with Penfold, who then exchanged glances with Scar, who did the same with Gareth, who continued the cycle with Jam.

"Just do it," ordered Rose. "Look, we're pirates. Vicious, grog-swilling corsairs. If there's anything to be afraid of on this ship, it's us. Now get going."

"Vicious grog-swilling corsairs," I muttered when Penfold, Jam and I were descending the ladder that led into the bowels of the ship. "That only accounts for half the party."

Penfold nodded gloomily, and I could see that Jam was debating whether to ask who made up which half, but he wisely chose not to.

It was very dark below decks. All the oil lamps seemed to be out, and the generator for the electric ones had probably gone down months ago. The only light was a dim, second hand sort of light from the grimy portholes, just enough to see by. We were in a small section of hallway that divided various cabins, which seemed to have been at one point rather nicely decorated, with carpets and wallpaper and everything. Now, however, water vapour from clouds had seeped into the wood, the whole place was heavily swelled with damp, the wallpaper was grotty and slipping off, and the carpet was besmirched by more of the rotting cocktail party snacks. The three of us stepped gingerly around them.

"Jim la - er - Jim," said Penfold suddenly as I cast an inquisitive look around. "I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

I didn't even turn to face him. "Is this really a good time?"

"Well, I wanted to catch you alone ... I want this to be just between us three. You are my oldest friend on this ship."

I tried a nearby cabin door. Jammed with damp. I gave it a savage kick and I'm almost certain I felt it squelch underfoot, but it failed to open. Probably because the hinges opened outwards. "What is it, Penfold?" I said.

"Well ... I ... that is, me ... Jam and me ... Jam and I..."

"We've been thinking about leaving the crew," said Jam helpfully, adding "matey," as an afterthought.

This was quite astounding news to me. I was quite astounded. "Leave the ship? When you've just been made ship's 'lad'? Throw away a promising career? I'm quite astounded."

"Not both of us," said Penfold sheepishly. "Just me. Jam wants to stay. I'd like you to be his guardian."

My mouth opened and closed three or four times before I found words. "But ... why?"

"I've just had enough," said Penfold. "It's been ten years and I still haven't been able to settle in properly. It was a mistake from the start. I came into this world as an accountant, and I'll always be an accountant. I feel I've got to go back to my roots."

Our eyes met, but he turned them away hurriedly, embarrassed. I sighed deeply. "You're a wuss, Penfold. I've known you for ten years and you've always been a wuss."

"Perhaps it's all I can be," he said quietly. "I want to leave at the end of the month."

I felt a tugging on my shirt, and found myself receiving the full force of Jam's soulful look. "Please don't mention any of this to Uncle Rose or anyone else," he said. "Dad wants to tell them all in his own time."

"I promise not to tell anyone," I said, mentally inserting certain details into my internal blackmail database under Penfold's name.

"Thank you, Jim," said the man himself. "I'll write to you."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's not get too soppy, my vicious grog-swilling brain can't handle it. Let's get on with what we're supposed to be doing."

The next cabin door I tried was just as jammed as the last one. The one after it opened, but beyond it there was only an unused cabin, full of furniture covered in dust sheets. The next two doors were stuck, but the last one opened quite easily, and it was here that we found something interesting.

"It's a corpse," I said in wonder. Penfold instinctively stuck his hand in front of Jam's eyes.

"Let's go tell the others," he said anxiously. I could tell he wasn't very good around dead bodies, especially really old smelly rotting ones with flies swarming all over them. Just as well then that this was not one of those corpses, but was in fact quite fresh, with barely a week or so's decomposition. He - for he was undoubtedly male - was young, younger than me, and was dressed in the traditional cabin boy garb. He also had a small plastic badge on his waistcoat on which I could read the words 'IT'S MY 21st BIRTHDAY!!'.

"Tragic," I sighed.

"There's a note," said Jam, who had wrestled himself from his adoptive father's grip.

There was indeed a piece of paper apparently torn from a school exercise book, lying next to the dead boy's hand. I immediately picked it up and scanned the contents. A lot of it was rather boring sentimental rubbish about being trapped forever and never being able to see home or his fiancée again, but it did also have interesting details, such as -

"The entire crew has been transformed into cocktail party snacks," I said, having finished skimming through the bulk of the text.

Penfold's mouth was open. "Those things we found ... were the crew?"

"Would certainly make cannibalism easier," I said thoughtfully, then caught the funny look I was receiving, and pretended I hadn't said anything. "This lad was the only crew member who wasn't transformed, and he starved to death."

"He starved to death ... while surrounded by party snacks?"

"Apparently."

Penfold seemed quite pleased by this news. "So he didn't want to eat his former crewmates?" he thought aloud. "At least he had some morals."

"Or lactose intolerance," I said, reading from the paper.

If this book ever gets converted into a sit com of some description, then producers please note that that joke would be excellent to precede a storm of canned laughter.

"Wait a second, get a load of this," I said, still skimming through the text. I read it aloud for the benefit of my companions.

"It's all because of this stupid treasure hunt that this happened. I wish the captain had never had that stupid dream about the Lost Golden City of El Dorado. I wish someone hadn't left a permanent marker in the bathroom the night he woke up with that dream still in his head. Confound this ship, this voyage, and that toilet seat."

"How very expositional," commented Penfold perceptively. Jam and I hushed him into silence.

"Lost Golden City of El Dorado?" said Jam. "What happened on this ship?"

We didn't know. We simply didn't know.

*

But as it turned out, Rose and Scar did. We found them in the captain's cabin poring over the captain's log. It was a magnificent cabin - a classic pirate's den with books and ornaments and little charts, and even one of those bleached skulls with a dribbly candle on top. This was a far cry from Rose's executive place.

"Hey, guys, Penfold just told me he's thinking of leaving -" I said.

"JIM!" hissed the accountant.

"- his dinner this evening because he thinks he's getting fat," I finished, giving Penfold a mischievous smile. He didn't seem impressed, but then he always was a prude.

Neither Rose nor Scar gave any sign of registering our presence anyway, so no harm was done by my little joke. I felt I should give slightly more evidence of our existence.

"Found something, have you?" I asked, somewhat fatuously.

Rose's hand motioned us to sit, so we did. Penfold on a trunk, Jam on the floor, and myself on an elephant's foot umbrella stand I found by the door. After a few awkward seconds, Rose finally tore her eyes away from the book. "This is the captain's log," she said, also somewhat fatuously, as the words 'captain's log' were on the front cover in big gold lettering. "Apparently this ship went on some sort of treasure quest for the -"

"- Lost Golden City of El Dorado -" I joined in for that bit.

"- and they ran into something that turned the entire crew into -"

"- cheese and pineapple cocktail party snacks," chorused all present.

"I found a note," said Jam proudly. I displayed it for all to see.

"What else do ye know?" asked Scar. He and his thrush had been unusually quiet so far.

"We know the captain had some kind of dream about the place, but not much else," I said.

Rose flipped back through the book. "That dream gets three pages," she said. "Apparently he had this extraordinarily vivid vision of the Lost City, as well as map references and minor directions paving a route to the place."

"Arr," said Scar, nodding. "Then 'is old school mistress came an' turned into a giant cabbage that bit 'is goolies off, then he was standin' in front of the whole school completely naked smilin' and wavin' -"

"Yes, anyway," interrupted Rose quickly, "It goes on to say that the captain wrote out all the instructions he dreamt on the first thing that came to hand, but we haven't been able to find what."

Penfold and I exchanged knowing glances. "Oh, I think we know," I said, allowing myself a smug tone of voice. "Where's the captain's toilet?"

"Through that door," said Rose, pointing, adding "Gareth's in there at the moment," when we moved towards it.

On cue, the door flew open to the sound of flushing and Gareth entered, doing up his white leather belt and making satisfied noises. "Ah, it must be great being captain," he said. "Soap dispenser, bidet, touch-sensitive flush - hey!"

Gareth's last outburst was caused by my good self pushing him out of the way of the door. With a few sharp movements I took the toilet seat - noting that it was still quite warm from Gareth's buttocks - and wrenched it from its hinges, much to the surprise of most present. With a triumphant smile, I dumped the porcelain rim onto the captain's desk, scattering papers.

"Jesus Christ, Jim," said Gareth, "were you savaged by a urinal as a child or something?"

"Look!" said Penfold helpfully.

"Well, I'll be," said Scar.

All over the whiteness of the captain's own toilet seat someone had scrawled countless complex diagrams, notations and small pieces of map. There were so many notes written in such a small hand that the porcelain could appear grey from a distance, except in two large roundish shapes on either side where there wasn't any writing at all.

"It's the directions to the Lost Golden City of El Dorado!" said Jam in wonder. Scar tousled his hair fondly.

"Arr, it seems to be that," said the big man. "But some of it's come off, look." He indicated the two bare patches.

"It must've rubbed off onto something -" I began, then stopped sharply. Everyone exchanged a single glance, then as one turned to look at Gareth, who was busy investigating a nearby bookshelf.

"I say, he's got an original Robert Louis Stevenson hereAAARGH!"

Scar and I seized the struggling figure in silk and slammed him face down against the desk, whereupon Rose, with a businesslike flick of the arms, yanked down his trousers and shorts. Immediately the camp one stopped struggling, becoming quite relaxed, as if expecting something enjoyable. Penfold's hand instantly covered Jam's eyes again.

"It's there," said Rose, peering intently at Gareth's shame. "All the missing notes."

"Ye're lucky we're a nice crew," hissed Scar in Gareth's ear, "or we'd flay off yer botty skin and pin it to the ship's wheel!"

"You're not going to rape me, then?" asked Gareth, slightly muffled.

"No Gareth, we are not going to rape you," I said wearily.

Rose swiftly yanked up Gareth's trousers again, and we allowed him to get back to his feet. The captain took a thoughtful stance, laying a finger across her lips, supporting an elbow with the other hand. Eventually she spoke. "We're going to quest for the Lost City," she said.

Scar seemed happy, and Gareth was distracted, but I saw Penfold frown. "We're going to follow directions some bloke had in his dream to find a place that may or may not exist?"

Rose nodded.

"Just like this crew did?"

Scar nodded.

"This crew that got transformed into party snacks?"

I nodded.

"We're going to emulate them?"

Everyone nodded.

"I see." A pause. "Why?"

"For the adventure!" said Scar. "'Oo cares if we don't find the Lost City? It'll be fun! Remember when we went looking fer the Lost Golden Parking Ticket of Roland McIntyre? We never found that, did we? But the adventure was fun!"

I could see that Penfold was not reassured. But then, on that particular adventure, he had gotten rather badly sunburnt and had had to stay in his cabin while everyone else went shopping in a Pakistani street market, where an old man had told us the Meaning of Life and made us swear not to tell anyone else.

Penfold hadn't really minded about that, but we also couldn't find a stall that sold sherbet lemons, and he had really wanted some.

*

We returned to our own ship right after Rose had made the decision that we would seek out the Lost Golden City, then disposed of the ghost ship in the traditional sky pirate manner. We laid all the party snacks we could find on a huge pyre right in the middle of the deck and set fire to it, upon which the balloons keeping the ship afloat burst and the vessel plummeted downwards rapidly. We saluted as it dropped below cloud level, and I heard Scar blow his nose noisily as his thrush patted him on the shoulder with a comforting wing.

This done, we joined the rest of the crew in the canteen below decks, where everyone had already become riotously drunk and had forgotten about the mysterious ship entirely, as well as most of their names. I came in last and loaded a plate with sea biscuits, mashed potato and gravy from the mixed buffet in the centre of the room before heading towards my usual seat.

As I crossed the captain's table, I saw that Gareth, Penfold and Jam were sitting around it with the captain and first mate - usually unheard of. Even me, the second mate, traditionally sat with the main body of the crew to seem like 'one of the boys', rolling around and sloshing grog everywhere while leading the crewmen in the dirty songs. As I peered quizzically at the display, the captain motioned me to sit with them too, which came as a rare relief.

As I placed my tray upon the tabletop I noticed that the toilet seat from the mysterious ship was lying in the middle of the assembly, the eyes of all concerned fixed upon it.

"We've been thinking about this whole quest idea," said Rose conspiratorially, barely audible over the rest of the crew, who were happily chanting a rather slurred version of the popular drinking shanty 'My Wife Was Killed By A Giant Squid And I Had To Do The Ironing (Clumsy Bitch)'.

"What about the quest?" I enquired. Penfold didn't seem any less resignedly gloomy, so I assumed she didn't intend to call the whole thing off.

"You saw what happened to that other crew, Jim," said Rose. "We don't want to put more people in danger than they need to be. We don't want to take the entire crew."

"You'd have a job keeping this crew away from any exploit that might end with vast quantities of gold," I said.

"Exactly, which is why I have no intention of letting anyone else in on the object of the quest."

There was silence. At least, there was silence over our table, which was probably the best we could hope for.

"Oh, I get you," I said knowingly. "All the more for us, eh?"

Rose scowled. "No, that's not it at all."

"Ah. Right," I said exaggeratedly, and winked. She didn't wink back.

"Who are we going to take on this little excursion, anyway?" asked Penfold, who was sitting with his arms folded.

"Just everyone who knows about the Lost City," said Rose. "Me, you, Scar, Jim, Jam and Gareth."

"Just the five of us?" said Scar, surprised.

"Six, Scar."

"Just the six of us?" said Scar, changing gear smoothly. "Shouldn't we take along more in case we get into a fight and need 'ooman shields?"

Rose propped up her forearm on the tabletop and held up her face with it.. "Scar, that is precisely why we are not taking more."

He frowned at me. "I thought Jim said we just wanted more gold to go round..."

There was a soft bonk as the captain's head slammed gently into the tabletop, and Scar thought it wise to keep quiet. After a few minutes of low moans, Rose finally looked again. "Right then," she said brightly. "We'll stop off in Southampton tomorrow. We all stay on the ship while the rest of the crew goes off to get pissed, as they undoubtedly will. When everyone else is off, we take off and go. Clear?"

"Clear," we recited.

"Don't breathe a word of this to anyone," she said warningly. "This toilet seat is known only to us six. Myself, Horatio Scarlet, Penfold Lexington, Jam Lexington, Camp Gareth and Articulate Jim, whose real name is far too stupid for everyday use. From now on we will use the notes on this toilet seat and Penfold's arse to seek out the legendary Lost Golden City of El Dorado. From this day forth, we six shall be known as ... The Fellowship of the Rim."

Dramatic pause.

"That is so gay," said Jam.

"Of course I'm not jealous. Do I look jealous?"

- Casanova's brother Ted

And so, the following day, it came to pass that our mighty ship did land with the trademark splintering crunch once again upon Pier 14 in the city of Southampton, and though the bulk of the crew knew not the exact purpose of our landing, they knew they were going to have the opportunity to get pissed, and that was good enough for them.

Right up until touchdown the Fellowship of the Rim prepared to abandon the crew in a not-preparing kind of way. Rose and Scar chatted idly while remaining within two yards of the ship's helm. Gareth stood on the side of the top deck, observing the pirates file down the gangplank and clipping his fingernails (that is, Gareth was clipping his fingernails, not the pirates). Penfold and Jam took up position by the ropes used to support the enormous sacks of dirty laundry we used as ballast, discussing issues of the day (that is, Penfold and Jam were, not the sacks). And as for me, I was below decks, making sure every last sea dog had departed for alcohol-soaked shores (that is, I was making sure, not the decks).

Most of the cabins were empty, except for one. There I found Slitthroat Rolf lying in his hammock reading an issue of BBC Gardener's World Magazine. He was an easy-going sort of pirate, who had years ago happily changed his name when he discovered that Cutthroat Rolf had been taken already.

"Hey, er, everyone's going for a drink," I said casually, pointing a thumb over my shoulder.

"Oh, I know, I thought I'd sit this one out, Jim. Got a bit of a headache -"

"I've got some aspirin!"

"- and I think I might be allergic to alcohol -"

"Well, now would be a good time to find out for certain."

"- and I really want to read this."

Nothing I could say seemed to sway him, and I got the impression that he was becoming suspicious, so eventually I was forced to pull the magazine away from him using the fishing rod I had been equipped with for exactly this purpose. So engrossed was he in the article that I was able to lead him all the way up to the top deck and over the side before he noticed he was moving at all. He looked up at me balefully from the pier he had landed painfully on, and I gave a shrug that attempted to convey apology mixed with undisguised mirth.

"I think that's the lot," I signed to the captain in semaphore. She nodded in return, and looked at Gareth expectantly. When he observed that the last man - Rolf - had limped into the nearby Fitchew and Firkin, he gave a thumbs up and the captain gave Penfold and Jam the signal.

With two deft axe chops - well, two and a bit of sawing to finish the job - the dynamic duo caused the ballast to come loose from the ship, and the vast air balloons pulled us dramatically into the sky. As the pleasant little pub below us failed to stir, and as we ascended ever higher, it became clear that The Fellowship of the Rim had succeeded in the first task of our quest. We felt dynamic and adventurous, and yet also guilty about abandoning our fellows. But as Rose kept insisting, it was all for the best.

(Incidentally, after the adventure was over and I had already compiled these memoirs I decided to see if I could find any of my old crewmates. Exploring and asking around in Southampton I eventually discovered that half the old crew were now running a successful soft toy business and the other half I found dead drunk on the floor of the Fitchew and Firkin, dressed exactly as I remember, but now all wearing long beards).

According to the toilet seat we were following, the first step in our adventure was to find an old sky pirate captain who had long since retired to a little shack somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales, to get some information on what El Dorado looked like and roughly where we could expect to find it. With a song in our hearts and the wind in our hair the six of us set a northward course.

The song in our hearts for the first part of our journey turned out to be some kind of funeral dirge, and the wind in our hair turned out to be behind us, blowing our hair over our faces and making our foreheads itch in that really annoying way it does. It only hit upon us the enormity of the task we had taken on at that point; running a ship with a full crew was sometimes hard work, and with only six people on board it was like trying to bail a sinking boat with a pitchfork.

I mentioned pretty much these sentiments to Penfold as he and I were attempting to lower the aft sail the day after our voyage began. I'm pretty sure he made some kind of reply, but his voice was muffled by the enormous sheet of canvas that descended on us with a soft flump.

Do you remember as a small child crawling around inside your parents' bed and finding yourself hopelessly lost in a neverending tunnel of linen? That's sort of like what being stuck under a fallen sail is like, only there's a great deal more swearing and it's not as pink, at least as long as Camp Gareth didn't have his way.

I fought and struggled my way through the fabric whiteness, one hand stroking my sheathed cutlass lovingly. I so wanted to draw it and hack my way out of my prison, but the ship was difficult enough to run as it was without a vital sail slashed to ribbons. I made do with imagining my blade slicing through the throat of the fat bloke who's always in the queue for the post office just before you and is always sending live animals to Abu Dhabi, and this was satisfactory until I bumped heavily into the struggling form of Penfold, whose state of entanglement had almost reached mummification level.

I helpfully pulled a few folds away from his face and he gave me a nervous smile. "I panicked," he said by way of explanation. "I tend to get claustrophobic under sheets. It stems from when I was crawling around in my parents' bed when I was very little and ran into an, erm, marital aid -"

"TMI," I said hastily, attempting to untangle my cohort while avoiding becoming similarly disadvantaged, which is harder than it sounds. Incidentally the acronym 'TMI' is a very cool and modern thing to say and if you don't know what it stands for then you're not the sort of person who is supposed to say it.

When I had finished untangling Penfold and we had finally found the way out, there wasn't much change in the amount of sunlight reaching us. This was because something was coming up behind our ship. Something very large. Every member of The Fellowship of the Rim looked up from their tasks, and five jaws dropped in unison. A sixth pair began grinding their teeth.

The thing coming up behind us was another sky pirate ship, so phenomenally huge that the smallest of the three balloons holding it up dwarfed the entirety of our vessel, and the Jolly Roger flapping merrily above the crow's nest could have comfortably been used as a bedsheet by an entire string quartet and their instruments. The ship itself was painted a deep blood red and the top deck was big enough to play a decent game of premiership football on. A crew of gargantuan proportions, probably enough to fill any three Broadway theatres you'd care to name, was assembled on deck, crowding along the sides and waving their cutlasses while going 'aharr'.

Instantly I recognised the ship as a Bastard Mk. IV, the biggest and most expensive ship in the sky pirating catalogue. Ten decks, three swimming pools, onboard elevators and satellite television, it embodied everything a pirate captain aspired to. Once I had acquired a copy of Popular Pirating Quarterly Rose had finished with, and discovered that the six-page feature on the Bastard Mk. IV was almost totally covered in saliva.

Thank the lord for glossy pages, that's all I can say!

I tore my gaze away from the enormous ship just long enough to take in the expressions of my companions' faces. Incredible envy and awe was the main theme. Even Penfold, to whom the name 'Bastard Mk. IV' just meant one of his old supervisors, was gazing with rapt attention. The only person who wasn't falling deeply and sickly in love with the ship was Captain Black; to say her face was like thunder would be severely overrating thunder. She noticed me looking at her and nodded her head towards the enormous vessel's figurehead. I took in the thing - which was indeed big enough to scare the willies out of Jack the Giant Killer - and tried to work out who it was supposed to resemble. When I did, the bottom of my stomach immediately collapsed.

"Erk," I said.

When Captain Rose Black had been just plain Rosemary Black, aged 16, she had gone to a very elite college for young pirates. It was so elite that the only way to get there was by taking a special train that only comes to a usually thought non-existent platform in King's Cross Station, but there I'm afraid the description must end for fear of litigation.

Anyway, Rose's father - Black Jack, as he was unoriginally named - had scrimped and saved and stolen for months to gather the funds to send her there, and as it turned out, it had been worth it. Rose was almost top of every class and was popular among other students for her large stolen collection of Red Dwarf videos, and was well on her way to becoming one of the finest pirate queens the world had ever seen. But there had been one thing troubling her. That thing was a she, and that she was Gertrude Van Helsing. A notch more beautiful than Rose, a notch smarter, a notch tougher, a notch more popular and several notches richer. She was the reason for the 'almost' in the phrase 'almost top of every class', above. The latest daughter of one of the richest and most notorious dynasties in Europe, Gertrude Van Helsing had been molly-coddled to oblivion and was given everything by her doting father. And she was always quick to remind Rose about all the more notches she had.

At their graduation ceremony, Gertrude had naturally come top of the class, with Rose coming a close second. The girl Van Helsing had delivered a lengthy speech, written of course by one of the nation's top speechwriters, which had ended with the words "Perhaps if Rose had just tried that extra bit as hard as me, she could have come an even closer second".

Apparently it took two months for the bruise on Rose's forehead to go down, but slightly longer for Gertrude's shattered nose to knit itself back together.

Rose had been aware that Gertrude Van Helsing had also joined the sky pirating business, in her opinion to wind up her old rival even more, and had been able to carefully avoid her for years. But there was no mistaking that figurehead; it was very well-carved, and the sculptor had obviously been paid an awful lot of money. Those perfectly formed cheekbones, the smile that made one want to ventilate its owner's forehead with a sniper rifle, that ever-so-slightly misshapen nose. This was the face of the woman your parents wanted you to marry. The face of the traffic warden who obviously loves her job putting a ticket on your car.

Somehow Rose was now standing by my side as the enormous ship drew up alongside its miniature contemporary, and descended until its deck was level with our own. The control system had to be something truly amazing to park so closely without colliding. They were so close we could see the toothy grins of every pirate on their deck.

Which was where I noticed the odd thing. Most of the pirates seemed to have very white, sparkly, straight teeth. In fact, forget 'most', they all did. They also all possessed immaculately styled blonde hair, a highly-developed musclebound body, and the face of a young Harrison Ford. They all wore well-laundered traditional posh-boy pirate garb which clung to their manly bodies in a way that I could tell was making Camp Gareth feel an urge to lock himself in the bathroom for an hour. But there was no sign of Gertrude, and for a moment Rose and I hoped that the ship was stolen or something.

But then we detected movement among the ranks of identical men - who were all still grinning broadly, staring with glazed eyes and occasionally going 'aharr' in a kind of robotic way - and the sea of faces parted like the Dead Sea on the day Moses felt his people needed a holiday to reveal -

- Rose made a funny little choking sound -

- an enormous blue and white throne, which seemed to have a lot of the chaise longue about it, with a large overhanging ornamental cover made to look like a clam shell. Upon it lounged Gertrude, clad in a white dress tailored to leave tantalising glimpses of thigh and waist and shoulder, which was really going overboard since the thing was made from such light material we could read the labels on her underwear. I noticed Penfold's hand slip discreetly over Jam's eyes.

As for the woman herself, well, she was of course staggeringly beautiful to the degree that made one's eyes hurt. She was about five foot nine in height with bounteous quantities of blonde flowing hair. Physically perfect in every detail but one - her nose. It had clearly once been, of course, perfect, but was now visibly slightly squashed. Rose's blows could be terrible ones, that I know well, and there's clearly only so much that the finest plastic surgeons money can buy can do.

"Well, look who it is," said Gertrude loudly. "Black Rose herself, scourge of the seven skies."

Rose clenched her fists.

"I must say, I am rather disappointed with the setup you have here," continued the woman in white. "I was expecting a much bigger ship, a Bastard Mk. II at least, and slightly more than six people for a crew. Still, I suppose this was the best someone of your background could manage."

Rose clenched those parts of her body that hadn't been clenched yet.

"What - do - you - want," she asked, showing superhuman self-restraint.

"Just bidding the time of day with an old friend," said Gertrude brightly. "Have you seen my ship? Daddy bought me it for my twenty-eighth birthday. He also arranged to have the finest sky pirate who ever lived cloned five thousand times for my crew. And look what you've got! A little rowboat, a clapped out old has-been, an accountant, a ragingly offensive stereotype of homosexuals, a little boy, and - oh."

I was hoping that she wouldn't recognise me with an eyepatch and being eleven years older than when we last met, but Gertrude Van Helsing never passed up an opportunity to induce torment.

"Hello, Richard," she said, the smarm and smugness in her voice toned down considerably.

"Hello, Gertrude," I muttered. Everyone was staring at me now, even Gertrude's blank-faced crew. I felt myself turning bright red.

"Richard?" I heard Jam whisper to Penfold. He replied with a shrug.

"You are the last person I ever expected to meet here, Richard," said Gertrude. "How on earth did you end up on some slip of a girl's poor excuse for a crew?"

I briefly laughed out loud. Like this: "Ha!". I could tell it annoyed her, and this cheered me up no end. "Slip of a girl? You're the same age as her! You sound just like your mother."

Her face became a scowl of fury for approximately one tenth of a second before she hurriedly constructed her mask of calm, cool demeanour again. "Don't ever compare me to my mother," she said levelly, with only a slight quiver in her voice to give away the urge she was clearly having to bite off my face.

Despite myself, a broad grin stretched itself across my features. "How's she doing, anyway? Still entertaining ten important businessmen a night?"

"SHUT UP!" she screeched, hopping off her seat and gripping the decorative rail that went along the side of her ship's top deck. Her clone minions were still wearing broad grins, but their eyebrows were universally creased in confusion. "You lot are nothing before me, you hear me? I'm better than all of you!"

The sudden disappearance of her smugness was making my companions more confident in her presence, too.

"You won't be talking like that after we've found the Lost City!" said Gareth suddenly.

Utter silence surrounded the congregation.

"What Lost City?" inquired Gertrude.

"The Lost Golden City of El Dorado," said Gareth proudly. "Ow," he added when four people kicked him in the shin simultaneously.

"Ah yes," said Gertrude, syrup once again oozing over her voice. "The dream of every penniless captain with minuscule crews around the world. And you really think you're going to find it?"

I could tell Rose was trying to think of some amazingly memorable line to come back with, but all that came out was "'Es."

There was silence as Gertrude did some thinking. As a result this silence took rather a long time. "What say we enter into a little wager?" she eventually said in her wheedling voice.

"What kind of wager?" asked Scar.

"A race," elaborated Gertrude. "For the Lost City. Whoever is there first waiting for the loser wins."

"And what will the stake be?" I asked.

"If you win, then you can have, oh, let's say, ten thousand doubloons."

"And if you win?"

"Then you all have to join my crew and do what I say for five years. And you, Richard, have to marry me. Like you were always supposed to."

I swallowed hard. The looks I was getting were becoming even more inquisitive and intense. "Captain?" I asked.

There was really no point in asking. I knew Rose would have done anything if it meant showing up Gertrude Van Helsing. "Okay, we'll accept those terms with just one minor alteration."

"Yes?"

"If we win, we want your ship. And you have to introduce us all to your mother."

I'll say one thing for Rose, she never missed an opportunity, and could instantly pounce on a person's weak spots. Gertrude's face twisted like she was trying to eat a particularly large and sour gobstopper, then said just one word: "Deal."

After that, not one more word was exchanged between the two crews (although I noticed two of Gertrude's clones wave and smile at Rose, then blush hotly), and both ships took off in opposite directions. When the Bastard Mk. IV had faded to nothing more than a speck in the distance - which took rather a long time - the Fellowship of the Rim congregated on the main deck. I noticed I was once again feeling the force of many stares.

"Well, this puts a whole new spin on things, doesn't it," I said jovially, trying to ease the mood. "I hope you realise what we're risking here, captain -"

"How the hell do you know Gertrude Van Helsing?" asked the captain steadily.

"Hey, I've been around, I've done all sorts. I've met all kinds of people."

"The full story, Jim," said Scar humourlessly.

I gave a deep and heartfelt sigh that made the big man shudder, then went into the tale.

Shrewd readers will no doubt have already guessed that the Van Helsing clan is better known as a dynasty of demon slayers, the first born of every generation becoming the latest burly hero destined to rid the world of evil. The lattermost of these eccentric nobles was one Christopher Van Helsing, who also happened to be Gertrude's oldest brother.

Shrewder readers will also remember that I myself had spent a short amount of time working in the capacity of a demon slayer. I was eighteen years old, the job had lasted six days, and for four of those days I partnered Chris Van Helsing. He was arrogant, self-obsess