The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics Read Online Free Page A

tar. And most of the rest of the crew just walked around in circles because they couldn’t think of anything more appropriate.
    When they had finished, Byron looked confused, Shelley looked dubious and Mary of course was a woman, so her feelings were impossible to guess.
    ‘As you can see – all the romance and thrills of the High Seas, in one colourful package,’ the Captain said, handing out a brochure he’d got some of the more visually creative pirates to knock up that morning. ‘You’ll find the details in there. You get to stay on an honest-to-goodness pirate boat. There’s a guaranteed minimum of two feasts per day. All toiletries and towels will be provided. And there’ll be more swashbuckling than you can shake a parrot at. Best of all, it’s a special one-time-only bargain price of only a hundred doubloons per adventure.’
    ‘A hundred doubloons,’ said Mary, flicking through the brochure. ‘That does seem very reasonable.’
    ‘Plus sundries,’ said the Captain.

Three
     
    The Spectral Brine
     

     
    ‘I can’t believe we’re having an actual feast with actual pirates!’ exclaimed Byron, happily thumping the boat’s dining table. ‘See here – this placemat is in the shape of a treasure map! Brilliant!’
    The pirates had spent the afternoon giving their guests a tour of the boat, taking care to point out the important nautical bits, like the sails. The Captain, worried they might be disappointed with how small the place was, ended up walking Byron and his friends around it three times, but in a variety of directions, giving the masts and cannons different names on each circuit. After that he’d got the lads to sing a few of the more risqué shanties, and now they were in the midst of a pirate feast. In honour of their guests being poets, the pirates had laid on a menu of dishes made out of food that rhymed, because they wanted to look classy.
    ‘Of course – being a pirate is not quite as glamorous as people make out,’ said the Captain, thinking he could afford to dial it back it a little, having just finished an unlikely story about blowing up the kraken by a kicking a barrel of dynamite at its head. ‘There’s a surprising amount of paperwork these days. And it turns out there’s a lot of boring technical what-have-you that makes the boat go along. You can’t just strap a porpoise to the wheel and swan off to have cocktails. Learnt that the hard way.’
    ‘Pfft!’ roared Byron, taking a big bite out of his lamb and clam ciabatta. ‘I won’t hear it! What a life. Not knowing what the next day might bring! Adventuring! Derring-do! Boys wearing outsized jewellery! It’s exactly the kind of thing we’ve been looking for.’
    ‘But you say you’re writers? That must be interesting too,’ said the Pirate Captain, turning to Mary and waggling his eyebrows at her in as debonair a way as he could. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m something of a gentleman of letters myself.’
    ‘Really?’ said Mary, incredulous. ‘You write? What sort of things do you write about?’
    ‘Oh, you know,’ said the Captain, waving his fork in a vague circle and looking to whichever side it is that you look to when you’re not being entirely honest. ‘Emotions. Waves breaking on a rocky shore. The usual artistic bits and bobs.’
    ‘We’re not just “writers”,’ interjected Shelley, picking unenthusiastically at his spam and yam salad. ‘You can’t reduce a man to the label of his profession.’
    ‘Look!’ said Byron, ‘now I’m drinking pirate grog out of a mug made from a skull! It’s as atmospheric as it is impractical!’
    ‘So how would you describe yourselves?’ asked the pirate with a scarf.
    ‘We . . .’ said Shelley, flicking his hair with a flourish, ‘. . . are romantics .’
    ‘Ah,’ said the Captain, after a long pause, and with what he hoped would pass as a ‘wise’ nod. ‘Is that like a gang?’
    Shelley visibly bristled. ‘No, Pirate Captain. It is not