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Chapter Seven

Peter followed Patrick out of the hold from the purser’s office to the gun deck, weaving between the rats who were waiting beside the great brass cannons. Past the last cannon, they climbed up a ladder and through a hatch.

Out in the open air, Patrick showed Peter how to fire his pistols and hold his cutlass. Peter shot at a floating barrel and learned how to reload; then he put the pistols away to hack at a spar with the cutlass and learn the basics of attack and defence.

“We’re… we’re not going to get killed, are we?” he asked Patrick nervously. Half an hour of practice with the pistols and cutlass had shown him how dangerous they could be.

“Of course not!” said Patrick, surprise in his bright black eyes. “This is the Neverworld! You only get awfully wounded here and suffer terrible pain till you get better or grow back a paw or tail. No one dies.”

“Terrible pain?” asked Peter faintly. “I don’t like the sound of that!”

“Patrick always exaggerates,” said a small, balding rat who was sharpening his cutlass nearby. “It ain’t that bad. Why, I’ve had both my ears shot off and I hardly noticed when it happened. The doc gave me a cordial and they grew back in two weeks, though I’ve had a little trouble with my fur.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “Things are very different where I come from.”

“Naturally,” said the balding rat. “That’s Topside. All sorts of strange things happen there. You just stick with the captain, Mister Peter. He’ll see you through.”

“Speaking of the captain,” said Patrick, “I think he wants you on the poop.”

“The poop?”

“The deck at the back, where the captain paces to and fro, grappling with strategies and tactics and cunning plans to defeat the foe,” explained the purser, who had just come on deck. “How are the britches?”

“They itches,” said Peter as he climbed the short ladder to the poop deck. The captain was looking through a telescope, but he clapped it shut and shook Peter’s hand with one powerful paw.

“It’s good to see a fellow take to this way of life,” he declared. “Are your pistols primed and ready? Cutlass sharp as it can get?”

“Yes, sir,” declared Peter, who suddenly felt braver for the captain’s handshake.

“Hmm,” said the captain, as if he wasn’t sure what to say next. He took Peter’s arm and led him away from the two rats who stood nearby at the ship’s wheel.

“There’s a bit of a problem,” he whispered. “I’ve recognised the pirate ship and the news is not good. You see, we can’t risk destroying the Ratinci orrery by sinking the ship with cannon fire, so we’ll have to board and fight it out. But that ship’s the Nasty Cupboard and its captain is none other than—”

He looked around to make sure no one was listening, then pushed his snout so close to Peter’s ear that his whiskers tickled the boy’s cheek.

“Its captain… its captain is none other than the worst pirate who ever sailed the seas. The most awful bandit of the oceans, the most ghastly robber of the deep. A rat whose true name cannot be spoken, a rat who is only known by the fearsome weapon he employs, the rat that we call—”

“I say,” interrupted Doctor Norvegicus loudly as he climbed up to the poop deck. He peered through his monocle at the pirate ship. “Isn’t that the Nasty Cupboard? The ship captained by the most awful pirate of our times, the villainous, terrible, disgusting, horrendous rat who is known only as—”

“Blackbread,” finished Captain Rattus, giving up on whispering. As the name echoed out, the fur on the rats across the deck paled from black to grey and their tails began to shiver.

“Blackbread?” asked Peter. “Why is he called that?”

“He has a magic weapon,” explained the doctor. “A long thin loaf of ancient petrified black bread. It’s harder than iron and sharper than a diamond, and its magic powers make Blackbread entirely bulletproof. They bounce off the loaf and off him as well. Some have tried to fight him using only sword or cutlass, but he is too dangerous for that. Blackbread is a true master of the loaf.”

“There’s not a rat aboard the Tumblewheel that dares to face Blackbread,” sighed Captain Rattus. “Including, I’m sad to say, myself. We’ll just have to let him go.”