Читать книгу Greenbeard - Richard James Bentley - Страница 12

CHAPTER THE SIXTH,

or A Close Shave.

“As we are a-pretendin’ to be nice peaceable Dutch persons,” bellowed Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, “it behooves yuz to learn yerselves a few words o’ the lingo.” He tapped the blackboard. “First word, o’ course, be ‘please’, because we are polite Dutch persons, and that word is alstublieft, which is short for als het U belieft, meanin’ ‘if it you pleases ‘. Now you say it ... alstublieft.”

The crew, assembled in the waist and in the rigging, mumbled ‘alstublieft’ as best they could. There was little wind, and the sails hung, flapping occasionally when a stray cat’s-paw of breeze caught them.

“Pay attention, shipmates,” bellowed the Captain. “We are in the Gulf of Gabes, an’ so we are in the waters o’ the corsairs of Barbary, who are a parcel o’ nasty buggers, and no mistake. Pirates they may be - and indeed they pays fees to use the ports o’ the Spanish main - but they are not members o’ the Free Brotherhood o’ the Coasts, curse ‘em, and they would surely take us prize as soon as look at us. Iffen they did that they would sell us all at the slave-market and we’d spend the rest o’ our miserable lives pulling the oar of a galley.”

The Captain paused for breath, and to run his cold grey eyes over the faces of the buccaneers.

“However, I knows that the admiral o’ the Algerine fleet, Suleyman Reis, is actually a Dutchman, name of Salomo de Veenboer!”

There was a mutter of surprise from the crew.

“Strange, ain’t it, mateys?” said the Captain, “but it be true. He was taken into slavery himself, but worked his way up through cunning and brutality, an’ now he’s the donanma komutani, which is to say admiral o’ the fleet. He has recently squeezed the Dutch East India Company into givin’ him much gold to let their ships be, an’ some say he do yearn to go home, to the country o’ his birth, and wishes to be seen in a favourable light, and so we be pretendin’ to be Hollanders to take advantage o’ his present benevolence to them. All this’ll be for naught if yuz cannot learn yerselves a few words o’ the lingo. Think o’ the galley-oar iffen yuz finds yer minds wandering, and how many times ye has to pull it every day! Now says it again, you lubbers!”

“Alstublieft!” roared the crew.

“The next word is ‘thankyou’, or ‘thank’ee’, which is dank U wel or bedankt ...”

This notion of the Captain’s to bludgeon the crew into obedience with words works wondrously well, thought Blue Peter Ceshwayoo, but I pray that he does not over-use it. If he ever intends to give them lectures in the appreciation of water-colours I shall try and stop him. The sun was hot on his neck, and the still air oppressive, the sky a blue bowl from horizon to horizon. The Captain was still bellowing.

“ ... the Dutch for ‘no’ is nee, or neen in some parts. ‘Yes’ is ja. After me ...”

There was a shout from the mainmast top. Blue Peter was jerked from a reverie about a plump Dutch lady he had once seen in a painting. The look-out at the main-top was pointing.

“Lesson over!” roared the Captain. “Do any of yuz lubbers speak any Dutch at all?” A few hands went up. “Yer must stay on deck, then. Enough crew in the rigging to trim sail iffen the wind stiffens, the rest o’ yuz below. Cutlasses and guns ready. Cannon loaded and primed, but not run out. And be as quiet as little mice below, d’yuz hear me? As quiet as little mice!”

“Do you intend adopting Lord Mondegreen’s stratagem of concealing the crew below decks?” said Blue Peter.

“Well, I do have the advantage that my crew will come up when I call them,” said the Captain, “but I would rather convince any corsairs that we are a Dutch ship, and so not their prey. Peter, go and attend to your guns, then come back on deck. Your great size and fine uniform may impress them if we parley.”

“I have no Dutch, Captain.”

“Well then, look shy and mumble. I must go up and see for myself.” The Captain strode from the quarterdeck and jumped up onto the ratlines. Blue Peter was briefly obstructed by the ship’s carpenter wrestling the blackboard and easel down the companionway before he could get to the gundeck. The gun-crews were already loading and ramming the cannons, the gun-locks were out of their wooden boxes and fixed to the touch-holes, while the rest of the crew armed themselves in silence broken only by muttered curses and the clink of metal.

When Blue Peter returned on deck Captain Greybagges was climbing down from the shrouds.

“It is Algerines, blast ‘em. A galley. With no wind we cannot even bring the guns to bear. If I launch a longboat to swing her round, then we don’t look much like a peaceable Dutch ship that has its protection paid for. I shall have to brazen it out, Peter, unless a wind comes.”

No wind came, and the galley came closer, until Blue Peter could see the massed corsairs on its deck and the glint of the bright sun on their scimitars and breastplates. The oars of the galley moved as one, like the wings of a bird, as it manoevred to approach the frigate from the prow, out of the line of fire of her broadside guns. There is something odd about those Algerines, thought Blue Peter, but I cannot place what it is exactly.

When the galley bumped gently into the becalmed frigate, its low rakish silhouette sliding easily under the bowsprit, corsairs clambered over the forepeak rail and flooded onto the ship. Captain Greybagges, Blue Peter and Bulbous Bill stood on the quarterdeck. An enormous corsair bearing a huge tulwar and a ferocious grin led the boarding-party up the steps to the quarterdeck and stood before them. They have no beards, thought Blue Peter, that is what is odd. They have turbans, curved scimitars and baggy pants, but they are all clean-shaven.

“Goed middag, heeren! Hoe ik u kan helpen?” said Captain Greybagges affably.

“Spraak-je ‘Scheveningen!’” commanded the huge corsair, waving his tulwar menacingly.

“Wat? Scheveningen! Potverdomme! Bent-jou gek?” said the Captain, with surprise.

“Hie zijn en Engelsman!” said a voice, and a pale blue-eyed man stepped from behind the huge corsair.

“Hah! A cursed Englishman!” roared the corsair, waggling the tulwar. “Dank U wel, Jan!”

“Ik bent en Nederlander, zeker!” protested the Captain.

“Hah! Nobody but a true Hollander can pronounce the word Scheveningen correctly! You are caught, cursed Englishman!” the huge corsair laughed. “Did you think our mighty admiral Suleyman Reis is such a fool? He gives me his own quartermaster,” - the blue-eyed man bowed - “to unmask such pitiful impostures. The Dutch East India Company have paid their tarifa, but you have not! Now you will pay, ho-ho-ho!”

“You speak English remarkably well,” said the Captain.

“Hah! You think compliments will make me look upon you more kindly!” sneered the corsair captain. “How little you know! My father had an English slave whom he trusted, and the fellow swore that English schools were the best in the world, and so I was sent up to your cursed Eton College. Five years of hell! Drinking! Brutality! Endless dreary sermons! Foul food! Vile infidel depravities! I have loathed the filthy English ever since. You will find no mercy in me, Englishman!”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed the Captain, “I remember you! You were one of the warts who came up to school in my final year! You fagged for Stinky Bodfish!”

“Bismallah! I remember you, too ... Greybagges, that is your name ... you clean-bowled the foul cretin Bodfish out for no runs in the House matches, third ball of his first over, middle stump with a wicked slow bouncer! That will not help you! I laughed at the vile Stinky Bodfish when you did that, and he beat me cruelly with a leather slipper, the infidel fiend!”

“He was always a bully and a sneak, that Stinky Bodfish,” said the Captain, shaking his head. “Always creeping around and peaching to the beaks.”

“But wait!” said the corsair captain, “the Greybagges chap at school had fair yellow hair, and yet you have a brown beard!”

“Merely part of the imposture,” said the Captain. He pulled a black handkerchief from his sleeve and rubbed carefully at his long beard. “There, green, can you see? I am not only the Greybagges who took Bodfish’s wicket, I am also Greenbeard the pirate.”

“Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim!” said the corsair, lowering his huge tulwar, looking at the beard with awe. “This is a sad day! The buccaneering exploits of the fearsome Greenbeard are known even here - even as the name of Abu Karim Muhammad al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Berberi is known in your neck of the woods, I dare say - and that was indeed a wonderful ball you bowled that day! I remember it now! There was so much spin on it that a little puff of dust went out sideways where it bounced and jinked behind foul Stinky’s bat ... so I would dearly love to have swopped tales with you over a glass of serbet or two, but my thirty-nine pirates and I have sworn a solemn oath to be the greatest thieves on land or sea until all infidels are driven from ... from ... well, from just about everywhere, actually. It’s that kind of oath, it goes on a bit, you know? Until then we will not grow our beards, either. We follow the teachings of our mullah, Ali.”

The corsairs parted, and a man stepped forward as if summoned by those words. He was small and wiry-looking, and his orange turban was the size of a prize-winning pumpkin. His shaven chin was as brown as mahogany, his nose was a blade like an eagle’s beak and his eyes were as mad and yellow as a chicken’s.

“I am Ali!” he spoke in a light musical voice, red light glinted from the large ruby that he wore on his orange turban. “Too many infidels infest the world! We shall sweep the infidels from the seas, and from the lakes, and from the rivers, and from the ... and from all the rest of the places. Thieving is not thieving if it is from infidels! So we are thieves gladly! We have sworn not to grow beards until the task is done! I, Ali the Barber, have sworn an even mightier oath! I have sworn ...”

He brought out an enormous cutthroat razor and opened it. It was as big as a scimitar.

“I have sworn that I shall shave every man who does not shave himself! I have sworn a mighty oath that it shall be so! So take your choice, captain of dogs, shall you shave yourself, or shall I, Ali the Barber, shave you?”

I have a pistol in my belt, thought Blue Peter, but my coat is buttoned over it. Can I wrench my coat open, ripping off the buttons, and get to the pistol before the big fellow splits me in twain with his tulwar