“This is outrageous!” Avery, a practical man who had supposed it was a simple matter of yo-ho-ho and lay on, my hearties, was appalled. “Why isn't something done about it?”
“Well, that's where agents come in,” quo' crafty Vladimir. “Take the Bruvver'ood – they got more managers an' accountants than flamin' gunners, they 'ave. You want ter see their publicity budget, an' all – well, Esquemelin' don't come cheap, does 'e? Cost yer a governor's ransome afore 'e sets pen ter parchment. But money's the least of it; it's the paperwork – you can't cope wi' that an' expect to be shootin' away spars an' layin' alongside and blowin' Dons to 'ell at the same time, can yer? But wiv a good agent, nah – a class man 'oo wouldn't arsk more'n 90 per cent, an' well worth it – why, yer can concentrate on the essentials, can't yer?”
Avery had a sudden inspiration. Listening to this honest fellow, it had come to him, and while he was accustomed to being dazzled by his own genius, he had to admit that this time he'd excelled himself. He glanced down at the vulpine, greasy face leering up innocently at him, what time Vladimir washed his grubby paws in air, and smiled to think how this simple shopkeeper had unwittingly pointed the way.
“Master Mackintosh-Groonbaum,” said he, “it is in mind to appoint thee my agent. Ninety percent, you said?”
Vladimir's ratlike eyes opened wide, he gaped, and caught at the table for support. “Ooh, sir!” he quavered. “Ooh, I never! Yer mean – me? But… well, I'm all took aback!” He gazed at the smiling captain with shark-like devotion. “Sir, I am most deeply honnered, no kid! Nah, I wonder if I 'ave sich a thing as a contract anywheres? 'Ere, jus' you glance through these back numbers o' Playwench while I go an' see …”
It's a moot point whether Vladimir is listed as an accredited agent in the Filibusters' Yearbook, but although Avery little dreams it, the pawnbroker's possession of three of the crosses could halve our hero's work for him – if Vladimir is to be trusted. (Ha!) And other perils and horrors lie ahead – there's Vanity stuck on Aves, defenceless, wi' Happy Dan and his cut-throats closing in, and Black Sheba and Bilbo preparing to work their hellish design against Don Lardo (who cares?) and sweet Donna Meliflua (that's something else). Hurry, Avery, hurry …
*Just for the record, the crosses had been distributed as follows: Sheba – diamond; Bilbo – black pearl; Happy Dan Pew – opal, plus Firebeard's sapphire, both now at Uncle's; Rackham – ruby; Akbar – emerald, now in possession of T. Blood, renegade. Right? Fine.
CHAPTER
THE NINTH
t was towards dusk of a balmy tropic Friday when the cursed hellship Frantic Frog came gliding out of the setting sun, her tasselled sails limp in the sultry evening air, and dropped anchor with a colossal splash and a shriek from one member of her crew who hadn't let go in time, on the edge of the Isle of Aves lagoon. In the drawing-room of her bower Lady Vanity heard the distant clank of the chain, and with a muttered “About time, too!” flung aside her year-old copy of Vogue (for Avery had omitted naught for her comfort), and moved with graceful yet petulant stride to the bamboo window. Yes, there was a ship at anchor, and this would be him, hours late, and the corned beef omelette and paw-paw mousse which she had so lovingly and inexpertly prepared would be respectively flatter than old beer and curdled in its cowrie shell. Well, he could ruddy well eat them, anyway, coming home at this hour when he'd promised to be punctual, and if he thought that the fact that he'd obviously captured one of the pirates was any excuse, he could think again. It was jolly sickening, and her all glamoured up to welcome him in the red bikini which she had woven painstakingly during the week from jungle blossoms, all for his delight, rot his boots.
Across the water a boat was pulling towards shore, and Vanity's pouting lips parted in sudden surprise. She couldn't make out the rowers, but they were undoubtedly singing “Mademoiselle from Armentières,” and her beloved would never have permitted such continental levity, surely? A sudden shiver of apprehension flapped the hibiscus blossom behind her shapely right ear and her blue eyes widened in alarm as she stared at the distant forepeak of the anchored ship. Could that be a black flag, a skull and crossbones surmounted by a capering frog with a frilly tricolour undergarment in its paw and the dread legend “Vive le sport!” underneath? Vanity drew in a sharp breath, and with it inhaled a distant drift of hair-oil. That did it – Avery wasn't even late, the selfish rotter hadn't arrived at all, and instead she was at the mercy of beastly foreigners, including almost certainly that ghastly person who had ogled her in her shortie nightdress aboard the Twelve Apostles.
Sure enough, as the boat grounded she could hear them singing “Milor'”, and a hatefully-remembered voice was exclaiming: “So, we return ourselves from the lifeboat trip avec plaisir. Maman likes not the sea, and rests sur le pont, hélas! Has Papa purchased to himself the tickets? Mais non, le douanier has trouvé Papa's packet of smuggled heroin and called les flatties. We mount for to seek places in the paddy-wagon. Ah, mais que c'est drôle …”
By this time Trembling Beauty was leafing frantically through the instruction leaflet which Avery had left her in case of emergencies. Her slender fingers flew through the pages … in case o' Fyre … burst pypes … Headdehunters … dizzy spells … how to pickle Yams … ah, here it was:
An there come Knaves to ye Isle, Lewd Fellowes bent on Myschief, seek not concealment, lest they rootle Ye oute, so should Ye be undone. But rather Attire thyself right smartly as a Barbaric Native Female or Hottentot, the which ye may do by stayning thy Flesh and Hair wi' juice of Galoopa nuts boyl'd, therewith shall Ye be darken'd. Then, venturing Boldly forth, if any stay or question Thee, answer only “Me Aloma, me good girl,” that hearing the which they may take thee for a Savage, and be Satisfyed, and so pass by. (But in no case answer “Me Tondelayo, me bad girl,” lest Shame and Ill-usage befall Thee.)
Galoopa nuts … in a trice she had them simmering on the hob, watching the dark liquid bubble as the distant tread of booted feet crunched across the shingle. Happy Dan Pew's voice was upraised in altercation with an imaginary hotel manager who had refused him entrance to the salle à manger because it was after dix heures moins le quart, while his raucous followers were now singing “Auprès de ma Blonde,” which to the terrified Vanity sounded horribly prophetic. In haste she plunged her golden tresses into the stew, but before she could proceed to staining her skin there fell a thunderous crash of pistol-butts on the front door, followed by:
“Knock-knock. 'oo ees thaire? Absinthe. Absinthe 'oo? Absinthe makes the 'eart grow fondaire!” The French filibusters fell about in childish glee and began to kick the door in, and with a sob of panic Vanity, now a rather damp brunette, fled through the back door to the concealment of the jungle.
She crouched, towelling her hair and peering through the fronds at the hideous havoc being wreaked on her little bower by the brutish invaders. With disgusted oaths they sampled her corned-beef omelette, with rude cries of “Quelle horreur!” they flung her paw-paw mousse into the bin, with lustful whistles they tore the corset ads from Vogue, and finally, having reduced themselves to staggering confusion with reckless draughts of the galoopa juice which they supposed to be some choice native drink, they built a fire on the beach and had a sing-song. Vanity trembled and covered her ears; what sub-human wretches were these, and what must be her fate when they found her? Even with her thought there arose a cry of “Cherchez la femme!”, and urged on by Happy Dan Pew, who advised them to look under the buffet, les fauteuils, le tabouret, les coussins, et le tapis de table (he was in his “Familiar-things-in-the-living-room” stage by now), they began to advance on the jungle, horrible bearded figures in culottes and buckled shoes and floppy hats, brandishing torches and cutlasses, and shouting:
“Yoo-hoo, belle fille d'Admiral! Nous vous cherchons, ready or not! Un, deux, trois – allons! Vive la blonde bombshell Anglaise!”
Swiftly arranging her coal-black hair in an elegant bouffant, Vanity strove to remember her instructions. She must sally out boldly and pass he
rself off as a native wench, but would her jungle-blossom bikini pass muster as authentic savage costume? Well, whatever the locals wore, it wouldn't be twin-set and pearls … if only she had a basket of breadfruit to go over her arm, and a bone through her nose … Drawing herself proudly erect, the pearl of English womanhood took a deep breath, hastily replaced her bikini top, murmured: “Chin-chin-chingo, Cheltenham, ra-ra-ra!,” walked through the bushes, and out on to the beach.
There wasn't a pirate in sight. They were all plunging blindly through the jungle, crying “Hélas!” and getting their wellingtons full of water, falling over branches, blundering into thickets, and squealing when crawly things slipped down their collars; the only figure in the fire-glow was a tattered specimen swinging by his thumbs from an improvised gallows, humming “Galway Bay” and giving an occasional anguished groan. Vanity peered at him doubtfully, cleared her throat, and said hopefully: “Me, Aloma, me good girl.”
“Are ye hell-as-like!” snapped the hanging figure.
“Colonel Blood!” exclaimed Vanity, her hand flying to her parted lips. “Ah, what shall this portend, and what are you doing up there?”
“What the devil does it look like?” was the sarcastic reply. “If I can chin meself a hundred times on this bar, the pirates have promised to let me go. Ye brainless biddy!” he added violently, “I'm strung up here because I'm a prisoner, and like to be carbonadoed by these hellions, and you come primpin' along as if ye were in the last three o' Miss World and ask damfool questions! Cut me down afore me thumbs come loose, can't you?”
“Why, art well served for a turncoat!” cried haughty Vanity, and set him swinging with an indignant push. “Who beetled off and left us in the boat, you rotter? Of all the sneaky tricks – aye, and whipped my dear one's piece o' the Madagascar crown, and gutsed all the tinned pears, and I am not primping along like Miss World, I am disguised as a jungle maiden, so there!”
“Ye wouldn't fool an infant!” cried Blood. “And what the divil have ye done to your hair?”
“Galoopa juice,” said Vanity. “Like it?”
“Not bad,” gasped Blood, writhing. “Mind, it doesn't suit ye as well as blonde, wi' your milkmaid complexion—”
“And blue eyes, of course. But you're quite right, it's the flesh-tint that's really important.”
“That's a fact,” whimpered the Colonel, “although given a touch … oh, Jayzus, me poor t'umbs … a touch o' the sun—”
“We-ell, perhaps … but only a smidgin, and lashings of Ambre Solaire, or I'll look like a beetroot.”
“To be sure, just a light tan, an' the new hair colour'd tone is a fair treat. Prithee,” groaned the pendant rascal, “get a knife an' cut me down, or I am like to croak untimely.”
“Well,” said Vanity severely, “it would serve you jolly well right if I didn't, because you've behaved like an absolute beast, but… Dost truly think I would show to advantage i' the Miss World competition its finals? True, this costume is but sorry makeshift—”
“Ye could win wearin' dungarees and wi' a paper bag over your head!” babbled Blood, dangling in anguish. “A knife, acushla, quick as ye can!”
“All right. Hang about,” said Vanity, a trifle tactlessly, and discovering a convenient snickersnee among the pirates' litter, she had just sawed through his bonds and brought him to the sand in a complaining heap, when uproar broke out on the jungle edge. Vanity turned in dismay, Blood scurried on all fours to the concealment of a couple of rum-casks, and out on to the beach swarmed a gesticulating mob of pirates. Fed up with blundering around, they had turned back, and now they swooped on their hapless prey with triumphant whoops of “C'est her, là! Elle était içi tous les temps! Ah, méchante blondie! Come to Papa!” Rough hands seized her, bearded faces leered, eyepatches flapped, waves of garlic made her senses swim, and hoots of derision greeted her pathetic plea that she was Aloma and a good girl.
“Do not attempt to pull our eyes over your sweater!” bawled a burly Breton. “You are no hula-hula girl, although it's not a bad idea, by example! See, mon capitaine, here is la bébé fantastique, Milady Vanity Rooke, en bikini formidable et une perruque noire, tres kinky, n'est-ce pas?”
Through the raffish throng minced Happy Dan Pew, brave in galloons and flounces, one ring-bedecked hand on hilt o' rapier, the other raising quizzing-glass to view the supple body writhing in the cruel grasp of his followers. He lamped the shapely form, the proud loveliness of feature, the glossy blackness of the bouffant coiffure, and above all, the crimson perfection of the cupid's bow lips. A moment he gaped, gulped like a throttled ferret, dropped his quizzing-glass, staggered, and clutched his brow.
“Nom d'un Meerschaum, what is this?” he cried distraught. “Par la grande règle de Monsieur Cladel le professeur – it is she! Her! Elle! Le hairdo brunette, les lips rouge, les curves extraordinaire – tous les works as depicted by Monsieur H.M. Brock!” He glared in frenzy at his crew. “Ce n'est pas Milady Vanity, bombheads -c'est ma grande amour, la femme j'ai been cherching ever since la classe 2B Moderne! Ah, chérie, j'ai trouvé'd vous at last!” He fell to his knees and rained passionate kisses on Vanity's toes, panting out his adoration: “Ce petit cochon went to market, ce petit cochon stayed 'ome, ce petit cochon avait roastbif…je suis, tu es, il est, elle est – ah, how elle she est!”
Hands clasped in entreaty he gazed rapturously up at her. “Parlez-vous français, doll? Then parlez-moi, ma belle – ma Jeune Fille Avec La Grande Bouche!” The words trembled fearfully on his ashen lips. “Petite … pomme?”
Convinced that he had at long last gone Harpic beyond redemption, his buccaneers stared at each other in embarrassment. Vanity was at a loss: why should a dark dye-job have rendered her an object of worship to this grotesque French fruit-cake? Petite pomme? Something stirred in her powder-puff brain … a memory of schooldays, guzzling marshmallows and reading Angela Brazil in the back row during French – yes, a lesson about some snooty-looking piece who did facial exercises before the mirror and chuntered on about fruit. What was it again … another catch-phrase; she hesitated, nervously viewing the love-smitten head-banger nuzzling her insteps.
“Petite poire?” she ventured, and promptly wished she hadn't, for with an ecstatic yell of “Chaud chien!” Happy Dan bounded to his feet, swept her into his embrace, rained burning kisses on her upturned face, flung her half-swooning over his shoulder, and bore her forthwith aboard his vessel – or rather, he didn't quite, because emotion and Vanity's well-nourished charms brought him exhausted to his knees before he'd got halfway down the beach, and they both had to be carried aboard by his grumbling crew, Vanity unconscious with terror and Happy Dan burbling dementedly about bridal cabins and honeymoon cruises. Whereafter the Frantic Frog stood out o' the Aves lagoon, cleaving the purple swell, with Vanity once again in the amorous clutches of a pitiless sea-wolf (and a doolaly one, at that), and no hope o' succour, unless … unless …
Toiling in the vessel's wake, and just catching hold of her rudder before she moved into overdrive, came the Forgotten Man – for in all the excitement the lubberly matelots had overlooked their prisoner (who had been hiding behind the rum-casks with his ears flapping). Faced with the choice of rotting on a desert island, or hitching a ride, the Colonel had reluctantly chosen the latter, and now he drags himself blasphemously from the water, sucks his thumbs with little whimpers, and finally disappears, appropriately rat-like, through a dark hawsehole.
But while all these portentous events are breaking loose on Aves, what of our hero Ben? We last saw him in Vladimir's shop, blushing hotly as he goggled through Playwench, while the conniving little crook prepared the contract under which he agreed to kit out our captain for his anti-Brotherhood campaign, in return for a 90 per cent cut (whew!) of all prize-money, loot, rewards, and kindred lettuce which might accrue. From which you will deduce that Avery, his Mathematical Tripos notwithstanding, was no whizz at the fine print (as what respectable hero is?), and that Vladimir's spiritual home was Pico Boulevard,
with private lines to the Valley and Culver City. Hovering like an unwashed guardian angel as Avery inscribed his copperplate signature, the happy shyster gloated silently at the prospect of jyenormous profits; like Lady Vanity, he foresaw a golden future with his waggon hitched to Avery's shooting star, and lost no time in fulfilling his own side of the contract, sort of.
Which is how we now find Avery at sea, hundreds o' leagues to loo'ard, and if a frown mantles his features as he scans the horizon, it's because he's had it up to here these past few days. For one thing, the first-rate man-o'-war procured by Vladimir looked suspiciously to our hero's trained nautical eye like a converted coal-barge, and the two hundred prime seamen were either from the Libertatia Remand Centre (Vladimir had an understanding with the authorities), or had had to be dragged bodily from the Y.M.C.A. by the press-gang. Whereof came black mischief within the first day's sailing, when the rum-vending machine broke down and bloody mutiny erupted, which Avery had had to quell in person, and skinned his knuckles. Worse still, the vessel leaked abominably, and our hero had spent hours swimming alongside in heavy seas, labouring wi' plugs, oakum, buckets o' tar, and scotch tape, d'ye see, while the crew baled and pumped sulkily and hung around in groups discussing industrial action. Since then they'd weathered a couple of hurricanes, beaten off a Sallee Rover, lost their mizzen top-mast (Avery had conducted a thorough investigation, but no one seemed to know where it had got to), run aground on dreaded Cape Banana, by the powers, warped and garbled their way clear, revictualled at Port Fortnum, flogged the carpenter (for a quite decent price, actually), marooned a chronically intoxicated bosun on a sandpit with a loaded pistol and a latrine bucket, and after all these misadventures had finally beaten their way west to a point roughly there on the chart, or a little to the left.