The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists: A Novel (The Pirates! Series, Band 2) - Softcover

Defoe, Gideon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307274918 ISBN 13: 9780307274915

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

London, 1840: Wagner's latest opera plays to packed houses while disgruntled workers gather in crowded pubs to eat ice cream and plan the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the Pirate Captain finds himself incarcerated at Scotland Yard, in a case of mistaken identity.

Discovering that his doppelgänger is none other than Karl Marx, the Captain and his crew are unwittingly caught up in a sinister plot that involves intellectual giants, enormous beards, and a quest to discover whether ham might really be the opium of the people.

Includes, at no additional charge, The Wit and Wisdom of the Pirate Captain—a Major Philosophical Work.

On the Matter of Love:
If you're off to fight in a battle, snap a ship's biscuit in half and give your girlfriend the other half. When you meet again, they will match—like two halves of a single soul! Hopefully, this will stop her sleeping with other men.

On Life in General:
Life is like a big shanty. Everything will be fine so long as everyone sings in harmony. But if someone plays a duff note on the accordion or tries to break-dance at a sensitive bit, then there will be all sorts of trouble, mark my words.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gideon Defoe was born in 1975 and lives in London. Because of all the usual politics and petty jealousies rife throughout the literary world, neither of his previous books, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists nor The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab, has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One
NIGHTMARE ON SHARK MOUNTAIN

The best thing to do,’ said the albino pirate, ‘is shave his belly with a rusty razor.’

‘That’s rubbish!’ said the pirate with gout. ‘You should soak him in a barrel until he grows flippers.’

‘You should put him in bed with the Captain’s daughter!’

‘You should stick a plaster on his back!’

The pirates were sat in the boat’s kitchen arguing over what the proper protocol was for dealing with a drunken pirate. After the debate about whether sea anemones made better pretend moustaches or better pretend eyebrows when you stuck them to your face, this was easily the pirates’ favourite topic of conversation. Discussions onboard a pirate boat usually escalated into violence without much prompting, and the albino pirate was just about to empty a carton of milk over the pirate with gout’s head when the door crashed open and into the kitchen strode the Pirate Captain himself.

Even in slippers and dressing gown, the Pirate Captain cut an imposing figure. If you were to compare him to a type of font – because whilst the pirates usually liked to compare people to types of tree, just recently they had taken to comparing people to other stuff as well, like fonts, or creatures, or makes of cheese – he would undoubtedly be Impact, or maybe Rockwell Extra Bold. His years of staring at the ocean had given him a nice even tan, and when asked to describe himself in letters to pen friends he would tend to note that he was ‘all teeth and curls’ but with ‘a pleasant, open face’.1 And most strikingly of all, he wore a great luxuriant beard that the pirates knew had inspired at least one book of epic poetry, because the Captain had personally dictated it on an adventure when it had been too rainy to get up to much else.

‘Sorry, Pirate Captain,’ said the albino pirate, who knew that they weren’t supposed to fight at the breakfast table. ‘We didn’t mean to disturb you. We were just discussing what the best thing to do with a drunken pirate is. You know how we can never seem to decide.’

The Pirate Captain looked thoughtful. ‘The best thing to do with a drunken pirate,’ he said firmly, ‘is to give him some strong black coffee.’

And with the argument settled, the Pirate Captain grabbed a tray of breakfast and strode back towards his office.

‘He’s right,’ said the pirate with gout. ‘That makes a lot more sense. I don’t actually know what “soaking him in a barrel until he grows flippers” even means.’

The Pirate Captain sat back down at the desk in his office, or ‘nerve centre’ as he had been trying to encourage the men to call it, on account of that sounding more exciting. The cabin was decorated with all kinds of maps, charts, calendars, trophies and at least half a dozen portraits. There was one of the Pirate Captain with a large white whale, the latter smiling weakly and waving its tail. There was a painting of him wearing a string vest and holding a ship’s wheel in each hand to draw attention to the musculature in his arms and chest; and another showed him from the rear, walking across a tennis court and scratching his behind. Then there were the gifts from the crew – a series of commemorative plates that depicted famous pirate haircuts, a wind chime made out of miniature cutlasses, a tea towel with ‘10 Facts About Pirates’ and so on. Even the Captain occasionally got tired of the persistent nautical theme, but he didn’t have the heart to tell the men to be a little more imaginative in future. His pirates genuinely loved him, in a manly, shoulder-punching kind of way, and in turn he felt a genuine affection towards his crew. He liked to think of himself as a kind of maritime goatherd, responsible for keeping his pirate goats fed with goat food and warding off wolves and that. The Captain was still working on the metaphor and hoped to share it with them all one day. It had occurred to him to try keeping some actual wolves hidden on the boat and then to set them free to give him an excuse to bring up the whole goatherd-analogy thing, but he wasn’t sure where you could get wolves from. He’d certainly never seen any for sale anywhere. The Captain made a mental note: ‘Ask number two where I can buy some wolves. Preferably ravening.’ Then he went back to reading nautical trivia off the side of his cereal box, because that was where he got most of his seafaring knowledge.

There was a tap at the door, and the pirate with a scarf and Jennifer came in looking excited. Jennifer had been with the pirates for a while now, and she was beginning to blend in. She’d lost some of her characteristic Victorian-lady traits, like wearing corsets that crushed your womb or having hysterical illnesses at the drop of a hat and, eager to be a good pirate, she’d also passed on some of her more charming habits to the crew – it was now a common sight to see pirates brushing their hair a hundred times before bed or self-consciously correcting their posture by walking about with a book on their head.

‘Hello, Pirate Captain,’ said Jennifer.

‘Hello there,’ said the Captain. He pointed at his cereal box. ‘Did you know that, according to this, pirates wear patches to aid their view of the stars at night? Isn’t that something?’

‘The world of trivia is amazing,’ agreed the pirate with a scarf. ‘We’ve got the morning paper for you.’

‘Oh, well, just the cartoon section for me, thanks.’

‘I think you should see the front page, sir.’

The Captain glanced up at the paper Jennifer was holding and frowned. ‘“Communist Dingo Ate My Baby”?’

‘Next to that.’

Fishing his glasses out from under a sextant, the Pirate Captain began to read:

EAGLES
Admiral Sedgwick spoke exclusively to this newspaper about his horrific ordeal: ‘We were minding our own business, knocking about the ocean, when a huge flotilla of pirate ships sailed out of the fog. They swooped down like eagles in eye patches, waving cutlasses and gnashing their gold teeth.’

SKIN
Though hopelessly outnumbered, our brave  Admiral managed to get his officers to safety in a launch. The pirates were led by the ruthless Pirate Captain, who was described by eyewitnesses as  all teeth and curls but with a pleasant, open face and devilish flashing eyes. He was accompanied by a cackling pirate wearing a scarf made from human skin. ‘When that hellhound gave the order to hole the ship, I looked into his eyes and saw a man without a soul,’ reports Admiral Sedgwick. Many fine sailors went to a watery grave.

The Pirate Captain, who is of indeterminate age and no fixed address, apparently took up pirating in a misguided attempt to impress a girl.

‘I like the bit about your eyes flashing,’ said Jennifer. ‘Can you actually make them flash on and off?’

‘When the mood takes me,’ said the Pirate Captain, looking pleased.

‘And is it true about you taking up pirating to impress a girl?’

‘Oh, sort of,’ said the Captain. ‘Truth is, I’m a little tired of telling that anecdote.’

‘Is that human skin?’

‘No,’ said the pirate with a scarf. ‘It’s chinchilla. Nice and warm.’

‘Funny thing is,’ said the Pirate Captain, knitting his bushy eyebrows together, ‘I don’t really remember us...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307274918
• ISBN 13: 9780307274915
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 177
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland