– so mum, an’ leave all to us.”
As they were going, Sheba suddenly checked them. “Calico, wait. When they were going to flog me today …” she looked askance, and her voice was over-casual “… who was yon that loosed me?”
“Which one?” asked Firebeard. “The cocky black Irisher or the mealy swab wi’ the long legs?”
“The Englishman,” said Sheba coldly, “thou untutored bladder.”
“Name o’ Avery,” said Rackham. “Captain in Charlie boy’s navy. Why?”
“Oh … nothing,” said Black Sheba, and stretched herself like some great black cat on her straw, her eyes stoking up ’neath lazily-lowered lids, a strange enigmatic quiver agitating her sensuously-parted toes …
A Canberra cruise this isn’t, but who can tell what lies ahead as the Twelve Apostles skids round the corner of the Kentish coast, her passengers all unaware of the mischief brewing below decks? What dark purpose does Sheba harbour Avery-wise? What will come of his infatuation with the lovely Lady Vanity? Is her dress of creaseless material, and could it conceivably be altered to fit a corsair virago six inches taller? What dark schemes revolve in the fertile mind of Colonel Blood? How would you like to be chained up in an orlop? Read on …
The Twelve Apostles followed the course charted by movie art directors since time immemorial, in which the image of a tiny galleon is seen gliding gently across an Olde Worlde map with whales spouting bottom right – down from the Channel, across Biscay (where everyone would be ghastly sick and heaving, but you don’t see that bit), round the top left-hand bump of Africa, and down into tropic waters, at which point the map dissolves into a long shot of the actual galleon cruising briskly across a sunlit sea. Then we get a quick shot of life on board – first the captain with a telescope on the quarter-deck, just to let you know that everything’s under control, possibly a long shot of filling sails in case you’ve forgotten how the ship is actually propelled, and lastly to the matter in hand, whatever it may be. Right.
In this case we see Captain Yardley and Admiral Rooke looking down indulgently on a specially-holystoned part of the main deck, where Lady Vanity, clad in biscuit-coloured muslin, is playing shuffleboard with Captain Avery, trilling merrily when she wins, and pouting prettily when she loses. She doesn’t often pout, because Avery is the shuffleboard champion of the Royal Navy, and his keen eye and sinewy wrist enable him to leave his rings just that bit short every time, or nudge Vanity’s shots into the centre of the target. (After all, he’s besotted with the girl, and knows that his wooing won’t prosper if he whitewashes her 12–0 every time.)
And as they play, the jovial Firebeard galumphs about retrieving the rings and crying “Rare shot, milady!” and “Bravely thrown, cap’n!” and “Bloody hard lines, ma’am!” and bobbing and grinning and knuckling his forehead and generally grovelling like anything. For he and Rackham have shipped aboard under the names of Knatchbull-Carshalton and Wentworth respectively (Bilbo’s suggestions, naturally), and have been at pains to impress their superiors with their trustworthy, seamanlike, forelock-tugging qualities. With the result that Captain Yardley has remarked to Admiral Rooke on the rare good fort’n, by cock, of getting two such prime hands, and Rackham has won such golden opinions by his resolution and intelligence that he has been appointed quartermaster, with responsibility for steering in the night watches. (Significant, eh?) Firebeard isn’t much good at navigation (let’s face it, when he watches the sunrise he has to spin a coin to decide whether he’s looking east or not), but he is something of a mascot because he organises dice-horse-racing and deck quoits and sweeps on the ship’s mileage for Vanity’s amusement, and is the caller for Bingo in the evenings, crying “Eyes down, look in, clickety-click, legs eleven, Kelly’s plonk, blind sixty” and the like, to the hilarity of all. Vanity thinks he is a perfect pet, and calls him (wait for it) Master Nittywhiskers, and generally treats him like a tame retriever, and no one ever notices the occasional mad piggy glint in the eyes of the grinning, fawning sycophant.
Not even Blood, with his villain’s nose for villainy. For he had other things to think about. To start with, he found himself sent to Coventry in the first week, after Avery suddenly remembered where he’d heard the Colonel’s name before, and the Admiral, Yardley, and Vanity were thunderstruck to discover that their fellow-passenger was the notorious ruffian who had recently scandalised London by his attempt to glom the Crown Jewels, for which daring exploit he had unaccountably been pardoned by King Charles and set at liberty. (Fact, and no one has solved the mystery to this day.) However, after that it was the cold shoulder all round for our Tom, the gentlemen turning sharply on their heels and Lady Vanity elevating her exquisite little retroussé nose and daintily fanning the air if he came within ten feet of her. The Colonel endured philosophically his exclusion from after-dinner whist and “I spy”, and having to eat in his cabin alone, and not having anyone tell him the right time. His isolation enabled him to ponder two matters which were intriguing him – one being the mysterious oak box which Avery kept hidden in his cabin (the Colonel having watched its bestowal from a convenient skylight on the first day of the voyage), and the other being how to arrange an undisturbed visit to the orlop to teach Sheba postman’s knock. Being a patient man, he set himself to wait, ignoring the slights of Cabin Society, and fingering his clarkie moustache with a slow smile as he leaned nonchalantly against the rail.
His double opportunity came on a balmy tropic night as they sailed smoothly down towards the Cape over a limpid azure sea beneath a moon so golden that it almost dripped in the purple sky. Stars twinkled, scented breezes blew, in the great cabin the Admiral and Yardley, stuffed to surfeit and drowsy with port, hiccoughed and reminisced, and in the seclusion of the stern gallery Captain Avery and Lady Vanity clung in an ecstatic embrace, munching each other’s lips and only occasionally coming up for air.
(Avery? Necking? Has our idol got feet of smouldering clay? By no means. Left to himself, he would have worshipped his blonde divinity from afar, or rather from close quarters, but never laying a glove on her; he didn’t have all his Scout badges for nothing. His love was chaste and holy, and he had never so much as held hands at the church social. But Vanity soon took care of that. Delicately nurtured at a finishing school where panty-raids by ardent young males were commonplace, and where she and her schoolmates had been wont to classify Society bucks as N.S.A.V., N.S.I.S.C., and N.S.A.* respectively, she had quickly realised that this dream-man was such a spiritual Galahad that he would need tuition in how to get physical. Her course of instruction took about eleven seconds, consisting of a glance at the moon, a gentle sigh, a hand on his arm, her eyes wide and uplifted to his, a parting of her moist lips, and before the hypnotised Avery knew what he was doing he was glued to her like the Magdeburg hemispheres, finally parting after three solid minutes of osculation with the sound of a drain unblocking. After that first memorable kiss, which he quickly convinced himself was not only a perfectly seemly, but courteous thing to do – for this adorable girl deserved every treat she could get – it was plain sailing; Vanity could relax contentedly and let him make the running – all good clean fun, mind you, for she was a proper and toward young lady who permitted no undue familiarities, which she guessed Avery wouldn’t know how to make, anyway.)
So they smooched away blissfully and decorously, as lovers will, until Vanity decided that she had now got this superman softened up sufficiently to start moulding him to her imperious will – a necessary preliminary to the marriage which she had determined would follow eventually, when she felt like it. From this point the lovers were observed by Colonel Blood, out for a twilight prowl, and cheerfully eavesdropping from the stern rail above their heads, the swine. This is what he heard:
VANITY (panting): Easy, boy, easy! Golly, you don’t know your own strength! Is my hair a mess?
AVERY: Nay, sweet goddess, ’tis immaculate as thy perfect self. (With an indulgent male chauvinist smile.)