Greenbeard. Richard James Bentley

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