The Great Galloon and the Pirate Queen (15 page)

‘I don't even know if there IS a Pirate Queen!' he was sobbing. ‘Some people say she came through here years ago, threatening everybody and looking for the lost city of El Bravado, but then they also say she gave up, and went off to marry some sailor, or explorer, or something. Turned to the good, they say.'

‘I'm sure … the Captain … will get to … the bottom of it …' said Stanley, gasping for breath that wouldn't come.

Rasmussen was, if anything, struggling even more than Stanley, because of the Examinator strapped to her back. She stopped for a moment and held her side.

‘I've … got a stitch …' she said. ‘Do you think we could leave the Examinator here … and get it later …?'

‘Yes, of course – or not get it later,' said Stanley, thinking this could be a way to free himself from the tyranny of lessons.

Rasmussen unstrapped the big box from her shoulders, and laid it on the ground. As she did so, she must have knocked the ‘on' button. First a crackling noise, then a distinct voice came out of the little mesh speaker.

‘Breaker, ten four, big buddy, this is Sidney and Ragnarsson calling the Galloon. Rasmussen, are you there?'

Rasmussen sank to her knees and grabbed the speaktophone.

‘Come in, Ragnarsson and Sidney, But please only say normal things, not “breaker” or “ten four”, over.'

‘Copy that … I mean … we understand,'
said the voice.
‘We have to warn you – the FishTank, as you call it, has changed course – we're making straight for the Galloon! They want to wage war on your captain! Over.'

Stanley, Rasmussen and Perky looked at each other in shock.

‘I can't believe it!' said Stanley. ‘Just as the Captain might finally get a chance to rescue Isabella, he's going to be busy fighting off this “Pirate Queen”, whoever she is.'

‘Ah,'
said a pedantic little voice on the Examinator, who Stanley thought must be Sidney.
‘We can help you there. Your captain will not have to deal with both Isabella and the Pirate Queen.'

‘Oh?' said Rasmussen, testily. ‘And why's that?'

‘Because,'
said Sidney.
‘Isabella IS the Pirate Queen.'

Perky Luffington's return to the Galloon would have been a happy occasion under any other circumstances. Even as it was, he had so many hearty slaps on the back that he felt winded by teatime. But Stanley could see that a terrible weight was on him.

‘If I had known …' he kept saying. ‘If I had all the pieces, I would have moved sky and earth to tell the Captain the truth about this woman, however hard it would be for him …'

People consoled him, made him tea, listened to him – but it didn't make it any easier for anybody.

In the end, cowardice had won the day. Stanley and Rasmussen had told the Countess, who had told Ms Huntley, who had, surprisingly, told Abel. Abel and the Captain had retreated to his cabin, the Captain looking drawn and haggard as he knew something terrible was going on.

Stanley and Rasmussen had not hidden in their little eavesdropping hidey-hole. They had waited on deck, with everyone else. There had been no ranting, no smashing of fists on desks. The Captain had simply returned to the deck a short while later, looking tight-lipped but resolute. Abel had his hand on the Captain's shoulder. Stanley thought he had seen a look pass between the Captain and Ms Huntley, but as they were grown-ups and therefore continually giving each other knowing looks of little subtlety, it was hard to tell whether this one meant anything in particular.

‘I have led you across the world on a wild goose chase. My only mitigation can be that it was done for the best of reasons – love.'

This was all the Captain said, before climbing the mast to oversee the work that had been done on the balloon.

The FishTank was approaching. Onboard was not only the Captain's brother, who now seemed as feckless as he was evil, but his onetime bride-to-be, the dread Pirate Queen Isabella. Together Stanley, Rasmussen, Cloudier and Clamdigger had painted all of these strange goings-on into one big picture. And yet here they sat in the canteen, great mugs of tea in hands, while the grown-ups around them tried to save the day. The Captain had rallied himself enough to request that anyone who still felt inclined to help him should redouble their efforts at the repairs. Everybody had. Night was drawing in once more, regular as clockwork in this tropical place, and it had been another busy day. The Galloon was in better shape than it had been, but not yet ready to fly. Ms Huntley had commended Cloudier on her peace of mind in restoring the Liken to the mainb'loon. The Captain had persuaded Clamdigger to stop sewing and fixing, climbing and repairing for a few hours, and take some rest. The Countess had told Rasmussen that her sharp thinking with the Examinator may have given them the warning they needed to prepare for the assault. No-one had spoken specifically to Stanley. For the first time since joining the Galloon almost two years before, he was missing his home and his parents. He couldn't even talk to them – the Examinator was still out in the forest, which was now a no-go area. Everybody had been confined to the Galloon, if confined is the right word for such a massive place.

‘We don't even know whether the FishTank is any match for the Galloon, in the air or on the ground,' said Cloudier, hopefully.

They all nodded in agreement.

‘Though if the Pirate Queen was responsible for transforming the Sumbaroon into such a formidable vessel, then she has surely the capability to make it almost invincible,' said Clamdigger, staring into his cup.

‘Thanks for that, Mr Sunshine,' said Rasmussen.

‘Sorry,' said Clamdigger. ‘But I'm just saying …'

‘This is the Captain we're talking about!' said Stanley. ‘Captain Meredith Anstruther and his Great Galloon! Think of all the scrapes he's got us out of in the past!'

‘The volcano,' said Rasmussen.

They nodded.

‘Although technically, he got us into that, and Cloudier and the Brunt got us out,' said Stanley.

‘There were the Boomaphone noises!' said Clamdigger.

‘Yes!' said Cloudier. ‘Although that was Rasmussen and Stanley, wasn't it, really?'

‘The BeheMoths?' said Clamdigger.

‘Cloudier, if you think about it. And you, Jack.'

‘What about Fassbinder, the robot spy? The Captain knocked his block off!'

‘True! True! Hear hear!' they all muttered.

‘But quite a lot of it's been us, hasn't it?' said Cloudier.

‘Yup,' said Rasmussen, who'd never experienced a moment of self-doubt in her life.

‘So … why have we persuaded them to let us sit down here?' said Clamdigger. ‘Let's get up on deck and see what's going on!'

‘Okay!' said Stanley.

And so they did. As one, they left the canteen, and jumped on the back of Clamdigger's dog-cart. This took them to the for'ard heckscalator. This moving walkway, an innovation of Clamdigger's, took them all the way past the ballroom, the high street and the Royal Opera House to the upper hatchway, from where they could climb up a spiral ladder to the main deck. They travelled in silence, but as they emerged onto the deck, near the twelve great trunks of the mast, each and every one of them gasped. Stanley felt the blood rush to his ears. In the past few hours, while they had been sleeping, resting and eating, the Galloon had been transformed. It was no longer a shipwreck. It was a fortress.

The main balloon had been inflated once more, and was standing proudly above them. Smoke was billowing from the funnels, so that Stanley knew the Brunt's work of re-stoking the furnaces was well under way. All around the rail, barricades had been built, using spare planking coils of ropes, great nets full of hammocks, furniture and mattresses. Stanley whirled around, and saw that the quarterdeck was now more like a castle turret, built up and thickened with trees from the forest. The harpoon, which Stanley had once seen used to fight off the all-devouring BeheMoths, was now a bunker, surrounded by sandbags, aiming into the forest. Perky Luffington was standing by it, and he tipped his odd hat at them as they emerged. He was surrounded, Stanley now saw, by some people who were new to the Great Galloon. Some were in shorts and sandals, some in strange robes, others in what looked like swimming costumes. Many of them had bow and arrows in their hands, and they all looked ready for a fight.

‘My friends, the Rococans!' said Perky, proudly. ‘Once the drums put the word out, everybody comes together!'

Stanley felt a lump in his throat, fear in his heart, and a niggling thought in the back of his mind. He walked towards Claude's outstretched finger, the size of a sofa, and touched it – but no, the tiger was still dormant. Perhaps he had had his moment. It looked to Stanley as if he had always been there – indeed some of the planks of the deck seemed to merge into the wooden fingers and claws, as if the tiger had been carved here where he lay.

WHEN THE TIME COMES AGAIN, LITTLE BLUE

Had he imagined it? Perhaps. Perhaps he had imagined it all. He shook his head to dislodge such gloomy thoughts, and turned to see where the others had gone. Rasmussen was sitting, chirpy as ever, atop the great harpoon, looking out to the forest.

Stanley climbed up next to her and peered over the edge of the rampart, at the wide expanse of forest below. The river snaked through it, reflecting the sun into their eyes despite the cloud cover. It was still mercilessly hot.

‘Alright, ugly?' said Rasmussen. Stanley knew her jollity was slightly forced – she always got more insulting as she got more tense. ‘I know! Perhaps you're a yeti?'

‘A blue yeti?' said Stanley.

‘Stranger things have happened at sea,' she said.

‘Yep. And in the air. We've seen most of them.'

They looked out across the forest.

‘What's gonna happen?' she said.

‘A fight. Or not. Let's see,' he said.

‘We'll see soon,' she said, pointing out across the forest.

Stanley looked, and saw that, where she pointed, something strange was happening to the forest. Along the line of the river, trees were rattling, then shaking, then disappearing with a crash. The trail was moving towards the Galloon, and Stanley knew it could only be the FishTank, making an almost frontal assault.

‘Here she comes,' said Stanley. ‘I wonder if she knows who she's dealing with?'

‘Of course she does – she was engaged to be married to him not long ago!' said Rasmussen.

‘You know, on this occasion I didn't just mean him.'

Rasmussen looked at Stanley, and they smiled at each other.

Up the mast, Perky Luffington was emerging from the main balloon, with Cloudier right behind him. Clamdigger had waited in the crow's nest.

‘Well, I'm jiggered!' he said. ‘You know – I was onboard for seventeen years, and never knew anything whatever about this. I left the Galloon because I missed the forest, the wildlife, the heat. And all the time we had the forest, the wildlife, and the heat with us. If only I'd known.'

‘The Captain needs someone to tend it all, you know – now we've reintroduced the Liken, it may take a long time to re-establish itself. The B'loondeer will need feeding and managing …' Cloudier was saying.

‘Well, where there's B'loondeer there's always sackrabbits, and where there's sackrabbits there's moon hawks. I bet there's a whole ecosystem in there …'

Perky seemed to be in a reverie as he continued. ‘I couldn't do it on my own – but I know some of my Rococan friends are desperate for adventure … do you think he'd allow it?'

‘You know, I think he would?' said Cloudier, with a look at Clamdigger. ‘Besides, I think we've earned the right to make some decisions of our own.'

They turned and looked out across the forest, to where the FishTank was blazing its trail of destruction through the trees.

‘She's coming!' said Cloudier.