“Young’un, what’s that you’re saying?” he asked sternly.
To have told him would have spoilt everything. Only when my night-shirt had been stripped off and I saw that a grand gala-night of hair-brushing was being planned, did I venture an explanation.
“I was only telling the Bantam a story.”
“That’s a lie. Let’s hear it,” said the Cow.
“I can’t begin when you’ve got my shirt,” I expostulated. “Let me get back into bed; then I’ll tell you.”
It was arranged that I should be given a respite while the older boys undressed. Once safe in bed, I set my imagination galloping.
“Once upon a time,” I commenced, “there was a great pirate and he was known as the Pirate King. He had a wife called One-Eye, and she was the only person he was afraid of in all the world. He sailed the blood-red seas with a crew of smugglers and highwaymen, most of whom he had rescued at the last minute from the gallows. They were devoted to him, and the vessel in which he sailed was called The Damn.”
The name of the vessel fetched them. There was no more talk of hair-brushing. At half-past ten the light went out and we heard old Sneard shuffling down the passage, going his final round of inspection. At each door he halted, lifting his candle above his head and craning out his long thin neck. Satisfied that all was in order, he shuffled on to his own quarters and we heard his door slam. That night I must have lain in the darkness recounting the adventures of the Pirate King till long past twelve. Every now and then a voice would interrupt me from one of the narrow white beds, asking a question. I fell asleep in the midst of my recounting.
After that it became a practice that each night a fresh development in the life of this wonderful man should be unfolded. It was a good deal of a tax on the imagination, but the Bantam came to my help, and we told the story turn and turn about. We told how The Damn sailed into Peru and came back blood-drenched and treasure-laden; how the Pirate King took strange maidens to his breast in coloring all the way from alabaster to ebony, and what his wife One-Eye had to say about it; how the Pirate King could never be defeated and became so strong that he made himself Pope till he got tired of it. Discrepancies in chronology caused us no more inconvenience than they usually do historic novelists. In our world Joan of Arc and Julius Cæsar were contemporaries. They met for the first time as prisoners, when they were introduced by the Pirate King on board The Damn. It was owing to the Roman Emperor that the Maid escaped and survived to be burnt.
But the part which found most favor was that which described the sack of London, and how the boys of the Red House enlisted with the pirates and took all the masters, except the Creature, out to sea and made them walk the plank. I refused to allow the Creature to be murdered.