"What did you say?" he shouted.
"Come back," Barty shouted in answer. "Mr. Bajorum will not let anyone hurt you. This," waving his hand towards the Baboo to introduce him, "is Mr. Bajorum."
The Impolite Pirates were so astonished that their faces dropped and they sat with their mouths wide open. Then they took off their hats and mopped their foreheads with their red bandanna handkerchiefs. Then they took up their oars and began to row towards the ship.
They were in five boats, and they all stopped in a line by the ship's side and looked up at the row of Polite Pirates who were looking down. They were so amazed that their mouths were still wide open, and when the Impolite Pirate captain spoke he stammered.
"D-d-did you s-s-say we m-might c-c-come on b-b-b-board?" he said. And when all the Polite Pirates bowed at once and the Captain answered him he was so overcome that he fainted quite away into the bottom of his boat. Because this was what the Captain said:
"If you will do us the honor and the kindness and will be so good as to oblige us, we shall be more delighted than we have words to express."
Then they let down a rope ladder and a bottle of smelling salts and some eau de cologne to restore the Impolite Captain, and by the time he was restored and assisted up the rope ladder all the Polite Pirates were standing lined up on deck ready to receive him and his crew with low sweeping bows. Barty and the Good Wolf came forward together and Barty explained.
"They are like this," he said, "because they are polite pirates, and in time they are going to teach you to be polite too. It is really very much nicer."
Just at first they almost gibbered because they did not know what to say, but when they were taken below and allowed to wash the smoke and powder off their faces and hands, and then were given cups of tea and muffins and raspberry jam, and then were shown all over the beautiful ship, they could not help but begin to be calm. But because they had never seen anything like Baboo Bajorum and his crew before, they could not help staring, and they could not all keep their mouths shut at the same time. The bows and politeness quite made them jump sometimes, but it was plain they began to admire them, because it was not long before they began to try to remember to make bows themselves.
At last they were all sitting peacefully together on the deck, and the sun had gone down and the moon had risen. The ship had sailed back to the Desert Island again and was lying at anchor in the beautiful blue water, which was making a soft lap-lap-lapping sound against its side. Barty looked out at the green slope which led up the cliff to the cave, and suddenly he remembered how he had slept on the bed of leaves last night and how comfortable it had been, and he remembered, too, that the Polite Pirates had only invited him to tea. So he got up from his chair and went to Baboo Bajorum and bowed—this time he did it more beautifully than ever, and he did it six times.