Barty Crusoe and His Man Saturday Part 10

After tea was over Baboo Bajorum made a sign to the pirate Captain and he got up and bowed more deeply than ever and began to tell his story.

"This," he said, "is the story of how we were made into Polite Pirates. When first we were pirates we were a disgrace to the name. We chased ships and made them prisoners. We robbed them of their treasures and burned them and sank them in the sea. We made people walk the plank or chopped their heads off. n.o.body would a.s.sociate with us and we were never invited anywhere. I think I might even say that we were disliked. One day we dropped anchor near a small island in the Indian Ocean. We were very hot and tired because the sun was blazing and the sea was like a burning-gla.s.s and we had been having a busy day. We had chased a merchant vessel loaded with a rich cargo of gold and splendid stuff and ivory, and when we had caught it we had behaved in our usual rude and inconsiderate way. We had sliced any number of heads off, and after we had carried the rich cargo to our own ship we had blown up the merchant ship without a word of apology. We were so hot and tired when we dropped anchor near the little island that we all lay down in our hammocks and fell into a deep sleep.

"Just before I went down to my cabin one of the other pirates asked me to come with him to the side of the ship and look at something he had been noticing on the island.

"'Do you see those big creatures dodging in and out among the trees?'

he said. 'Are they savages, or what are they?'

"I took my spy-gla.s.s and looked and saw that there really were some big creatures moving about among the cocoanut palm trees. They seemed to be peeping at us but trying to keep out of our sight and I could not see them plainly at all.

"'They look like savages dressed in skins of wild beasts,' I said; 'but they cannot do us any harm so long as we are on the sea and they are on the land. We will go to our cabins and sleep and leave one of the little cabin boys to watch.'

"So we went downstairs and left a little pirate whose name was Reginal Cyrel Adolphin Seymour to watch. He was a little boy who had run away from school to be a pirate, and very often he had been heard to remark that now he really was a pirate he would rather learn the multiplication table. He was as hot and tired as any of us that day, and what _he_ did was to fall asleep the minute the rest of us had gone to lie down." The pirate Captain stopped and cleared his throat and mopped his forehead with his red handkerchief.

"What happened then?" asked Barty. He saw Baboo Bajorum leaning forward with his big hairy hands on his knees and listening attentively. The pirate Captain began again:

"The sun got hotter and hotter and we slept and slept and slept. You know how heavily one sleeps on a hot day and how hard it is to get awake when you try. We did not try, but suddenly we all wakened at once. We were wakened by a great roaring which we thought was a sudden storm. But it was not a storm. It was a Baboo Bajorum sound, which you have never heard and which I hope you will never hear. It is louder than lions and fiercer than tigers and more piercing than panthers and leopards. Baboo Bajorums never make it unless they are very angry indeed, and when you hear it you had better look out."

"Are there more Baboo Bajorums than one?" Barty asked. "I thought this gentleman was the only one in the world."

The pirate Captain opened his mouth very wide and drew a long breath.

Then he said in a solemn voice:

"When we waked up there were forty-two Baboo Bajorums on our ship and one was sitting by each man's hammock and roaring the angry roar."

"Ah," said Barty, "how frightening!" and he felt quite alarmed.

"It was frightening," replied the pirate Captain, "but we deserved it--for our unpoliteness. We had disturbed the Captain of the merchant ship at his dinner when we cut his head off, and we had disturbed the whole crew when we blew the ship up. Books about politeness always say that you must have quiet and una.s.suming manners. We deserved all that happened. We had been loud and a.s.suming."

"What _did_ happen?" inquired Barty, and the Good Wolf leaned forward to listen, and Sat.u.r.day leaned forward and Blue Crest nearly tilted over with eagerness.

"When they stopped roaring they took us all prisoners. They had swum over from the little island and climbed up the ship's side as soon as they were sure we were asleep. This gentleman," and he made a bow to Baboo Bajorum, "is the Great Baboo of all. He made me get out of my hammock and fastened a chain round my waist so that he could lead me about. The other Baboos did the same with the other pirates. The first place he led me to was to a black corner down in the hold. I had taken captive a sick old gentleman on the merchant ship and I had loaded him with chains and put him down in the darkest corner of the bottom of the ship. I was going to try and make him sign a paper to give me the money he had left on land. Baboo Bajorum made me take the chains off him and take him on deck and wait on him and make bows to him until my back was almost broken."

"He must have been very glad," said Barty, quite relieved.

"He was gladder than I was," said the pirate Captain. "It was through him that we found out what the Baboo Bajorum really intended to teach us. We were so frightened that we could not understand their signs, and as they always knocked us down or threw us overboard when we did not obey at once, we should very soon have been black and blue all over. The sea was very full of sharks near the island and when you were thrown overboard you never knew whether you would get back or not."

"That was dangerous enough to make any one polite," said Barty.

"But," said the Captain, "we did not know it was politeness they wanted until we brought the old gentleman out of the hold. He was very polite himself and made the most beautiful bows to all the Baboos.

They had never seen bows before and they were very much pleased and began to practice bowing themselves. When the old gentleman was bowing a book fell out of his pocket. The Great Baboo kicked me until I picked it up. This is it. I never go anywhere without it." He took a book from his pocket and handed it to Barty, who opened it.

"'A Guide to Perfect Politeness, With Rules for Entertaining Royal Families, the n.o.bility and Gentry.' That is the name of it," said Barty. "Are there any adventures in it?"

"Not exactly adventures," said the pirate Captain. "It tells you how to converse brilliantly and how to fill up awkward pauses and how to begin a letter to a duke when you are writing to one, besides about never eating with your knife and always saying 'please' and 'I thank you' and 'pray excuse me' and 'I beg your pardon.'"

"Ah, I see!" said Barty. "That's why you said all those things in the cave."

"It was indeed," answered the pirate Captain. "The moment the Great Baboo saw the book he went and sat by the old gentleman and made signs to him to read aloud. The old gentleman read to him. In half an hour from that time I was chained to the mast and all the other pirates were chained on the deck round me and I was reading to them out of the 'Guide to Perfect Politeness.' The Great Baboo had thrown me into the sea in a very sharky place until I understood what he wanted. We all knew all the book by heart before breakfast next morning, and since then we have never broken a single rule. That was three years ago. The other Baboo Bajorums went back to their island in six months, but the Great Baboo has always sailed with us."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It is another pirate vessel and it is going to attack us."]

At that moment Barty heard the sound of many feet running on the deck and the shouting of many voices, as if something new and alarming was happening. The pirate sailors were all running about. Some came tumbling up the companion-way and some went screaming up the rigging and some went running to the side to look over the sea.

The pirate Captain stopped and clapped his spy-gla.s.s to his eye.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said. "I beg your pardon, excuse me for disturbing you by mentioning it, but there is a large ship bearing down on us at full sail. It is another pirate vessel and is going to attack us."

Barty jumped up and threw his cap in the air. "Hooray! Hooray!

Hooray!" he said. "There's going to be a pirate battle and I'm certain we shall win."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

The other pirate ship looked very big and grand. All its sails were filled with wind and it came cutting through the waves so fast that it looked as if it were alive. Barty stood and watched it and Sat.u.r.day came and took hold of his hand. Everybody on the polite pirates' ship was running about, dragging guns into place or pulling ropes or sharpening swords. There was a great clatter and noise and shouting of "I beg your pardon," or "pray excuse me," or "may I ask you to be so kind," when the pirates fell over each other, or got in each other's way, or wanted to be helped to lift or drag something. Blue Crest prudently went and hid in a coil of rope and Good Wolf walked up and down the deck and examined things. Baboo Bajorum walked up and down, too, with his big hands in his pockets. Suddenly there came a white puff of smoke from the chasing ship and a big "boom," and Barty and Sat.u.r.day both jumped at the same time because they knew the cannon had begun to fire.

The pirate captain shouted and waved his sword and then a puff of white smoke and a big "boom" came from the side of his ship, and Barty knew they had fired back.

Then everything became so exciting that you could scarcely stand it.

As soon as the boom and puff of white smoke was sent from the polite pirates' ship, a boom and a puff of white smoke came from the impolite pirates' ship, and as soon as a boom came from the impolite pirates'

ship, a boom answered back from the polite pirates' ship.

It was like this:

"Boom!" from the impolite pirates.

"Boom----boom!" from the polite pirates.

"Boom!" from the impolite pirates.

"Boom, boom, boom!" from the polite pirates.

"Let us go and sit behind that big coil of rope and watch," said the Good Wolf.

It was the coil of rope Blue Crest had hidden herself inside, and when Barty and the Good Wolf and Sat.u.r.day sat on the floor of the deck behind it, she was so glad that she whistled Barty's little song to let him know that she was quite near him. But Barty could scarcely hear her because there was so much noise. Pirates were shouting, gunners were ramming cannon b.a.l.l.s into cannons, and the polite pirate captain was yelling polite orders to his men. Barty was obliged to shout himself, just as he had been obliged to shout in the tropical storm.

"Do you think we shall win?" he called out, as loud as he could, to the Good Wolf.