Now I make no bones about it, in fact neither skull nor crossed bones, but I have always had this thing for pirates. How well I recall the dealings Mr Rune and I had with Captain Bartholomew Moulsecoomb, the Bog Troll Buccaneer [14] and his crew of scurvy pirate types. I really took to those fellows, I did. I do not know exactly what it is about pirates that I like so much. It might be one of so many things. The tricornes or cutlasses, peg legs or hand-hooks, frock coats or eyepatches, parrots or treasure chests. One of them, or maybe all. But I do like pirates. Monkeys I also like. But I like pirates the bestest.

And even as Fangio, my dad and myself were discussing THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE and I was telling them that I had chosen the tarot card of THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, so we must be doing the right thing, grappling hooks were being thrown up onto the passenger decks and pirates, many lacking for bits and bobs of themselves, were swarming up ropes, with knives between their teeth, arr’ing and arr-harr’ing and belching rum-tainted breaths.

A pause in our conversation was occasioned by the bursting in of the posh saloon bar door and the bursting through the opening of this by a group of the most wretched, hideous, horrible, scabrous, foul and filthy scum of the sea as should ever end their evil days doing a dance for Jack Ketch.

An overwhelming rankness, the very foetor of the damned, engulfed us in a healthless miasma. I coughed, my father coughed, Mr Rune and Fangio coughed, but Fangio’s monkey just grinned and chattered.

If they smelled bad, and they did, these malodorous blackguards, the looks of them were sufficient to strike fear into the bravest of hearts.

It was clear that any brief flirtations any of them ever had with hygiene had not led to a lasting relationship. They were filthy. They were bedraggled. Unkempt, unrinsed, soiled and begrimed. They were turbid, they were dreggy. Matted, caked and nauseatingly slimed.

And though I did have a thing about pirates, I did not take to this ghastly bunch.

‘Who be cap’n here?’ roared one of this putrid crew. One bigger and more repulsive than the rest. He wore a rotting tricorne titfer on his hideous head, a feculent frock coat, once of grey but now of gangrenous green. A pair of squalid seaman’s boots and a threadbare fusty necktie.

I noticed that this necktie was that of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers. It is strange what catches your eye in moments of extreme terror.

‘Who be cap’n here?’ roared this malcontent once more.

Fangio now pointed at my father. As did his monkey and also Mr Rune.

My father began now to flap his hands and turn around in small circles. Which explained to me how I must have come by this undignified habit.

‘We be takin’ this ship,’ quoth the large ungarnished pirate to my father. ‘What say ye to this?’

‘I say such is the law of the sea,’ said my father. ‘If you would be so kind as to put me in a longboat with a few weeks’ supply of food and send me on my way, I’ll be happy to even let you have my cap, if you fancy it.’

‘’Tis the cap of a nancy-boy,’ now quoth the pulverulent pirate. ‘But I might take it with your head still inside, if such takes my fancy.’

‘Now hold on there,’ I said, as I did not fancy any insalubrious malfeasant parting my daddy’s head from his body. ‘He said you can have the ship – there is no cause to go chopping his head off.’

‘And who be you, my girly boy?’ asked the besmutted buccaneer. ‘We’ll find a use for your botty parts as we might for a Portobello harlot.’

‘Is he suggesting what I think he is suggesting?’ asked Fangio of Hugo Rune.

‘Silence!’ roared the rank and rotten ruffian.

‘If I might just crave a moment of your time, O lord of the sea,’ said Hugo Rune, stepping forwards and bowing low before our tainted tormentor. ‘There is much treasure aboard this vessel and I can lead you to its whereabouts.’

‘Such you will do indeed,’ went the unwashed one and then took to arr’ing and arr-harr’ing, after the manner of his kind. Although even this did not endear him to me.

‘But first,’ continued Hugo Rune, ‘why not slake your thirsts here? There is much fine liquor to be had and it would be our honour to serve you.’

‘Arrr!’ and, ‘Arrr-harrr!’ And the putrid pirates cheered at this.

‘Take yourself to the rear of the bar counter,’ said Hugo Rune to me, ‘and serve our guests. Hurry now.’

And he gave me a look.

And I understood this look.

And I took to the rear of the counter.

The mildewed multitude called out for liquor, wine and ale and whisky. Fangio shook cocktails, his monkey pulled the pints and I handed out bags of crisps.

‘Do you have any Kryptonite-flavoured crisps?’ asked a septic seaman who knew nothing of continuity.

I was by now becoming able to deal with the extreme taint foisted onto the goodly air of the posh saloon bar by the scrofulous scoundrels. By the simple expedient of dipping two cocktail umbrellas in Angostura bitters and ramming them up my nostrils. Fangio’s monkey was still looking happy enough.

Hugo Rune engaged the pirate captain in conversation. Whilst plying him with a mixture of drinks that could surely have brought down a rhino.

‘And,’ I heard him say, ‘this floating city could serve you as a luxurious headquarters, whilst in it you scour the seas for further wealth. All that would be needed would be for half a dozen of your men to dive down and free the propellers that drive the ship.’

And I gathered from the pirate chieftain’s reply to this that the notion of leaving the Sargasso Sea, where his forefathers had become trapped and where he and his father before him had lived since birth, preying upon the contents and crews of unhappy ships that fell victim to the Sargassum weed, found great favour with him.

‘And so,’ Mr Rune continued, ‘myself and my companions would be honoured to throw in our lots with you and offer the highly specialised skills, which take years of training, to manage the actual movement of this great ship. You will find us a valuable asset.’

The scummy ruffian nodded his mouldy tricorne to this and then asked Mr Rune what progress had been made in the world beyond during the last two hundred years and whether the iPod had been invented yet. Which certainly had me baffled. But I did think that we were all starting to get along quite well. And I was joining in with some of the shanty singing. And my father was telling a tale about how he had been aboard a cross-Channel ferry that had gone down with all hands but himself and how he had been washed up on the beach at Hartlepool. Where the locals would have hanged him as a French spy, had he not been able to convince them that he was in fact a monkey. And Fangio had even encouraged several of the pirates to enter the Weeping and Wailing Competition. And Clarence was dancing a jig and rattling a tin cup for money.

When things suddenly went the shape of a pear in an unexpected fashion.

The door to the posh saloon bar, which had been burst in by the arriving pirates, and which had been eased back into its frame by my father, whom it appeared to me for the first time had a thing about tidiness and was perhaps just a tad obsessive-compulsive, burst open again, this time to admit the entrance of something more foul and unwholesome than all of the pocky pirates put together.

‘Ahoy there to you, bonny lads!’ cried out Count Otto Black.

There was a moment of silence then. Followed by mighty cheerings. The squalid leader of the bog-rotten bunch did evil toothless grinnings towards Mr Rune. ‘I have enjoyed our conversation,’ said he, ‘whilst you tried to inveigle me with talk of your knowledge and the value of your fellows. But we need none of you, as we can move this mighty ship by other means. I only spared you my blade because I was ordered to do so by my master here, who predicted who would be found aboard this ship after she struck the Sargasso.’