That explains a lot,' he said. 'I suppose it's also why we've never glimpsed that giant compass in the corner of the Atlantic. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed.

It’s not really my fault. The problem is that my mouth just comes out with these things. And you can’t blame me for what my mouth does, can you? Curse this mouth. Do you think it might be possessed?'The Pirate Captain looked in the mirror and made his mouth into a series of shapes he thought looked demonic.

The Captain was wearing his best blousey shirt, his beard was gleaming in the early morning light and he’d polished all his gold teeth. As he strode manfully towards the shore, the only thing that could have make him look even more heroic that he already did would have been the theme to Flash Gordon playing in the background, but it was a hundred and seventy years too early for that.

The Captain’s boat inspections were always pretty slapdash, because they mainly just involved him looking at the ropes and planks and barnacles and then nodding to show that he approved of whatever they happened to be doing.

I fear it is the end for us,’ wailed Marx as the bears inched closer. ‘Is this the way you saw yourself going. Pirate Captain:‘In fact,’ said the Captain grumpily, ‘it’s pretty much the exact situation I usually try to cheer myself up with when I’m in a bit of a fix. “At least you’re not about to be eaten by bears and/or fall into a replica volcano,” I tell myself. So now I’ve got to come up with an even worse scenario, which is a nuisance.

In his time the Pirate Captain had made a number of dramatic entrances of his own – not always intentional it had to be said, as quite often they were the result of him accidentally setting himself on fire – but even he had to admit that Cutlass Liz’s dramatic entrance set an extremely high dramatic-entrance standard.

Just then there came the wheezy sound of an accordion. It was an odd little tune that, had he been alive exactly one hundred and fifty years later, the scarf-wearing pirate would have recognized as the first few bars from ‘Theme to Murder, She Wrote’.

Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.

They both fell silent. For a while the only sound they could hear was the noise of books resting on shelves, which wasn’t really enough of a sound to distract them from the awkwardness of the moment.