Pirate King Read Online Free PDF Page B

first.”
    “ ‘On, on, the vessel flies, the land is gone.’ ”
    He cocked his head, and replied, “ ‘What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!’ ”
    “ ‘But whoso entereth within this town / That, sheening far, celestial seems to be / Disconsolate will wander up and down.’ ”
    “Yes, Byron was not fond of Portugal, even before he had an unhappy affaire there.”
    Long, long ago, as an unschooled orphan preparing for university examinations, I had a tutrix with a marked, even startling, affection for Lord Byron. There were lines of Childe Harold that the Byron-besotted Miss Sim had taken care to skip lightly over—thus guaranteeing that her adolescent student should commit them indelibly to memory. Triggered by mention of the Portuguese capital, some of those phrases began to rise now to the surface of my mind: memorials frail of murderous wrath , and the shrieking victim hath / Pour’d forth his blood beneath the assassin’s knife , and Throughout this purple land, where Law secures not life … I could see from the way Hale fiddled uneasily with his cigarette case that those phrases were pressing at his memory as well.
    “No doubt much has changed in the past eleven decades,” I observed.
    “So I have been reassured.”
    “Very well: We set off on Monday for some weeks in Lisbon.”
    “And Morocco.”
    “Africa?”
    “The town of Salé, on the coast north of Casablanca. In the seventeenth century, it was a pirate kingdom.”
    “ ‘Sun-burnt his check, his forehead high and pale,’ ” I blurted out. “ ‘The sable curls in wild profusion veil.’ ”
    “ ‘There was a laughing Devil in his sneer / that raised emotions both of rage and fear,’ ” Hale agreed. Before any more of Miss Sim’s Byronic Corsair images could trail before my eyes, I pushed the glass of brandy away from me. “Mr Hale, you’re making a film about a film about pirates. Unsuccessful Victorian pirates from fifty years ago, not blood-thirsty African pirates three hundred years in the past. And from Penzance, not Salé. Why on earth don’t you just film the thing in Penzance?”
    “Because at some point real pirates enter the scene, and they are based in Morocco.”
    “But if you are telling a story about some people telling a story, why not just construct a fake-Africa studio? Which, since you’re after realism, is what your fictional film company would have done, in any event.” Real realism about realistic verisimilitude …
    “As I said, Pirate King is about a film crew that is making a picture—which is also called Pirate King —about The Pirates of Penzance . The picture’s director—the fictional director, not Randolph Fflytte—is dissatisfied with the looks of the men in England, so he takes the production to Lisbon to hire some swarthy types, only to have their boat captured by actual pirates, who take them to Salé. The fictional director and the apprentice pirate Frederic are both played by Daniel Marks. The fictional director’s fictional fiancée is an actress. That is to say, she is an actress working on the fictional film, playing the part of Frederic’s girlfriend, Mabel, both parts being played, I’m afraid, by Bibi, who is an actual actress. Or so she claims. You don’t know Bibi? Oh, blessed innocence!
    “But lest you think there’s a further stratum of reality, Daniel Marks and Bibi are not in turn romantically connected. Daniel is, shall we say, otherwise inclined. Then there’s Major-General Stanley, who is not only Mabel’s father but the fiancée’s father, and also a financial backer of the film. The fictional film, that is—the actor himself, Harold Scott; you’ve heard of him , I expect?—is unrelated to Bibi, and doesn’t have a sou. Spent it all on drink and horses.”
    I made a small noise rather like a whimper.
    “I know, it gives one a headache. Still, that’s Randolph’s plan. Ours not to reason why.”
    Ours but to do and die? God, I hoped he