Four

The pirates had arranged to meet up by the Enquiry Desk after an hour had past.

The Captain had assembled a towering pile of books – more than 6000 pages tall – and he was hoping that his book stacking prowess might impress Miss Taciturn.  The deckhands had three baskets full of dull looking grey and black books with ribbons and what not on the covers.

‘Fifty Shades of Grey?’ queried the Captain as he pulled one out to inspect it. 

‘Tis the authoritative tome on the use of Grey in interior decorating Captain.’ Said Ed. 

‘Aye.’  Chorused Ned and Ted.  ‘We was thinking the Griddlebone could do with a spruce up .’

‘Haven of Obedience?’  The Captain was fairly certain that the little black book was not about interior décor.  He opened it up, but Ted snatched it from his paws before he could read further. 

‘Dull stuff, Captain very dull.’ 

Ed and Ned nodded in agreement.  ‘Aye tis all about …’  the deckhands exchanged glances and then huddled together.  Always a bad sign, thought the Captain.  One day he would take a hand in the recruitment of crew and then there would be no more of this hiring of sets of triplets and twins.  They were just conspiracies in embryo.

‘Staff management!’  Ed declared triumphantly.

‘Yes, Captain.  Tis a tome on the proper respect due to a leader of an organisation and how happy workers are obedient ones.’  Ted added. 

‘Destined to Play?’  This one had a red ribbon on the cover, but the Captain supposed that might be the new trend in management book covers.  It was better than the beheaded ladies of the regency romances that the deckhands had stashed under their hammocks.

‘All work and no play…’ chorused the deckhands. 

The Cabin boy turned up, dragging a basket of Science fiction and fantasy novels behind him.  The Captain spared these a cursory glance – it would do no good for him to be letting his crew read books that were unsuitable – but otherwise left them alone.  Miss Taciturn was bent over her computer, and giving no sign that she’d seen the elegant tower the Captain had built with his own selection of books.  He wondered if adding the decorating, management, and genre fiction to it would result in the sort of edifice that she couldn’t ignore.  But then the genre fiction would lower the tone and it would not do for a Librarian to think a Pirate Captain so poorly read that he could manage nothing more than a light hearted fantasy romp and a galaxy spanning space opera.

The clock moved to five past the hour and the Captain counted up his crew.

‘Has anyone seen Mate and Cook?’

‘No Captain.’ 

‘They were going to look for cook books.’

‘First Floor.’  Said Miss Taciturn from behind her computer.

The pirates jumped and the deckhands pulled out their cutlasses at this sign of the mysterious powers of the librarian.

‘How would you know such a thing?’ Asked the Captain, whiskers bristling, ‘Our shipmates would not have confided in their plans with such as you.’ 

‘The cookbooks are on the first floor.  If your shipmates wanted them that’s where they would have gone.’

‘Do not trust her Captain.’ Cried the deckhands.  ‘No good ever came of a woman eavesdropping on the private councils of honest pirates!”

‘Honest?’  Miss Taciturn shook her head.  ‘I am sure you are many things gentlemen, but I doubt you are honest.’

‘We are honest according to the pirate code.’ Said the deckhands, who were mightily offended by this attack on their honour.  No pirate could hear such slander and let the speaker live, although in the case of Miss Taciturn the deckhands felt they might be willing to wave the mandatory keelhauling if she would only stop looking at them over her glasses in that nasty way.

‘Very well.  Would you like me to show where the cookbooks are?’  Miss Taciturn was not sure that letting a band of marauding pirates roam the library unaccompanied would be a good thing. 

‘Aye’  The Captain nodded.  ‘But the rest of you bilge rats can stay here and guard the books.’

The deckhands agreed eagerly to this, already calculating how many of the Captain’s books they could replace before he returned.