"The best bit about magic," said the pirate with gout, "is the sparkles."

"That's way off," argued the pirate in green. "It's got to be the sawing people in half!"

"The leotards!"

"The vanishing elephants!"

Soon a fight broke out amongst the men, and their afternoon tea poured over the deck, crumbs of ship's biscuits crashing to the floor and teeth following suit. It was in the middle of this that the Pirate Captain kicked his way through his quarters and strode onto the deck malevolently, a hard thing to do in bright sunlight, but he pulled it off well. The Pirate Captain was all teeth and curls, with a pleasant open face. If he had been born a pencil rather than a pirate, and thinking of what sort of pencil they would be if they weren't pirates was among one of the crew's favorite pastimes (bypassing comparisons to trees, creatures, fonts, and sedimentary rocks), the Pirate Captain would undoubtedly be a broad but thin strikingly darkly-stroked hand-carved carpenter's pencil.

"What's all this racket, you coves?" the Pirate Captain said in greeting. The other pirates looked at him apologetically.

"Sorry, sir," said the pirate with rickets, who had just splashed hot tea in the face of the pirate with a nut allergy. "We were just discussing what the best part about magic tricks is."

"Well, that's simple, it's learning the secrets of the tricks by means of force," the Pirate Captain said while waggling his cutlass at an imaginary magician. "Number two, would you come here a mo?"

As the Pirate Captain and the pirate with a scarf left the crew, the pirate with a nut allergy - scalding tea streaming down his face - gave an impressed nod. "He's right. Next to learning a secret while running someone through, leotards are rubbish."

"What is it, Captain?" the scarfed pirate asked him as soon as they were inside the captain's quarters.

"Ah, I'm sure you know. I'm just awfully curious why the crew should be talking about magic at such a time. Have I missed something?" He straightened the pile of junk on his desk absent-mindedly.

"Yes, sir," the loyal first mate replied delicately. The Pirate Captain always loved to be 'in the know,' so having missed a small adventure because he overslept had to be worded carefully. Luckily the pirate with a scarf knew that his captain's curiosity would keep him from being moody, so he backed off on replying delicately and gave it to him straight. "While you were asleep, the lads grew so restless they begged to go ashore and check out that old antique shop." The ship was currently docked outside an artsy town in France. "You know how I can't say no to them when they're pleading like that."

"That is hard, yes."

"So we went and got some trinkets to tide them over."

"Ah. Not sure what that has to do with magic, Number Two…?"

"Oh, well, yes, you see Albino got himself a vanishing doubloon kit and they started the discussion that way."

"Vanishing doubloon, really! I'd like to see that. Disappearing doubloon would be better, I think. Alliteration, that sort of thing. Disappearing doubloon... Can he perform it well?" The Pirate Captain made to walk back on deck excitedly.

The pirate with a scarf winced. "No. No he can't. But the pirate in red is good, if you'd want to see him have a go…" he drifted into a high-pitched whisper at the sight of the Pirate Captain's face souring, pretending to fix up his scarf as though he hadn't been talking. The Captain never did like the pirate in red. Too surly and rebellious, even for a pirate.

"I never did like him. Much too surly and rebellious," he muttered to the door to the deck. "Even for a pirate."

"The pirate with a hook is all right at it," the pirate with a scarf said with a shrug. And at that the captain perked up again and strode back out to his crew to see.