Gloriana and the Twins
Hunt for Pirate Treasure
John Last
Introduction
This story is based on one I made up in 1962 to
tell two toddlers who were bored after many
re-readings of Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the
Willows, Charlotte’s Web and The Magic Pudding. We were
on a cargo ship carrying 12 passengers, in the Indian Ocean
about halfway between the Red Sea and the Western
Australian coast. I couldn’t pop out to a book shop to
replenish the supply of suitable books for small children.
They asked me to make up a story and tell it to them.
Remembering Treasure Island by Robert Louis
Stephenson and the villainous ship’s cook Long John
Silver, I recalled the parrot on Silver’s shoulder. I made up
a story about that parrot, about 9-year-old twins Jennifer
and Christopher who got this parrot hundreds of years later
at a pawnshop in an Australian seaport. The twins and the
parrot were the heroes of my story, and were chased across
inland Australia and out to an island – Treasure Island –
off the coast beyond the top end of the Great Barrier Reef,
by three villains who were after the parrot and planned to
extract the location of the pirates’ treasure by getting the
parrot drunk.
I thank those two toddlers, Rebecca and David Last, for
provoking me into making up the precursor to this story,
and I thank my beloved late wife Wendy for recording
details of that sea voyage in her diary for 1962. When I read
her diary for the first time in 2014, several years after she
died, I was reminded of the story I made up and I began to
write it down for the first time. The characters came to life
in my head and took over their story. Gloriana is the result.
The story is set in Australia in the early 1930s and is
based partly on my memories of the country and its people
at that time. The human and avian characters in the story,
however, do not resemble any real people or parrots, living
or dead. I have taken some liberties with the facts. Rosella
parrots can live a long time, but not several hundred years
and I never heard of one with Gloriana’s conversational
abilities. Bon-Bon station was on the edge of the Nullarbor
Plain in South Australia, not in Northern New South
Wales. Seasons in Australia and seasonal activities in the
fruit-growing irrigation districts along the River Murray
and on sheep stations, don’t follow the sequence implied
in this story.
John Last
Ottawa 2016
Acknowledgements
Several people have given me useful reactions to
incomplete drafts, and other help and advice as this story
took shape. They include Janet Byron Anderson, Theresa
Jamone, Susan Jennings, Karen Trollope Kumar, Ian
McDowell, Nerys Parry, and Ian Prattis. I thank them all
Also, I thank friends who have children or
grandchildren in the target age range, approximately 8-12
years of age; and have given the story to these children to
read. These include Jennifer Chew, Maria Cristina Harris,
Margaret Jaekl (her grand-daughter Erika Iwasaki Jaekl,
was especially helpful), Susan Jennings, Guy Thatcher, and
Leslie Wake.
Finally I thank my children Rebecca, David and
Jonathan Last, all middle-aged now but still able to accept
make-believe; and my beloved Wendy, for jogging my
memory even after her death.
John Last
Ottawa, Canada, 2016
Chapter 1
Sunbeams flowed through gaps between all the stuff
in the crowded pawnshop window and the dusty
air inside until they struck something that glowed
green, blue, yellow and red against its drab surroundings.
Gazing at it after she noticed it beyond the clutter in the
window, Jennifer McLeod at first couldn’t make out what
this strange thing could be. Whatever it was, it moved
sideways and turned first one way then the other. As she
kept looking at it, she made out a head and beak at one
end, beady black eyes that seemed to be looking straight at
her and two grey claws grasping a perch. It was a brilliantly
colored parrot.
She gasped with surprise and delight and clutched her
twin brother’s arm.
“Look, Chris! Look at that beautiful parrot!”
Christopher McLeod turned rather reluctantly from
the flintlock musket he was inspecting in another part of
the pawnshop window and looked where she was pointing.
Jen wondered if their father would get the parrot for
them for their birthday. Chris grinned. “Yeah! Let’s ask
him.” He hadn’t heard her unspoken thought, although
he did occasionally at times of crisis; he knew his twin
sister as well as he knew himself, and he knew what was
on her mind.
In a few weeks the twins would have their 10th birthday
and were already thinking about it. They were far-sighted
children who believed in planning ahead. Entering double
figures, they believed, would make them quite mature and
grown up.
“Would we have to do much looking after it?”
Christopher asked cautiously, speaking aloud rather
than thinking silently, remembering the guinea pigs that
had been so much more work than either of them had
bargained for.
School had to be taken more seriously this year too.
Not only were the hours more demanding, the work was
more interesting and even good fun at times, there was
also homework for the first time in their lives, a rather
rude shock to the system. The twins enjoyed school, were
doing well and recognized their duty to get homework
done; but they rarely enjoyed doing it. They knew there
wouldn’t be as much spare time as there had been in
earlier school years.
“I dunno, Jen,” said Christopher. “It might be a lot of
work, like those guinea pigs…” But Jennifer was determined
at least to have a closer look. She turned to their father,
Alec McLeod, who had caught up with them and was
standing behind them, smiling.
“Daddy,” she said (she only called her father “Daddy”
when she really, really wanted something; at other times
he was just “Dad”), “Daddy! There’s a beautiful parrot in
there! Can we go in and have a look at it? It mightn’t be for
sale, but if it is and it’s not too expensive, could Chris and
me get it for our birthday?”
“Your birthdays are a long way off,” Alec McLeod
remarked quietly, but firmly. He was accustomed to his
persuasive daughter’s ways. She’d had a way of extracting
un-birthday presents for herself and for her twin brother
Chris for several years. Both parents tolerated this as part
of the price they had to pay for having happy children.
So in they went. The pawnshop was dimly lit, except
where rays of sunlight got through between all the stuff
displayed in the window. The parrot was bathed in
sunshine that make it seem almost to glow.
The cramped space between the entrance and the
counter had a fusty smell, mildew, disinfectant, mothballs,
stale cigarette smoke and other unattractive odors. The
parrot’s glowing colors made the smell seem unimportant.
The parrot looked them up and down with its bright beady
eyes, giving Jennifer the feeling that it was inspecting them
before deciding whether to approve of them.
Then, both Christopher and Jennifer were absolutely
certain, the parrot winked at them, first with its left eye,
looking straight at Jennifer, then turning its head a little,
it winked at Christopher with its right eye. Somehow, they
both thought, the parrot would have smiled too if a beak
could smile. But of course a beak can’t smile so that really
must have been just wishful thinking.
“Shop,” called the parrot in a high-pitched squawky
voice, “Customers!” They turned as they heard footsteps
shuffling along behind the counter, to see a stooped old
man, wisps of straggly white hair across a nearly bald head,
several days’ stubble on his chin. His shirt sleeves were
rolled up. The wrinkled skin of his forearms which looked
as if they had once been beefy and muscular, was covered
with tattoos. On his left arm there was a ship’s anchor, a
mermaid and a dagger; and on his right, a flintlock pistol
pointed at a man’s torso with the initials LJS ; below this,
forked lightning and more initials.
“Good morning sir,” Jennifer said politely, “We are
interested in this beautiful parrot. What’s its name? Is it
for sale?”
The old man’s shoulders shook as he coughed, and
growled in an angry-sounding sort of way, not a happy
sound. “Don’t call ‘im it,” he snapped, glaring at her with
watery red-rimmed eyes. “This ‘ere is Cap’n Flint, a wise
and wily old bird. ‘E’s ‘undreds of years old! You treat ‘im
with respect!”
“Um, I’m sorry, sir,” said Jennifer politely to the
pawnshop proprietor, but looking at the parrot, which
looked back at her and nodded his head as if he understood
what she had said and accepted her apology. She went on
speaking, now looking directly at the parrot. “We want you
to come home with us, Cap’n Flint. Would you like that?”
The parrot bobbed his head up and down vigorously, as if
he was saying “Yes! I’d like that!”
Alec McLeod took over from his daughter and picked
up the conversation with the rather unsavory looking
pawnshop proprietor. He named a price, í10 for the parrot
but seemed to be in two minds whether to sell or keep
the bird. Jennifer and Christopher listened to the back and
forth conversation. The old man was saying something
about giving up on his mate who’d left the parrot for him
to look after many years ago but had never come back; now
the old man was sick, probably not long for this world, and
wanted to pass on the parrot, Cap’n Flint, to somebody
who would give him a comfortable home and take good
care of him.
In 1931 í10 was a lot of money, several weeks’ wages,
and their Dad was reluctant to pay so much, even though
he reflected that this was a 10th birthday present for the
two of them and he was getting a good salary. He offered
í5, and eventually agreed to í7. He peeled a í5 note and
two singles from the small sheaf of notes in his wallet and
handed them over.
The old man, whose name was Pew according to a
faded sign above the door, wrote Alec McLeod’s name and
address in his sale book, “Just in case me mate turns up,
so ‘e can argue the toss with you about ownership.” He
held his wrist out for Cap’n Flint to step on, brought his
wrist close to Jennifer’s shoulder and the parrot stepped
daintily from his wrist to her shoulder. He reassured her
that once Cap’n Flint was settled on her shoulder, there
he’d stay, “Come ‘ell or ‘igh water – and, what’s more, ‘e’s
‘ouse trained, ‘e won’t make messes on your cardigan! And
‘e won’t fly away. But just to be on the safe side, I’ll clip this
chain to the ring around ‘is leg and you ‘old the other end
or loop it around your wrist.”
He took a light metal chain from a drawer under the
counter, snapped a clip at one end around a ring on the
parrot’s leg and gave the other end to Jennifer. “Mind you
take good care of ‘im now, lassie!”
Mr. Pew told them how to feed the parrot, “Bird seed,
yes, especially sunflower seeds, stale bread crusts, a lettuce
leaf or a bit of celery, also Cap’n Flint likes a little bit of
underdone steak now and then, and ‘e’s partial to a tot of
rum once or twice a week.”
Alec McLeod raised his eyebrows at that suggestion,
but Christopher, who was looking at Cap’n Flint as the old
man mentioned a tot of rum, was sure the bird perked up
and looked more cheerful when he heard the word ‘rum.’
Two happy children walked back to their shabby old
car with its torn and patched canvas top and yellowing
celluloid side curtains to keep the rain out on wet days.
Christopher was carrying the perch in one hand and a big
wire bird-cage in the other. Jennifer had Cap’n Flint on
her shoulder. The thin metal chain was clipped to the ring
around one of Cap’n Flint’s legs and she held the loop at
the other end of the chain firmly in her hand – not that the
bird seemed the least bit interested in flying away.
“What a marvelous shop!” Chris exclaimed as they got
into their car. “I’d love to have one of those old pistols!”
His Dad replied, “It’s not really a shop, Chris, it’s
a pawnshop, more like a bank. Did you notice the sign
outside it, the three golden balls? That’s the symbol for a
pawnshop, a place where you take something you value,
and use it as a pledge to borrow money against the value of
what you leave as your pledge. That symbol dates back to
the powerful Medici family in Florence, in Italy, hundreds
of years ago. They got rich lending money, and successful
pawnbrokers still do, because if the pledge isn’t claimed in
a timely way, the pawnbroker can sell it.”
Jennifer and Christopher – the tumultuous twins,
their parents, Brenda and Alec McLeod, called them
affectionately– always enjoyed going to the port with
their Dad. He had business there, something to do with
insurance on ships and their cargo. They had never before
been inside a shop there, and thanks to their new parrot,
this had been their best visit ever.
The port, especially the wharves, smelt different from
the well-kept gardens and eucalyptus gum trees of their
suburb on the other side of the little city of Adelaide.
The port smelt of the sea, of salt and drying seaweed, of
tarred ships’ decks, and wet canvas. It smelt of cargo being
unloaded, new cars, and wooden crates of farm machinery,
tractors and harvesters heavily coated with pungent grease
to protect them from rust. And it smelt of the cargo being
loaded, great bales of wool that smelt of lanoline, sacks of
wheat that smelt of dust and breakfast cereal, sometimes
frozen meat going into refrigerated holds to keep it fresh
and frozen solid all the way to London, or Hamburg,
or Liverpool or Rotterdam. Frozen meat didn’t have a
distinctive smell but everything else did. Wool and wheat,
the main exports especially at this time of the year, had very
distinctive smells. In the early 1930s, a world-wide slump
had slowed business but some trade went on, although
very sluggishly. Insurance of ships and their cargo was as
important as ever, so Alec McLeod’s profession was more
secure than many others in a time of high unemployment.
The sights and sounds too were different from where
they lived. Wharf laborers shouted in loud voices, seamen
sometimes spoke in languages they didn’t understand,
with different rhythms in their speech that made it hard to
know when a sentence began and ended, and wore clothes
unlike the customary jacket, tie and trousers of the locals.
In the background there were seagulls’ calls and squawks
as they squabbled over food scraps. Occasionally a goods
train rumbled along the tracks, its engine puffing, steam
hissing from its pistons, and for a while the distinctive tang
of coal smoke overwhelmed all the other interesting smells.
The ship’s winches were driven by motors that throbbed
like a motor-bike’s engine, and the derricks often squealed
their need for oil as they swung back and forth, over the
ship’s hold, then over the cargo stacked on the wharf.
A little way back from the waterfront was a street of
interesting shops that Jennifer and Christopher always
liked to dawdle over. There was a shop selling local
souvenirs that seafarers could take home to their families
in Britain or Europe: boomerangs, imitation doll-sized
koala bears and kangaroos made of rabbit fur, as well as
exotic nick-knacks from overseas. Several other shops sold
things used on ships: pulleys, ropes, sails, life jackets, red
and green lights in glass covers that ships used to indicate
starboard and port sides, signal flares and the heavylooking
pistol-shaped gadget to fire them, bright red antifouling
marine paint that supposedly stopped weeds and
barnacles from settling on ships’ hulls. Another shop sold
navigation instruments, compasses, telescopes, sextants,
barometers, and other brass instruments that swiveled and
balanced so they were always upright and level, gimbals
their Dad called them.
The pawnshop was the most interesting of all. It wasn’t
always open early on Saturday mornings when their Dad
usually took them to the port, but it was a never-ending
source of fascination to browse over the astonishing variety
of things in its windows. There were wrist watches, fob
pocket watches with gold chains to go through a buttonhole,
ivory carved into a coach and horses, a set of ivory
and ebony chessmen, cameras, radios, war medals, silver
and brass cigarette and cigar cases, telescopes, binoculars,
pocket knives and sheath knives, bags of golf clubs, tennis
racquets, lawn bowling balls, portable typewriters, a sword
in its scabbard with a coat of arms on the guard over the
handle, antique firearms, two muskets and a flintlock
pistol, a book of nautical signals, signal flags, pewter beer
mugs, a large picture frame with a portrait of a king and
queen – not King George V and Queen Mary who were on
the throne now, but the one who had died over 20 years
earlier, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in oldfashioned
clothing. The twins always found the pawnshop
windows fascinating. This was the first time they had been
inside it, and what a successful visit it had been!
The twins’ Mum, Brenda McLeod, was pleased to see
them all when they walked into the kitchen. The parrot
was on Jennifer’s
shoulder and Christopher was close behind her
carrying the perch and the bird cage. The parrot looked
their Mum up and down just as he’d looked the twins up
and down in the pawnshop and somehow, they weren’t
quite sure how, he seemed to be letting them all know he
approved of her too.
“Aha! Who have we here?” Brenda McLeod said,
“What’s the name of this new member of the family?”
Jennifer and Christopher answered together: “Mum,
this is a birthday present from Dad! May we introduce you
to Cap’n Flint,” they said, while Cap’n Flint looked from
one to another of them, bobbing his head up and down
and looking very cheerful.
Smiling at her husband and clasping his hand, Brenda
McLeod said: “As head of this household, it is my pleasure
to officially welcome you to our home, Cap’n Flint. I hope
you will be happy here!”
The parrot looked happy, and bobbed his head up
and down several times as if acknowledging their Mum’s
welcoming words.
They decided to set up the perch and the cage on the
veranda outside Jennifer’s bedroom window. They weren’t
sure if or when they might need the bird cage. In that mild
climate Cap’n Flint would be quite comfy on his perch
outside in the open air on the veranda. On the rare cold
nights, they could put him in the cage with a rug over it to
keep out the draught.
Cap’n Flint was very well behaved, and he seemed to
understand almost everything they said. When there was
a conversation going on, his head was cocked slightly to
one side, and as each of them spoke, his beady little black
eyes looking straight at the speaker, occasionally nodding
his head as if he understood it all and was agreeing
with what had just been said. Clearly he agreed with the
family’s decision to put his perch on the veranda outside
Jennifer’s window.
That first night after he came home with them, as
Jennifer lay in bed before drifting off to sleep, she was very
excited about their new pet – their new family member, she
corrected herself. Cap’n Flint really felt to her more like a
member of the family than a pet – she was too excited to
go straight to sleep. She heard Cap’n Flint muttering away
to himself, although that night and for a goodly number of
nights and days after that she couldn’t make out what he
was muttering.
Finally after several weeks she got accustomed to
Cap’n Flint’s voice and began to pick up some of the words
he was muttering. She heard him say “Buried treasure,”
“Pieces of eight” and “Spanish doubloons,” and “Rubies
and diamonds,” but it was all rather disjointed. Another
thing he muttered had something to do with his name, and
yet another bit of muttering sounded like directions to get
somewhere, or perhaps it was to find something.
Some of what the bird said was a sort of song, part of
a song anyway.
The song went like this:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest;
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! ”
Christopher could have told her that this was the song
the pirates sang in a book called Treasure Island, but that
was a boy’s book and Jennifer hadn’t read it. She would
read it before long, however, when Christopher told her
where the song came from.
As the days began to get shorter and cooler in April
and increasingly frequent rain squalls lashed the roof,
she wondered whether she should bring Cap’n Flint
inside where it was warmer and no wind or rain would
discomfort him.
One night late in May as autumn was giving way to the
beginning of winter there was heavy rain and a penetrating
cold south wind at bed time. For the first time that year,
Jennifer felt the need to switch from cotton to warmer
flannel pajamas as her Mum had suggested, and wondered
about closing her window part way. She looked at the
parrot, who had been sleeping as he usually did with his
head tucked under one wing, until her movement at the
window woke him up and he looked at her. She was quite
sure that, as usual, he winked at her cheerfully.
More to herself than to the parrot, she murmured, “I
hope you are warm enough out there, Cap’n Flint.”
To her astonishment, Cap’n Flint answered her: “Of
course I’m warm enough, you silly girl! My feathers keep me
warm; feathers are very good insulation; and this veranda
is warmer, and steadier, than the deck of the Hispaniola!”
The parrot went on: “And another thing Jennifer, now
that I’ve got your attention. My name is not Cap’n Flint.
That was the name of the leader of those wicked pirates
who captured me. After Flint came to a bad end – he had
a very gory death, I won’t talk about it – Long John Silver
became their leader, and had me on his shoulder for a
while. Then Jim Hawkins looked after me, looked after me
very well too, until Silver stole me back.”
The parrot paused briefly, puffed its feathers out so it
looked larger, and went on speaking.
“My name is Gloriana, the poets’ name for Queen
Elizabeth, Good Queen Bess, God bless her. Queen
Elizabeth gave me my name herself! I’m a lady parrot!
And don’t you forget it! I must say it’s good to be back
with decent, respectable folk like your family, after all
these years!”
Jennifer was usually a talkative girl, but she was struck
speechless listening to all this, her jaw dropped, her mouth
fell open and stayed open. Fancy the parrot speaking to
her by name! And knowing Queen Elizabeth! After this
conversation she was at a loss for words for almost the
first time in her life.
There were a few moments of silence while Jennifer
digested this exciting new information. Then she took
the parrot’s claw in her hand and shook it as if she was
shaking hands.
“You’ve made me very happy, Gloriana,” she said. “I
love your name. It suits your beautiful colors. I’m very glad
you’re a girl, too!”
“Mhff,” said Gloriana. “That’s all very well. But I’m
hardly a girl. I’m more than 300 years old. And my memory
isn’t as sharp as it was. Flint, and Silver and the others were
wicked pirates. They attacked merchant ships and stole
all the valuables. Sometimes they even killed the people
on the ships. When they’d gathered enough valuables to
fill their ship’s hold, they made for an island in the South
Pacific and buried their treasure on it. I’ve been trying to
remember all the directions to the buried treasure, Flint’s
treasure, that is, and what Long John Silver added. It’s
coming back to me slowly, little bits at a time, but it’s not
all there yet. When it’s all come back, I’ll tell you all, you
and your brother Chris and your Mum and Dad. We can all
go to the island where the treasure is buried. We can dig it
up and we’ll all be rich.”
