Now the lady confides to her maid her plan for keeping in touch with her lover, and invites her co-operation. The maid jumps at the idea, for is not the marine—by happy chance—in charge of those same ridiculous and preposterous tea-rooms! And the curtain falls on the first act.
After a short interval the stage is once more revealed, and now shows the aforesaid island at dawn. The tea-house is on the left, and in the foreground a group of pirates of the good old-fashioned melodramatic kind are lying noisily asleep. Their sentry goes around waking them by vigorous kicks. Then they breakfast on rum, and a heated argument takes place over the question of calling their formidable Chief. He, it appears, is afflicted in the morning hours with a shortness of temper highly dangerous to the health of any one to whose lot it falls to arouse him. Eventually one of them undertakes the job, and, having carefully removed a gigantic knobkerrie to a safe distance from his Chief's side, deals him a resounding smack on the most prominent part of his person. The pirate springs to his feet with a volley of strange oaths, kicks every one within reach, and shouts for his breakfast of rum. Refreshed and soothed thereby he calls for his Chief of Staff, Cuthbert Cut-throat, a lanky, pasty-faced villain, and together they go through a list of booty captured that month. This comprises many weird items, and its recital invokes roars of laughter from the audience. Then the pirate calls for his children, and there enter from the wings a Marine Lieutenant fearfully and wonderfully arrayed in a short, light blue pinafore, revealing bare and unmistakably masculine legs. This vision wears a tow-coloured wig and has its face heavily painted in imitation of a cheap doll. It is followed by an exceedingly small boy in a sailor suit, and also with bare legs, and we are given to understand that this is "her" twin brother. The Pirate Chief greets them with loud smacking kisses, but soon becoming bored with his prodigious offspring, he once more summons Cuthbert Cut-throat, and to him discourses in maudlin sentimentality of the virtues and graces of his last wife, whom he apparently murdered about a month before! Life without a wife he declares to be impossible, and announces his intention of filling the vacancy with the first likely looking "little bit of skirt" he comes across. Then the pirates strike camp, and disappear into a cave on the right of the stage. (No explanation forthcoming!)