​​Synopsis​

When Frederick was a little boy, his nurse, Ruth, was told to apprentice him to a pilot. Not hearing correctly, she apprenticed him to a band of pirates, remaining with them herself as a maid. Frederick served dutifully.

As the curtain rises, his indentures are almost up and he is preparing to leave the pirate band and devote himself to the extermination of piracy.

A group of young ladies, wards of Major-General Stanley, arrive on the scene to have a holiday. One of them, Mabel, takes an interest in Frederick, and he in her. The other girls are seized by the pirates and pretending that he is an orphan so that they will feel sorry for him, Major-General Stanley manages to free them.

The curtain rises on the second act as this lie is troubling Major-General Stanley and he sits brooding among the gothic ruins of his ancestral home. He is consoled by his wards and by Frederick's plan to lead a band of police against the pirates.

The Pirate King and Ruth come to Frederick to tell him that he was bound to the pirates until his twenty-first birthday, and since he was born on February 29th, he has only had five birthdays- not twenty-one! Frederick's strong sense of duty compels him to re-join the pirates and he tells them of the Major-General's deception. They vow revenge, overpower the bumbling police and seize the Major-General.

The police charge the pirates to yield "in the name of Queen Victoria." This they do, being pirates who always honour their Queen. Ruth then explains that the pirates are not really pirates but "noblemen who have gone wrong." The Major-General pardons them and permits them to marry his wards.