Another Non-Drabble: On the Shoals.
Oct. 5th, 2005 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honoratBy Honorat
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Takin’ what I can; givin’ nothing back.
Summary: Mr. Gibbs has an involuntary career change and an identity crisis. For the “First Day” Challenge at Black Pearl Sails. This one is an only child as far as I can tell. Though it may have a sequel coming up--Jack Sparrow has twenty-five chickens and a Plan.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geek_mama_2 for the beta read.
* * * * *
He’d been Navy all his life. Well, all of it he cared to remember. Oh, he wasn’t one o’ them fancy career officers fightin’ for England, Harry, and St. George or whatever it was.
But it had been a job. All his days had arranged themselves around the bells that called the larboard watch. He’d always been larboard, never starboard. He felt like larboard belonged to him. It was routine. The pattern into which he fit.
Unlike some, the pressed men especially, he’d never really seriously considered desertin'. No matter how lousy the pay, how brutal the officers, how bad the grub. He’d taken the verbal abuse, even the physical abuse. Kinda felt like home, actually. Sometimes he’d even had decent officers. Those had been good times. He hadn’t minded knockin’ the hardtack on the table to shake out the weevils. After all, it was food and better’n starvin’.
Then there was always the sea. That bitch goddess with her siren smile and her claws that got so damn deep in a man’s soul that he couldn’t lose her for love nor money, though God knows he’d tried both. Couldn’t hear a wind whistle around the eaves on land without needin’ to know how the horizon would look and how the ship would be slidin’ down into the trough of a wave and what sails she’d carry and whether the captain would be tryin’ to outrace the storm or drivin’ into its teeth.
He was Navy—had that roll to his walk, the peculiar cant, the odds and ends of uniform. Even the smell—salt and tar and rum and black powder. People recognized it without his sayin’ a word.
So what was he now that the Royal Navy had discharged him? Spat him out on some godforsaken Caribbean dock—he didn’t even know which one. Drunk and disorderly. Insubordinate.
Well, he’d admit he had a fondness for rum, but so did most the men before the mast. And he didn’t suffer fools in wigs and gold braid any more gladly than the ones with oakum in their fingernails. But to take away a man’s livelihood for that? He’d rather have taken the floggin’. Add a new set of scars to the pattern on his back.
What was he now that he’d lost his anchor to windward? Cracked up on the shoals, that’s what. He didn’t even know if there was anything left to salvage.
His first day back as a civilian. He’d forgotten anything he’d ever known about bein’ a civilian.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Takin’ what I can; givin’ nothing back.
Summary: Mr. Gibbs has an involuntary career change and an identity crisis. For the “First Day” Challenge at Black Pearl Sails. This one is an only child as far as I can tell. Though it may have a sequel coming up--Jack Sparrow has twenty-five chickens and a Plan.
Thanks to
geek_mama_2 for the beta read.* * * * *
He’d been Navy all his life. Well, all of it he cared to remember. Oh, he wasn’t one o’ them fancy career officers fightin’ for England, Harry, and St. George or whatever it was.
But it had been a job. All his days had arranged themselves around the bells that called the larboard watch. He’d always been larboard, never starboard. He felt like larboard belonged to him. It was routine. The pattern into which he fit.
Unlike some, the pressed men especially, he’d never really seriously considered desertin'. No matter how lousy the pay, how brutal the officers, how bad the grub. He’d taken the verbal abuse, even the physical abuse. Kinda felt like home, actually. Sometimes he’d even had decent officers. Those had been good times. He hadn’t minded knockin’ the hardtack on the table to shake out the weevils. After all, it was food and better’n starvin’.
Then there was always the sea. That bitch goddess with her siren smile and her claws that got so damn deep in a man’s soul that he couldn’t lose her for love nor money, though God knows he’d tried both. Couldn’t hear a wind whistle around the eaves on land without needin’ to know how the horizon would look and how the ship would be slidin’ down into the trough of a wave and what sails she’d carry and whether the captain would be tryin’ to outrace the storm or drivin’ into its teeth.
He was Navy—had that roll to his walk, the peculiar cant, the odds and ends of uniform. Even the smell—salt and tar and rum and black powder. People recognized it without his sayin’ a word.
So what was he now that the Royal Navy had discharged him? Spat him out on some godforsaken Caribbean dock—he didn’t even know which one. Drunk and disorderly. Insubordinate.
Well, he’d admit he had a fondness for rum, but so did most the men before the mast. And he didn’t suffer fools in wigs and gold braid any more gladly than the ones with oakum in their fingernails. But to take away a man’s livelihood for that? He’d rather have taken the floggin’. Add a new set of scars to the pattern on his back.
What was he now that he’d lost his anchor to windward? Cracked up on the shoals, that’s what. He didn’t even know if there was anything left to salvage.
His first day back as a civilian. He’d forgotten anything he’d ever known about bein’ a civilian.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 02:42 pm (UTC)This was a bit of an odd point of view--sort of a blend of first and third person--as though my third person narrator is eavesdropping on Gibbs' thoughts.
I do think that Gibbs' need for the sea would be a major portion of what leads him to piracy. Yes, he and Jack would be worshipping at the same altar, as it were. But you're right that for Jack the sea is a lover while for Gibbs it is something he can't escape.
Gibbs is one of my favourites. I simply must figure out how he met Jack--before the twenty-five chickens part I mean.
The sea and the ships and the men who sailed them are an enigma of poetry and bitter reality. Beauty mixed with danger--the old meaning for "romance". Those fragile wooden hulls which men had to maintain at the cost of their bodies and lives because the ships were all that stood between their souls and a watery grave. The masters of those ships who had the power to be gods or devils or both to the men under them. The realities of life on an alien element where no food or drink was easily come by. The brutality of this century. All of it creates such a minor chord in the music of the breath-taking cycle of dawn and dusk, the every changing, multi-coloured light shimmering on water, the consummate artistry of the clouds, and the beauty of a ship under sail. Couldn't resist, mate! I know how Gibbs feels!
Thanks for the lovely feedback.