Fic: Crossing the Bar (18/?)
Jul. 29th, 2006 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honoratAuthor: Honorat
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Gibbs, Anamaria, the crew of the Black Pearl
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria somewhat. Jack/Pearl most definitely.
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The setting of the trap for the Defender. A long night for all concerned. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
17 A Fine-Baited Delay
* * * * *
18 To Watch the Night in Storms
The oncoming night had gradually swathed the Black Pearl in mystery. First her topgallant masts had dissolved in the darkness, followed inexorably by her topmasts, and then even her courses had vanished as though they had never been. A man could scarcely believe she was there any longer at all were it not for the burn of rope in his palms and the press of planks against the soles of his feet. Even her ceaseless communion with the wind and the sea seemed eerily disembodied.
The captain’s hand on his arm made Gibbs jump like a startled coney. “A pox on your throat, you uncharitable dog!” he hissed. “Stop doing that! I’m not as young as I once was.”
The ghost of Jack’s amused laugh tickled his ear.
He hadn’t heard the captain come up behind him on the quarterdeck. The man could be as fumble-footed as a newborn colt when his mind was elsewhere, an admittedly familiar destination for it, but when it suited Jack Sparrow to practice stealth, he made no more noise than a breath of air. Nerve-wracking, it could be. A man would be minding his own business, and suddenly, there would be the captain, minding it, too. Kept the crew on their toes, of which Gibbs was all in favour, but he had another opinion of how much it kept him on his toes.
Taking a deep breath to settle his heart back down in his chest where it belonged, Gibbs turned to confront his captain. “What is it?”
He could sense Jack was too close to his face for peace of mind, but he could not see even a glint of a gold tooth in the absence of any light from ship or cloud-girt sky.
“Shhhh,” Jack warned conspiratorially. “Listen.”
Gibbs could hear the steady plash of rain on the deck, the dash of the sea against the complaining hull, the creaking of rope and canvas and tackle, and the unending toiling of the pumps—all as normal as they were going to get. The weather was dismal, but no longer dangerous. He raised an unseen eyebrow at Jack and shrugged. He had no idea what the captain wanted him to hear.
Detecting the bewildered movement of his quartermaster, the captain deigned to elucidate.
“They got it going again.” Gibbs could hear the smirk in Jack’s voice.
“Got what going?” he asked.
“That broken pump!” Jack said triumphantly. “They’re all working now.”
How Jack Sparrow could tell such a thing baffled Gibbs, but he knew the captain would be right. Sure enough, a thumping of jubilant boots sounded, and out of the gloom Hawkin’s white smile appeared in the sliver of light from the dark lantern he carried.
“Captain! We did it! We fixed the pump!”
Jack’s answering grin flashed back gold lightning. “I never doubted you would, mate!” He clapped a hand on Hawkin’s shoulder. “Good work! Now douse that light as quick as you can.”
“Aye, sir. Thank ye, sir.” Hawkins clipped the sliding door closed, and then they could only hear his sure feet as he danced off, convinced he was a miracle worker.
Gibbs just stood there shaking his head. Apparently Jack could do more than talk the wind out of the sky. Then he hurried to catch up to the captain, whose footsteps were already halfway to the helm.
“Cotton, my good man.” Jack’s bracing voice drifted back. “It’s time to give our lady a bit of a change in direction before she gets bored with this one!”
When he heard the heading the captain gave Cotton, Gibbs grimaced, unnoticed in the dark.
The parrot had an opinion, too. “Avast, ye lubber!”
“Captain,” Gibbs objected. “Cotton’s right. Ain’t that a bit off her best course in this wind?”
“Of course it is,” Jack agreed. “The Dauntless will be on that course. The good commodore won’t have a choice if he hopes to see us again. I don’t know about you, but the sooner I never see that man again, the happier I’ll be. There’s nothing we can do to get rid of that brig, but we’ve got to lose the Dauntless.”
“Aye,” Gibbs conceded. “I have t’ admit to a devout wish to be better strangers with that ship.”
The parrot added his approval to the sentiment. “Let go and haul!”
For an instant a flame flared in the lantern by the compass in the binnacle as the helmsman adjusted the ship’s wheel to bring her onto her new course. Then, as quickly, the light went out.
As Gibbs felt his way back to the main decks to see to the trimming of the sails, he reflected grimly that Jack was right. The new heading would work just as badly for the Defender as it did for the Pearl. But if Norrington came upon them, masts down and totally helpless, they’d all face the gallows or be feeding the sharks by set of tomorrow’s sun.
* * * * *
With the last vestiges of rum worn off, Anamaria did not sleep well after Jack had left the cabin. She drifted on a sea of restless, pain-filled nightmares, ebbing and flowing in and out of the far worse nightmare that was the truth, living over and over again the horrors of the past day. The ink of darkness, crushing her like the weight of water, re-etched pictures in her head, bringing them to appalling life—crumpled too-still bodies, decks drenched in blood, men writhing and screaming. The moment she’d thought Jack was dead. The moment she’d known she was. She wanted to run from them, but there was nowhere she could flee that would make them not have happened.
Her leg felt leaden and tight, as though it were dragging her further down into lightlessness, and she had to resist the urge to remove Peytoe’s bandages to feel if the stitches were pulling out from the swelling. The constant ache shot through with darts of severe pain kept bringing her to the surface of consciousness with the sound of her own moans, a weakness she immediately stifled. Her head seemed hot and heavy and too large for her to lift.
Oh, how she wanted the night to be over! How she wanted not to be alone! She even wished Duncan were still there, a solid, human presence that she might reach out and touch and know was real. Several times she had to cram her knuckles into her mouth to prevent herself from calling for someone. Anyone. Once she thought her grandmother was there stroking her hand, singing to her, but that was nonsense, and the sensations faded away like mist. Once she thought she felt again the brush of feathers and heard the Black Pearl whisper words she did not understand. Once she thought Jack was there, felt his cool fingers on her hot forehead, heard him say her name; however, when she expected him to disappear, too, he really was there, holding water to her parched lips, supporting her head while she drank. Then he vanished as well, not into thin air, but with the quiet closing of a door.
Throughout long periods of unbearable half-wakefulness, when it seemed the night would lengthen and draw out forever, Anamaria listened to the Pearl, aching to be out on deck and a part of the efforts to save her, trying to picture what was happening, hearing footsteps overhead—picking out the steady pace of Jack’s when the ship rolled heavily and everyone else stumbled. The continuous grind of the pumps in their failing battle against the water in the holds and the unending groans of the ship as the wind pressed her against the sea filled in the background of her entire sightless world. Occasionally a raised voice would sound above the other noises, but for the most part the men were quiet. A few times a cry of agony lacerated the night, and her heart would wrench, causing her to hug the sodden blankets to her chest and shiver while she fought not to imagine. The only peace was the cessation of the Defender’s fire, but somewhere out in the dark, that brig paced them, listening for the slightest of those sounds from the Black Pearl.
They were safe in this stygian absence of light, as long as the ship stayed afloat. But even so, Anamaria’s loathing of the dark grew more swollen and bitter every moment of that livelong night.
* * * * *
The predicted storm struck suddenly, with a banshee wail of fury. One minute it was flickers of light on the horizon, the next, like the hand of the devil, it picked up the great ship and dashed her over into the seas. Before its force, the Black Pearl leapt like a high-couraged horse under the lash of the whip. Her remaining sails boomed like cannon shots as they filled with wind, her rigging sang as taut as the strings of violins, and her wounded hull screamed in protest as the storm swells hammered against her.
Gibbs really wished Jack had not been quite so accurate in his estimate of this gale. They needed the speed of those blasts, they needed the Pearl’s uncanny seaworthiness in the worst tempests, they needed this chance to outrace the smaller, less daring brig. But this was a storm that could just as easily take their own crippled ship down.
The air sizzled against his skin, raising the hair on his arms and singeing his nostrils. Forked tongues of lightning licked burning trails into the boiling seas. Thunder cracked like the mighty flight of dragon wings. One instant the black spars and torn sails stood out in sinister detail, every gossamer line as crisp and clear as day. The next it was as if the ship had been swallowed by a great growling beast, and a man could not see his mate standing at his shoulder. Ghostly bursts of foam gleamed through the darkness as waves broke roaring over the decks and swept aft in torrents.
The Defender was a forgotten menace as the crew fought to hold their fragile ship together amidst the overpowering explosion of wind, the rain falling in blinding sheets, and the spray stinging like flung shot. Men spent half their time hanging onto yards and jackstays and various lines as tight as limpets to avoid getting hurled into the sea. Gibbs could see their faces, in the flashes of blinding light, drained pale beneath the shine of salt water, as he delivered Jack’s orders. All depended on these ragged exhausted men, hungry, battle-weary, too tired to piss, pushed beyond endurance, their strength sapped by the wind that leached heat from their soaked bodies. They struggled until their hearts were breaking with the sweating, cursing, hauling, bloody labour of keeping the ship on course and afloat. No words could convey their extravagant suffering, nor their extraordinary courage.
The Pearl was making heavy going of it too, plunging into endless lines of battering seas, burying her bow to the foremast, throwing spray past the poop deck, driving as fierce as a ship would be driven. She was heeled achingly hard over, her lee-rail awash in foaming water, her timbers wailing their protest, the deep-down steps of her masts groaning. If they weren’t careful there’d be no need to await Jack’s plan. Surely the storm was near to dismasting the ship for them.
Gibbs fought his way to the captain’s side. He found Jack hanging with a hand on the weather shrouds, soaking wet and stiff with cold, his fatigue so profound he’d closed his eyes and drifted off.
Shaking Jack’s arm he shouted in his ear, “Wind’s about t’ rip her sails out o’ their bolt ropes, sir! Shall I get the t’gallants off her?
“Can you see her bowsprit still?” the captain growled, opening one eye to see for himself.
“Aye, if you look for it long enough!” Gibbs exclaimed.
“She’s all right then, Gibbs. Leave her be,” Jack said tiredly and opened the other eye to peer out through the sheets of spume into the storm, watching in the flashes of lightning for patterns of waves and the shapes and complex layers of clouds, reading like a prophet the portents of tone and pitch in the wind, forever weighing the odds.
“Ol’ Neptune’s shaking his trident, tonight, eh?” he commented to Gibbs. “Good thing this one ain’t got any stamina.”
Sailing one of these great ships took an artistry bordering upon magic, and Gibbs knew that he would never serve under a man with more of the wizardry of the sea flashing from his fingertips than Captain Jack Sparrow. Jack claimed he’d been born in a storm at sea, and at times like these, Gibbs thought maybe that one story was true.
Which was why, in the midst of his own fear, he reassured the terrified men who approached him, “Cap’n knows this ship and what she’ll take.”
* * * * *
Jack did know his ship, but he was aware that he was requesting more of his Black Pearl than he ever could have from any other ship. He knew Gibbs trusted his judgment, knew the men would follow his orders. Above all, he knew that the Pearl would break her heart trying to do for him what he asked. But what if he asked too much? This gradually sinking ship and the lives of all aboard were in his hands. Would she stand all that straining sail? Was it safe to carry on?
He didn’t know any more. Too many variables had entered into the equation. All he did know was that they must be out of sight and sound of that brig by the time this storm was over, and that meant he had to be far more daring than the Navy captain. It meant the Pearl had to sail far harder than the Defender through this tempest. It meant that even if his decisions sent her to the bottom, he had to press on.
As captain, he lived with this ship; he was a part of her. Her every lurch and roll, every slight variation in the wind’s roar in her rigging, spoke to him. He could detect a note of growing protest, a sudden gesture of alarm and be ready to act on the instant. He’d always been able to hold her to that fine line of the possible, had always known he could bring her through whatever he’d set her at. But now he was pushing her beyond what he knew she could do. They were sailing over the edge of the line into destruction. He diced with death this night—for the life of his ship, for the lives of his crew.
Yet in the midst of this peril, how magnificent she was! His Black Pearl.
As the wind howled its ancient loneliness, she sang back its wild refrain through her rigging, rejoicing in this contest. Soaring in scorn above the insensate wrath of the sea, her tall masts scraped fire from the skies. She porpoised and plunged from crest to trough with crashes that felt and sounded as if she were driving into sunken rocks. Her bowsprit heaved to heaven on the breaking waves, then rushed down through masses of foam into deep deathlike valleys. And yet, as always, in the midst of the thunderous fury of the elements beating against her like the hammers of hell, seeking to crush and rend her, she strung his soul to silence and caught him in her eternal beauty. Even in her weakness, she lent him strength.
Jack held on to his ship as though the touch of his hand could return that strength back to her.
* * * * *
The storm provided a tempestuous background for Anamaria’s worst half-awake dreams. The thunder boomed like shot thudding through splintered wood. The flare of lightning pierced her feverish eyes like cannon fire even through tightly closed lids. Each rolling swoop of the ship skewing down the back of a wave sent Anamaria slamming against the bulkheads unless her battered hands could grip the bed frame hard enough. She felt as though she were being beaten by the sea. Every involuntary movement was a torment as the damaged muscles in her injured leg attempted to tighten in resistance. Once, she was nearly thrown off the bed, saving herself at the expense of a wrenched elbow and several snapped stitches. The heat of fresh blood soaked through the stiffened bandages.
Anamaria flung her own curses back at the tempest and grimly hung on.
By the time the gale stood down, Anamaria was drenched in sweat again, trembling with exhaustion, and blaspheming brokenly. She could scarcely uncurl her hands from where she’d driven her nails into the wooden frame of the bed. Her breath came in hitching gasps that she was fervently grateful there was no one around to hear.
When she had finally succeeded in banishing the pain from her conscious mind to a sufficient degree, Anamaria began to be aware of the deliberate violation of the Black Pearl. Although she had said nothing, Jack had promised her he’d only drop the main and mizzen masts. The foremast, with the stays she’d fought so hard to bend on, would remain upright. She hadn’t known how much that would mean to her until he’d said it.
Now she strained to hear the sounds of the ship being dismantled. Gibbs’ delivering the captain’s orders to the crew to rig the tackle that would bring down the Pearl’s masts with the least possible damage to spars or ship. The occasional rise in the crew’s voices as they worked blindly, feeling their way among lines and blocks and yards they knew like their own bones and sinews. And finally, as the opaque blackness was barely turning to a deep charcoal, the agonizing stretch and grind of tackle, the groan of the heavy wooden main and mizzen topmasts being raised, the heart-rending crash of spars and rigging as they fell towards the sea, wrenching the Pearl onto her port side, and then the tremendous splash of water as the fallen masts, with their burden of sails and rigging, brought up against its surface. The ship lay mortally wounded in the water, shuddering profoundly.
The Black Pearl had survived all storms, all perils of the sea, all fierce battles without ever having allowed her masts to fall, but now the proud ship lay cut down for the first time by her own crew. Anamaria realized her face was wet with tears.
She managed to roll to where she could press up against the side of the ship, murmuring broken endearments and encouragements against the satiny wood, promising her—Oh!—Anything a ship could desire!—Strong, straight spars, stiff new canvas, unmarred planking, her crew well and hearty again, a fine brisk wind on a bright day with a following sea, dolphins dancing in her bow wave, and voices singing on her decks. Above all, her captain whole and at her helm. Everything this gallant lady so richly deserved.
She was not surprised when Jack stumbled into the cabin. In the pre-dawn dark, she could not see him, but she could hear his ragged breathing.
“Anamaria?” he choked.
“Jack,” was all she said.
And then he was in her arms, shoulders shaking, clinging like a child but so much fiercer, while she held him tight and stroked his tangled hair.
“Oh my God! Ana, what have I done?” His words broke against her neck, as hot as the tears he would not shed.
She had no words to answer that. And so she tightened her arms around him, tasting the rough, wet, salt of his hair on her lips, her own heart echoing with the ache of his grief.
“She fought so hard,” he whispered, the words torn and frayed. “She would have gone on fighting. But I took that from her.”
“You did what you had to do,” she murmured, her hand moving in soothing circles against the halyard-taut muscles of his back. “The only thing that will give us a chance. The only thing that will give her a chance. Shhhhh. It’s all right. She understands.”
And she blessed the unrevealing darkness that stood in place of all the barriers that would have risen between them had this moment of comfort been forced to bear the light of day and truth.
* * * * *
The dawn was just beginning to ease the night and brush the crests of sullen waves with dim pewter when the man on lookout at the crosstrees of the Defender called out. Their quarry had been sighted once again.
As his brig altered course to intercept the pirate ship, Captain Walton felt a wash of sheer relief. In the clash and fury of the elements they had caught glimpses of the Black Pearl, a ghostly, tattered silhouette against coruscations of fire, fleeing like a demon before the wrath of God. But when the tempest had finally wailed and beaten its rage into a fretful calm, they’d been unable to locate her by sound or sight in the pitchy dark. Apparently Sparrow had tried to seize the ferocity of that gale to outrace the Defender. For a time, Walton had very much feared he had succeeded, and they had lost their prey. But in the end, the pirate captain’s gamble had cost him the match.
The Black Pearl listed brokenly, wrenched over by her shattered main and mizzen masts, a barely perceptible shadow inked against the attenuating sable silk of sky and water, as though a fragment of that midnight storm had fallen, lightning-struck, from heaven and lay dying in the cradling arms of the sea.
The legendary ship rested helpless now. To the Defender and Captain Alexander Walton would belong the renown of taking her down and capturing that elusive pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow.
Of course he did not yet know what numbers the pirates could muster to resist his boarding party. He was confident that the terrible bombardment that ship had taken had significantly reduced the living, or at least able-bodied men they would be engaging. Nevertheless, he would have to commit a large portion of his crew to the action if they were to have any hope of subduing desperate men fighting for their lives.
Calling together his officers in the wardroom, Walton threw himself into a feverish intensity of planning. With a brisk wind on their starboard quarter, all sails up to the topgallants bellying full, and a following sea, the Defender would be upon the wreck of the Black Pearl within the next two hours. This time, they would make no mistakes.
* * * * *
TBC
19a The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Gibbs, Anamaria, the crew of the Black Pearl
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria somewhat. Jack/Pearl most definitely.
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The setting of the trap for the Defender. A long night for all concerned. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
17 A Fine-Baited Delay
* * * * *
18 To Watch the Night in Storms
The oncoming night had gradually swathed the Black Pearl in mystery. First her topgallant masts had dissolved in the darkness, followed inexorably by her topmasts, and then even her courses had vanished as though they had never been. A man could scarcely believe she was there any longer at all were it not for the burn of rope in his palms and the press of planks against the soles of his feet. Even her ceaseless communion with the wind and the sea seemed eerily disembodied.
The captain’s hand on his arm made Gibbs jump like a startled coney. “A pox on your throat, you uncharitable dog!” he hissed. “Stop doing that! I’m not as young as I once was.”
The ghost of Jack’s amused laugh tickled his ear.
He hadn’t heard the captain come up behind him on the quarterdeck. The man could be as fumble-footed as a newborn colt when his mind was elsewhere, an admittedly familiar destination for it, but when it suited Jack Sparrow to practice stealth, he made no more noise than a breath of air. Nerve-wracking, it could be. A man would be minding his own business, and suddenly, there would be the captain, minding it, too. Kept the crew on their toes, of which Gibbs was all in favour, but he had another opinion of how much it kept him on his toes.
Taking a deep breath to settle his heart back down in his chest where it belonged, Gibbs turned to confront his captain. “What is it?”
He could sense Jack was too close to his face for peace of mind, but he could not see even a glint of a gold tooth in the absence of any light from ship or cloud-girt sky.
“Shhhh,” Jack warned conspiratorially. “Listen.”
Gibbs could hear the steady plash of rain on the deck, the dash of the sea against the complaining hull, the creaking of rope and canvas and tackle, and the unending toiling of the pumps—all as normal as they were going to get. The weather was dismal, but no longer dangerous. He raised an unseen eyebrow at Jack and shrugged. He had no idea what the captain wanted him to hear.
Detecting the bewildered movement of his quartermaster, the captain deigned to elucidate.
“They got it going again.” Gibbs could hear the smirk in Jack’s voice.
“Got what going?” he asked.
“That broken pump!” Jack said triumphantly. “They’re all working now.”
How Jack Sparrow could tell such a thing baffled Gibbs, but he knew the captain would be right. Sure enough, a thumping of jubilant boots sounded, and out of the gloom Hawkin’s white smile appeared in the sliver of light from the dark lantern he carried.
“Captain! We did it! We fixed the pump!”
Jack’s answering grin flashed back gold lightning. “I never doubted you would, mate!” He clapped a hand on Hawkin’s shoulder. “Good work! Now douse that light as quick as you can.”
“Aye, sir. Thank ye, sir.” Hawkins clipped the sliding door closed, and then they could only hear his sure feet as he danced off, convinced he was a miracle worker.
Gibbs just stood there shaking his head. Apparently Jack could do more than talk the wind out of the sky. Then he hurried to catch up to the captain, whose footsteps were already halfway to the helm.
“Cotton, my good man.” Jack’s bracing voice drifted back. “It’s time to give our lady a bit of a change in direction before she gets bored with this one!”
When he heard the heading the captain gave Cotton, Gibbs grimaced, unnoticed in the dark.
The parrot had an opinion, too. “Avast, ye lubber!”
“Captain,” Gibbs objected. “Cotton’s right. Ain’t that a bit off her best course in this wind?”
“Of course it is,” Jack agreed. “The Dauntless will be on that course. The good commodore won’t have a choice if he hopes to see us again. I don’t know about you, but the sooner I never see that man again, the happier I’ll be. There’s nothing we can do to get rid of that brig, but we’ve got to lose the Dauntless.”
“Aye,” Gibbs conceded. “I have t’ admit to a devout wish to be better strangers with that ship.”
The parrot added his approval to the sentiment. “Let go and haul!”
For an instant a flame flared in the lantern by the compass in the binnacle as the helmsman adjusted the ship’s wheel to bring her onto her new course. Then, as quickly, the light went out.
As Gibbs felt his way back to the main decks to see to the trimming of the sails, he reflected grimly that Jack was right. The new heading would work just as badly for the Defender as it did for the Pearl. But if Norrington came upon them, masts down and totally helpless, they’d all face the gallows or be feeding the sharks by set of tomorrow’s sun.
* * * * *
With the last vestiges of rum worn off, Anamaria did not sleep well after Jack had left the cabin. She drifted on a sea of restless, pain-filled nightmares, ebbing and flowing in and out of the far worse nightmare that was the truth, living over and over again the horrors of the past day. The ink of darkness, crushing her like the weight of water, re-etched pictures in her head, bringing them to appalling life—crumpled too-still bodies, decks drenched in blood, men writhing and screaming. The moment she’d thought Jack was dead. The moment she’d known she was. She wanted to run from them, but there was nowhere she could flee that would make them not have happened.
Her leg felt leaden and tight, as though it were dragging her further down into lightlessness, and she had to resist the urge to remove Peytoe’s bandages to feel if the stitches were pulling out from the swelling. The constant ache shot through with darts of severe pain kept bringing her to the surface of consciousness with the sound of her own moans, a weakness she immediately stifled. Her head seemed hot and heavy and too large for her to lift.
Oh, how she wanted the night to be over! How she wanted not to be alone! She even wished Duncan were still there, a solid, human presence that she might reach out and touch and know was real. Several times she had to cram her knuckles into her mouth to prevent herself from calling for someone. Anyone. Once she thought her grandmother was there stroking her hand, singing to her, but that was nonsense, and the sensations faded away like mist. Once she thought she felt again the brush of feathers and heard the Black Pearl whisper words she did not understand. Once she thought Jack was there, felt his cool fingers on her hot forehead, heard him say her name; however, when she expected him to disappear, too, he really was there, holding water to her parched lips, supporting her head while she drank. Then he vanished as well, not into thin air, but with the quiet closing of a door.
Throughout long periods of unbearable half-wakefulness, when it seemed the night would lengthen and draw out forever, Anamaria listened to the Pearl, aching to be out on deck and a part of the efforts to save her, trying to picture what was happening, hearing footsteps overhead—picking out the steady pace of Jack’s when the ship rolled heavily and everyone else stumbled. The continuous grind of the pumps in their failing battle against the water in the holds and the unending groans of the ship as the wind pressed her against the sea filled in the background of her entire sightless world. Occasionally a raised voice would sound above the other noises, but for the most part the men were quiet. A few times a cry of agony lacerated the night, and her heart would wrench, causing her to hug the sodden blankets to her chest and shiver while she fought not to imagine. The only peace was the cessation of the Defender’s fire, but somewhere out in the dark, that brig paced them, listening for the slightest of those sounds from the Black Pearl.
They were safe in this stygian absence of light, as long as the ship stayed afloat. But even so, Anamaria’s loathing of the dark grew more swollen and bitter every moment of that livelong night.
* * * * *
The predicted storm struck suddenly, with a banshee wail of fury. One minute it was flickers of light on the horizon, the next, like the hand of the devil, it picked up the great ship and dashed her over into the seas. Before its force, the Black Pearl leapt like a high-couraged horse under the lash of the whip. Her remaining sails boomed like cannon shots as they filled with wind, her rigging sang as taut as the strings of violins, and her wounded hull screamed in protest as the storm swells hammered against her.
Gibbs really wished Jack had not been quite so accurate in his estimate of this gale. They needed the speed of those blasts, they needed the Pearl’s uncanny seaworthiness in the worst tempests, they needed this chance to outrace the smaller, less daring brig. But this was a storm that could just as easily take their own crippled ship down.
The air sizzled against his skin, raising the hair on his arms and singeing his nostrils. Forked tongues of lightning licked burning trails into the boiling seas. Thunder cracked like the mighty flight of dragon wings. One instant the black spars and torn sails stood out in sinister detail, every gossamer line as crisp and clear as day. The next it was as if the ship had been swallowed by a great growling beast, and a man could not see his mate standing at his shoulder. Ghostly bursts of foam gleamed through the darkness as waves broke roaring over the decks and swept aft in torrents.
The Defender was a forgotten menace as the crew fought to hold their fragile ship together amidst the overpowering explosion of wind, the rain falling in blinding sheets, and the spray stinging like flung shot. Men spent half their time hanging onto yards and jackstays and various lines as tight as limpets to avoid getting hurled into the sea. Gibbs could see their faces, in the flashes of blinding light, drained pale beneath the shine of salt water, as he delivered Jack’s orders. All depended on these ragged exhausted men, hungry, battle-weary, too tired to piss, pushed beyond endurance, their strength sapped by the wind that leached heat from their soaked bodies. They struggled until their hearts were breaking with the sweating, cursing, hauling, bloody labour of keeping the ship on course and afloat. No words could convey their extravagant suffering, nor their extraordinary courage.
The Pearl was making heavy going of it too, plunging into endless lines of battering seas, burying her bow to the foremast, throwing spray past the poop deck, driving as fierce as a ship would be driven. She was heeled achingly hard over, her lee-rail awash in foaming water, her timbers wailing their protest, the deep-down steps of her masts groaning. If they weren’t careful there’d be no need to await Jack’s plan. Surely the storm was near to dismasting the ship for them.
Gibbs fought his way to the captain’s side. He found Jack hanging with a hand on the weather shrouds, soaking wet and stiff with cold, his fatigue so profound he’d closed his eyes and drifted off.
Shaking Jack’s arm he shouted in his ear, “Wind’s about t’ rip her sails out o’ their bolt ropes, sir! Shall I get the t’gallants off her?
“Can you see her bowsprit still?” the captain growled, opening one eye to see for himself.
“Aye, if you look for it long enough!” Gibbs exclaimed.
“She’s all right then, Gibbs. Leave her be,” Jack said tiredly and opened the other eye to peer out through the sheets of spume into the storm, watching in the flashes of lightning for patterns of waves and the shapes and complex layers of clouds, reading like a prophet the portents of tone and pitch in the wind, forever weighing the odds.
“Ol’ Neptune’s shaking his trident, tonight, eh?” he commented to Gibbs. “Good thing this one ain’t got any stamina.”
Sailing one of these great ships took an artistry bordering upon magic, and Gibbs knew that he would never serve under a man with more of the wizardry of the sea flashing from his fingertips than Captain Jack Sparrow. Jack claimed he’d been born in a storm at sea, and at times like these, Gibbs thought maybe that one story was true.
Which was why, in the midst of his own fear, he reassured the terrified men who approached him, “Cap’n knows this ship and what she’ll take.”
* * * * *
Jack did know his ship, but he was aware that he was requesting more of his Black Pearl than he ever could have from any other ship. He knew Gibbs trusted his judgment, knew the men would follow his orders. Above all, he knew that the Pearl would break her heart trying to do for him what he asked. But what if he asked too much? This gradually sinking ship and the lives of all aboard were in his hands. Would she stand all that straining sail? Was it safe to carry on?
He didn’t know any more. Too many variables had entered into the equation. All he did know was that they must be out of sight and sound of that brig by the time this storm was over, and that meant he had to be far more daring than the Navy captain. It meant the Pearl had to sail far harder than the Defender through this tempest. It meant that even if his decisions sent her to the bottom, he had to press on.
As captain, he lived with this ship; he was a part of her. Her every lurch and roll, every slight variation in the wind’s roar in her rigging, spoke to him. He could detect a note of growing protest, a sudden gesture of alarm and be ready to act on the instant. He’d always been able to hold her to that fine line of the possible, had always known he could bring her through whatever he’d set her at. But now he was pushing her beyond what he knew she could do. They were sailing over the edge of the line into destruction. He diced with death this night—for the life of his ship, for the lives of his crew.
Yet in the midst of this peril, how magnificent she was! His Black Pearl.
As the wind howled its ancient loneliness, she sang back its wild refrain through her rigging, rejoicing in this contest. Soaring in scorn above the insensate wrath of the sea, her tall masts scraped fire from the skies. She porpoised and plunged from crest to trough with crashes that felt and sounded as if she were driving into sunken rocks. Her bowsprit heaved to heaven on the breaking waves, then rushed down through masses of foam into deep deathlike valleys. And yet, as always, in the midst of the thunderous fury of the elements beating against her like the hammers of hell, seeking to crush and rend her, she strung his soul to silence and caught him in her eternal beauty. Even in her weakness, she lent him strength.
Jack held on to his ship as though the touch of his hand could return that strength back to her.
* * * * *
The storm provided a tempestuous background for Anamaria’s worst half-awake dreams. The thunder boomed like shot thudding through splintered wood. The flare of lightning pierced her feverish eyes like cannon fire even through tightly closed lids. Each rolling swoop of the ship skewing down the back of a wave sent Anamaria slamming against the bulkheads unless her battered hands could grip the bed frame hard enough. She felt as though she were being beaten by the sea. Every involuntary movement was a torment as the damaged muscles in her injured leg attempted to tighten in resistance. Once, she was nearly thrown off the bed, saving herself at the expense of a wrenched elbow and several snapped stitches. The heat of fresh blood soaked through the stiffened bandages.
Anamaria flung her own curses back at the tempest and grimly hung on.
By the time the gale stood down, Anamaria was drenched in sweat again, trembling with exhaustion, and blaspheming brokenly. She could scarcely uncurl her hands from where she’d driven her nails into the wooden frame of the bed. Her breath came in hitching gasps that she was fervently grateful there was no one around to hear.
When she had finally succeeded in banishing the pain from her conscious mind to a sufficient degree, Anamaria began to be aware of the deliberate violation of the Black Pearl. Although she had said nothing, Jack had promised her he’d only drop the main and mizzen masts. The foremast, with the stays she’d fought so hard to bend on, would remain upright. She hadn’t known how much that would mean to her until he’d said it.
Now she strained to hear the sounds of the ship being dismantled. Gibbs’ delivering the captain’s orders to the crew to rig the tackle that would bring down the Pearl’s masts with the least possible damage to spars or ship. The occasional rise in the crew’s voices as they worked blindly, feeling their way among lines and blocks and yards they knew like their own bones and sinews. And finally, as the opaque blackness was barely turning to a deep charcoal, the agonizing stretch and grind of tackle, the groan of the heavy wooden main and mizzen topmasts being raised, the heart-rending crash of spars and rigging as they fell towards the sea, wrenching the Pearl onto her port side, and then the tremendous splash of water as the fallen masts, with their burden of sails and rigging, brought up against its surface. The ship lay mortally wounded in the water, shuddering profoundly.
The Black Pearl had survived all storms, all perils of the sea, all fierce battles without ever having allowed her masts to fall, but now the proud ship lay cut down for the first time by her own crew. Anamaria realized her face was wet with tears.
She managed to roll to where she could press up against the side of the ship, murmuring broken endearments and encouragements against the satiny wood, promising her—Oh!—Anything a ship could desire!—Strong, straight spars, stiff new canvas, unmarred planking, her crew well and hearty again, a fine brisk wind on a bright day with a following sea, dolphins dancing in her bow wave, and voices singing on her decks. Above all, her captain whole and at her helm. Everything this gallant lady so richly deserved.
She was not surprised when Jack stumbled into the cabin. In the pre-dawn dark, she could not see him, but she could hear his ragged breathing.
“Anamaria?” he choked.
“Jack,” was all she said.
And then he was in her arms, shoulders shaking, clinging like a child but so much fiercer, while she held him tight and stroked his tangled hair.
“Oh my God! Ana, what have I done?” His words broke against her neck, as hot as the tears he would not shed.
She had no words to answer that. And so she tightened her arms around him, tasting the rough, wet, salt of his hair on her lips, her own heart echoing with the ache of his grief.
“She fought so hard,” he whispered, the words torn and frayed. “She would have gone on fighting. But I took that from her.”
“You did what you had to do,” she murmured, her hand moving in soothing circles against the halyard-taut muscles of his back. “The only thing that will give us a chance. The only thing that will give her a chance. Shhhhh. It’s all right. She understands.”
And she blessed the unrevealing darkness that stood in place of all the barriers that would have risen between them had this moment of comfort been forced to bear the light of day and truth.
* * * * *
The dawn was just beginning to ease the night and brush the crests of sullen waves with dim pewter when the man on lookout at the crosstrees of the Defender called out. Their quarry had been sighted once again.
As his brig altered course to intercept the pirate ship, Captain Walton felt a wash of sheer relief. In the clash and fury of the elements they had caught glimpses of the Black Pearl, a ghostly, tattered silhouette against coruscations of fire, fleeing like a demon before the wrath of God. But when the tempest had finally wailed and beaten its rage into a fretful calm, they’d been unable to locate her by sound or sight in the pitchy dark. Apparently Sparrow had tried to seize the ferocity of that gale to outrace the Defender. For a time, Walton had very much feared he had succeeded, and they had lost their prey. But in the end, the pirate captain’s gamble had cost him the match.
The Black Pearl listed brokenly, wrenched over by her shattered main and mizzen masts, a barely perceptible shadow inked against the attenuating sable silk of sky and water, as though a fragment of that midnight storm had fallen, lightning-struck, from heaven and lay dying in the cradling arms of the sea.
The legendary ship rested helpless now. To the Defender and Captain Alexander Walton would belong the renown of taking her down and capturing that elusive pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow.
Of course he did not yet know what numbers the pirates could muster to resist his boarding party. He was confident that the terrible bombardment that ship had taken had significantly reduced the living, or at least able-bodied men they would be engaging. Nevertheless, he would have to commit a large portion of his crew to the action if they were to have any hope of subduing desperate men fighting for their lives.
Calling together his officers in the wardroom, Walton threw himself into a feverish intensity of planning. With a brisk wind on their starboard quarter, all sails up to the topgallants bellying full, and a following sea, the Defender would be upon the wreck of the Black Pearl within the next two hours. This time, they would make no mistakes.
* * * * *
TBC
19a The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To