Fic: Crossing the Bar (4/?)
Jan. 7th, 2006 06:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honoratAuthor: Honorat
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, the crew of the Black Pearl, Commodore Norrington, Lieutenant Gillette
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint.
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: 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? I promised chapter 3 would be continued, and here it is.
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
Captain Jack Sparrow did not waver in his determination as the third cross-sea raced towards the starboard side of the Black Pearl. “This is it, my lady,” he murmured to his ship still gallantly trying to recover from the last sea that had nearly laid her over on her beam ends. The glassy silver-green wall of water rose above the Pearl’s highest decks, above her courses even, reaching hungrily for her topsail yards. Its surface swirled with pearlescent streaks and veins of quicksilver, like rare marble. The top twenty feet of it broke high above his head into a foaming white cataract, the roar of its approach drowning out all other sounds of men and wind and hull and canvas.
He had never seen anything so sublime. This was why he had chosen to cross the bar. If death would come, this was how it should be. Not the shameful, painful, landbound ugliness of hanging and rotting like an animal. This sheer indifferent beauty, this implacable power, this dark mysterious violence—this he could embrace.
His men had fled, fleet-footed up her shrouds, striving to outrace that mass of water, but Jack stayed at the helm of the Black Pearl. He could sense Anamaria beside him, fierce and indomitable.
Jack held his ship, gentling her with his touch. “It’ll be all right, love. I won’t let you go.” He had never been so aware of her, every singing line, every inch of shuddering canvas, every curving carved embellishment, every raking mast and swaying yard, every moaning plank of her hull, every living heart that beat in her crew. He had never been so aware of the sea, of its weight and majesty and inexorable strength. The Pearl hung there, terrifyingly alive, in the moment before that apocalyptic wave swept her up its slope and avalanched over her, driving her down again into the lightless abyss of its trough.
And then they were no longer separate—no longer man and sea and ship. Jack felt along his own flesh the weight of water striking the fragile hull. The groans and cries and cracks of the Black Pearl resonated in his own bones as she surrendered to the wave that crushed him against her helm. His ship’s pain sliced through him like shards of glass. Then all was chaos—thundering, pounding water followed by cold darkness and unbearable, surging pressure.
Still Captain Jack Sparrow did not let the Black Pearl go alone into the sea.
Together.
Forever.
* * * * *
Anamaria glared at the onrushing wave as though the heat of her gaze could boil it off into ineffectual steam. Her arms ached, trembling from the attempt to throw the Pearl’s bow to starboard, an attempt that had finally failed.
Time seemed to catch its breath, eerily still. As the Pearl’s masts carved impossibly deliberate arcs into the seething sea, Anamaria saw each of her boys as vividly as though she could touch them, aloft as high into the rigging as they could scramble—vivid candle flames of life, so easily snuffed out. They were as hard and as quick and as skilled as she could make them. They needed to be, in order to survive this harsh element and even harsher life. And so she drove them and herself mercilessly. This ship had drunk deep of the blood of each of them, binding them to her. Good men, all of them. The Black Pearl deserved the best. Jack Sparrow deserved the best. Anamaria’s eyes stung—from the wind or the salt in the air.
She could sense Jack beside her like a fire that burned her. The wall of seething, snarling death hung over them, an executioner’s blade, mocking their puny mortal struggles to survive its overwhelming might.
She did not want this to be the last thing she ever saw. And so she looked instead at Jack. She had never seen anything so sublime. Drenched in rain and salt spray, his hair whipping like black flames in the wind, his ornaments snapping like sparks, he stared into that onrushing cavern of water with an incomprehensible ardent serenity in his dark eyes, even though his knuckles gleamed white bone as he shared the fight with the Pearl’s rudder against the force of the sea. She could see his lips move as he spoke to his ship, but she could not hear his voice above the thunder of that wave.
Almost she could hear the ship whisper back. Jack Sparrow was the Black Pearl’s human half. Anamaria knew that Jack would always belong first to his ship. She could no longer imagine life without the two of them together.
And so she held on as long as she could to the helm when that cold hell of a sea made good its threat and engulfed the ship. Then the shock of water, hitting her like a solid fist, stole her futile curses, tore at her body like hateful hands, and ripped her from her grip on the wheel and her place at Jack’s side.
Anamaria despaired for the first time that day. She did not want to die alone. Frantically she grabbed for anything that would give her purchase as she was pummeled down the slope of the deck. Just before she was swept into the open sea, one hand brushed rough cable and she seized the line as though it were life itself. In the end it would not matter. But Anamaria felt gratitude as the darkness beat down over them all. The Black Pearl had not abandoned her.
* * * * *
Joshamee Gibbs knew the minute his luck ran out. This was the end—exactly as Jack Sparrow had foreseen. The ship was going over. Her port rail was dropping away, her decks were sloping at a steeper and steeper pitch. He and the seven crewmembers responsible for the spar and hawser clung to the Pearl’s windward rail as it rose high into the air on the shoulders of that doomsday sea.
Gibbs tried to remember some childhood prayer adequate for this extremity, but the only litany that came unhelpfully to his mind was the phrase, “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” Which made no sense at all, since he was about to drown a very wet, dust-free death.
Not for the first time, Gibbs wondered why he was fated to continue returning to an element that was forever trying to kill him. This time it looked fair to be succeeding.
He felt the Black Pearl pulsing under his grip like a living creature. As she began to go over, her decks writhing under his feet, he could hear her crying out in the shriek of her timbers. Somehow it seemed a blasphemy that such a ship should fight so hard to live and yet go down.
Then the force of the water struck him, beating at his hands and head, lashing his back like the cut of a whip, clawing at his body like a beast of prey. Air and light were gone. His hands failed him, and he lost his hold on the Pearl. He felt himself sliding down the vertical decks of the ship, being swept by a cataract of roaring water into the depths of the sea. He tried to call out but salt water stopped his mouth.
There was no one left to answer his call anyway.
* * * * *
When that third wave came charging towards the Black Pearl like a raging bull elephant, her crew had not needed orders to send them scurrying up her ratlines as high as they could go. They clung now, dark human beads on delicate rope chains, as the ship began to heel fatally far over.
Not one of them faced the sight of that brave ship surrendering helplessly to the sea without a chill of horror that was only partially related to his own survival.
For an instant, through the pall of rain, they could still see the captain and first mate and the few men whose duties held them to the decks far below. Then a wall of white fury broke over the starboard rail. Salt spray from that collision dashed against the crew even to the topgallants. Below now, the only sign of life, the only record that a ship had ever been on that terrible sea, was etched in three black spars thrusting up from the fathomless valleys and gray-green mountains of water. And even those masts were capitulating.
The men rode out that descent, the wind drowning their curses, their prayers, and finally their silence as the Black Pearl laid down her arms into the sea.
* * * * *
The depth and blackness of the sea seemed endless, eternal. Jack wondered how long he could hold his breath, when he would be forced to surrender and gasp in cold salt water. His lungs had long since ceased their polite requests for air and were now engaged in active coercive torture. He needed to breathe. He could have let go of his ship long ago, could have prolonged the agony by fighting as long as possible to stay on the surface of the sea, but now it was too late. Either they both came up, or they both went down. He could feel the grate of bone against his labouring chest like the sear of a branding iron. Broken ribs. Thanks so much, love.
Just when he had almost given up, the darkness began to recede to a dim gray as the capsized hull of the Black Pearl emerged from under the maelstrom of that lethal sea. Jack’s head broke through just as his lungs won their argument, and he gasped in great gulps of spray-drenched air, ignoring his ribs’ protest. As the water drained away and more of her vertical decks reappeared every second, Jack found himself perched on his ship’s helm. The Pearl lay on her port side at least eighty degrees, beam on to the wind and seas, waves slamming over her hull like cannon fire, spray hailing from her starboard rail like grapeshot. Her masts would surely not remain stepped for much longer. He could see her yards hanging askew or detached, the sails like limp, dark bodies lying in the water, many ripped to shreds, their upper portions flogging in the wind, the remainder becalmed by the ship’s hull.
Pulling himself back from that serene edge of resignation to death, Jack reached deep inside for the energy and courage to resume fighting. This situation was as much as he could have hoped for. They were still afloat. He had a few precious moments to resurrect his ship before another such sea sent her to the bottom. Even now her breached hatches were swallowing an impossible amount of water. Soon the weight of all that water would overcome her buoyancy and drag her down.
How many of his crew had survived? He was chillingly aware that he was alone at the helm.
“Anamaria!” he called out over the roar of the storm.
* * * * *
Anamaria clung desperately to the line as the seas broke around her sometimes allowing her space for a breath before submerging her in their dark embrace. With every ounce of determination she possessed, she began the hand over hand climb up the deck of the Pearl. They were surely about to die, every last one of them, but she was not going to give up without a fight.
The hand that surfaced beside her startled her. Even though she knew she hadn’t made it far enough to be safe, she quickly hitched the rope around her body and let go with one hand. As the water rose to her chin, the hand rose too. Before it could sink away, Anamaria seized the crewman’s wrist. His fingers snapped around her arm in a panicked grip. Her shoulder nearly tore out as the sea dropped out from under them, leaving her supporting herself and some fourteen stone of man and waterlogged clothing. The rope bit into her torso and other hand. She gasped in pain and swore colourfully.
Her soggy burden coughed and choked. “Anamaria!”
Even though her eyes were clenched shut with the strain, Anamaria recognized that voice.
“Mr. Gibbs,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Couldn’t you just stay on the ship, you bloody idiot?”
She didn’t know how much longer she could hold him. Occasionally, a rising sea would relieve some of his weight, but she was beginning to see flashes of lightning behind her eyes, and she could feel the fatigue in her muscles beginning to overwhelm her grip. She was never going to be able to use that shoulder again, that was a sure bet.
“Lass, ye can’t hang on for us both!” Gibbs was yelling from somewhere far away.
Summoning up enough air, she tried to shout back at him. It came out as an angry whisper. “Don’t you dare let go, you rotten scoundrel!”
“Don’t know how long I can hang on!” Gibbs choked. The breaking crest of a wave shipped over the Pearl’s hull and rushed over them, tearing at their fragile bond.
Then, above the mayhem of the storm and the sinking ship rang out the voice of Captain Sparrow calling her name. No matter her battered, half-drowned exhaustion, the captain’s call was an irresistible stimulus. Anamaria tightened her grip, opened her eyes and managed an actual audible, if half-mast, bellow. “Aye, sir! I’m here! A little help, if you please?”
She’d never seen a more beautiful sight than Jack Sparrow clambering down the poop deck rail as though it were a ladder. He’d lost his hat and he looked like a drowned rat, but he was alive and carrying a second line. Giving it a couple of wraps around the rail, he tossed the other end towards Gibbs.
With his free hand, Gibbs managed to clutch the rope. Then he dropped back into the water. Anamaria nearly cried with relief as the weight left her and Jack towed the man to the rail where he could attach himself with the tenacity of a barnacle. She could tell something was wrong with Jack, because the effort seemed almost too much for him, but they were alive. And that was enough for now.
By this time, two other crewmen had managed to get a hold on Anamaria’s line, hauling her quickly up the Pearl’s sloping deck. Finally, she was able to let go, although her fingers refused to straighten. Huddling on the stair railing of the poop deck, riding out the wild swoops of the ship, Anamaria rubbed her shoulder. She was amazed to find it wasn’t dislocated. She couldn’t use that arm at the moment, but she could worry about that later.
Gibbs' face appeared as he climbed up to her level. He joined her on her perch, followed by Jack.
“Ye all right, lass?” Gibbs asked.
She wasn’t used to him caring what she felt like. “I’ll be fine,” she answered shortly.
He set a large, rough hand on her good shoulder. “Thank ye,” he said simply.
Anamaria shrugged. “I’d’ve done it for anyone.”
“But since it was me,” Gibbs countered. “I’m thankin’ ye for not just droppin’ me back in the drink.” He grinned at her.
“Aye, well, that sea must’ve addled m’brains,” she muttered.
“That was a big one all right,” Gibbs reflected calmly. “I’ve decided to retire from this profession, if ye want t’know.”
Suddenly, absurdly, they were laughing. Jack looked like laughing hurt him even more than the rescue operation. But it was such a relief to be alive for another moment.
“All right, mates!” Jack was back to captaining. “Let’s get this lady on her feet. Gibbs, you up to collecting your crew and getting that spar launched?”
“Aye, sir!” And Gibbs scrambled on up the poop deck rails in search of his men.
“Anamaria, we’ll need all her sail forward. See to her hatches. And get those pumps manned.”
“Aye, sir!” There’d be time to collapse later, if they survived this capsize.
Anamaria didn’t know whether Gibb’s task would make any difference. She didn’t know if her own orders would be sufficient. Jack was always a gambler, but if he lost this bet and the ship didn’t pay off, the only choice would be to chop away her topgallant masts and shrouds—main, mizzen and fore. Relieved of their windage, the ship might right herself. Anamaria was surprised Jack hadn’t made provision for this.
“Captain, do you want me to send the men out on her masts with the axes?” she reminded him.
“No.” His reply was short and sharp.
“What do you mean, no? If she doesn’t right herself soon, she’ll go down!” Anamaria exclaimed incredulously.
“We’ve already decided that, Anamaria. She can’t fly without her topgallants, and I won’t cut off her wings.” Jack reached out his hand to his ship’s deck in that impossibly tender gesture he reserved for the Black Pearl. “If she can’t pull her masts up, I’ll let her go,” he continued quietly. “It’s what she would want. The Royal Navy is not taking this ship or these men.”
Anamaria compressed her lips over any retort she might have made. If that was the way of it, no protest of hers would sway Jack Sparrow. She turned away from him and shinnied up the line onto the ship’s side rail, making her way forward by hanging on to shrouds and running rigging. She was stuck on a boat full of bloody last-stand heroes. Time to go make a valiant attempt to save this ship of fools.
Behind her, she could hear Jack’s voice ringing out fiercely over the explosions of waves and beating canvas, calming and comforting with its familiarity.
“Cotton, Tearlach, get aft to the helm if y’ain’t drowned!”
* * * * *
The crew of the Black Pearl were convinced they were about to die, that death was imminent. The ship was on her side and she wasn’t coming up again. The seas crashed over the half-submerged decks and yards of the ship, plucking at their bodies ravenously. Strips of shredded canvas snapped in the wind like whips. The men clung to the rigging in silent, stunned immobility.
Then the voices rose, like beacons of hope flaring out of the tumult. The captain calling for the first mate. Anamaria’s acknowledgment. And then Captain Sparrow’s orders, urgent but calm, sounding as if they had a chance.
Anamaria’s familiar bellow drew them like a halyard. “All right, my lads, lay forward and get some head sails on this lady! Larboard watch, get some men onto those pumps!”
Suddenly they were equally firmly convinced that they would not die this time—even though they knew the situation was dire when Anamaria stood down in violence if not in volume. The string of orders got them moving. Shaking off the sea’s spell of paralyzing anguish, they began to make their way back to the ship.
* * * * *
Along with the two men who’d helped haul in Anamaria, Gibbs struggled precariously to where the spar was lashed to the Pearl’s starboard rail and the remainder of his crew waited enduring the unceasing gout and spout of seas over the hull. He was grateful to discover all seven of them had somehow managed to stay attached to the ship during that cataclysmic wave.
“All right, me hearties!” Gibbs tried to project the confidence Jack Sparrow exuded when he ordered something impossible. “We’ve got a stop-waters to launch.”
To do so would involve wrestling that thirty-foot long, nearly one foot in diameter chunk of wood over the rail, onto the twisting hull of the ship, without being bucked off into the sea. Then they’d somehow have to get it in the water to windward without joining it themselves. Carrying out Jack Sparrow’s outrageous plans was going to kill him someday. Gibbs grimaced. Now he needed a plan of his own to make sure that day was not today.
First Gibbs had his men tether themselves to the rail. There wasn’t a chance in hell that they weren’t going to need that precaution. Then it was time to abandon what protection the ship’s bulwarks provided and venture onto that exposed hull. Blast, he hated leading by example.
The wind slapped his face, determined to drive him back as he braved that expanse of storm-besieged timber. Four men crept out beside him, clinging to the grooves in the planking. The other three released the spar from its bindings.
Masses of breaking crests and rushing foam hammered against the backs of the men balanced on the Pearl’s heaving side, spewing plumes of spray until they could scarcely breathe. Every time they could almost stand upright to haul on the spar, the ship would pitch into a trough in a stomach-rolling dive, driving them to their knees. Three times men lost their footing entirely and had to be hauled back up onto the hull with the ropes that bound them to the ship. All of them suffered repeated collisions with the remorseless wood. The violent abuse bloodied their hands and knees, but they persevered doggedly.
“Heave boys! That’s it!” Gibbs shouted over the uproar. “Up she goes now. That’ll do her! Hang on now or you’re gone altogether!”
Somehow in the turmoil of breaking seas, the wind not easing a knot, hanging onto that topsy-turvy ship, his lads managed to hoist that spar onto the hull. The three men below scrambled out onto the rocking planks and lent their strength to one final, heart-cracking, sinew-breaking heave that thrust the spar out into the sea.
Throwing themselves to the boards in exhaustion, they clung there shaking in the aftermath of that all-out effort.
Would it be enough? They would not know until the wind and seas, pressing on her upturned hull, had driven the ship far enough to leeward to stretch that hawser taut.
As they lay there, gasping for breath, Captain Sparrow’s head appeared above the railings. He disappeared for a moment as a wave broke over the ship, but his face was alight when he reappeared, hauling himself onto the rail, water cascading off of him.
“Excellent work, my bonnie lads,” he exclaimed, with a flourish of one arm. “That ought to bring her head to the wind in fine style.”
His collapsed crewmembers revived somewhat under the praise, waving back at him.
“Captain!”
Jack’s head whipped about in answer to that call.
Jip, the smallest ship’s boy, came scampering along the Pearl’s pitching rail as though he were on her level decks in a calm. “Captain!” he cried.
“You still aboard, whelp?” the captain inquired, grinning at the soaked urchin.
“He is,” Matelot’s deep voice answered as he laboured along behind. “No thanks t’ himself. I just fished him out—again.”
Capering about in high good humour, heedless of the corkscrew rolls of the Pearl, Jip crowed, “Look what I found, Captain!” He held up a battered dark object that upon closer examination was revealed to be Jack’s hat.
Jack reached for the beloved object. “Thought I’d lost that for good,” he said nearly too softly to be heard. Carefully he set it back on his head. He reached out and ruffled Jip’s wet curls. “Thanks, scamp. What would I do without you?”
“Well, I, for one, would not have had to risk life and limb twice to get a rope on the little bastard,” Matelot groused. He shared a look of commiseration with Gibbs. “I’d just pulled him in when he saw that hat floating in the rigging and back into the sea he goes. Never had such a turn! Blasted kid.”
“And for that, I thank you, as well,” Jack said sincerely. “You’re a good man, Matelot.”
He turned to Jip, schooling his features to severity. “And as for you, young miscreant. Stay on the ship from now on. Hats can be replaced. Good men cannot.”
“Aye, sir,” Jip saluted gaily, not at all chastised. They all could tell the captain was pleased to have his hat back.
“Right.” Jack eyed him suspiciously. The kid was only compliant when he was plotting mischief. “Now make yourself useful. See if Anamaria can put you to work.”
“Aye, sir,” Jip sighed. He turned and scurried off the way he’d come.
* * * * *
While Gibbs and his men were labouring to toss the spar overboard, Anamaria was overseeing the most pressing repairs.
“Marty!” she called. “Lay forward and see how many hatches are breached. Call the carpenter and see what you can do for ‘em.”
“Securing the hatches, aye.” Marty swung down beside her and began clambering forward through the rigging.
Marty was a good hand. The next time she looked for him, he and the carpenter were covering the broken hatches temporarily with sail canvas in spite of being under water half the time as the seas continued to break heavily over the ship.
Now that they’d stopped the majority of the water from getting in, it was imperative that they pump out the masses of it already sloshing about below. No doubt the ship had sprung a few seams as well, but there’d be no time to pack in oakum and tar. They’d just have to pump unceasingly until they made harbour somewhere for repairs.
Anamaria snorted to herself. Here she was planning as if they were not only going to survive this capsize but also going to outmaneuver and outrun two Royal Navy warships. Jack Sparrow’s daftness must be bloody contagious.
The men from the larboard watch were already toiling away at the pumps on the most exposed part of the main deck. The waves shipping over the hull were burying them in water up to their waists and necks, so they’d had to lash themselves to the main mast fife rail to avoid getting washed away. It was work to break hearts and backs on that vertical deck, but they lowered their heads and did not let up. Water poured out of the Pearl’s clanging washports, although not nearly fast enough.
Anamaria spoke a word of encouragement as she swung by the men on her way to direct the setting of the foresails should Jack’s crazy plans work. God, she prayed her boys would live.
* * * * *
Gibbs and his crew had only partially recovered from their exertion when the hawser snapped tight over the Pearl’s rail.
“This is it, mates,” Gibbs called. He shared a glance with the captain whose supple imagination had foreseen this necessity. The men watched solemnly along with them to see the results of their work.
Painfully slowly the Black Pearl’s headway was checked. The pull on her lee bow drew her towards the wind. Her stern began to fly off in excruciating increments. As the great ship came head to the wind, the press of the gale and the seas on her hull reduced dramatically and she ceased her leeward course.
It seemed every man and woman aboard the ship forgot to breathe, waiting to see what the Pearl would do. With the weight of the wind no longer forcing her over and pinning her down, no longer causing her hull to becalm her sails, would she be able to right herself? Would her few remaining sails catch enough wind to overcome the tenacious inertia of her tall masts?
A shout rang out as the Pearl’s decks began almost imperceptibly to level, her yards to come up ever so slightly. Those crewmembers not manning the pumps leapt into her rigging again to ride out the change in orientation.
“Hoist the fore topmast staysail,” Jack commanded. “Get it up there lads! This is our chance. Get her headsails on her.” They needed to pay the ship’s head off to leeward and cast her onto the starboard tack as swiftly as possible in order to get her under way again.
The minute Anamaria could set foot on the Black Pearl’s decks without tumbling into the sea, she bounded up to the forecastle deck.
Her orders rang, mighty-voiced over the wind. “Lay aloft and get that foretopsail set, my beauties! Fast like the devil’s up y’r arse! Haul up the damn jibs while you’re at it. Sing out when you’re ready. Jump to it!”
The starboard watch scrambled forward to comply, attempting to reset the sails that had been ripped down by that monster wave.
“Cotton, Tearlach,” Jack added from his position on the poop deck, “when they’ve hoisted the headsails, up helm as hard as you can. Get her bow to pay off.”
The storm was still refusing to ease their tasks. The surviving heavy canvas tore away from them, threatening to flail itself to flinders, making every move arduous. Braced on the steeply-tilted, rolling decks of the ship, the men hauled on the lines. They pulled until their callused hands burned, until their backs revolted and their muscles jumped with the strain.
Handspan by bloodied handspan, the sails rose again.
“Haul away boys,” Anamaria goaded. “Heave the sonofabitch up there! Two men aft to the sheets! Now the inner jib—heave and wake the dead! Go boys! Don’t let this bastard win!”
When the men had succeeded in hoisting the three jibs and sheeting them home, Anamaria hollered aft, “Ahoy the poop! Up your helm there! Bring her around! Now! Now!”
“Helm up, aye!” Tearlach bellowed back. He and Cotton spun the ship’s wheel as fast as they could.
For a moment nothing changed. The crew waited with bated breath for the half-exposed rudder to bite the waves that were beginning to submerge it.
As they fought the staysail into place, the Black Pearl’s straining jibs and rudder began to catch, pivoting her bow gradually onto the wind and she began to move forward, coming upright more every minute.
The crew cheered wildly. She was doing it! Their dark lady was rising out of the sea once again!
Suddenly men were dancing on her decks, throwing their arms around each other, slapping one another on the back. Laughter and shouts rang out.
Jip was darting about hugging everyone he could stretch his small arms around, including Anamaria. He was the only one who ever dared. The little wretch had never been afraid of her, and he had an even worse vocabulary. Anamaria found she was happy to hug him back before he went scampering off to throw himself at the captain.
She nearly dropped dead with shock when Gibbs draped an arm around her and gave her a tentative squeeze. He looked uncertain, as though ready to defend himself from an attack. But Anamaria was so happy she embraced him back. The startled expression on his face was worth it.
Then she found herself in Jack’s arms, his rough beard scratching against her cheek. Although his skin was cold against her face, the water on it held the warmth of tears, not the chill of rain. She could feel his shoulders shake under her hands.
“They’re all here, Ana,” he whispered into her neck. “I checked. Every last man and boy is still aboard and alive. They all made it.”
“Duncan?” she murmured into his hair.
“Considerably worse for wear. He hit the bulkhead pretty damn hard when she went down, but he’ll survive.”
Anamaria felt her own throat tighten in gratitude. By some miracle they had done it. They had saved the ship and the souls aboard her. The Black Pearl had saved them all.
* * * * *
No choir had ever sung such music as the sound of the Black Pearl picking up her heels off the wind, going as full sail ahead as she could, a great roaring aloft. She seized the wind, drinking it in great draughts, plunging forward eagerly. Nevertheless, the sea had not yet laid down its arms. The shuddering jerk as the ship topped a wave and plunged into the next was like hitting a stone wall. As the waves washed over her bow, there was little to distinguish her deck from the sea.
However, battered as she was, one mast crippled, too many of her sails shredded or flailing loose, their lines snapped, too many of her yards hanging a-cock-bill, she faced the storm with her customary, unsubdued courage. She would stand up to those punishing seas, put her shoulder to the thundering waves, rise up over and over again, shake off the tons of rushing water and fight on.
Jack Sparrow stood again at the helm of his ship, his face raised to the rain and the wind, his eyes closed as he listened to her voice, a song of victory. What a beauty she was, his Black Pearl. What a valiant, unconquerable, incredible ship. What an honour to be her captain. What a privilege to be here to see her vanquish this storm this day, to see her pull herself and her crew out of the jaws of death.
“Thank you, love,” he said softly.
She might have foundered and gone down had the spirit of the sea said the word. But nothing, not even her most intimate adversary, the Ocean itself, could fail to grant quarter to such a magnificent vessel.
* * * * *
A shout rang out, and Norrington’s head snapped up. Disbelieving, he saw that black angel knifing her way back out of her watery grave, saw the Black Pearl clawing a path out of the savage sea. One of her topmasts had snapped and half her sails were hanging in shreds, but she was alive. He watched in awe as she gained her feet, her remaining sails shivering and singing taut in the wind. That was no ordinary ship, he swore; Jack Sparrow had leashed himself one of Neptune’s daughters. She arose from the waves, gallant and invincible, shrugging off the attempts of the lesser seas to batter her into submission. Eagerly she caught at the vicious winds, sinking her teeth into them, lifting herself out of her briny prison as though she might truly fly.
“I don’t believe it,” Lieutenant Gillette muttered beside Norrington.
Norrington shook his head in awe. He didn’t believe it either. “You will never see another ship with that much heart,” he said with conviction.
And now that she had survived that passage, it was his duty to destroy her. Reluctantly, he turned to give the orders that would bring the Dauntless within range of the Black Pearl as she completed her crossing of the bar.
“Sir,” Gillette’s voice was quiet, almost inaudible in the howl of wind through the Dauntless’s rigging.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Norrington was actually grateful for the delay.
“Perhaps,” the Lieutenant smiled crookedly, “another day’s head start?”
The commodore’s shoulders slumped a little and his rare smile was sad as he answered the lieutenant. “So you feel it, too,” he said.
“She’s a bonny ship, sir,” Gillette said carefully.
“She is indeed,” Norrington sighed. “But this ambush represents months of work that we cannot afford to waste for the sake of even so fine a ship as the Black Pearl. Sparrow has used up his day’s grace, and we have our duty.”
“Aye, sir.”
If the sea had this day paid homage to the courage of that ship and released her from certain death, the Royal Navy would have no such mercy.
* * * * *
TBC
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, the crew of the Black Pearl, Commodore Norrington, Lieutenant Gillette
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint.
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: 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? I promised chapter 3 would be continued, and here it is.
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
Captain Jack Sparrow did not waver in his determination as the third cross-sea raced towards the starboard side of the Black Pearl. “This is it, my lady,” he murmured to his ship still gallantly trying to recover from the last sea that had nearly laid her over on her beam ends. The glassy silver-green wall of water rose above the Pearl’s highest decks, above her courses even, reaching hungrily for her topsail yards. Its surface swirled with pearlescent streaks and veins of quicksilver, like rare marble. The top twenty feet of it broke high above his head into a foaming white cataract, the roar of its approach drowning out all other sounds of men and wind and hull and canvas.
He had never seen anything so sublime. This was why he had chosen to cross the bar. If death would come, this was how it should be. Not the shameful, painful, landbound ugliness of hanging and rotting like an animal. This sheer indifferent beauty, this implacable power, this dark mysterious violence—this he could embrace.
His men had fled, fleet-footed up her shrouds, striving to outrace that mass of water, but Jack stayed at the helm of the Black Pearl. He could sense Anamaria beside him, fierce and indomitable.
Jack held his ship, gentling her with his touch. “It’ll be all right, love. I won’t let you go.” He had never been so aware of her, every singing line, every inch of shuddering canvas, every curving carved embellishment, every raking mast and swaying yard, every moaning plank of her hull, every living heart that beat in her crew. He had never been so aware of the sea, of its weight and majesty and inexorable strength. The Pearl hung there, terrifyingly alive, in the moment before that apocalyptic wave swept her up its slope and avalanched over her, driving her down again into the lightless abyss of its trough.
And then they were no longer separate—no longer man and sea and ship. Jack felt along his own flesh the weight of water striking the fragile hull. The groans and cries and cracks of the Black Pearl resonated in his own bones as she surrendered to the wave that crushed him against her helm. His ship’s pain sliced through him like shards of glass. Then all was chaos—thundering, pounding water followed by cold darkness and unbearable, surging pressure.
Still Captain Jack Sparrow did not let the Black Pearl go alone into the sea.
Together.
Forever.
* * * * *
Anamaria glared at the onrushing wave as though the heat of her gaze could boil it off into ineffectual steam. Her arms ached, trembling from the attempt to throw the Pearl’s bow to starboard, an attempt that had finally failed.
Time seemed to catch its breath, eerily still. As the Pearl’s masts carved impossibly deliberate arcs into the seething sea, Anamaria saw each of her boys as vividly as though she could touch them, aloft as high into the rigging as they could scramble—vivid candle flames of life, so easily snuffed out. They were as hard and as quick and as skilled as she could make them. They needed to be, in order to survive this harsh element and even harsher life. And so she drove them and herself mercilessly. This ship had drunk deep of the blood of each of them, binding them to her. Good men, all of them. The Black Pearl deserved the best. Jack Sparrow deserved the best. Anamaria’s eyes stung—from the wind or the salt in the air.
She could sense Jack beside her like a fire that burned her. The wall of seething, snarling death hung over them, an executioner’s blade, mocking their puny mortal struggles to survive its overwhelming might.
She did not want this to be the last thing she ever saw. And so she looked instead at Jack. She had never seen anything so sublime. Drenched in rain and salt spray, his hair whipping like black flames in the wind, his ornaments snapping like sparks, he stared into that onrushing cavern of water with an incomprehensible ardent serenity in his dark eyes, even though his knuckles gleamed white bone as he shared the fight with the Pearl’s rudder against the force of the sea. She could see his lips move as he spoke to his ship, but she could not hear his voice above the thunder of that wave.
Almost she could hear the ship whisper back. Jack Sparrow was the Black Pearl’s human half. Anamaria knew that Jack would always belong first to his ship. She could no longer imagine life without the two of them together.
And so she held on as long as she could to the helm when that cold hell of a sea made good its threat and engulfed the ship. Then the shock of water, hitting her like a solid fist, stole her futile curses, tore at her body like hateful hands, and ripped her from her grip on the wheel and her place at Jack’s side.
Anamaria despaired for the first time that day. She did not want to die alone. Frantically she grabbed for anything that would give her purchase as she was pummeled down the slope of the deck. Just before she was swept into the open sea, one hand brushed rough cable and she seized the line as though it were life itself. In the end it would not matter. But Anamaria felt gratitude as the darkness beat down over them all. The Black Pearl had not abandoned her.
* * * * *
Joshamee Gibbs knew the minute his luck ran out. This was the end—exactly as Jack Sparrow had foreseen. The ship was going over. Her port rail was dropping away, her decks were sloping at a steeper and steeper pitch. He and the seven crewmembers responsible for the spar and hawser clung to the Pearl’s windward rail as it rose high into the air on the shoulders of that doomsday sea.
Gibbs tried to remember some childhood prayer adequate for this extremity, but the only litany that came unhelpfully to his mind was the phrase, “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” Which made no sense at all, since he was about to drown a very wet, dust-free death.
Not for the first time, Gibbs wondered why he was fated to continue returning to an element that was forever trying to kill him. This time it looked fair to be succeeding.
He felt the Black Pearl pulsing under his grip like a living creature. As she began to go over, her decks writhing under his feet, he could hear her crying out in the shriek of her timbers. Somehow it seemed a blasphemy that such a ship should fight so hard to live and yet go down.
Then the force of the water struck him, beating at his hands and head, lashing his back like the cut of a whip, clawing at his body like a beast of prey. Air and light were gone. His hands failed him, and he lost his hold on the Pearl. He felt himself sliding down the vertical decks of the ship, being swept by a cataract of roaring water into the depths of the sea. He tried to call out but salt water stopped his mouth.
There was no one left to answer his call anyway.
* * * * *
When that third wave came charging towards the Black Pearl like a raging bull elephant, her crew had not needed orders to send them scurrying up her ratlines as high as they could go. They clung now, dark human beads on delicate rope chains, as the ship began to heel fatally far over.
Not one of them faced the sight of that brave ship surrendering helplessly to the sea without a chill of horror that was only partially related to his own survival.
For an instant, through the pall of rain, they could still see the captain and first mate and the few men whose duties held them to the decks far below. Then a wall of white fury broke over the starboard rail. Salt spray from that collision dashed against the crew even to the topgallants. Below now, the only sign of life, the only record that a ship had ever been on that terrible sea, was etched in three black spars thrusting up from the fathomless valleys and gray-green mountains of water. And even those masts were capitulating.
The men rode out that descent, the wind drowning their curses, their prayers, and finally their silence as the Black Pearl laid down her arms into the sea.
* * * * *
The depth and blackness of the sea seemed endless, eternal. Jack wondered how long he could hold his breath, when he would be forced to surrender and gasp in cold salt water. His lungs had long since ceased their polite requests for air and were now engaged in active coercive torture. He needed to breathe. He could have let go of his ship long ago, could have prolonged the agony by fighting as long as possible to stay on the surface of the sea, but now it was too late. Either they both came up, or they both went down. He could feel the grate of bone against his labouring chest like the sear of a branding iron. Broken ribs. Thanks so much, love.
Just when he had almost given up, the darkness began to recede to a dim gray as the capsized hull of the Black Pearl emerged from under the maelstrom of that lethal sea. Jack’s head broke through just as his lungs won their argument, and he gasped in great gulps of spray-drenched air, ignoring his ribs’ protest. As the water drained away and more of her vertical decks reappeared every second, Jack found himself perched on his ship’s helm. The Pearl lay on her port side at least eighty degrees, beam on to the wind and seas, waves slamming over her hull like cannon fire, spray hailing from her starboard rail like grapeshot. Her masts would surely not remain stepped for much longer. He could see her yards hanging askew or detached, the sails like limp, dark bodies lying in the water, many ripped to shreds, their upper portions flogging in the wind, the remainder becalmed by the ship’s hull.
Pulling himself back from that serene edge of resignation to death, Jack reached deep inside for the energy and courage to resume fighting. This situation was as much as he could have hoped for. They were still afloat. He had a few precious moments to resurrect his ship before another such sea sent her to the bottom. Even now her breached hatches were swallowing an impossible amount of water. Soon the weight of all that water would overcome her buoyancy and drag her down.
How many of his crew had survived? He was chillingly aware that he was alone at the helm.
“Anamaria!” he called out over the roar of the storm.
* * * * *
Anamaria clung desperately to the line as the seas broke around her sometimes allowing her space for a breath before submerging her in their dark embrace. With every ounce of determination she possessed, she began the hand over hand climb up the deck of the Pearl. They were surely about to die, every last one of them, but she was not going to give up without a fight.
The hand that surfaced beside her startled her. Even though she knew she hadn’t made it far enough to be safe, she quickly hitched the rope around her body and let go with one hand. As the water rose to her chin, the hand rose too. Before it could sink away, Anamaria seized the crewman’s wrist. His fingers snapped around her arm in a panicked grip. Her shoulder nearly tore out as the sea dropped out from under them, leaving her supporting herself and some fourteen stone of man and waterlogged clothing. The rope bit into her torso and other hand. She gasped in pain and swore colourfully.
Her soggy burden coughed and choked. “Anamaria!”
Even though her eyes were clenched shut with the strain, Anamaria recognized that voice.
“Mr. Gibbs,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Couldn’t you just stay on the ship, you bloody idiot?”
She didn’t know how much longer she could hold him. Occasionally, a rising sea would relieve some of his weight, but she was beginning to see flashes of lightning behind her eyes, and she could feel the fatigue in her muscles beginning to overwhelm her grip. She was never going to be able to use that shoulder again, that was a sure bet.
“Lass, ye can’t hang on for us both!” Gibbs was yelling from somewhere far away.
Summoning up enough air, she tried to shout back at him. It came out as an angry whisper. “Don’t you dare let go, you rotten scoundrel!”
“Don’t know how long I can hang on!” Gibbs choked. The breaking crest of a wave shipped over the Pearl’s hull and rushed over them, tearing at their fragile bond.
Then, above the mayhem of the storm and the sinking ship rang out the voice of Captain Sparrow calling her name. No matter her battered, half-drowned exhaustion, the captain’s call was an irresistible stimulus. Anamaria tightened her grip, opened her eyes and managed an actual audible, if half-mast, bellow. “Aye, sir! I’m here! A little help, if you please?”
She’d never seen a more beautiful sight than Jack Sparrow clambering down the poop deck rail as though it were a ladder. He’d lost his hat and he looked like a drowned rat, but he was alive and carrying a second line. Giving it a couple of wraps around the rail, he tossed the other end towards Gibbs.
With his free hand, Gibbs managed to clutch the rope. Then he dropped back into the water. Anamaria nearly cried with relief as the weight left her and Jack towed the man to the rail where he could attach himself with the tenacity of a barnacle. She could tell something was wrong with Jack, because the effort seemed almost too much for him, but they were alive. And that was enough for now.
By this time, two other crewmen had managed to get a hold on Anamaria’s line, hauling her quickly up the Pearl’s sloping deck. Finally, she was able to let go, although her fingers refused to straighten. Huddling on the stair railing of the poop deck, riding out the wild swoops of the ship, Anamaria rubbed her shoulder. She was amazed to find it wasn’t dislocated. She couldn’t use that arm at the moment, but she could worry about that later.
Gibbs' face appeared as he climbed up to her level. He joined her on her perch, followed by Jack.
“Ye all right, lass?” Gibbs asked.
She wasn’t used to him caring what she felt like. “I’ll be fine,” she answered shortly.
He set a large, rough hand on her good shoulder. “Thank ye,” he said simply.
Anamaria shrugged. “I’d’ve done it for anyone.”
“But since it was me,” Gibbs countered. “I’m thankin’ ye for not just droppin’ me back in the drink.” He grinned at her.
“Aye, well, that sea must’ve addled m’brains,” she muttered.
“That was a big one all right,” Gibbs reflected calmly. “I’ve decided to retire from this profession, if ye want t’know.”
Suddenly, absurdly, they were laughing. Jack looked like laughing hurt him even more than the rescue operation. But it was such a relief to be alive for another moment.
“All right, mates!” Jack was back to captaining. “Let’s get this lady on her feet. Gibbs, you up to collecting your crew and getting that spar launched?”
“Aye, sir!” And Gibbs scrambled on up the poop deck rails in search of his men.
“Anamaria, we’ll need all her sail forward. See to her hatches. And get those pumps manned.”
“Aye, sir!” There’d be time to collapse later, if they survived this capsize.
Anamaria didn’t know whether Gibb’s task would make any difference. She didn’t know if her own orders would be sufficient. Jack was always a gambler, but if he lost this bet and the ship didn’t pay off, the only choice would be to chop away her topgallant masts and shrouds—main, mizzen and fore. Relieved of their windage, the ship might right herself. Anamaria was surprised Jack hadn’t made provision for this.
“Captain, do you want me to send the men out on her masts with the axes?” she reminded him.
“No.” His reply was short and sharp.
“What do you mean, no? If she doesn’t right herself soon, she’ll go down!” Anamaria exclaimed incredulously.
“We’ve already decided that, Anamaria. She can’t fly without her topgallants, and I won’t cut off her wings.” Jack reached out his hand to his ship’s deck in that impossibly tender gesture he reserved for the Black Pearl. “If she can’t pull her masts up, I’ll let her go,” he continued quietly. “It’s what she would want. The Royal Navy is not taking this ship or these men.”
Anamaria compressed her lips over any retort she might have made. If that was the way of it, no protest of hers would sway Jack Sparrow. She turned away from him and shinnied up the line onto the ship’s side rail, making her way forward by hanging on to shrouds and running rigging. She was stuck on a boat full of bloody last-stand heroes. Time to go make a valiant attempt to save this ship of fools.
Behind her, she could hear Jack’s voice ringing out fiercely over the explosions of waves and beating canvas, calming and comforting with its familiarity.
“Cotton, Tearlach, get aft to the helm if y’ain’t drowned!”
* * * * *
The crew of the Black Pearl were convinced they were about to die, that death was imminent. The ship was on her side and she wasn’t coming up again. The seas crashed over the half-submerged decks and yards of the ship, plucking at their bodies ravenously. Strips of shredded canvas snapped in the wind like whips. The men clung to the rigging in silent, stunned immobility.
Then the voices rose, like beacons of hope flaring out of the tumult. The captain calling for the first mate. Anamaria’s acknowledgment. And then Captain Sparrow’s orders, urgent but calm, sounding as if they had a chance.
Anamaria’s familiar bellow drew them like a halyard. “All right, my lads, lay forward and get some head sails on this lady! Larboard watch, get some men onto those pumps!”
Suddenly they were equally firmly convinced that they would not die this time—even though they knew the situation was dire when Anamaria stood down in violence if not in volume. The string of orders got them moving. Shaking off the sea’s spell of paralyzing anguish, they began to make their way back to the ship.
* * * * *
Along with the two men who’d helped haul in Anamaria, Gibbs struggled precariously to where the spar was lashed to the Pearl’s starboard rail and the remainder of his crew waited enduring the unceasing gout and spout of seas over the hull. He was grateful to discover all seven of them had somehow managed to stay attached to the ship during that cataclysmic wave.
“All right, me hearties!” Gibbs tried to project the confidence Jack Sparrow exuded when he ordered something impossible. “We’ve got a stop-waters to launch.”
To do so would involve wrestling that thirty-foot long, nearly one foot in diameter chunk of wood over the rail, onto the twisting hull of the ship, without being bucked off into the sea. Then they’d somehow have to get it in the water to windward without joining it themselves. Carrying out Jack Sparrow’s outrageous plans was going to kill him someday. Gibbs grimaced. Now he needed a plan of his own to make sure that day was not today.
First Gibbs had his men tether themselves to the rail. There wasn’t a chance in hell that they weren’t going to need that precaution. Then it was time to abandon what protection the ship’s bulwarks provided and venture onto that exposed hull. Blast, he hated leading by example.
The wind slapped his face, determined to drive him back as he braved that expanse of storm-besieged timber. Four men crept out beside him, clinging to the grooves in the planking. The other three released the spar from its bindings.
Masses of breaking crests and rushing foam hammered against the backs of the men balanced on the Pearl’s heaving side, spewing plumes of spray until they could scarcely breathe. Every time they could almost stand upright to haul on the spar, the ship would pitch into a trough in a stomach-rolling dive, driving them to their knees. Three times men lost their footing entirely and had to be hauled back up onto the hull with the ropes that bound them to the ship. All of them suffered repeated collisions with the remorseless wood. The violent abuse bloodied their hands and knees, but they persevered doggedly.
“Heave boys! That’s it!” Gibbs shouted over the uproar. “Up she goes now. That’ll do her! Hang on now or you’re gone altogether!”
Somehow in the turmoil of breaking seas, the wind not easing a knot, hanging onto that topsy-turvy ship, his lads managed to hoist that spar onto the hull. The three men below scrambled out onto the rocking planks and lent their strength to one final, heart-cracking, sinew-breaking heave that thrust the spar out into the sea.
Throwing themselves to the boards in exhaustion, they clung there shaking in the aftermath of that all-out effort.
Would it be enough? They would not know until the wind and seas, pressing on her upturned hull, had driven the ship far enough to leeward to stretch that hawser taut.
As they lay there, gasping for breath, Captain Sparrow’s head appeared above the railings. He disappeared for a moment as a wave broke over the ship, but his face was alight when he reappeared, hauling himself onto the rail, water cascading off of him.
“Excellent work, my bonnie lads,” he exclaimed, with a flourish of one arm. “That ought to bring her head to the wind in fine style.”
His collapsed crewmembers revived somewhat under the praise, waving back at him.
“Captain!”
Jack’s head whipped about in answer to that call.
Jip, the smallest ship’s boy, came scampering along the Pearl’s pitching rail as though he were on her level decks in a calm. “Captain!” he cried.
“You still aboard, whelp?” the captain inquired, grinning at the soaked urchin.
“He is,” Matelot’s deep voice answered as he laboured along behind. “No thanks t’ himself. I just fished him out—again.”
Capering about in high good humour, heedless of the corkscrew rolls of the Pearl, Jip crowed, “Look what I found, Captain!” He held up a battered dark object that upon closer examination was revealed to be Jack’s hat.
Jack reached for the beloved object. “Thought I’d lost that for good,” he said nearly too softly to be heard. Carefully he set it back on his head. He reached out and ruffled Jip’s wet curls. “Thanks, scamp. What would I do without you?”
“Well, I, for one, would not have had to risk life and limb twice to get a rope on the little bastard,” Matelot groused. He shared a look of commiseration with Gibbs. “I’d just pulled him in when he saw that hat floating in the rigging and back into the sea he goes. Never had such a turn! Blasted kid.”
“And for that, I thank you, as well,” Jack said sincerely. “You’re a good man, Matelot.”
He turned to Jip, schooling his features to severity. “And as for you, young miscreant. Stay on the ship from now on. Hats can be replaced. Good men cannot.”
“Aye, sir,” Jip saluted gaily, not at all chastised. They all could tell the captain was pleased to have his hat back.
“Right.” Jack eyed him suspiciously. The kid was only compliant when he was plotting mischief. “Now make yourself useful. See if Anamaria can put you to work.”
“Aye, sir,” Jip sighed. He turned and scurried off the way he’d come.
* * * * *
While Gibbs and his men were labouring to toss the spar overboard, Anamaria was overseeing the most pressing repairs.
“Marty!” she called. “Lay forward and see how many hatches are breached. Call the carpenter and see what you can do for ‘em.”
“Securing the hatches, aye.” Marty swung down beside her and began clambering forward through the rigging.
Marty was a good hand. The next time she looked for him, he and the carpenter were covering the broken hatches temporarily with sail canvas in spite of being under water half the time as the seas continued to break heavily over the ship.
Now that they’d stopped the majority of the water from getting in, it was imperative that they pump out the masses of it already sloshing about below. No doubt the ship had sprung a few seams as well, but there’d be no time to pack in oakum and tar. They’d just have to pump unceasingly until they made harbour somewhere for repairs.
Anamaria snorted to herself. Here she was planning as if they were not only going to survive this capsize but also going to outmaneuver and outrun two Royal Navy warships. Jack Sparrow’s daftness must be bloody contagious.
The men from the larboard watch were already toiling away at the pumps on the most exposed part of the main deck. The waves shipping over the hull were burying them in water up to their waists and necks, so they’d had to lash themselves to the main mast fife rail to avoid getting washed away. It was work to break hearts and backs on that vertical deck, but they lowered their heads and did not let up. Water poured out of the Pearl’s clanging washports, although not nearly fast enough.
Anamaria spoke a word of encouragement as she swung by the men on her way to direct the setting of the foresails should Jack’s crazy plans work. God, she prayed her boys would live.
* * * * *
Gibbs and his crew had only partially recovered from their exertion when the hawser snapped tight over the Pearl’s rail.
“This is it, mates,” Gibbs called. He shared a glance with the captain whose supple imagination had foreseen this necessity. The men watched solemnly along with them to see the results of their work.
Painfully slowly the Black Pearl’s headway was checked. The pull on her lee bow drew her towards the wind. Her stern began to fly off in excruciating increments. As the great ship came head to the wind, the press of the gale and the seas on her hull reduced dramatically and she ceased her leeward course.
It seemed every man and woman aboard the ship forgot to breathe, waiting to see what the Pearl would do. With the weight of the wind no longer forcing her over and pinning her down, no longer causing her hull to becalm her sails, would she be able to right herself? Would her few remaining sails catch enough wind to overcome the tenacious inertia of her tall masts?
A shout rang out as the Pearl’s decks began almost imperceptibly to level, her yards to come up ever so slightly. Those crewmembers not manning the pumps leapt into her rigging again to ride out the change in orientation.
“Hoist the fore topmast staysail,” Jack commanded. “Get it up there lads! This is our chance. Get her headsails on her.” They needed to pay the ship’s head off to leeward and cast her onto the starboard tack as swiftly as possible in order to get her under way again.
The minute Anamaria could set foot on the Black Pearl’s decks without tumbling into the sea, she bounded up to the forecastle deck.
Her orders rang, mighty-voiced over the wind. “Lay aloft and get that foretopsail set, my beauties! Fast like the devil’s up y’r arse! Haul up the damn jibs while you’re at it. Sing out when you’re ready. Jump to it!”
The starboard watch scrambled forward to comply, attempting to reset the sails that had been ripped down by that monster wave.
“Cotton, Tearlach,” Jack added from his position on the poop deck, “when they’ve hoisted the headsails, up helm as hard as you can. Get her bow to pay off.”
The storm was still refusing to ease their tasks. The surviving heavy canvas tore away from them, threatening to flail itself to flinders, making every move arduous. Braced on the steeply-tilted, rolling decks of the ship, the men hauled on the lines. They pulled until their callused hands burned, until their backs revolted and their muscles jumped with the strain.
Handspan by bloodied handspan, the sails rose again.
“Haul away boys,” Anamaria goaded. “Heave the sonofabitch up there! Two men aft to the sheets! Now the inner jib—heave and wake the dead! Go boys! Don’t let this bastard win!”
When the men had succeeded in hoisting the three jibs and sheeting them home, Anamaria hollered aft, “Ahoy the poop! Up your helm there! Bring her around! Now! Now!”
“Helm up, aye!” Tearlach bellowed back. He and Cotton spun the ship’s wheel as fast as they could.
For a moment nothing changed. The crew waited with bated breath for the half-exposed rudder to bite the waves that were beginning to submerge it.
As they fought the staysail into place, the Black Pearl’s straining jibs and rudder began to catch, pivoting her bow gradually onto the wind and she began to move forward, coming upright more every minute.
The crew cheered wildly. She was doing it! Their dark lady was rising out of the sea once again!
Suddenly men were dancing on her decks, throwing their arms around each other, slapping one another on the back. Laughter and shouts rang out.
Jip was darting about hugging everyone he could stretch his small arms around, including Anamaria. He was the only one who ever dared. The little wretch had never been afraid of her, and he had an even worse vocabulary. Anamaria found she was happy to hug him back before he went scampering off to throw himself at the captain.
She nearly dropped dead with shock when Gibbs draped an arm around her and gave her a tentative squeeze. He looked uncertain, as though ready to defend himself from an attack. But Anamaria was so happy she embraced him back. The startled expression on his face was worth it.
Then she found herself in Jack’s arms, his rough beard scratching against her cheek. Although his skin was cold against her face, the water on it held the warmth of tears, not the chill of rain. She could feel his shoulders shake under her hands.
“They’re all here, Ana,” he whispered into her neck. “I checked. Every last man and boy is still aboard and alive. They all made it.”
“Duncan?” she murmured into his hair.
“Considerably worse for wear. He hit the bulkhead pretty damn hard when she went down, but he’ll survive.”
Anamaria felt her own throat tighten in gratitude. By some miracle they had done it. They had saved the ship and the souls aboard her. The Black Pearl had saved them all.
* * * * *
No choir had ever sung such music as the sound of the Black Pearl picking up her heels off the wind, going as full sail ahead as she could, a great roaring aloft. She seized the wind, drinking it in great draughts, plunging forward eagerly. Nevertheless, the sea had not yet laid down its arms. The shuddering jerk as the ship topped a wave and plunged into the next was like hitting a stone wall. As the waves washed over her bow, there was little to distinguish her deck from the sea.
However, battered as she was, one mast crippled, too many of her sails shredded or flailing loose, their lines snapped, too many of her yards hanging a-cock-bill, she faced the storm with her customary, unsubdued courage. She would stand up to those punishing seas, put her shoulder to the thundering waves, rise up over and over again, shake off the tons of rushing water and fight on.
Jack Sparrow stood again at the helm of his ship, his face raised to the rain and the wind, his eyes closed as he listened to her voice, a song of victory. What a beauty she was, his Black Pearl. What a valiant, unconquerable, incredible ship. What an honour to be her captain. What a privilege to be here to see her vanquish this storm this day, to see her pull herself and her crew out of the jaws of death.
“Thank you, love,” he said softly.
She might have foundered and gone down had the spirit of the sea said the word. But nothing, not even her most intimate adversary, the Ocean itself, could fail to grant quarter to such a magnificent vessel.
* * * * *
A shout rang out, and Norrington’s head snapped up. Disbelieving, he saw that black angel knifing her way back out of her watery grave, saw the Black Pearl clawing a path out of the savage sea. One of her topmasts had snapped and half her sails were hanging in shreds, but she was alive. He watched in awe as she gained her feet, her remaining sails shivering and singing taut in the wind. That was no ordinary ship, he swore; Jack Sparrow had leashed himself one of Neptune’s daughters. She arose from the waves, gallant and invincible, shrugging off the attempts of the lesser seas to batter her into submission. Eagerly she caught at the vicious winds, sinking her teeth into them, lifting herself out of her briny prison as though she might truly fly.
“I don’t believe it,” Lieutenant Gillette muttered beside Norrington.
Norrington shook his head in awe. He didn’t believe it either. “You will never see another ship with that much heart,” he said with conviction.
And now that she had survived that passage, it was his duty to destroy her. Reluctantly, he turned to give the orders that would bring the Dauntless within range of the Black Pearl as she completed her crossing of the bar.
“Sir,” Gillette’s voice was quiet, almost inaudible in the howl of wind through the Dauntless’s rigging.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Norrington was actually grateful for the delay.
“Perhaps,” the Lieutenant smiled crookedly, “another day’s head start?”
The commodore’s shoulders slumped a little and his rare smile was sad as he answered the lieutenant. “So you feel it, too,” he said.
“She’s a bonny ship, sir,” Gillette said carefully.
“She is indeed,” Norrington sighed. “But this ambush represents months of work that we cannot afford to waste for the sake of even so fine a ship as the Black Pearl. Sparrow has used up his day’s grace, and we have our duty.”
“Aye, sir.”
If the sea had this day paid homage to the courage of that ship and released her from certain death, the Royal Navy would have no such mercy.
* * * * *
TBC
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
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WOW
Date: 2006-01-08 10:25 am (UTC)Re: WOW
Date: 2006-01-08 07:14 pm (UTC)