Fic: Crossing the Bar (5/?)
Mar. 23rd, 2006 09:49 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, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl, Commodore Norrington
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?
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
In the excruciating boredom of lying in wait for their quarry, Commodore Norrington and Captain Walton had spent dozens of evenings with their officers in the wardroom of the Dauntless developing tactics and mapping strategies for every likely and, as Norrington had insisted, every unlikely scenario. Now they would finally be able to utilize that planning. As soon as Sparrow’s ship emerged far enough into open water, while she was still reeling from her encounter with the bar, Walton would bring the Defender across her T and rake her bow with all his fire. The original plan had been a far more dangerous one, assuming, as it did, that the enemy ship would be fully capable and swift as lightning.
However, as the matter stood, the Royal Navy would never have a better opportunity to take the Black Pearl. The pirate ship rode low in the pounding seas, hamstrung by the water in her holds, down on her marks like a half-tide rock, staggering under her broken mast and torn sails. For this one time, the Dauntless should easily match pace with the fastest ship in the Caribbean.
But even crippled as she was, the Black Pearl was a foe to give a man pause. The commodore’s face was grim as he watched the pirate vessel loom up out of the sea, closer and closer. As dark as fear and deadly sin, as beautiful as night and the heart of a storm. No wonder ships surrendered to her without a fight. Battered as she was now, bearing down on the Defender and the Dauntless like an avenging fury, she was a nightmare incarnate. Not for the first time did he wonder why a man like Sparrow, who played the fool with such relish and used force with more reluctance than most men Norrington knew, let alone any of the pirates he’d pursued, would choose to sail such a menacing ship. Even though he knew she could scarcely be a worthy opponent in her current condition, even though he had her outgunned more than two to one, he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck rising in irrational fear. There was something uncanny about Jack Sparrow’s ship.
Since Norrington had the weather gauge on the Pearl, he’d given Sparrow no choice but to run this gauntlet—first the Defender’s raking fire, then on his windward side the lethal broadsides of the Dauntless with her hundred hungry guns; then, if the pirate’s ship survived, the Defender on his lee, her fewer guns even more deadly when the Pearl’s decks, heeled hard over, would be fully exposed. And finally, if necessary, the Defender with her superior speed would be able to rake the Pearl’s bow for a final strike while the Dauntless harried her flank. They had planned well.
The Black Pearl’s course was a choice of desperation not threat. Nevertheless, he could not shake the feeling that a predator was stalking them. The pirate hunter fought the urge to behave like prey. It was illogical, utter nonsense.
It didn’t help that the storm was hobbling the Royal Navy as well. The small swift brig could not even consider opening her gun ports in such heavy weather. She would be limited to her main deck guns. Nor, broad reaching in the following seas, could she hope to spill enough wind to provide a very wide window of opportunity. But what shots she could get off were far more likely to find a target down the full length of the Black Pearl than if the ships were broadside to each other. And, Norrington reassured himself, even if they’d be unable to utilize their largest guns on the lowest gun decks, no pirate crew could match the trained and practiced gunnery of his men on the Dauntless.
Jack Sparrow would not escape this time. Nor would his lovely ship.
* * * * *
Cotton’s parrot, who had abandoned the sinking ship in high dudgeon, rejoined the Black Pearl, a wet and disgruntled piece of sunshine and blue sky huddled on the helmsman’s shoulder, muttering parroty profanities into Cotton’s ear. Everyone cheered, taking his return as a sign that the Pearl would stay afloat.
The jubilation at the righting of the ship was short lived, however, when it became apparent just how badly damaged she had been by that capsize.
The constant creak and grind of pumps as the men cranked at the bars until their shoulders nearly dropped off was a reminder that far too much water had invaded her holds. Everything on her decks had been washed away, her boats stove in and swept to sea. Half a dozen of her sails had been ripped out of their gaskets by the wave and were now restrained only by their clew and buntlines, and several of her yards were detached, hanging only by their lifts. But the most immediate danger came from the long split in the main topgallant mast that was threatening to descend on their bloody heads at any moment.
“Gibbs, I need that spar back aboard!” Jack shouted, decisions already multiplying frantically in his head. “Anamaria, rig the tackle for fishing that mast—we’ve got to get it splinted.”
The two of them dashed off, trailing strings of orders and swirling eddies of men, to carry out his instructions.
Taking charge of the remaining crew, Jack ordered, “Starboard watch, lay aloft to secure those yards and get that gear stripped off. Re-rig them and rove their lifts, braces and sheets. Larboard, take in any sails that are too damaged to reattach and furl the shredded canvas. We’ll salvage what we can.”
With agile confidence, his men leapt to the ratlines at his command, the press of the wind on their bodies forcing them to strain for every step.
Jack watched them climb high into the dark, boiling clouds. The wild, deep chant of the Black Pearl’s passage through the storm filled her captain as though it were his soul singing. But the song held notes of discord now. The high seas, marching in endless succession of serried ranks, broke over her bulwarks, filling her decks, battering her starboard bow, driving it off to leeward. The wind lashed the surface of the water into the air, sending spray thundering to her tops. As the Pearl slammed into the seas, parting them, her hull flipped from side to side wrenching her spars. She was such an intricate and marvelous creature, but therein lay also her vulnerability. So much needed to work together for her to fly—so much now hopelessly fouled.
His crew would spend their last strength to save this ship, to halt her slide into disaster. Her captain would use every last scrap of knowledge and imagination and bloody invention to give them a chance. But it would not be enough. The two warships waiting beyond the channel would see to that.
Standing his ground by the weather shrouds, soaking wet, the wind leaching the heat from his body, Captain Jack Sparrow watched the strained, gaunt faces of his crew, their eyes glazed with fatigue but not giving in to fear. They were a crowd of roistering, whoring, drunkards, scraped together from the lowest dens of wretchedness and vice, a motley lot, composed of all nations—but a brotherhood standing together, willing to perform any act of daring and desperation. These were the men who had chosen to follow him to the gates of hell. He would not let himself wonder which of these faces he would never see alive again, whose voices never hear.
* * * * *
Gibbs arrived back at Jack’s side, having delivered his team and the dripping spar into Anamaria’s hands. Even now the massive timber was being trussed and edged up the main mast.
With worried eyes, Gibbs surveyed the turmoil of preparations surging over the Black Pearl. “Even if ye save that mast, Captain,” he said, “she hasn’t got enough sail left on her to outrun those Navy ships.”
“Then we’ll need to bend on every sail she’s got. Put up our shirts if we have to,” Jack commented matter-of-factly, as though he’d already thought this through.
“Captain,” Gibbs protested. “Ye’ll never haul those bloody sails up in this blow! They’ll light out for the Americas and not stop until they get there. We’ll be lucky if they don’t take half the crew with them.”
“Well then,” Jack grinned madly. “We’ll just have to furl those sails before we bend them on, won’t we?”
Gibbs opened his mouth, got a strange look on his face, and shut it again. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Like so many of Jack’s daft plans, that one just might work.
“Get your crew to rig the spare sails on the top gun deck,” Jack ordered. “I want the least surface area possible on that canvas.”
“Aye sir,” Gibbs agreed, beginning to turn away. Suddenly he halted and twisted back. There was just one small flaw in this whole plan. “Jack, we’ll never make it in time.”
“I know.” Jack’s eyes traveled over his wounded ship like a man’s might over his dying lover. “But if I can hold the Navy off just long enough, perhaps . . .” His voice trailed off. With restless fingertips he traced patterns in the raindrops on the Black Pearl’s rail.
Captain Jack Sparrow made a habit of believing in the impossible. It chilled Gibbs far more than wind and rain to realize that this time even Jack didn’t quite believe he could pull off the miracle.
* * * * *
Captain Sparrow made the decision. They would spill as much wind as they dared from the Black Pearl’s remaining sails. As long as they could draw out their passage through the perilous breakers at the far side of the bar, they would be safe from the Navy ships. He had to buy his ship time to recover. No matter that to attempt to salvage their main topgallant mast and bend on new sails under such conditions was utter madness. He had to take that chance.
Such an order was going to be a test of his helmsmen’s skill and nerve. At the heavy wheel, he found Cotton and Tearlach battling their treacherous and wily antagonist in the impossible task of keeping the Pearl’s bow facing the waves. Again and again the ship would fall off, lying broadside on to them, rolling so hard her yardarms plunged into the sea. The two of them stared at him in disbelief when he informed them that they were to do their best to see that the ship was brought to, halted right in the middle of this maelstrom. The current would keep them moving towards the open sea, but the captain wanted the ship delayed as long as possible.
Even the parrot had a comment: “Three sheets to the wind.”
Jack snorted. “Mr. Cotton, you never said a truer word.”
Tearlach stepped aside to allow the captain to take the wheel. Captain Sparrow’s feeling for the wind, his sense of the size and direction of the seas, and his uncanny knowledge of how and when to respond were legendary. If difficult piloting was in order, Jack was the man they wanted at the helm.
The feel of his ship in his hands again was such a relief to Jack that it took him a moment to react to the set of butcher’s knives that was carving up his chest every time he pressed on the wheel. In the mayhem of restoring the Black Pearl he’d been aware that he’d be paying for those broken ribs at some date, but he’d been ignoring them. Now they’d come to collect. He could almost bear the pain if he didn’t use his right arm, but Cotton was going to need more help than he could provide. The minute the strain on the ship’s rudder relaxed again, Jack surrendered.
“Tearlach,” he managed, shocked to hear how breathless his voice sounded. “You’ll have to take her. I’m afraid I’m pretty near scuppered.”
The captain certainly looked like it was bellows to mend with him. Tearlach swiftly seized the helm and added his strength to Cotton’s.
“You goin’ t’ be all right, Captain?” he asked, concerned. “Should I call Anamaria?”
“No!” Jack gasped. Of all the things he really didn’t need, his first mate fussing over him pretty much topped the list. Well, perhaps came second. Right after bloody devious commodores with undamaged warships.
Tearlach nodded. He could perfectly understand a desire to remain far away from Anamaria. Together he and Cotton followed the captain’s instructions to bear off or head up in order to take the blows of the furious seas at the best angle.
However, Captain Sparrow soon found himself with too many crises to keep track of.
The scene aboard his ship was a last gasp away from complete chaos. Like a high-couraged horse fighting all restraint, the Black Pearl reared and lunged against the clawing hands of the sea, tossing her bowsprit high in the air, then plunging into the gaping troughs, twisting dangerously in the deep cross swells, dashing her yardarms down into the steep-sided waves. Out on those spars, his crew clung grimly to the jackstays, dodging the flailing strips of number one canvas that seemed hell-bent on flinging them into the sea, riding out the monstrous, relentless energy of the ship and the storm on the wildly dancing footropes. Their legs shook with the strain of stabilizing the lines that snapped back and forth under their motion. Certain death was only the slightest slip away.
Fanned out along the windward sides of the yards, slithering on the footropes, they battled with the wet, heavy sails, trying to pound the stiff canvas into graspable shapes, leaning so far over the yards that their feet, jammed onto the footropes, swung high into the air as though they’d dive into the deck. Time and again they would have the canvas nearly muzzled when a blast of wind would rip it from their fingers.
Furling these scraps of sails for salvage would have taken five minutes in fair weather. In this bloody gale it would be a long and intense battle. The board-stiff canvas exploded against their hands, ripping nails and bludgeoning knuckles. The blood of that skirmish stained the sails. The wind screamed with the voices of his crew in five languages cursing each other, the weather, the Navy, God, and all the whores in Singapore.
There was a note of desperate exhilaration in those voices.
“Who let go? Who let go of the bloody sail? Damn it! Haul away and hold on!”
“Now boys, on my word, all together. Ready? Now pull!”
“Bring it in! Handsomely now!”
“Keep a hold! Can’t ye hang on t’ a wee bit o’ canvas?”
Jack still had new crew up on those yards—boys who were only just beginning to believe that they might not die when they pivoted on their bellies over the yard to grab for the sail, and the footrope flipped up and out until their legs were level with their backs. He could hear the exasperated roar of an experienced seaman goading them, “Let go o’ the jackstays ye greenhorns and lend a hand! I’ll be damned if I ever seen more useless lumps aloft! Lay out here or when we get down I’ll feed y’ t’ the first mate!”
The corner of the captain’s mouth lifted. There was a threat to strike fear into the souls of those hapless crewmen.
One of the newest of his men had still not dredged up enough courage to set foot on the ratlines again. Jack could see that Anamaria had noticed and was beginning her stalk in that direction. He had no doubt that his first mate was capable of making the solid decks of the Black Pearl seem a far more terrifying place than the highest swaying mast, but the captain thought he might take this one himself. The kid had been one of his recruits after all. Well, “recruiting” was perhaps an inaccuracy. “Pirating” might work better; “kidnapping” possibly struck closer to the heart of the matter. Jack had forced this one off his former ship with a pistol to his head.
The boy had had too much of the spirit beaten out of him ever to go against orders sufficiently to escape his abusive merchant captain and sign on to a pirate crew. So Captain Jack Sparrow had removed the necessity of him having to make the choice and included him with the rest of the swag.
The stripes on his back had scarred over. With better grub, his health had returned. But Jack could still see the injuries that mattered, the lacerations on the soul that broke open in the lad’s cringing behaviour and bled from the fear in his eyes. No, this boy did not need the concentrated vituperation of Anamaria’s style of motivation at this moment. He caught his first mate’s eye and read her comprehension. They exchanged nods and Anamaria veered off her course, leaving Jack to do the job he was best at—convincing someone to go against his or her better judgment.
Leaving his really quite competent helmsmen, Jack charted a wide circle around his quarry, not wanting to startle him by coming up behind. Even so, he saw the boy stiffen, and his eyes, if it were possible, grew even wider. To draw the captain’s attention was no small matter in his world. He backed up a step, and Jack stopped moving.
“Requin,” Jack called. The name still made him laugh inside. Of all the hyperbolic, inaccurate misnomers, that one took the prize. “Shark,” the kid had named himself, trying to sound like a pirate. Perhaps he would one day grow into the name.
The boy froze again. “Aye, sir?” he responded shakily.
Jack closed the gap between them now that he was sure the kid wouldn’t bolt. Requin could speak sufficient English to understand the operations of the ship, but the captain slipped smoothly into the French that was the boy’s native tongue. “Easy now, lad,” he soothed. He could see Requin relax a little at the familiar words.
Looking up at the dark mast rising above the two of them, Jack spoke as though thinking aloud, “There’s no shame in being afraid, son.” The boy made a noise of denial, but subsided when the captain shook his head. Jack placed a hand on the vibrating line of the shroud. “Fear is a wind that blows on us all.”
Turning to face Requin, Jack held his eyes. “What you have now is a choice. Will you let that wind fill your sails? Or will you let it snap your masts and shred your canvas? Will you use it to give you strength? Or will you be used by it?”
The boy bowed his head.
Jack stroked the rigging under his hand. “She’s a grand ship, Requin. She’ll take care of you, if you let her. There’s only the wind and the sea and the ship up there. Those are all good things, whatever happens.”
He reached out and gripped the young man’s shoulder, feeling the steel returning to his spine. He grinned at Requin. “What say you, boy? Can you trust yourself and this ship? Can she trust you?”
Requin returned a tentative smile. “Aye, sir.”
“Good lad.” Jack nodded his approval. “Up you go then.” He waited until Requin was firmly on his way, slow but determined, then he headed towards the forecastle. On the way there, he fell into step with Anamaria.
“Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria shook her head, glancing up at the main topsail yard where Requin had joined his mates on the footropes, “I hope you never try to convince me that I can fly.”
“Why Anamaria, love,” Jack’s eyebrow climbed under the brim of his hat and his slow smile curved full of mischief, “of course you can.”
* * * * *
Gibbs had finally managed to corner the captain on the water-logged forecastle deck of the Black Pearl, an accomplishment of some note since Jack appeared determined to oversee the repairs to his ship personally and simultaneously. For the longest time, the captain had seemed to be everywhere Gibbs looked but nowhere at which he actually arrived. Even now the demented man was off to supervise something else. Gibbs had to jog along, grabbing for lines when the ship rolled and the seas swept her decks, to keep up with Jack as he headed back towards the quarterdeck.
“Captain.” Gibbs’ voice was grim. “We got a problem.”
“We’ve got a great many problems, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack commented waving one arm to encompass the wreckage of the Black Pearl. He widened his eyes and peered inquiringly at his quartermaster. “Could you be a bit more specific?”
There was no easy way to deliver this news, so Gibbs opted for the brutally direct. “Our powder’s scuppered, Captain. The Pearl’s holds are swamped and she’s still takin’ on water. The magazine’s gone under. We’d have to dive for it, and there’s no hope in hell the powder hasn’t been dampened.”
He waited for the captain to do something—lose his temper and curse the heavens, reveal some madcap, suicidal plot to utilize wet powder, explain how this was all part of some deeply-laid, fiendishly clever plan. But Jack simply nodded.
“I figured as much,” he said. “So, we face the Royal mastiffs with our wings clipped and our teeth pulled, eh?”
“That about sums it up.” Gibbs tried to match the captain’s nonchalant tone, but he succeeded only in sounding half strangled.
“Never mind.” Jack shrugged. “If we’re to bend enough canvas to outrun those bastards, we’ll need every able-bodied man on her sails. And with those Navy cannon doing their bloody best to undo our work, we’ll be repairing this ship as fast as they can take her apart. We couldn’t spare the crew to man her guns anyway.”
Gibbs swallowed hard. And he’d thought that bar had been bad. “This is not going to go well, is it?” he said hollowly.
Still keeping his eye on the massive activity around him, Jack answered him, “Not likely.”
“Have we any chance?” Gibbs asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer to that.
“Well now, that’ll depend, won’t it?” Jack transferred his attention to the heaving gray-green expanse of ocean ahead of them where the brig was pulling away from the Dauntless and beginning its move to intercept the Black Pearl. “The storm’s in our favour. They’ll not be opening their lower gunports in this chop. And it won’t matter how fine their gunnery is—their aim will be shot to hell. On the other hand, they’ll have plenty of time to practice. Until the Pearl’s got her legs back, even the Dauntless is goin’ to be able to outrun her.” Jack gave a humourless bark of laughter, then looked as though he regretted that action. “I wish we could count on ol’ Norrington fightin’ like the British.”
Gibbs nodded. “Ah. Royal Navy doctrine. Kill the crews and leave the ships. All shots between wind and water. Aye. That’d give what’s left of us a chance t’ run for it.”
“But I wouldn’t put it past the good commodore to have borrowed a page from the French book. No doubt he’ll be tryin’ to take down our masts and rigging as well.” Jack grimaced. “Any way you look at it, we’ll be payin’ in blood for that open sea.”
TBC
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl, Commodore Norrington
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?
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
In the excruciating boredom of lying in wait for their quarry, Commodore Norrington and Captain Walton had spent dozens of evenings with their officers in the wardroom of the Dauntless developing tactics and mapping strategies for every likely and, as Norrington had insisted, every unlikely scenario. Now they would finally be able to utilize that planning. As soon as Sparrow’s ship emerged far enough into open water, while she was still reeling from her encounter with the bar, Walton would bring the Defender across her T and rake her bow with all his fire. The original plan had been a far more dangerous one, assuming, as it did, that the enemy ship would be fully capable and swift as lightning.
However, as the matter stood, the Royal Navy would never have a better opportunity to take the Black Pearl. The pirate ship rode low in the pounding seas, hamstrung by the water in her holds, down on her marks like a half-tide rock, staggering under her broken mast and torn sails. For this one time, the Dauntless should easily match pace with the fastest ship in the Caribbean.
But even crippled as she was, the Black Pearl was a foe to give a man pause. The commodore’s face was grim as he watched the pirate vessel loom up out of the sea, closer and closer. As dark as fear and deadly sin, as beautiful as night and the heart of a storm. No wonder ships surrendered to her without a fight. Battered as she was now, bearing down on the Defender and the Dauntless like an avenging fury, she was a nightmare incarnate. Not for the first time did he wonder why a man like Sparrow, who played the fool with such relish and used force with more reluctance than most men Norrington knew, let alone any of the pirates he’d pursued, would choose to sail such a menacing ship. Even though he knew she could scarcely be a worthy opponent in her current condition, even though he had her outgunned more than two to one, he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck rising in irrational fear. There was something uncanny about Jack Sparrow’s ship.
Since Norrington had the weather gauge on the Pearl, he’d given Sparrow no choice but to run this gauntlet—first the Defender’s raking fire, then on his windward side the lethal broadsides of the Dauntless with her hundred hungry guns; then, if the pirate’s ship survived, the Defender on his lee, her fewer guns even more deadly when the Pearl’s decks, heeled hard over, would be fully exposed. And finally, if necessary, the Defender with her superior speed would be able to rake the Pearl’s bow for a final strike while the Dauntless harried her flank. They had planned well.
The Black Pearl’s course was a choice of desperation not threat. Nevertheless, he could not shake the feeling that a predator was stalking them. The pirate hunter fought the urge to behave like prey. It was illogical, utter nonsense.
It didn’t help that the storm was hobbling the Royal Navy as well. The small swift brig could not even consider opening her gun ports in such heavy weather. She would be limited to her main deck guns. Nor, broad reaching in the following seas, could she hope to spill enough wind to provide a very wide window of opportunity. But what shots she could get off were far more likely to find a target down the full length of the Black Pearl than if the ships were broadside to each other. And, Norrington reassured himself, even if they’d be unable to utilize their largest guns on the lowest gun decks, no pirate crew could match the trained and practiced gunnery of his men on the Dauntless.
Jack Sparrow would not escape this time. Nor would his lovely ship.
* * * * *
Cotton’s parrot, who had abandoned the sinking ship in high dudgeon, rejoined the Black Pearl, a wet and disgruntled piece of sunshine and blue sky huddled on the helmsman’s shoulder, muttering parroty profanities into Cotton’s ear. Everyone cheered, taking his return as a sign that the Pearl would stay afloat.
The jubilation at the righting of the ship was short lived, however, when it became apparent just how badly damaged she had been by that capsize.
The constant creak and grind of pumps as the men cranked at the bars until their shoulders nearly dropped off was a reminder that far too much water had invaded her holds. Everything on her decks had been washed away, her boats stove in and swept to sea. Half a dozen of her sails had been ripped out of their gaskets by the wave and were now restrained only by their clew and buntlines, and several of her yards were detached, hanging only by their lifts. But the most immediate danger came from the long split in the main topgallant mast that was threatening to descend on their bloody heads at any moment.
“Gibbs, I need that spar back aboard!” Jack shouted, decisions already multiplying frantically in his head. “Anamaria, rig the tackle for fishing that mast—we’ve got to get it splinted.”
The two of them dashed off, trailing strings of orders and swirling eddies of men, to carry out his instructions.
Taking charge of the remaining crew, Jack ordered, “Starboard watch, lay aloft to secure those yards and get that gear stripped off. Re-rig them and rove their lifts, braces and sheets. Larboard, take in any sails that are too damaged to reattach and furl the shredded canvas. We’ll salvage what we can.”
With agile confidence, his men leapt to the ratlines at his command, the press of the wind on their bodies forcing them to strain for every step.
Jack watched them climb high into the dark, boiling clouds. The wild, deep chant of the Black Pearl’s passage through the storm filled her captain as though it were his soul singing. But the song held notes of discord now. The high seas, marching in endless succession of serried ranks, broke over her bulwarks, filling her decks, battering her starboard bow, driving it off to leeward. The wind lashed the surface of the water into the air, sending spray thundering to her tops. As the Pearl slammed into the seas, parting them, her hull flipped from side to side wrenching her spars. She was such an intricate and marvelous creature, but therein lay also her vulnerability. So much needed to work together for her to fly—so much now hopelessly fouled.
His crew would spend their last strength to save this ship, to halt her slide into disaster. Her captain would use every last scrap of knowledge and imagination and bloody invention to give them a chance. But it would not be enough. The two warships waiting beyond the channel would see to that.
Standing his ground by the weather shrouds, soaking wet, the wind leaching the heat from his body, Captain Jack Sparrow watched the strained, gaunt faces of his crew, their eyes glazed with fatigue but not giving in to fear. They were a crowd of roistering, whoring, drunkards, scraped together from the lowest dens of wretchedness and vice, a motley lot, composed of all nations—but a brotherhood standing together, willing to perform any act of daring and desperation. These were the men who had chosen to follow him to the gates of hell. He would not let himself wonder which of these faces he would never see alive again, whose voices never hear.
* * * * *
Gibbs arrived back at Jack’s side, having delivered his team and the dripping spar into Anamaria’s hands. Even now the massive timber was being trussed and edged up the main mast.
With worried eyes, Gibbs surveyed the turmoil of preparations surging over the Black Pearl. “Even if ye save that mast, Captain,” he said, “she hasn’t got enough sail left on her to outrun those Navy ships.”
“Then we’ll need to bend on every sail she’s got. Put up our shirts if we have to,” Jack commented matter-of-factly, as though he’d already thought this through.
“Captain,” Gibbs protested. “Ye’ll never haul those bloody sails up in this blow! They’ll light out for the Americas and not stop until they get there. We’ll be lucky if they don’t take half the crew with them.”
“Well then,” Jack grinned madly. “We’ll just have to furl those sails before we bend them on, won’t we?”
Gibbs opened his mouth, got a strange look on his face, and shut it again. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Like so many of Jack’s daft plans, that one just might work.
“Get your crew to rig the spare sails on the top gun deck,” Jack ordered. “I want the least surface area possible on that canvas.”
“Aye sir,” Gibbs agreed, beginning to turn away. Suddenly he halted and twisted back. There was just one small flaw in this whole plan. “Jack, we’ll never make it in time.”
“I know.” Jack’s eyes traveled over his wounded ship like a man’s might over his dying lover. “But if I can hold the Navy off just long enough, perhaps . . .” His voice trailed off. With restless fingertips he traced patterns in the raindrops on the Black Pearl’s rail.
Captain Jack Sparrow made a habit of believing in the impossible. It chilled Gibbs far more than wind and rain to realize that this time even Jack didn’t quite believe he could pull off the miracle.
* * * * *
Captain Sparrow made the decision. They would spill as much wind as they dared from the Black Pearl’s remaining sails. As long as they could draw out their passage through the perilous breakers at the far side of the bar, they would be safe from the Navy ships. He had to buy his ship time to recover. No matter that to attempt to salvage their main topgallant mast and bend on new sails under such conditions was utter madness. He had to take that chance.
Such an order was going to be a test of his helmsmen’s skill and nerve. At the heavy wheel, he found Cotton and Tearlach battling their treacherous and wily antagonist in the impossible task of keeping the Pearl’s bow facing the waves. Again and again the ship would fall off, lying broadside on to them, rolling so hard her yardarms plunged into the sea. The two of them stared at him in disbelief when he informed them that they were to do their best to see that the ship was brought to, halted right in the middle of this maelstrom. The current would keep them moving towards the open sea, but the captain wanted the ship delayed as long as possible.
Even the parrot had a comment: “Three sheets to the wind.”
Jack snorted. “Mr. Cotton, you never said a truer word.”
Tearlach stepped aside to allow the captain to take the wheel. Captain Sparrow’s feeling for the wind, his sense of the size and direction of the seas, and his uncanny knowledge of how and when to respond were legendary. If difficult piloting was in order, Jack was the man they wanted at the helm.
The feel of his ship in his hands again was such a relief to Jack that it took him a moment to react to the set of butcher’s knives that was carving up his chest every time he pressed on the wheel. In the mayhem of restoring the Black Pearl he’d been aware that he’d be paying for those broken ribs at some date, but he’d been ignoring them. Now they’d come to collect. He could almost bear the pain if he didn’t use his right arm, but Cotton was going to need more help than he could provide. The minute the strain on the ship’s rudder relaxed again, Jack surrendered.
“Tearlach,” he managed, shocked to hear how breathless his voice sounded. “You’ll have to take her. I’m afraid I’m pretty near scuppered.”
The captain certainly looked like it was bellows to mend with him. Tearlach swiftly seized the helm and added his strength to Cotton’s.
“You goin’ t’ be all right, Captain?” he asked, concerned. “Should I call Anamaria?”
“No!” Jack gasped. Of all the things he really didn’t need, his first mate fussing over him pretty much topped the list. Well, perhaps came second. Right after bloody devious commodores with undamaged warships.
Tearlach nodded. He could perfectly understand a desire to remain far away from Anamaria. Together he and Cotton followed the captain’s instructions to bear off or head up in order to take the blows of the furious seas at the best angle.
However, Captain Sparrow soon found himself with too many crises to keep track of.
The scene aboard his ship was a last gasp away from complete chaos. Like a high-couraged horse fighting all restraint, the Black Pearl reared and lunged against the clawing hands of the sea, tossing her bowsprit high in the air, then plunging into the gaping troughs, twisting dangerously in the deep cross swells, dashing her yardarms down into the steep-sided waves. Out on those spars, his crew clung grimly to the jackstays, dodging the flailing strips of number one canvas that seemed hell-bent on flinging them into the sea, riding out the monstrous, relentless energy of the ship and the storm on the wildly dancing footropes. Their legs shook with the strain of stabilizing the lines that snapped back and forth under their motion. Certain death was only the slightest slip away.
Fanned out along the windward sides of the yards, slithering on the footropes, they battled with the wet, heavy sails, trying to pound the stiff canvas into graspable shapes, leaning so far over the yards that their feet, jammed onto the footropes, swung high into the air as though they’d dive into the deck. Time and again they would have the canvas nearly muzzled when a blast of wind would rip it from their fingers.
Furling these scraps of sails for salvage would have taken five minutes in fair weather. In this bloody gale it would be a long and intense battle. The board-stiff canvas exploded against their hands, ripping nails and bludgeoning knuckles. The blood of that skirmish stained the sails. The wind screamed with the voices of his crew in five languages cursing each other, the weather, the Navy, God, and all the whores in Singapore.
There was a note of desperate exhilaration in those voices.
“Who let go? Who let go of the bloody sail? Damn it! Haul away and hold on!”
“Now boys, on my word, all together. Ready? Now pull!”
“Bring it in! Handsomely now!”
“Keep a hold! Can’t ye hang on t’ a wee bit o’ canvas?”
Jack still had new crew up on those yards—boys who were only just beginning to believe that they might not die when they pivoted on their bellies over the yard to grab for the sail, and the footrope flipped up and out until their legs were level with their backs. He could hear the exasperated roar of an experienced seaman goading them, “Let go o’ the jackstays ye greenhorns and lend a hand! I’ll be damned if I ever seen more useless lumps aloft! Lay out here or when we get down I’ll feed y’ t’ the first mate!”
The corner of the captain’s mouth lifted. There was a threat to strike fear into the souls of those hapless crewmen.
One of the newest of his men had still not dredged up enough courage to set foot on the ratlines again. Jack could see that Anamaria had noticed and was beginning her stalk in that direction. He had no doubt that his first mate was capable of making the solid decks of the Black Pearl seem a far more terrifying place than the highest swaying mast, but the captain thought he might take this one himself. The kid had been one of his recruits after all. Well, “recruiting” was perhaps an inaccuracy. “Pirating” might work better; “kidnapping” possibly struck closer to the heart of the matter. Jack had forced this one off his former ship with a pistol to his head.
The boy had had too much of the spirit beaten out of him ever to go against orders sufficiently to escape his abusive merchant captain and sign on to a pirate crew. So Captain Jack Sparrow had removed the necessity of him having to make the choice and included him with the rest of the swag.
The stripes on his back had scarred over. With better grub, his health had returned. But Jack could still see the injuries that mattered, the lacerations on the soul that broke open in the lad’s cringing behaviour and bled from the fear in his eyes. No, this boy did not need the concentrated vituperation of Anamaria’s style of motivation at this moment. He caught his first mate’s eye and read her comprehension. They exchanged nods and Anamaria veered off her course, leaving Jack to do the job he was best at—convincing someone to go against his or her better judgment.
Leaving his really quite competent helmsmen, Jack charted a wide circle around his quarry, not wanting to startle him by coming up behind. Even so, he saw the boy stiffen, and his eyes, if it were possible, grew even wider. To draw the captain’s attention was no small matter in his world. He backed up a step, and Jack stopped moving.
“Requin,” Jack called. The name still made him laugh inside. Of all the hyperbolic, inaccurate misnomers, that one took the prize. “Shark,” the kid had named himself, trying to sound like a pirate. Perhaps he would one day grow into the name.
The boy froze again. “Aye, sir?” he responded shakily.
Jack closed the gap between them now that he was sure the kid wouldn’t bolt. Requin could speak sufficient English to understand the operations of the ship, but the captain slipped smoothly into the French that was the boy’s native tongue. “Easy now, lad,” he soothed. He could see Requin relax a little at the familiar words.
Looking up at the dark mast rising above the two of them, Jack spoke as though thinking aloud, “There’s no shame in being afraid, son.” The boy made a noise of denial, but subsided when the captain shook his head. Jack placed a hand on the vibrating line of the shroud. “Fear is a wind that blows on us all.”
Turning to face Requin, Jack held his eyes. “What you have now is a choice. Will you let that wind fill your sails? Or will you let it snap your masts and shred your canvas? Will you use it to give you strength? Or will you be used by it?”
The boy bowed his head.
Jack stroked the rigging under his hand. “She’s a grand ship, Requin. She’ll take care of you, if you let her. There’s only the wind and the sea and the ship up there. Those are all good things, whatever happens.”
He reached out and gripped the young man’s shoulder, feeling the steel returning to his spine. He grinned at Requin. “What say you, boy? Can you trust yourself and this ship? Can she trust you?”
Requin returned a tentative smile. “Aye, sir.”
“Good lad.” Jack nodded his approval. “Up you go then.” He waited until Requin was firmly on his way, slow but determined, then he headed towards the forecastle. On the way there, he fell into step with Anamaria.
“Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria shook her head, glancing up at the main topsail yard where Requin had joined his mates on the footropes, “I hope you never try to convince me that I can fly.”
“Why Anamaria, love,” Jack’s eyebrow climbed under the brim of his hat and his slow smile curved full of mischief, “of course you can.”
* * * * *
Gibbs had finally managed to corner the captain on the water-logged forecastle deck of the Black Pearl, an accomplishment of some note since Jack appeared determined to oversee the repairs to his ship personally and simultaneously. For the longest time, the captain had seemed to be everywhere Gibbs looked but nowhere at which he actually arrived. Even now the demented man was off to supervise something else. Gibbs had to jog along, grabbing for lines when the ship rolled and the seas swept her decks, to keep up with Jack as he headed back towards the quarterdeck.
“Captain.” Gibbs’ voice was grim. “We got a problem.”
“We’ve got a great many problems, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack commented waving one arm to encompass the wreckage of the Black Pearl. He widened his eyes and peered inquiringly at his quartermaster. “Could you be a bit more specific?”
There was no easy way to deliver this news, so Gibbs opted for the brutally direct. “Our powder’s scuppered, Captain. The Pearl’s holds are swamped and she’s still takin’ on water. The magazine’s gone under. We’d have to dive for it, and there’s no hope in hell the powder hasn’t been dampened.”
He waited for the captain to do something—lose his temper and curse the heavens, reveal some madcap, suicidal plot to utilize wet powder, explain how this was all part of some deeply-laid, fiendishly clever plan. But Jack simply nodded.
“I figured as much,” he said. “So, we face the Royal mastiffs with our wings clipped and our teeth pulled, eh?”
“That about sums it up.” Gibbs tried to match the captain’s nonchalant tone, but he succeeded only in sounding half strangled.
“Never mind.” Jack shrugged. “If we’re to bend enough canvas to outrun those bastards, we’ll need every able-bodied man on her sails. And with those Navy cannon doing their bloody best to undo our work, we’ll be repairing this ship as fast as they can take her apart. We couldn’t spare the crew to man her guns anyway.”
Gibbs swallowed hard. And he’d thought that bar had been bad. “This is not going to go well, is it?” he said hollowly.
Still keeping his eye on the massive activity around him, Jack answered him, “Not likely.”
“Have we any chance?” Gibbs asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer to that.
“Well now, that’ll depend, won’t it?” Jack transferred his attention to the heaving gray-green expanse of ocean ahead of them where the brig was pulling away from the Dauntless and beginning its move to intercept the Black Pearl. “The storm’s in our favour. They’ll not be opening their lower gunports in this chop. And it won’t matter how fine their gunnery is—their aim will be shot to hell. On the other hand, they’ll have plenty of time to practice. Until the Pearl’s got her legs back, even the Dauntless is goin’ to be able to outrun her.” Jack gave a humourless bark of laughter, then looked as though he regretted that action. “I wish we could count on ol’ Norrington fightin’ like the British.”
Gibbs nodded. “Ah. Royal Navy doctrine. Kill the crews and leave the ships. All shots between wind and water. Aye. That’d give what’s left of us a chance t’ run for it.”
“But I wouldn’t put it past the good commodore to have borrowed a page from the French book. No doubt he’ll be tryin’ to take down our masts and rigging as well.” Jack grimaced. “Any way you look at it, we’ll be payin’ in blood for that open sea.”
TBC
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
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Date: 2006-04-03 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 05:22 pm (UTC)Oh dear! *searches frantically for mini shark cage*
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Date: 2006-04-10 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 11:19 am (UTC)Of course I do!
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Date: 2006-04-11 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-11 01:49 pm (UTC)*hangs head at display of bad manners*
Please?
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Date: 2006-04-12 07:31 am (UTC)