Fic: Crossing the Bar (10/?)
May. 24th, 2006 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honoratAuthor: Honorat
Rating: hard R for language and excessive violence
Characters: Commodore Norrington, Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl,
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint.
Warning: This one is grim. VERY bloody. VERY painful. To call this angst is an understatement. To borrow a phrase from the 2nd Earl of Rochester: “You will not like me.”
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: I really mean that rating. This one is not pretty in any way. We have reached rock bottom in this story. The stygian darkness of this chapter is epic. All I can say is that it is always darkest just before dawn. Chapter 11 is already done, so you will not have to wait long for an update. 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? The battle continues.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
* * * * *
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
As his cannons ripped into the flanks of the Black Pearl, Commodore Norrington saw her falter, shuddering against the repeated blows. The heavy missiles tore wide-open gashes in her sides and slashed through her sails; exploding grapeshot flayed her decks. From the tops, his sharpshooters kept a steady bombardment of the pirates on her yards, trying to prevent them from bending on the sails that would allow her to flee. Sparrow’s ship screamed her anguish. Through the pall of smoke and rain, he could see her washports running red with blood, as though the Black Pearl herself were bleeding into the sea.
James Norrington had taken down pirate ships many times before. Such sights and sounds were sufficiently familiar. However, he had never felt so much like a butcher. Usually he had the righteous justification that whatever the horrors his guns were perpetrating on the bodies of his foes, they were mild compared to the atrocities those men had committed on their victims. But the Pearl’s victims, while they complained of many things, did not complain of atrocities. Usually the other pirate ships were fighting back, mano a mano as it were. Fair game. Not struggling silently and courageously to stumble away. He should be grateful that he was able to close with the dread Black Pearl and yet be relatively sure he would not lose a man except by veriest accident. And he was grateful, for his crew’s sake. Nevertheless, the whole bloody business sickened him. This slaughter hardly counted as defeat of an honourable foe in glorious combat. It seemed a travesty to treat such a ship so shamefully.
He would do what he must, because it was his duty. But he didn’t have to enjoy it.
* * * * *
Jack Sparrow must have imagined they’d saved the Black Pearl from that monster wave, for this was surely Hell, and they sailed through the sulfur and brimstone of the Devil’s own inferno.
His ship was caught in the heart of a tremendous storm of cannon fire. Every lightning flash hurled from the Dauntless’s incessant guns brought a deafening roar that strewed the Pearl’s decks with the victims of its wrath. The Dauntless’s broadsides were coming less than two minutes apart. Damnation! He hated crossing blades with the Royal Navy!
The slaughter on his ship had become horrible. The wardroom could hold no more wounded.
The images of his injured and dying crewmen were branded onto the backs of Jack’s eyelids. He saw them whenever his eyes closed. Perhaps because he’d gradually become aware of them as he’d floated up from the depths of unconsciousness, those images had the disorienting quality of nightmare, illogical mosaics of smells and sounds and sights.
The sounds had pierced their way into his consciousness first, riding the blades of the knives that were stabbing his skull. The thudding concussion of roundshot battering through his ship’s hull. The gut-wrenching cries of wounded men. The grate of a blade carving through bone. Screams he would never get out of his ears. A deep voice moaning, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” over and over again.
Smells had assaulted his nostrils next. Sulfur and saltpeter, hot metal and burnt wood, saltwater and rain, all overlaid with the stench of blood and bile and excrement until he could taste them, his stomach roiling.
Sight had remained his most unreliable resource. He’d tried to open his eyes, but the whirling pinwheels of dark and candlelight had fractured his brain into outraged agony. The gradually solidifying pictures that emerged as his body adjusted to the pain remained fragmented. The spurt of glistening red blood flying from a severed artery. The bruised and twisted devastation of a broken leg. The sand on the floor dyed crimson.
Several times, his senses had actually flowed together and he remembered a specific man, bits of a real incident.
A young man crying piteously for his mother. Jack had never seen his face, because, when he’d dragged himself to the boy’s side, his sight had gone black. Incapable of anything but wrapping his arms around the lad and lying there, aching head leaned back against the bulkhead, Jack had simply held on in place of that unknown mother until the boy had grown cold in his arms.
Matelot, who had taken crushing shots in both legs, refusing more than the minimum of laudanum but keeping a bottle of rum close, sweat standing like raindrops on his forehead and chest, sewing ragged stitches into wool and oakum and canvas. Matelot who would never run after Jip again, nor fish him from the sea should he fall in. Who would never again break open a door instead of walking through it. “’S better to work,” he’d gasped when the harried cook-surgeon had suggested he take more of the sweet drug of oblivion.
Diego, eviscerated from nave to chaps, but still alive, screaming his throat raw. A voice begging, “Will someone please grant that man mercy?” Crawling to the writhing ruin of a body. Fumbling clumsily, hands trembling, for his blade. Cradling the dark, damp head. Murmuring in Spanish, “Shhh. Hush. It’s all right now. You did good work, man. Brave Diego. Everything will be well. Shhh. Rest now. Go with God.” The hot gush of life against his hand, of tears on his face. Closing tormented eyes with bloodstained fingertips.
At least the man was at peace. Jack could not, at the moment, remember peace.
The magnificent, exploding glory of the Dauntless’s cannon fire seemed remote and distant from the lethal bursts that laid waste to the Black Pearl with such savage brutality.
The toll of her ordeal was beginning to tell on his lady. Jack could feel her wavering and beginning to fade away from him as he paced her decks encouraging his flagging men. More and more of the Dauntless’s shots were getting through. His ship was disintegrating around him—halyards, sheets, braces and lifts parting; blocks exploding; ratlines and footropes snapping. Captain Sparrow felt as if each shattering blow that struck her landed on his own flesh.
High in that cold, storm-ravaged sky above the wind-torn sea, his crew continued their fight with her sodden sails long past when the work had become only pain and purgatory.
When he reached the forecastle, Jack saw that the fore topgallant sail had finally been bent onto the yard. Bjorn, their one Norwegian crewman, and Requin had finished battling the clew and buntlines into submission and were descending. The two of them were an odd pair, scarcely able to communicate. The huge blond Scandinavian had taken the small dark Frenchman under his wing when the lad had first come aboard, making sure he wasn’t imposed upon by the other rough men of the crew and trying to help him learn the ropes of being a free pirate instead of bound fo’c’sle fodder. Bjorn would jabber instructions in Norse while Requin, gesticulating wildly, would argue back in French. Somehow the work got done. Requin didn’t need much protecting any more, but the two of them had remained friends and often worked together. Jack could hear parts of their odd multilingual shouting at each other as they clambered down. As usual Requin’s responses bore no relationship to Bjorn’s exclamations.
The men on the capstan began the painful process of heaving the yard aloft. When it was halfway up, Jack saw that a gasket had fouled the weather clew. He yelled to Bjorn to go out on the foretopsail yard and free it. The man responded with alacrity, climbing back up the shrouds and scrambling onto the lurching footropes towards the perilous weather end of the yard. The sail was doing its best to smash him into the sea, straining against its bindings in self-mutilating fury. For a moment he froze, clinging to the massive spar as the ship dived a corkscrew twist into the trough of a wave. Then carefully, enduring the battering of frantic canvas, he reached the yard end and freed the caught line. When he called down that everything was clear, his fellow crewmen began to heave and the yard began to rise slowly again. As the sail stretched taut in the wind, Bjorn inched back along the ropes.
At that moment a stray shot carried away the fore topgallant halyards with a stinging crack. The men at the capstan tumbled forward as the strain disappeared instantly.
“Bjorn! Get off that yard, man!” Jack found himself shouting. “Now!” But he knew it was too late.
With sickening speed, the huge spar dropped, pinning Bjorn in the rigging beneath it.
Requin was the first to move, flying back towards his trapped mate. Men rushed up the shrouds drawing fresh line with them to join him in frantically splicing the halyards to begin hauling again. As soon as the capstan had turned enough to raise the yard slightly, they eased Bjorn from under it. At first they thought he was simply unconscious. There was no sign of a wound, save for some blood oozing from his mouth. Requin tried to bring him to, slapping his face and shouting his name, but to no avail. Re-rigging a gantline, they got it under his armpits and lowered him gently to the deck.
Jack took one look. “He’s dead,” he said, turning away from the shaken cluster of men, heartsick. How much longer could this ordeal continue before the living began to envy the dead?
Leaving Gibbs to deal with the body, Jack headed aft. He had to get back to the helm.
The Black Pearl was trembling under his hand when he rejoined Cotton. This was the first of her crew she had killed herself. It’s not your fault, Jack thought fiercely at her. But even if it were not, their charmed survival was drawing to a close. They were no match for that first rate ship of the line. Something definitive had to change or they were lost indeed.
* * * * *
Anamaria knew she would never be free of the hideous noise of shot striking hardwood. It would be the last sound she heard whether she died now or in bed of decrepit old age. Its percussion drummed through her feet as though the Pearl herself were pulsing with fear.
She moved through the horrible confusion, trying to sort out the most crucial tasks from those merely important. Her boots were red with the torrents of blood dying the deck. As another volley of cannon fire rocked the ship, she threw herself aside, feeling her bruised knees and elbows crashing into planking again. Two men, crouching and shielding their heads with their arms, dashed by her to the side of their mate, who huddled shaking and bloodied against the capstan where he’d been thrown. They carried him as gently as they could across the sloping deck while Anamaria got to her feet again, trying to stop herself from shivering in shock. When she reached the quarterdeck, a boy standing right beside her took a piece of grape shot through the ankle and collapsed into her arms, screaming. She quickly handed him off to another crewmember, and continued, iron-willed, on her mission.
“No!”
Anamaria heard Jack’s shout, just as she saw a section of the Pearl’s starboard rail blast in. An explosion of splinters sprayed amidst the crewmen who were hauling on the halyards in an attempt to raise the new mizzen topgallant. The groans of the wounded rose above the thunderclaps of the now slatting sail and the roar of the Dauntless’s batteries. But one shrill cry froze her heart.
For an instant, the Pearl’s smallest crewmember wavered on the edge of the ship where had once been the belaying pin from which he had been casting off a line. But one leg had been crushed from under him by the shot, and a violent twist of the deck sent Jip spinning through that gap into the raging sea.
“Man overboard!” someone called.
“Cotton. Helm down! Hard!” Jack snapped. And then he was running towards that yawning opening, not even touching the stairs as he hit the quarterdeck.
“No! Damn you Jack Sparrow! You can’t do that! Cotton you’ll do no such thing!” Anamaria lunged and threw her arms around Jack’s chest. She hadn’t the strength to hold him, but her dead weight on his back in combination with his broken ribs might slow him. He scarcely seemed to notice her interference. The tension in him was frightening. She felt like she had grasped an armful of steel blades, as though she would surely slice herself to ribbons on the edges of his determination.
Then Gibbs’ solid, imposing bulk loomed up between Jack and that treacherous abyss. His large hands caught Jack’s shoulders and held him there. Above the racket of battle and storm he shouted, “Captain, it’s too late!” His voice sank pleading. “He’s already gone. The Black Pearl needs you.”
As Jack responded to the mention of his ship, Gibbs continued more quietly. “The boats are gone, sir. We can’t lose both of you.”
Halting in the grip of his two closest friends, Jack stared past Gibbs at the glassy green walls of water swirling with foam that surrounded his ship—the empty walls of water. Anamaria felt him gradually return to life in her arms, as though she held flesh and blood again, rather than cold steel. She relaxed her hold, sensitive to his injuries, her arms around him in comfort this time, her cheek resting on the wet roughness of his coat.
Jack bowed his bloodied forehead against Gibbs’ shoulder and let out a harsh breath.
Gibbs had been Jack’s friend longer than any of them. That and his gray hairs gave him the prerogative to raise one rough hand and clumsily stroke the back of his captain’s head, rumbling gruffly, “I know it’s hard, lad. I’m sorry.”
Taking one more deep breath, Jack raised his head. “Right.” He turned back to the ship, his face impassive. His voice revealed nothing but command. “Gibbs, see that the wounded get hauled belowdecks. Anamaria, get me some more men on that sail. I want this ship out of here!”
He did not look again at the hole in that railing.
* * * * *
As though she could sense victory, the Dauntless edged closer to the Black Pearl. Her big guns, well served, kept up a most galling fire. Commodore Norrington noted that he could now see daylight from the pirate ship’s leeward side through her windward hull. Some of his shots were passing cleanly through her without even touching wood. Very soon the Pearl would be reduced to a state where she could be easily boarded, her injured and spent crew subdued without difficulty—the culmination of more than a year of futile pursuit, difficult intelligence gathering, endless waiting, and careful planning. As the dark ship struggled gamely on, her holds filling with water, her tattered sails slipping the wind, Norrington could taste success.
* * * * *
The smoke of the Dauntless’s fire and the curtain of rain obscured Jack’s sight of the forecastle of his ship, but he knew when her foremast and bowsprit were struck and when her foremast stays were snapped by chainshot before he heard the cracking of wood, the twanging of taut lines whipping free, and the groaning of that now-unsupported mast.
He didn’t have enough strength left to curse; however, the parrot was doing enough for both of them.
“Luff and touch her, Mr. Cotton,” Jack ordered, eyes fixed on the gray distance. “We’ve got to deaden her way.” The words dropped like a knell. They would be helpless until they could get her standing rigging sound again. His ship would lose valuable and hard won ground. But the alternative was even worse.
Cotton jammed the wheel hard down and brought the ship up to the wind, moaning and shivering.
“Easy there, love,” Jack whispered to the Black Pearl. “Don’t try to move too hard.”
“Captain.” Anamaria’s voice was as tense as the Pearl’s rigging as she came to stand beside him. “If we stop now, we’re finished.”
“We’re never finished, love,” Jack said, not taking his eyes from his threatened ship as the weight of the wind in her remaining canvas fell away. “But we will be pretty close if that mast or her bowsprit goes. Without her stays there’s nothing to hold the foremast up, especially if it’s damaged. I’ll need you to check on her bowsprit, too, see if we have to repair it before you reeve new stays.”
“Jack. Ain’t you forgettin’ somethin’? The Dauntless? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a powerful lot o’ well-armed marines over there, just itchin’ to stick those shiny bayonets into our guts.” Anamaria pointed out, wondering if that knock on his head had shaken anything too important loose. “We’ve even lost the current!”
“Way I see it,” Jack answered quietly, as though he thought his voice would disturb some critical balance of his ship. “The Dauntless will be past us before she can respond to the fact that we’re not moving. She’s a good sight heavier than the Pearl, so she’ll take longer to bring up. That’ll mean she has to circle back if she doesn’t want us to slip out behind her. That’ll also buy us some time. If we can just match her for sails, we have a chance of outrunning her.”
Eyeing him dubiously, Anamaria subsided. What the captain said was true. The Pearl couldn’t escape if she lost her bowsprit or any of her masts. And the enormous load such seas and winds would place on the foremast without those stays would wrench it from its steps, bringing it down in a spiral of ruin that could destroy the other masts and would certainly leave them helpless to escape the Dauntless. The only thing that remained was to carry out Daft Jack’s crackbrained orders.
She caressed the hilt of her cutlass. At least when they were boarded, she might have a chance to shed some Navy blood before they took her down. There was some satisfaction in that thought.
Even as she and Jack spoke, she could see the commotion on the Dauntless as they realized they were committed to moving too far beyond their prey to back and fill. A flurry of signal flags was being exchanged with the lurking brig.
She recognized that Jack was counting on Norrington being confident enough and suspicious enough not to jeopardize his position by a mad attempt to rake the Pearl’s bow.
* * * * *
“Commodore! The Black Pearl! She’s falling off the wind!”
Lieutenant Gillette’s shout alerted Commodore Norrington to the need for an instantaneous decision. Already, his more massive vessel was pulling too far ahead of the pirate ship.
“What is her condition, Lieutenant?” he asked sharply.
“The enemy has suffered much in masts, rigging, and hull, above and below water, sir,” Gillette enumerated swiftly. “Her loss in killed or wounded I am not aware of; but I judge it to be significant.”
“Is it possible that ship is disabled?” Norrington wondered aloud.
“Anything is possible, sir. But with Jack Sparrow, I do not know if we dare count on that.”
“I imagine you are correct,” Norrington mused.
“Shall I give the orders to turn and cross her line?” Gillette asked.
“Sparrow may expect us to do just that.” The commodore grimaced. “If he is playing dead to lure us off his windward side, such a maneuver would be a mistake.”
“We haven’t much time to decide, sir,” the lieutenant warned.
“Indeed,” Norrington growled. “Signal the Defender to draw in and engage the Pearl from the lee. We’ll tack the Dauntless around and come up behind the Pearl. Our weather advantage thus remains secure, and whether Sparrow is feigning or is truly dead in the water, we will keep him pinned right where he is.”
“Aye, sir.” Gillette dashed off to give the orders.
Norrington studied the Black Pearl, a frown creasing his brow. Just what did that Bedlamite pirate have up his dirty sleeve now?
* * * * *
Sure enough, Anamaria observed, the Dauntless was already swinging through the wind and reversing her heading.
“Now that,” said Jack, nodding his head tiredly in the direction of their antagonist, “is the point of having a reputation. When your back is to the wall and you’ve got nowhere to run, they still think you have a plan.”
The brief cessation of the bombardment was like the first breath of air in the horse latitudes—a relief that almost brought them to their knees. Around the Pearl, men straightened and applied themselves with renewed vigour.
The reprieve would be over as soon as the Dauntless came about, but with that first rate ship’s wide turn radius, she’d be out of range for her sharpshooters, and her broadsides would have farther to travel. Even though the brig was drawing closer now, and they’d surely be taking fire on both port and starboard sides, Jack’s maneuver had opened up a window of opportunity for his ship.
Anamaria wasn’t looking forward to crawling out on that sea-swept spar, but such a task was always the mate’s job, if the mate were able-bodied, and so far she’d taken only minor injuries. However, there was one disagreeable duty that remained. She had to convince Jack Sparrow to let her buy the time they needed. And the price was very steep indeed in this market.
“Captain.”
Jack looked inquiringly at her.
“The minute I get the foretopmast stay reeved through the bee-blocks and the deadeye turned in to the end, you have to let her run,” Anamaria said calmly, understanding what she was asking.
“Anamaria,” he objected softly.
“I mean it, Jack. Don’t wait for me to rig her jib stay or her foremast stay. She’ll manage with just the one, for a short time.”
“It gets a mite rough out there when she’s underway in seas like this,” Jack said diffidently, as though noting a trivial fact about the weather.
“I’ll manage.” Anamaria shrugged. “The ship needs every second of time and every knot of speed she can get. We’ve got t’ give it to her.”
Jack met her eyes silently for a moment; then he gave a short nod.
Anamaria smiled grimly. They really had no choice. She turned, letting the weight of responsibility wash over any nervous survival instincts that tried to jolt up and convince her that she should go curl up in her cabin. “Ladbroc, Marty, Dampier!” she called. “Get those new stays clenched to her foremasthead and her staysails on their hanks and halyards again. Crimp, Requin, Quartetto! I’ll need you to hold the line while I go for a walk up her nose.”
“Ana.” Jack’s voice slowed her for a moment.
“Aye, sir?” She glanced back over her shoulder.
“Be careful out there,” he said.
“No intentions of doin’ otherwise, Captain.” She saluted casually. Then she was off at a jog.
* * * * *
While Anamaria was seeing to the forward spars and rigging, Jack and Gibbs would keep up the race to get the main and mizzen sails set and repaired. With a little luck, Norrington’s shots would not hamper their efforts too badly. With a great deal more luck, Anamaria would remain safe on that bowsprit. Jack wished he had any sense that luck was with them at all this day.
He watched Anamaria go, as fierce and strong and valiant as any man on his ship—aye, and as fragile and mortal, too. He laid his hand again on the scarred wood of the Black Pearl’s helm, brushing restlessly along the familiar curve. Take care of her, love. Take care of them all.
* * * * *
TBC
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
Rating: hard R for language and excessive violence
Characters: Commodore Norrington, Jack Sparrow, Anamaria, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl,
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint.
Warning: This one is grim. VERY bloody. VERY painful. To call this angst is an understatement. To borrow a phrase from the 2nd Earl of Rochester: “You will not like me.”
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: I really mean that rating. This one is not pretty in any way. We have reached rock bottom in this story. The stygian darkness of this chapter is epic. All I can say is that it is always darkest just before dawn. Chapter 11 is already done, so you will not have to wait long for an update. 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? The battle continues.
Thanks to
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
* * * * *
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
As his cannons ripped into the flanks of the Black Pearl, Commodore Norrington saw her falter, shuddering against the repeated blows. The heavy missiles tore wide-open gashes in her sides and slashed through her sails; exploding grapeshot flayed her decks. From the tops, his sharpshooters kept a steady bombardment of the pirates on her yards, trying to prevent them from bending on the sails that would allow her to flee. Sparrow’s ship screamed her anguish. Through the pall of smoke and rain, he could see her washports running red with blood, as though the Black Pearl herself were bleeding into the sea.
James Norrington had taken down pirate ships many times before. Such sights and sounds were sufficiently familiar. However, he had never felt so much like a butcher. Usually he had the righteous justification that whatever the horrors his guns were perpetrating on the bodies of his foes, they were mild compared to the atrocities those men had committed on their victims. But the Pearl’s victims, while they complained of many things, did not complain of atrocities. Usually the other pirate ships were fighting back, mano a mano as it were. Fair game. Not struggling silently and courageously to stumble away. He should be grateful that he was able to close with the dread Black Pearl and yet be relatively sure he would not lose a man except by veriest accident. And he was grateful, for his crew’s sake. Nevertheless, the whole bloody business sickened him. This slaughter hardly counted as defeat of an honourable foe in glorious combat. It seemed a travesty to treat such a ship so shamefully.
He would do what he must, because it was his duty. But he didn’t have to enjoy it.
* * * * *
Jack Sparrow must have imagined they’d saved the Black Pearl from that monster wave, for this was surely Hell, and they sailed through the sulfur and brimstone of the Devil’s own inferno.
His ship was caught in the heart of a tremendous storm of cannon fire. Every lightning flash hurled from the Dauntless’s incessant guns brought a deafening roar that strewed the Pearl’s decks with the victims of its wrath. The Dauntless’s broadsides were coming less than two minutes apart. Damnation! He hated crossing blades with the Royal Navy!
The slaughter on his ship had become horrible. The wardroom could hold no more wounded.
The images of his injured and dying crewmen were branded onto the backs of Jack’s eyelids. He saw them whenever his eyes closed. Perhaps because he’d gradually become aware of them as he’d floated up from the depths of unconsciousness, those images had the disorienting quality of nightmare, illogical mosaics of smells and sounds and sights.
The sounds had pierced their way into his consciousness first, riding the blades of the knives that were stabbing his skull. The thudding concussion of roundshot battering through his ship’s hull. The gut-wrenching cries of wounded men. The grate of a blade carving through bone. Screams he would never get out of his ears. A deep voice moaning, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” over and over again.
Smells had assaulted his nostrils next. Sulfur and saltpeter, hot metal and burnt wood, saltwater and rain, all overlaid with the stench of blood and bile and excrement until he could taste them, his stomach roiling.
Sight had remained his most unreliable resource. He’d tried to open his eyes, but the whirling pinwheels of dark and candlelight had fractured his brain into outraged agony. The gradually solidifying pictures that emerged as his body adjusted to the pain remained fragmented. The spurt of glistening red blood flying from a severed artery. The bruised and twisted devastation of a broken leg. The sand on the floor dyed crimson.
Several times, his senses had actually flowed together and he remembered a specific man, bits of a real incident.
A young man crying piteously for his mother. Jack had never seen his face, because, when he’d dragged himself to the boy’s side, his sight had gone black. Incapable of anything but wrapping his arms around the lad and lying there, aching head leaned back against the bulkhead, Jack had simply held on in place of that unknown mother until the boy had grown cold in his arms.
Matelot, who had taken crushing shots in both legs, refusing more than the minimum of laudanum but keeping a bottle of rum close, sweat standing like raindrops on his forehead and chest, sewing ragged stitches into wool and oakum and canvas. Matelot who would never run after Jip again, nor fish him from the sea should he fall in. Who would never again break open a door instead of walking through it. “’S better to work,” he’d gasped when the harried cook-surgeon had suggested he take more of the sweet drug of oblivion.
Diego, eviscerated from nave to chaps, but still alive, screaming his throat raw. A voice begging, “Will someone please grant that man mercy?” Crawling to the writhing ruin of a body. Fumbling clumsily, hands trembling, for his blade. Cradling the dark, damp head. Murmuring in Spanish, “Shhh. Hush. It’s all right now. You did good work, man. Brave Diego. Everything will be well. Shhh. Rest now. Go with God.” The hot gush of life against his hand, of tears on his face. Closing tormented eyes with bloodstained fingertips.
At least the man was at peace. Jack could not, at the moment, remember peace.
The magnificent, exploding glory of the Dauntless’s cannon fire seemed remote and distant from the lethal bursts that laid waste to the Black Pearl with such savage brutality.
The toll of her ordeal was beginning to tell on his lady. Jack could feel her wavering and beginning to fade away from him as he paced her decks encouraging his flagging men. More and more of the Dauntless’s shots were getting through. His ship was disintegrating around him—halyards, sheets, braces and lifts parting; blocks exploding; ratlines and footropes snapping. Captain Sparrow felt as if each shattering blow that struck her landed on his own flesh.
High in that cold, storm-ravaged sky above the wind-torn sea, his crew continued their fight with her sodden sails long past when the work had become only pain and purgatory.
When he reached the forecastle, Jack saw that the fore topgallant sail had finally been bent onto the yard. Bjorn, their one Norwegian crewman, and Requin had finished battling the clew and buntlines into submission and were descending. The two of them were an odd pair, scarcely able to communicate. The huge blond Scandinavian had taken the small dark Frenchman under his wing when the lad had first come aboard, making sure he wasn’t imposed upon by the other rough men of the crew and trying to help him learn the ropes of being a free pirate instead of bound fo’c’sle fodder. Bjorn would jabber instructions in Norse while Requin, gesticulating wildly, would argue back in French. Somehow the work got done. Requin didn’t need much protecting any more, but the two of them had remained friends and often worked together. Jack could hear parts of their odd multilingual shouting at each other as they clambered down. As usual Requin’s responses bore no relationship to Bjorn’s exclamations.
The men on the capstan began the painful process of heaving the yard aloft. When it was halfway up, Jack saw that a gasket had fouled the weather clew. He yelled to Bjorn to go out on the foretopsail yard and free it. The man responded with alacrity, climbing back up the shrouds and scrambling onto the lurching footropes towards the perilous weather end of the yard. The sail was doing its best to smash him into the sea, straining against its bindings in self-mutilating fury. For a moment he froze, clinging to the massive spar as the ship dived a corkscrew twist into the trough of a wave. Then carefully, enduring the battering of frantic canvas, he reached the yard end and freed the caught line. When he called down that everything was clear, his fellow crewmen began to heave and the yard began to rise slowly again. As the sail stretched taut in the wind, Bjorn inched back along the ropes.
At that moment a stray shot carried away the fore topgallant halyards with a stinging crack. The men at the capstan tumbled forward as the strain disappeared instantly.
“Bjorn! Get off that yard, man!” Jack found himself shouting. “Now!” But he knew it was too late.
With sickening speed, the huge spar dropped, pinning Bjorn in the rigging beneath it.
Requin was the first to move, flying back towards his trapped mate. Men rushed up the shrouds drawing fresh line with them to join him in frantically splicing the halyards to begin hauling again. As soon as the capstan had turned enough to raise the yard slightly, they eased Bjorn from under it. At first they thought he was simply unconscious. There was no sign of a wound, save for some blood oozing from his mouth. Requin tried to bring him to, slapping his face and shouting his name, but to no avail. Re-rigging a gantline, they got it under his armpits and lowered him gently to the deck.
Jack took one look. “He’s dead,” he said, turning away from the shaken cluster of men, heartsick. How much longer could this ordeal continue before the living began to envy the dead?
Leaving Gibbs to deal with the body, Jack headed aft. He had to get back to the helm.
The Black Pearl was trembling under his hand when he rejoined Cotton. This was the first of her crew she had killed herself. It’s not your fault, Jack thought fiercely at her. But even if it were not, their charmed survival was drawing to a close. They were no match for that first rate ship of the line. Something definitive had to change or they were lost indeed.
* * * * *
Anamaria knew she would never be free of the hideous noise of shot striking hardwood. It would be the last sound she heard whether she died now or in bed of decrepit old age. Its percussion drummed through her feet as though the Pearl herself were pulsing with fear.
She moved through the horrible confusion, trying to sort out the most crucial tasks from those merely important. Her boots were red with the torrents of blood dying the deck. As another volley of cannon fire rocked the ship, she threw herself aside, feeling her bruised knees and elbows crashing into planking again. Two men, crouching and shielding their heads with their arms, dashed by her to the side of their mate, who huddled shaking and bloodied against the capstan where he’d been thrown. They carried him as gently as they could across the sloping deck while Anamaria got to her feet again, trying to stop herself from shivering in shock. When she reached the quarterdeck, a boy standing right beside her took a piece of grape shot through the ankle and collapsed into her arms, screaming. She quickly handed him off to another crewmember, and continued, iron-willed, on her mission.
“No!”
Anamaria heard Jack’s shout, just as she saw a section of the Pearl’s starboard rail blast in. An explosion of splinters sprayed amidst the crewmen who were hauling on the halyards in an attempt to raise the new mizzen topgallant. The groans of the wounded rose above the thunderclaps of the now slatting sail and the roar of the Dauntless’s batteries. But one shrill cry froze her heart.
For an instant, the Pearl’s smallest crewmember wavered on the edge of the ship where had once been the belaying pin from which he had been casting off a line. But one leg had been crushed from under him by the shot, and a violent twist of the deck sent Jip spinning through that gap into the raging sea.
“Man overboard!” someone called.
“Cotton. Helm down! Hard!” Jack snapped. And then he was running towards that yawning opening, not even touching the stairs as he hit the quarterdeck.
“No! Damn you Jack Sparrow! You can’t do that! Cotton you’ll do no such thing!” Anamaria lunged and threw her arms around Jack’s chest. She hadn’t the strength to hold him, but her dead weight on his back in combination with his broken ribs might slow him. He scarcely seemed to notice her interference. The tension in him was frightening. She felt like she had grasped an armful of steel blades, as though she would surely slice herself to ribbons on the edges of his determination.
Then Gibbs’ solid, imposing bulk loomed up between Jack and that treacherous abyss. His large hands caught Jack’s shoulders and held him there. Above the racket of battle and storm he shouted, “Captain, it’s too late!” His voice sank pleading. “He’s already gone. The Black Pearl needs you.”
As Jack responded to the mention of his ship, Gibbs continued more quietly. “The boats are gone, sir. We can’t lose both of you.”
Halting in the grip of his two closest friends, Jack stared past Gibbs at the glassy green walls of water swirling with foam that surrounded his ship—the empty walls of water. Anamaria felt him gradually return to life in her arms, as though she held flesh and blood again, rather than cold steel. She relaxed her hold, sensitive to his injuries, her arms around him in comfort this time, her cheek resting on the wet roughness of his coat.
Jack bowed his bloodied forehead against Gibbs’ shoulder and let out a harsh breath.
Gibbs had been Jack’s friend longer than any of them. That and his gray hairs gave him the prerogative to raise one rough hand and clumsily stroke the back of his captain’s head, rumbling gruffly, “I know it’s hard, lad. I’m sorry.”
Taking one more deep breath, Jack raised his head. “Right.” He turned back to the ship, his face impassive. His voice revealed nothing but command. “Gibbs, see that the wounded get hauled belowdecks. Anamaria, get me some more men on that sail. I want this ship out of here!”
He did not look again at the hole in that railing.
* * * * *
As though she could sense victory, the Dauntless edged closer to the Black Pearl. Her big guns, well served, kept up a most galling fire. Commodore Norrington noted that he could now see daylight from the pirate ship’s leeward side through her windward hull. Some of his shots were passing cleanly through her without even touching wood. Very soon the Pearl would be reduced to a state where she could be easily boarded, her injured and spent crew subdued without difficulty—the culmination of more than a year of futile pursuit, difficult intelligence gathering, endless waiting, and careful planning. As the dark ship struggled gamely on, her holds filling with water, her tattered sails slipping the wind, Norrington could taste success.
* * * * *
The smoke of the Dauntless’s fire and the curtain of rain obscured Jack’s sight of the forecastle of his ship, but he knew when her foremast and bowsprit were struck and when her foremast stays were snapped by chainshot before he heard the cracking of wood, the twanging of taut lines whipping free, and the groaning of that now-unsupported mast.
He didn’t have enough strength left to curse; however, the parrot was doing enough for both of them.
“Luff and touch her, Mr. Cotton,” Jack ordered, eyes fixed on the gray distance. “We’ve got to deaden her way.” The words dropped like a knell. They would be helpless until they could get her standing rigging sound again. His ship would lose valuable and hard won ground. But the alternative was even worse.
Cotton jammed the wheel hard down and brought the ship up to the wind, moaning and shivering.
“Easy there, love,” Jack whispered to the Black Pearl. “Don’t try to move too hard.”
“Captain.” Anamaria’s voice was as tense as the Pearl’s rigging as she came to stand beside him. “If we stop now, we’re finished.”
“We’re never finished, love,” Jack said, not taking his eyes from his threatened ship as the weight of the wind in her remaining canvas fell away. “But we will be pretty close if that mast or her bowsprit goes. Without her stays there’s nothing to hold the foremast up, especially if it’s damaged. I’ll need you to check on her bowsprit, too, see if we have to repair it before you reeve new stays.”
“Jack. Ain’t you forgettin’ somethin’? The Dauntless? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a powerful lot o’ well-armed marines over there, just itchin’ to stick those shiny bayonets into our guts.” Anamaria pointed out, wondering if that knock on his head had shaken anything too important loose. “We’ve even lost the current!”
“Way I see it,” Jack answered quietly, as though he thought his voice would disturb some critical balance of his ship. “The Dauntless will be past us before she can respond to the fact that we’re not moving. She’s a good sight heavier than the Pearl, so she’ll take longer to bring up. That’ll mean she has to circle back if she doesn’t want us to slip out behind her. That’ll also buy us some time. If we can just match her for sails, we have a chance of outrunning her.”
Eyeing him dubiously, Anamaria subsided. What the captain said was true. The Pearl couldn’t escape if she lost her bowsprit or any of her masts. And the enormous load such seas and winds would place on the foremast without those stays would wrench it from its steps, bringing it down in a spiral of ruin that could destroy the other masts and would certainly leave them helpless to escape the Dauntless. The only thing that remained was to carry out Daft Jack’s crackbrained orders.
She caressed the hilt of her cutlass. At least when they were boarded, she might have a chance to shed some Navy blood before they took her down. There was some satisfaction in that thought.
Even as she and Jack spoke, she could see the commotion on the Dauntless as they realized they were committed to moving too far beyond their prey to back and fill. A flurry of signal flags was being exchanged with the lurking brig.
She recognized that Jack was counting on Norrington being confident enough and suspicious enough not to jeopardize his position by a mad attempt to rake the Pearl’s bow.
* * * * *
“Commodore! The Black Pearl! She’s falling off the wind!”
Lieutenant Gillette’s shout alerted Commodore Norrington to the need for an instantaneous decision. Already, his more massive vessel was pulling too far ahead of the pirate ship.
“What is her condition, Lieutenant?” he asked sharply.
“The enemy has suffered much in masts, rigging, and hull, above and below water, sir,” Gillette enumerated swiftly. “Her loss in killed or wounded I am not aware of; but I judge it to be significant.”
“Is it possible that ship is disabled?” Norrington wondered aloud.
“Anything is possible, sir. But with Jack Sparrow, I do not know if we dare count on that.”
“I imagine you are correct,” Norrington mused.
“Shall I give the orders to turn and cross her line?” Gillette asked.
“Sparrow may expect us to do just that.” The commodore grimaced. “If he is playing dead to lure us off his windward side, such a maneuver would be a mistake.”
“We haven’t much time to decide, sir,” the lieutenant warned.
“Indeed,” Norrington growled. “Signal the Defender to draw in and engage the Pearl from the lee. We’ll tack the Dauntless around and come up behind the Pearl. Our weather advantage thus remains secure, and whether Sparrow is feigning or is truly dead in the water, we will keep him pinned right where he is.”
“Aye, sir.” Gillette dashed off to give the orders.
Norrington studied the Black Pearl, a frown creasing his brow. Just what did that Bedlamite pirate have up his dirty sleeve now?
* * * * *
Sure enough, Anamaria observed, the Dauntless was already swinging through the wind and reversing her heading.
“Now that,” said Jack, nodding his head tiredly in the direction of their antagonist, “is the point of having a reputation. When your back is to the wall and you’ve got nowhere to run, they still think you have a plan.”
The brief cessation of the bombardment was like the first breath of air in the horse latitudes—a relief that almost brought them to their knees. Around the Pearl, men straightened and applied themselves with renewed vigour.
The reprieve would be over as soon as the Dauntless came about, but with that first rate ship’s wide turn radius, she’d be out of range for her sharpshooters, and her broadsides would have farther to travel. Even though the brig was drawing closer now, and they’d surely be taking fire on both port and starboard sides, Jack’s maneuver had opened up a window of opportunity for his ship.
Anamaria wasn’t looking forward to crawling out on that sea-swept spar, but such a task was always the mate’s job, if the mate were able-bodied, and so far she’d taken only minor injuries. However, there was one disagreeable duty that remained. She had to convince Jack Sparrow to let her buy the time they needed. And the price was very steep indeed in this market.
“Captain.”
Jack looked inquiringly at her.
“The minute I get the foretopmast stay reeved through the bee-blocks and the deadeye turned in to the end, you have to let her run,” Anamaria said calmly, understanding what she was asking.
“Anamaria,” he objected softly.
“I mean it, Jack. Don’t wait for me to rig her jib stay or her foremast stay. She’ll manage with just the one, for a short time.”
“It gets a mite rough out there when she’s underway in seas like this,” Jack said diffidently, as though noting a trivial fact about the weather.
“I’ll manage.” Anamaria shrugged. “The ship needs every second of time and every knot of speed she can get. We’ve got t’ give it to her.”
Jack met her eyes silently for a moment; then he gave a short nod.
Anamaria smiled grimly. They really had no choice. She turned, letting the weight of responsibility wash over any nervous survival instincts that tried to jolt up and convince her that she should go curl up in her cabin. “Ladbroc, Marty, Dampier!” she called. “Get those new stays clenched to her foremasthead and her staysails on their hanks and halyards again. Crimp, Requin, Quartetto! I’ll need you to hold the line while I go for a walk up her nose.”
“Ana.” Jack’s voice slowed her for a moment.
“Aye, sir?” She glanced back over her shoulder.
“Be careful out there,” he said.
“No intentions of doin’ otherwise, Captain.” She saluted casually. Then she was off at a jog.
* * * * *
While Anamaria was seeing to the forward spars and rigging, Jack and Gibbs would keep up the race to get the main and mizzen sails set and repaired. With a little luck, Norrington’s shots would not hamper their efforts too badly. With a great deal more luck, Anamaria would remain safe on that bowsprit. Jack wished he had any sense that luck was with them at all this day.
He watched Anamaria go, as fierce and strong and valiant as any man on his ship—aye, and as fragile and mortal, too. He laid his hand again on the scarred wood of the Black Pearl’s helm, brushing restlessly along the familiar curve. Take care of her, love. Take care of them all.
* * * * *
TBC
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 01:20 am (UTC)Because I am IMPRESSED that you killed off the kid. You didn't just make the threat, you carried through. That took balls, if I may be so crass. And it makes all future threats sooooo much more scary. Because you are MEAN. I think it was a bold and admirable stroke. Now we can be truly afraid for Anamaria, because you have proven that you are MERCILESS. Gosh, what a lot of capitals.
Through the pall of smoke and rain, he could see her washports running red with blood, as though the Black Pearl herself were bleeding into the sea. Nice. Well, not nice at all, but ooh, nicely done.
And the snippets of Jack's recall, his experiences, all mixed and mingled and half-confused, that worked really well. Knowing when to take a moment to comfort a dying man and when to simply send him on his way. It reminded me of that bit in Alexander, which is possibly the worst movie EVER, but the post-battlefield bit where he was comforting men as they were put out of their misery was very affecting. I do love Jack's sheer balls-to-the-wall leaderliness in this. No, I don't think that's a real word. But it should be.
The Black Pearl was trembling under his hand when he rejoined Cotton. This was the first of her crew she had killed herself. That was just... yeah.
And I liked the way, inside Jack's head, there was this terrible maelstrom of extremity, and on the outside, he was sharp and curt and short: Jack took one look. “He’s dead,” he said, turning away, and then He did not look again at the hole in that railing. Neat contrast.
Point that made me squirmy with delight, rather than horror: “Now that,” said Jack, nodding his head tiredly in the direction of their antagonist, “is the point of having a reputation. When your back is to the wall and you’ve got nowhere to run, they still think you have a plan.” It gave me hope.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 02:08 am (UTC)I am IMPRESSED that you killed off the kid.
Now you can't really say I killed him off. All I actually did was shoot him in the leg and knock him off the ship. Which was also very mean, but . . . non habes corpus
I'm glad you're scared for Anamaria because the muse hasn't given me a verdict on her yet. There's a distinct lack of Anamaria in the next movie that leaves me with a pretty wide playing field. In fact the ways that this fic could dovetail into the beginning of PotC2 are rather scary.
Having never seen Alexander (I've always said I'm culturally illiterate about anything that happened after the 19th century--PotC was a complete accident that arose out of the need to find a picture to draw), I can't judge the movie or the scene, but I read ship battle accounts where men with injuries like Diego's would simply be dumped overboard still alive, no mercy given. I didn't see Jack as that sort of man. And the idea that things were so chaotic and overcrowded that even the captain was just left to recover or not since there's nothing they could do for him anyway rather captured my twisted imagination. I have to say Jack as leader is my favourite part of this story. I'm glad you're enjoying that picture, too.
The near sentience of the Pearl is another thing I like to skirt around when I write her. She's not just any ship.
I liked the way, inside Jack's head, there was this terrible maelstrom of extremity, and on the outside, he was sharp and curt and short
He has to be the leader, so he can't fall apart on the outside, can't let any cracks expand, but there are moments when the internal bleeding shows.
That one ray of light in the stygian darkness is definitely the truth. If the Dauntless had crossed the Pearl's T at that point, it would have been all over. They'd never have survived. But Norrington can't be sure if Jack is faking his ship's disability because Jack has fooled him too many times before, and so he plays it safe and leaves the Pearl another chance.
Thank you for stopping by to leave such a deliciously thorough commentary.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 02:23 am (UTC)non habes corpus Are you the sort of writer who knows what's going to happen, or are you open to nagging? I bet if you ran a poll, he'd get voted back alive. But not by me. Stick to your guns, I say! Don't do the Disney thing! There's no WAY he'd survive that! (Can you see me waving my hands around overexcitedly? Pathetic, isn't it?)
(Besides, in my latest attempt at Real Novel Writing, there were a couple of cases of no corpus and my husband immediately said, huh, so they're turning up again later, right? And I was really annoyed because he was, indeed, smack on the money, and I was being predictable.)
Ugh, don't you hate readers who want to influence your plot. And I don't. Not really. Please take it as a compliment that I am involved enough in the story to have such a fierce opinion, and then do as you damn well please :)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 02:46 am (UTC)In my own novel that I shall NEVER get done I fear, I really do kill off a major sympathetic character--however there is no doubt about where the body is. It's easier to do that in one's own universe.
I do feel complimented that you care so much for my story. Thank you for that.