Fic: Crossing the Bar (16/?)
Author: Honorat
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The chase continues. The Navy pursues. The Black Pearl is falling apart. Jack has to decide what to do. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
* * * * *
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
As the door to his cabin closed behind him, Jack let out his breath in a ragged sigh and leaned against the bulkhead, head tilted back against the dark timbers, eyes dropping shut without his volition. He was so bloody tired. How long had it been since he’d last rested? There’d been that long run before the storm the night before, then the ship had needed to be readied to ride it out. He’d been about to turn in for the morning when Gibbs had shown up with that fatal bit of news . . . and it had been one damned thing after another ever since then until now it was coming on to nightfall. Too bloody long, however long it had been.
He’d had less sleep before, had indeed sailed ships for days at a time, catching only catnaps on deck, through storms that made this one look like a pretentious breeze. But those had been contests with the sea, a familiar adversary whose salt ran in his veins and whose rhythms pulsed in his heart. The sea brought her own peace with her, a sense in the midst of the highest hurricane that this was home, this was bred in his bones, this was where he belonged. And always before, he’d had the assurance that, however long it took, on the other side was rest and revival when he reached safe anchorage. Those times, he had not had the British Navy wearing away his soul in battle, then battering it to pulp in ceaseless, numbing pursuit. Those times, he had not lost friends and crewmembers nor seen others so terribly wounded. Those times, distant drums had not been throbbing in the back of his skull from that crack on the head he’d taken, nor had every breath burned against his protesting ribs until he considered the benefits of not breathing at all.
Under it all, like flame-hot steel against flesh, was the damage done to his Pearl. He could feel her, pressing against his back, surging in his pulse-so familiar, so beloved. And yet the wrongness of her jangled along his nerves like the dissonance of a badly-tuned lyre. The punishment she was taking drained him as though each shot that scourged her trembling hull opened another vein in his heart through which his spirit was gradually hemorrhaging away to wash from her decks with the blood of his crew. He could feel his ship growing heavier with the sea, sinking into the storm, losing ground ever so slowly.
He wanted to promise her that soon she could rest-that they would find some way to a safe harbour where he could heal her hurts, restore her wings, make her once more the most daringly beautiful of all joinings of wood and sail. But he did not know how he could keep such a vow. Like cold fear, their relentless pursuer would follow and find her wherever she fled. That was inescapable truth-hard as a harlot’s smile and bitter as unshed tears.
Turning to her, he rested his cheek against her bulkhead as on the breast of a lover. His hand traced the grain, soothing the dark wood, whether seeking reassurance or to reassure, he could not have said.
“Just hold for me a little longer, love.” He whispered the words so close to her that she breathed them back against his face, words that might almost have been a prayer.
* * * * *
Peytoe found him there soon after, nearly asleep, dark head bowed against the bulkhead, right arm clutching his coat to his chest as though to ease the burden on his ribs.
“Captain? Are ye all right?” the cook-now-surgeon asked worriedly.
Jack started back to full consciousness, assuming, with effort, the mantel of his office again. This was no time for the captain to fall apart, clutching at his ship like a bloody infant at its mammy’s teat. Turning to face Peytoe, he forced his face to fall into the familiar mask of unconcern with just the right dash of determination and a sprinkle of bracing humour. “I’m fine, Peytoe. Right as rain. Wet as it too, as a matter of fact. Just catching a wink or two. Bit tired is all. Kind of you to ask.”
Peytoe, having become fairly well-acquainted with his captain’s vagaries through having had to deal with various Sparrowish disturbances in a medical capacity ever since Jack had signed him on to the ship based on his unbroken record of never poisoning anyone with his grub-well at least not unto death-was not deceived. On the other hand, he also knew there wasn’t much he could do about Captain Sparrow when he took it into his thick skull to pretend to be indestructible. The most he could achieve was an efficient sweeping up of the pieces when the universe objected to that assumption and swatted the man back down to reality. Looked like the universe was busily going about that process at that very moment. So the cook merely shrugged, nodded at the captain’s un-donned coat, and offered, “Would ye like a hand wi’ that?”
Jack decided he would, but didn’t Peytoe have other more pressing duties? “Why ain’t you in the wardroom sawin’ off legs or somethin’?” he asked.
“Ain’t no more arteries shootin’ blood at the ceilin’,” Peytoe explained, “so I come lookin’ fer some spare hands t’ help wi’ the amputatin’. I can give ye a minute.”
In response the captain held out his coat to the man. This would have been more fun with Anamaria, Jack thought regretfully. Hurt just as much either way, but with his first mate, he could make rude suggestions just for the pleasure of seeing those hot fires strike up in her dark eyes. Admittedly, those were the sparks of wrath, but they were damn fine to watch anyway, and he could always pretend otherwise. Gave his mind something to work over while he was not so very comfortable. But Anamaria was a quenched candle at the moment. Only had little fizzes left in her there at the end. Hardly sporting to tease her, that was. And playing the dresser was completely beyond her abilities for now. So he would endure Peytoe.
“Now sir,” Peytoe said firmly, in the tone of a man who knows his onions and will not accept any backtalk from a mere captain, “Ye jes’ do what I says and leave everythin’ t’ me.”
Since the cook was a far larger man than his captain, Jack figured he wasn’t going to be given much choice.
Peytoe held up the jacket behind Captain Sparrow and began working the right sleeve on first. “Don’ ye take up wrigglin’ nor shruggin’ nor none o’ that monkeyshinin’, an then like as not ye won’ feel hardly anythin’.”
Jack wasn’t too sanguine about that possibility, but he complied, staying as relaxed and boneless as possible. “Cook, surgeon-valet. You’re a man of many talents, Peytoe,” he said.
“Used t’ do this for me da,” Peytoe reminisced. “Though he were usually jes’ too drunk, not banged up like you.”
Jack considered, wistfully, the concept of being too drunk.
“Then I run away t’ sea,” Peytoe continued, plunking Jack’s left hand efficiently into the second sleeve. “Allus wondered what happened t’ th’ ole gent.”
And speaking of drunks, Jack had his jug-bitten first mate to remember here. “Peytoe, I need you t’ bandage Anamaria’s leg when you’ve got a moment. She’s all stitched up, but I didn’t take the time t’ finish the job.”
“’M glad it was you, an’ not me!” Peytoe said with fervour, beginning to draw the coat up Jack’s arms. “I likes me ballocks jes’ how they is.”
Jack eyed his cook warily out of the corner of his eye. “Mr. Peytoe, are you suggestin’ . . .?”
“No, no, nowt o’ the sort,” Peytoe said hurriedly. “Merely sayin’ that ye’re the only man as can lay a hand on the lass an’ not find hisself missin’ some bits.”
“Tearlach managed t’ carry her without any . . . removal of parts, din’t he?” Jack said, curious about this perception of his first mate. The coat’s progress was moving apace with surprisingly bearable amounts of discomfort. Peytoe was working slowly, making sure the damp fabric of Jack’s shirt was not bunching up in the equally damp coat sleeves, being actually quite gentle.
“Aye, but she were dead then,” the cook said sagely from over Jack’s shoulder. “She might be safe, if’n she’s dead.”
It seemed clear that Anamaria would be joining the Black Pearl’s legends and folklore as the woman who came back from the dead, Jack decided, amused-and grateful for the amusement.
“You should be safe now,” Jack reassured the man. “She’s three sheets t’ the wind and half seas under.”
Peytoe looked relieved.
The coat settled over Jack’s shoulders finally, and some measure of warmth returned. Really, Peytoe was a gem of a doctor. Hadn’t been half bad at distracting his captain. Not Anamaria by any stretch, but not bad. Might not be one of those fancy sorts with the educations, but he could make a man laugh in the direst circumstances, and that was far better, in Jack’s opinion, than the ability to cup a man on every vein of his body or make thirty-five different sorts of blisters. Besides, Jack knew for a fact that Peytoe could take off a limb and tie the major blood vessels in a nearly naval-like three minutes. Just took practice, not education. Fortunately, he’d gotten most of his practice on ships other than the Pearl-up until now. The amusement drowned.
As Peytoe smoothed and straightened his handiwork, Jack hauled line on himself and asked the question he did not want answered. “Well, Peytoe, what’s the devil’s arithmetic for this day?”
Satisfied that his captain was now thoroughly re-attired, Peytoe began situating Jack’s arm in Anamaria’s sling. Soberly, he answered, “Nineteen dead, sir. Another fourteen sure t’ join ‘em. Twenty-eight wounded and disabled, an’ I lost count o’ the men I sent back up top wi’ only minor pieces shot off ‘em or holes in their hides.”
He’d known it was bad. Such a long time before they’d escaped. So much blood on his decks. But, “That’s a third of the crew down, one way or t’other!” he realized, horror twisting double-edged blades in his gut. Jack tried to tell himself that it was better than he’d hoped-that when he’d first put the Pearl at that bar, he’d expected to lose them all. But it didn’t help. Somehow-he didn’t rightly know how-he should have been able to save them. He should have done something to save them all. They had placed their lives in his hands, and he had failed them. The weight of that failure tightened on his chest, an agony sharper than any merely broken bone.
A stumble of hurried footsteps sounded and two men came rushing towards the wardroom carrying a third man, groans wrenching from him that could stop the heart, unrecognizable in the welter of his blood.
“That’ll either be number fifteen or number twenty-nine,” Peytoe said, and rushed after his new charge. “Send me some hands t’ help wi’ the butcherin’!” he tossed back to Jack before he disappeared.
Captain Sparrow, pivoted sharply and bolted for the open decks. He had to come up with a new plan, and he had to come up with one now, because running away was damn well not working.
* * * * *
The last of the grim daylight was being swallowed by night, cloaking the rain-blurred lines of the Black Pearl in further shadow, when Jack appeared again. Gibbs happened to be looking in the right direction to see the captain come boiling out on deck as though pursued by all the demons of hell, which fortuitous circumstance allowed him to brace himself for the onslaught of highly over-tuned Jack Sparrow that fetched up a hand span from his nose.
“Status!” Jack barked, reminding his quartermaster forcibly of several naval officers he’d known in the never-to-be-sufficiently-forgotten past. Except no officer had ever threatened to put out his eye by sheer proximity of wildly-whipping, dangerously-adorned hair. Of course neither would a naval officer have been handing him back his flask-naturally it was empty. Freestanding rum did not last long around Jack.
Gibbs backed up a couple of steps, but he needn’t have bothered. The captain pursued him, oblivious to the threat he posed.
Resigned, Gibbs attempted to satisfy Jack’s demand while strategically evading hair-borne missiles. The quicker the captain had his answers, the faster he’d depart for parts unoccupied by Gibbs’ head. Not that Jack was going to be liking those answers. Might as well start with the worst.
“She’s in rough shape, I have t’ tell you,” he admitted. “We can’t outrun that brig for much longer. The ship can’t handle much more of this. Not without we lay up for a refit in a right hurry.”
“Aye,” said the captain softening a little in sorrow as he glanced around at his blasted and battered ship. “She’s a bonnie grand lady, but we’ve abused her sore.”
Relieved that Jack was standing down from his zealous attempt to puncture or otherwise perforate his quartermaster, Gibbs continued, “We’re still takin’ on more water, and one of the main pumps took a hit from a loose timber and snapped right off at the deck. Broke Karanjeet’s leg, too,” he added. Although at this point, men were easier to replace than machinery.
“Damnation!” Jack swore, rather mildly Gibbs felt, considering the situation. “How long till she’s repaired?”
There was a stretch of silence. Gibbs cleared his throat. “She’s not being repaired.”
“What?” Jack’s voice was sharp, bordering on threatening. “And may I ask why? Gibbs, you know we need that pump.”
“Hawkins told me there was nothing he could do,” Gibbs admitted, not liking the look that response produced in the captain’s eyes.
“Send for Hawkins.” That tone did not bode well for their ship’s chief artificer.
“He can’t tell you anythin’ I haven’t,” Gibbs objected. “The man’s that busy . . .”
“Don’t need him t’ tell me anythin’,” Jack said mulishly. “Need t’ tell him somethin’. But you’re right. We’ll go to him. Where is he?”
“Another of the pumps is choked. He’s down settin’ it t’ rights.” Gibbs felt a twinge of guilt, sending poor Hawkins to the lions like that, but it wasn’t like the lion wasn’t going to track him down eventually. And when Captain Sparrow was all primed and loaded and ready to fire, a man couldn’t help wanting to misdirect the barrel away from himself.
Grateful for any time spent out of the rain that was chilling him to the bone, he followed the seething charge of Sparrow down to the well, extending from the lower deck to the bottom of the hull in the middle of the ship’s hold, that normally protected the boxes and valves of the pumps from being choked by shifting ballast or other obstructions. However, the well had been damaged in the firefight, and inevitably, one of the pumps was in need of help. There was water high up in it by now, Gibbs noted with a shudder. A few more minutes and that valve would have been under.
Jack shouted down the well, “Hawkins!”
A weary dark face looked up, only visible by the red-shot whites of his eyes. Its owner was already half submerged. “Aye, Captain?”
“Soon as you’ve got this pump workin’, get a team together and repair that broken pump,” Jack commanded, waving his hand in its topside direction with his sublime indifference to hard facts and even harder reality.
“But sir,” the astonished man stammered, “we can’t . . . we don’t have the parts . . . the forge is not . . . the fire is out and . . . fix it, sir? That’s impossible!”
Gibbs winced. He had a pretty good idea how that was going to go over.
“Did I ask you what you can’t do?” The captain’s voice lowered, menace prowling about its edges. “I seem to recall tellin’ you what you will do. That was not a request. That was an order. I don’t care if you have to fix that pump with somebody’s bones! I don’t care if you have to fix it with yours! You will fix it! Do you understand me?”
“Aye, sir!” The man gulped nervously. “Whatever you say, sir.”
Nothing like being told by your captain that your arse was on the line, and you didn’t stand a chance, Gibbs thought sympathetically. It was unlike the captain to be so bloody unreasonable. “Jack,” he remonstrated, as they scrambled back towards the weather decks. “Ye can’t ask more of the men than is possible.”
“That’s ‘Captain Jack’ to you, mate,” Jack snapped over his shoulder, still in high dudgeon. “And for your information, there is nothing possible or impossible but thinking makes it so. They’ll come up with something now. You see if they don’t.”
Gibbs shrugged expressively. There was no dealing with Jack when he got this way. Best let it run its course. “As you say, Captain.”
Slightly mollified, Jack deigned to offer a small explanation, also a rare occurrence. “Gibbs, if he’s right and it is impossible, the Pearl is scuppered. So you’d better pray I’m right.”
As they gained the quarterdeck again, Gibbs was puffing and out of breath, but the captain was sweeping along with that inhuman blast of energy desperate situations always seemed to breed in him. He paused briefly to delegate a couple of the lads to assist the cook, before swirling onward. Unable to keep still, Captain Sparrow forced his quartermaster to carom about the deck chasing after him in order to finish his report.
“And how is the crew?” Jack asked, his face grim as he paused by the windward shrouds, laying a hand on the heavy cable. “We’ve lost some good men, and more are hurtin’. Does their courage hold?”
“Aye, sir. They’re all good lads. Fighters, every last one.” Gibbs was glad to have at least one positive thing to say. It was certainly the only one. “But there’s only so far you can push a man before his body betrays him.”
Jack nodded shortly and resumed his perambulations. At the break in the poop, he turned back to Gibbs. “We’ve been driving hard for the better parts of two days now.”
“Harder, sir,” Gibbs said. “The men are all but done in. They’ve scarce had an hour t’ rest in the last twenty. First we had t’ beat that storm in. And now we’re pumpin’ non-stop, workin’ her sails, repairin’ the damage, dodgin’ that cursed brig’s fire. And ain’t none of ‘em had a bit o’ sup nor a draught t’ drink since this whole bloody business began.”
“And that’s goin’ to continue bein’ a problem, innit,” said the captain reflectively, lighting out for the binnacle.
“You’re on the money there, Cap’n,” Gibbs agreed, limping rapidly behind him. Too bad the racket of even this reduced storm made him have to stay close to Jack’s ear. “The seas keep puttin’ the galley fire out, but that don’t matter because the stove’s been damaged an’ we’ll be waitin’ on the forge before we get any hot food, but that don’t matter because the stores are full o’ salt water or washed away.” He paused to catch his breath.
Jack opened his mouth as though to say something, then closed it and simply waved Gibbs to carry on.
“Which brings up the problem of food. Or more to the point-lack of it. We’re pretty much down t’ a few barrels o’ fruit an’ the salt horse. But it takes fresh water t’ boil the salt out o’ that, an’ there’s the rub. Because we’re runnin’ real low on fresh water. Every time we try t’ collect rain, a bloody great sea swamps the decks and it’s salt again.”
A shot from the Defender screamed into the spars and rigging above them and the two of them threw themselves to the decks, arms sheltering their heads. When the rain of debris had settled, Gibbs found himself in possession of several new bruises that were immediately lost in the complaints being lodged by all his previous bruises.
He crawled to Jack’s side where the captain hadn’t moved from his huddle on the deck. “Ye all right, Captain? Jack?” Gibbs asked worriedly, laying a hand on Jack’s arm.
“’M fine,” came the muffled voice from under the heap of wet dark hair. “Just havin’ an argument wi’ me ribs. Don’ worry. ‘M winnin’. Jus’ . . . gi’ me a minute.”
Even though Gibbs thought he now had a pretty good idea how he was going to feel if he lived to be a hundred, and he was having his own argument with his knees, he made it to his feet, and clung to the binnacle for support. It took Jack a little longer to start slowly unfolding, and even then, he had to ask Gibbs’ help to make it to his feet. When a heavy cough shook his slender frame, Gibbs found himself supporting most of the captain’s weight.
As soon as he could stand on his own again, Jack spat into his hand and peered at the results. “No blood,” he said cheerfully, but Gibbs could hear the shiver in his voice. “I guess it’s not all bad, eh?” He wiped his palm on the leg of his grimy breeches.
Not all bad. At least the captain hadn’t lost a lung. Yet. “Jack,” Gibbs urged. “Ye can’t keep drivin’ yourself and this ship and these men. You’ll kill yourself!”
“Seems like someone is already on that,” Jack commented with a tilt of his head aft in the direction of the Defender.
“Then don’t do their work for them, Jack,” Gibbs begged. “We have t’ get this ship out of here. The men need food and water and rest. And we ain’t goin’ t’ be able t’ give it t’ them until we lose that brig.”
“No.” Jack’s flat monosyllable did not enlighten Gibbs.
“No what?” he asked in exasperation.
“We’re not goin’ to lose that brig, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack replied evenly.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gibbs grumbled. “But won’t we be able t’ shake her in the night, sir?”
Captain Sparrow shook his head slowly. “Only if the Defender’s captain is a damn sight duller than I’ve yet seen any sign of him bein’. Like as not he’ll hold fire and hug us close enough to hear our pumps. It’ll give us a breather from all the poundin’ we’ve been takin’, but we’ll not lose her.”
“No chance of a decoy, I suppose.”
“What have we left to use as a decoy? We’ve scavenged her very bulkheads by now to block leaks and she’s still as full of holes as a politician’s integrity. She’s goin’ down, Gibbs. Slowly, but I can feel it.” Jack was pacing like a man being stung by ants, unable to escape. His eyes were wide and ferocious. His hands half-formed and then rejected ideas, clenching and unclenching.
Gibbs reflected that the captain had always reacted as though the harm done to his ship were engraved on his own hide, as though they were connected by some frightening voodoo curse that neither of them could escape or ignore. And now that the ship was dying, could her captain even continue to function?
“I don’t dare order the pumps to cease long enough for us to give that brig the slip.” Jack’s voice twisted with frustration. He scowled at the sky. “And this storm is goin’ t’ turn into a real monster come about three o’ the clock in the morning. We’ll be hard pressed to keep her afloat as it is.”
“If it does,” said Gibbs, having sailed long enough with Jack Sparrow to accept that if Jack said the weather would do something, it did, “won’t we be able t’ sneak past them in all that noise?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Apparently he’d already considered that. “Won’t last long enough. The Pearl will be too slow by then. We’ll still be on the same horizon by the time the storm’s blown itself out sometime before dawn. If she’ll hold together, we might gain some distance, but with the weather calmin’ down, we’ll have lost the advantage of carryin’ near equal the canvas of the Defender. She’ll be free to crack on her full cloud while we’ve got no sails left to add. She’ll catch us soon after sunrise.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is that we’re finished, or we will be tomorrow mornin’,” Gibbs said, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. They’d expected this, he tried to tell himself. Their escape from that trap that had seemed such a miraculous deliverance had in reality changed nothing. They had known from the beginning that they danced this cotillion with death, and the devil was the fiddler. The knowledge didn’t make defeat any easier to accept.
“Unless we can miraculously create sails from baggywrinkles, planks from splinters, and water from rum . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off, and he went completely still.
Gibbs eyed him curiously. Jack never stopped moving except when he was unconscious or about to become very dangerous.
“I’m havin’ a thought here, Gibbs,” Jack said, an introspective finger beginning to trace his chin, pausing to twirl a rain-dripping braid, a wicked glitter appearing in his eyes. “Where is the closest source of re-supply for everything we need on the Pearl? Food, water, medical supplies, canvas, spars, powder, everything.”
Gibbs felt a cold little worm coil around his neck and tap at his spinal cord. Jack’s “thoughts” often had that effect on him, and with good reason. “What bee have you got buzzin’ in that daft head o’ yours, Jack Sparrow?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Why, only this, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack said gesturing grandly as though displaying a priceless work of art. “We are goin’ to take that little brig off the Royal Navy’s hands. Take her and all her provisions and her tackle and her shot.”
Gibbs could scarcely summon words for several moments. Finally he choked, “That’s not possible, Jack. We ain’t got more’n an ounce o’ dry powder between the lot o’ us. All we got is a bunch o’ useless hunks o’ iron!”
Jack had that look in his eyes now that made Gibbs start calculating the odds on whether it was more prudent to be hopeful or to duck and run. It was accompanied by a grin as full of cursed gold as any Aztec chest. Gibbs knew that smile. He could trace nearly every madness-inducing, apoplexy-creating, bowel-voiding, life-threatening adventure in his life to one of those looks on Jack Sparrow’s face. And knowing that, Gibbs still found it as irresistible as an enchantment.
And Jack knew it, the bastard. The gold flashed even brighter. “All the more reason we need that brig more than the Navy does!” the captain exclaimed happily. “They broke my ship! They can bloody well help fix her! All we need is a plan.” He strode off in the direction of his cabin, trailing clouds of insanity like a tattered cloak behind him.
“Oh, I really want t’ hear you explain this one t’ Anamaria,” Gibbs muttered under his breath, and hurried to catch up.
* * * * *
TBC
17 A Fine-Baited Delay
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Gibbs, the crew of the Black Pearl
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The chase continues. The Navy pursues. The Black Pearl is falling apart. Jack has to decide what to do. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
* * * * *
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
As the door to his cabin closed behind him, Jack let out his breath in a ragged sigh and leaned against the bulkhead, head tilted back against the dark timbers, eyes dropping shut without his volition. He was so bloody tired. How long had it been since he’d last rested? There’d been that long run before the storm the night before, then the ship had needed to be readied to ride it out. He’d been about to turn in for the morning when Gibbs had shown up with that fatal bit of news . . . and it had been one damned thing after another ever since then until now it was coming on to nightfall. Too bloody long, however long it had been.
He’d had less sleep before, had indeed sailed ships for days at a time, catching only catnaps on deck, through storms that made this one look like a pretentious breeze. But those had been contests with the sea, a familiar adversary whose salt ran in his veins and whose rhythms pulsed in his heart. The sea brought her own peace with her, a sense in the midst of the highest hurricane that this was home, this was bred in his bones, this was where he belonged. And always before, he’d had the assurance that, however long it took, on the other side was rest and revival when he reached safe anchorage. Those times, he had not had the British Navy wearing away his soul in battle, then battering it to pulp in ceaseless, numbing pursuit. Those times, he had not lost friends and crewmembers nor seen others so terribly wounded. Those times, distant drums had not been throbbing in the back of his skull from that crack on the head he’d taken, nor had every breath burned against his protesting ribs until he considered the benefits of not breathing at all.
Under it all, like flame-hot steel against flesh, was the damage done to his Pearl. He could feel her, pressing against his back, surging in his pulse-so familiar, so beloved. And yet the wrongness of her jangled along his nerves like the dissonance of a badly-tuned lyre. The punishment she was taking drained him as though each shot that scourged her trembling hull opened another vein in his heart through which his spirit was gradually hemorrhaging away to wash from her decks with the blood of his crew. He could feel his ship growing heavier with the sea, sinking into the storm, losing ground ever so slowly.
He wanted to promise her that soon she could rest-that they would find some way to a safe harbour where he could heal her hurts, restore her wings, make her once more the most daringly beautiful of all joinings of wood and sail. But he did not know how he could keep such a vow. Like cold fear, their relentless pursuer would follow and find her wherever she fled. That was inescapable truth-hard as a harlot’s smile and bitter as unshed tears.
Turning to her, he rested his cheek against her bulkhead as on the breast of a lover. His hand traced the grain, soothing the dark wood, whether seeking reassurance or to reassure, he could not have said.
“Just hold for me a little longer, love.” He whispered the words so close to her that she breathed them back against his face, words that might almost have been a prayer.
* * * * *
Peytoe found him there soon after, nearly asleep, dark head bowed against the bulkhead, right arm clutching his coat to his chest as though to ease the burden on his ribs.
“Captain? Are ye all right?” the cook-now-surgeon asked worriedly.
Jack started back to full consciousness, assuming, with effort, the mantel of his office again. This was no time for the captain to fall apart, clutching at his ship like a bloody infant at its mammy’s teat. Turning to face Peytoe, he forced his face to fall into the familiar mask of unconcern with just the right dash of determination and a sprinkle of bracing humour. “I’m fine, Peytoe. Right as rain. Wet as it too, as a matter of fact. Just catching a wink or two. Bit tired is all. Kind of you to ask.”
Peytoe, having become fairly well-acquainted with his captain’s vagaries through having had to deal with various Sparrowish disturbances in a medical capacity ever since Jack had signed him on to the ship based on his unbroken record of never poisoning anyone with his grub-well at least not unto death-was not deceived. On the other hand, he also knew there wasn’t much he could do about Captain Sparrow when he took it into his thick skull to pretend to be indestructible. The most he could achieve was an efficient sweeping up of the pieces when the universe objected to that assumption and swatted the man back down to reality. Looked like the universe was busily going about that process at that very moment. So the cook merely shrugged, nodded at the captain’s un-donned coat, and offered, “Would ye like a hand wi’ that?”
Jack decided he would, but didn’t Peytoe have other more pressing duties? “Why ain’t you in the wardroom sawin’ off legs or somethin’?” he asked.
“Ain’t no more arteries shootin’ blood at the ceilin’,” Peytoe explained, “so I come lookin’ fer some spare hands t’ help wi’ the amputatin’. I can give ye a minute.”
In response the captain held out his coat to the man. This would have been more fun with Anamaria, Jack thought regretfully. Hurt just as much either way, but with his first mate, he could make rude suggestions just for the pleasure of seeing those hot fires strike up in her dark eyes. Admittedly, those were the sparks of wrath, but they were damn fine to watch anyway, and he could always pretend otherwise. Gave his mind something to work over while he was not so very comfortable. But Anamaria was a quenched candle at the moment. Only had little fizzes left in her there at the end. Hardly sporting to tease her, that was. And playing the dresser was completely beyond her abilities for now. So he would endure Peytoe.
“Now sir,” Peytoe said firmly, in the tone of a man who knows his onions and will not accept any backtalk from a mere captain, “Ye jes’ do what I says and leave everythin’ t’ me.”
Since the cook was a far larger man than his captain, Jack figured he wasn’t going to be given much choice.
Peytoe held up the jacket behind Captain Sparrow and began working the right sleeve on first. “Don’ ye take up wrigglin’ nor shruggin’ nor none o’ that monkeyshinin’, an then like as not ye won’ feel hardly anythin’.”
Jack wasn’t too sanguine about that possibility, but he complied, staying as relaxed and boneless as possible. “Cook, surgeon-valet. You’re a man of many talents, Peytoe,” he said.
“Used t’ do this for me da,” Peytoe reminisced. “Though he were usually jes’ too drunk, not banged up like you.”
Jack considered, wistfully, the concept of being too drunk.
“Then I run away t’ sea,” Peytoe continued, plunking Jack’s left hand efficiently into the second sleeve. “Allus wondered what happened t’ th’ ole gent.”
And speaking of drunks, Jack had his jug-bitten first mate to remember here. “Peytoe, I need you t’ bandage Anamaria’s leg when you’ve got a moment. She’s all stitched up, but I didn’t take the time t’ finish the job.”
“’M glad it was you, an’ not me!” Peytoe said with fervour, beginning to draw the coat up Jack’s arms. “I likes me ballocks jes’ how they is.”
Jack eyed his cook warily out of the corner of his eye. “Mr. Peytoe, are you suggestin’ . . .?”
“No, no, nowt o’ the sort,” Peytoe said hurriedly. “Merely sayin’ that ye’re the only man as can lay a hand on the lass an’ not find hisself missin’ some bits.”
“Tearlach managed t’ carry her without any . . . removal of parts, din’t he?” Jack said, curious about this perception of his first mate. The coat’s progress was moving apace with surprisingly bearable amounts of discomfort. Peytoe was working slowly, making sure the damp fabric of Jack’s shirt was not bunching up in the equally damp coat sleeves, being actually quite gentle.
“Aye, but she were dead then,” the cook said sagely from over Jack’s shoulder. “She might be safe, if’n she’s dead.”
It seemed clear that Anamaria would be joining the Black Pearl’s legends and folklore as the woman who came back from the dead, Jack decided, amused-and grateful for the amusement.
“You should be safe now,” Jack reassured the man. “She’s three sheets t’ the wind and half seas under.”
Peytoe looked relieved.
The coat settled over Jack’s shoulders finally, and some measure of warmth returned. Really, Peytoe was a gem of a doctor. Hadn’t been half bad at distracting his captain. Not Anamaria by any stretch, but not bad. Might not be one of those fancy sorts with the educations, but he could make a man laugh in the direst circumstances, and that was far better, in Jack’s opinion, than the ability to cup a man on every vein of his body or make thirty-five different sorts of blisters. Besides, Jack knew for a fact that Peytoe could take off a limb and tie the major blood vessels in a nearly naval-like three minutes. Just took practice, not education. Fortunately, he’d gotten most of his practice on ships other than the Pearl-up until now. The amusement drowned.
As Peytoe smoothed and straightened his handiwork, Jack hauled line on himself and asked the question he did not want answered. “Well, Peytoe, what’s the devil’s arithmetic for this day?”
Satisfied that his captain was now thoroughly re-attired, Peytoe began situating Jack’s arm in Anamaria’s sling. Soberly, he answered, “Nineteen dead, sir. Another fourteen sure t’ join ‘em. Twenty-eight wounded and disabled, an’ I lost count o’ the men I sent back up top wi’ only minor pieces shot off ‘em or holes in their hides.”
He’d known it was bad. Such a long time before they’d escaped. So much blood on his decks. But, “That’s a third of the crew down, one way or t’other!” he realized, horror twisting double-edged blades in his gut. Jack tried to tell himself that it was better than he’d hoped-that when he’d first put the Pearl at that bar, he’d expected to lose them all. But it didn’t help. Somehow-he didn’t rightly know how-he should have been able to save them. He should have done something to save them all. They had placed their lives in his hands, and he had failed them. The weight of that failure tightened on his chest, an agony sharper than any merely broken bone.
A stumble of hurried footsteps sounded and two men came rushing towards the wardroom carrying a third man, groans wrenching from him that could stop the heart, unrecognizable in the welter of his blood.
“That’ll either be number fifteen or number twenty-nine,” Peytoe said, and rushed after his new charge. “Send me some hands t’ help wi’ the butcherin’!” he tossed back to Jack before he disappeared.
Captain Sparrow, pivoted sharply and bolted for the open decks. He had to come up with a new plan, and he had to come up with one now, because running away was damn well not working.
* * * * *
The last of the grim daylight was being swallowed by night, cloaking the rain-blurred lines of the Black Pearl in further shadow, when Jack appeared again. Gibbs happened to be looking in the right direction to see the captain come boiling out on deck as though pursued by all the demons of hell, which fortuitous circumstance allowed him to brace himself for the onslaught of highly over-tuned Jack Sparrow that fetched up a hand span from his nose.
“Status!” Jack barked, reminding his quartermaster forcibly of several naval officers he’d known in the never-to-be-sufficiently-forgotten past. Except no officer had ever threatened to put out his eye by sheer proximity of wildly-whipping, dangerously-adorned hair. Of course neither would a naval officer have been handing him back his flask-naturally it was empty. Freestanding rum did not last long around Jack.
Gibbs backed up a couple of steps, but he needn’t have bothered. The captain pursued him, oblivious to the threat he posed.
Resigned, Gibbs attempted to satisfy Jack’s demand while strategically evading hair-borne missiles. The quicker the captain had his answers, the faster he’d depart for parts unoccupied by Gibbs’ head. Not that Jack was going to be liking those answers. Might as well start with the worst.
“She’s in rough shape, I have t’ tell you,” he admitted. “We can’t outrun that brig for much longer. The ship can’t handle much more of this. Not without we lay up for a refit in a right hurry.”
“Aye,” said the captain softening a little in sorrow as he glanced around at his blasted and battered ship. “She’s a bonnie grand lady, but we’ve abused her sore.”
Relieved that Jack was standing down from his zealous attempt to puncture or otherwise perforate his quartermaster, Gibbs continued, “We’re still takin’ on more water, and one of the main pumps took a hit from a loose timber and snapped right off at the deck. Broke Karanjeet’s leg, too,” he added. Although at this point, men were easier to replace than machinery.
“Damnation!” Jack swore, rather mildly Gibbs felt, considering the situation. “How long till she’s repaired?”
There was a stretch of silence. Gibbs cleared his throat. “She’s not being repaired.”
“What?” Jack’s voice was sharp, bordering on threatening. “And may I ask why? Gibbs, you know we need that pump.”
“Hawkins told me there was nothing he could do,” Gibbs admitted, not liking the look that response produced in the captain’s eyes.
“Send for Hawkins.” That tone did not bode well for their ship’s chief artificer.
“He can’t tell you anythin’ I haven’t,” Gibbs objected. “The man’s that busy . . .”
“Don’t need him t’ tell me anythin’,” Jack said mulishly. “Need t’ tell him somethin’. But you’re right. We’ll go to him. Where is he?”
“Another of the pumps is choked. He’s down settin’ it t’ rights.” Gibbs felt a twinge of guilt, sending poor Hawkins to the lions like that, but it wasn’t like the lion wasn’t going to track him down eventually. And when Captain Sparrow was all primed and loaded and ready to fire, a man couldn’t help wanting to misdirect the barrel away from himself.
Grateful for any time spent out of the rain that was chilling him to the bone, he followed the seething charge of Sparrow down to the well, extending from the lower deck to the bottom of the hull in the middle of the ship’s hold, that normally protected the boxes and valves of the pumps from being choked by shifting ballast or other obstructions. However, the well had been damaged in the firefight, and inevitably, one of the pumps was in need of help. There was water high up in it by now, Gibbs noted with a shudder. A few more minutes and that valve would have been under.
Jack shouted down the well, “Hawkins!”
A weary dark face looked up, only visible by the red-shot whites of his eyes. Its owner was already half submerged. “Aye, Captain?”
“Soon as you’ve got this pump workin’, get a team together and repair that broken pump,” Jack commanded, waving his hand in its topside direction with his sublime indifference to hard facts and even harder reality.
“But sir,” the astonished man stammered, “we can’t . . . we don’t have the parts . . . the forge is not . . . the fire is out and . . . fix it, sir? That’s impossible!”
Gibbs winced. He had a pretty good idea how that was going to go over.
“Did I ask you what you can’t do?” The captain’s voice lowered, menace prowling about its edges. “I seem to recall tellin’ you what you will do. That was not a request. That was an order. I don’t care if you have to fix that pump with somebody’s bones! I don’t care if you have to fix it with yours! You will fix it! Do you understand me?”
“Aye, sir!” The man gulped nervously. “Whatever you say, sir.”
Nothing like being told by your captain that your arse was on the line, and you didn’t stand a chance, Gibbs thought sympathetically. It was unlike the captain to be so bloody unreasonable. “Jack,” he remonstrated, as they scrambled back towards the weather decks. “Ye can’t ask more of the men than is possible.”
“That’s ‘Captain Jack’ to you, mate,” Jack snapped over his shoulder, still in high dudgeon. “And for your information, there is nothing possible or impossible but thinking makes it so. They’ll come up with something now. You see if they don’t.”
Gibbs shrugged expressively. There was no dealing with Jack when he got this way. Best let it run its course. “As you say, Captain.”
Slightly mollified, Jack deigned to offer a small explanation, also a rare occurrence. “Gibbs, if he’s right and it is impossible, the Pearl is scuppered. So you’d better pray I’m right.”
As they gained the quarterdeck again, Gibbs was puffing and out of breath, but the captain was sweeping along with that inhuman blast of energy desperate situations always seemed to breed in him. He paused briefly to delegate a couple of the lads to assist the cook, before swirling onward. Unable to keep still, Captain Sparrow forced his quartermaster to carom about the deck chasing after him in order to finish his report.
“And how is the crew?” Jack asked, his face grim as he paused by the windward shrouds, laying a hand on the heavy cable. “We’ve lost some good men, and more are hurtin’. Does their courage hold?”
“Aye, sir. They’re all good lads. Fighters, every last one.” Gibbs was glad to have at least one positive thing to say. It was certainly the only one. “But there’s only so far you can push a man before his body betrays him.”
Jack nodded shortly and resumed his perambulations. At the break in the poop, he turned back to Gibbs. “We’ve been driving hard for the better parts of two days now.”
“Harder, sir,” Gibbs said. “The men are all but done in. They’ve scarce had an hour t’ rest in the last twenty. First we had t’ beat that storm in. And now we’re pumpin’ non-stop, workin’ her sails, repairin’ the damage, dodgin’ that cursed brig’s fire. And ain’t none of ‘em had a bit o’ sup nor a draught t’ drink since this whole bloody business began.”
“And that’s goin’ to continue bein’ a problem, innit,” said the captain reflectively, lighting out for the binnacle.
“You’re on the money there, Cap’n,” Gibbs agreed, limping rapidly behind him. Too bad the racket of even this reduced storm made him have to stay close to Jack’s ear. “The seas keep puttin’ the galley fire out, but that don’t matter because the stove’s been damaged an’ we’ll be waitin’ on the forge before we get any hot food, but that don’t matter because the stores are full o’ salt water or washed away.” He paused to catch his breath.
Jack opened his mouth as though to say something, then closed it and simply waved Gibbs to carry on.
“Which brings up the problem of food. Or more to the point-lack of it. We’re pretty much down t’ a few barrels o’ fruit an’ the salt horse. But it takes fresh water t’ boil the salt out o’ that, an’ there’s the rub. Because we’re runnin’ real low on fresh water. Every time we try t’ collect rain, a bloody great sea swamps the decks and it’s salt again.”
A shot from the Defender screamed into the spars and rigging above them and the two of them threw themselves to the decks, arms sheltering their heads. When the rain of debris had settled, Gibbs found himself in possession of several new bruises that were immediately lost in the complaints being lodged by all his previous bruises.
He crawled to Jack’s side where the captain hadn’t moved from his huddle on the deck. “Ye all right, Captain? Jack?” Gibbs asked worriedly, laying a hand on Jack’s arm.
“’M fine,” came the muffled voice from under the heap of wet dark hair. “Just havin’ an argument wi’ me ribs. Don’ worry. ‘M winnin’. Jus’ . . . gi’ me a minute.”
Even though Gibbs thought he now had a pretty good idea how he was going to feel if he lived to be a hundred, and he was having his own argument with his knees, he made it to his feet, and clung to the binnacle for support. It took Jack a little longer to start slowly unfolding, and even then, he had to ask Gibbs’ help to make it to his feet. When a heavy cough shook his slender frame, Gibbs found himself supporting most of the captain’s weight.
As soon as he could stand on his own again, Jack spat into his hand and peered at the results. “No blood,” he said cheerfully, but Gibbs could hear the shiver in his voice. “I guess it’s not all bad, eh?” He wiped his palm on the leg of his grimy breeches.
Not all bad. At least the captain hadn’t lost a lung. Yet. “Jack,” Gibbs urged. “Ye can’t keep drivin’ yourself and this ship and these men. You’ll kill yourself!”
“Seems like someone is already on that,” Jack commented with a tilt of his head aft in the direction of the Defender.
“Then don’t do their work for them, Jack,” Gibbs begged. “We have t’ get this ship out of here. The men need food and water and rest. And we ain’t goin’ t’ be able t’ give it t’ them until we lose that brig.”
“No.” Jack’s flat monosyllable did not enlighten Gibbs.
“No what?” he asked in exasperation.
“We’re not goin’ to lose that brig, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack replied evenly.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gibbs grumbled. “But won’t we be able t’ shake her in the night, sir?”
Captain Sparrow shook his head slowly. “Only if the Defender’s captain is a damn sight duller than I’ve yet seen any sign of him bein’. Like as not he’ll hold fire and hug us close enough to hear our pumps. It’ll give us a breather from all the poundin’ we’ve been takin’, but we’ll not lose her.”
“No chance of a decoy, I suppose.”
“What have we left to use as a decoy? We’ve scavenged her very bulkheads by now to block leaks and she’s still as full of holes as a politician’s integrity. She’s goin’ down, Gibbs. Slowly, but I can feel it.” Jack was pacing like a man being stung by ants, unable to escape. His eyes were wide and ferocious. His hands half-formed and then rejected ideas, clenching and unclenching.
Gibbs reflected that the captain had always reacted as though the harm done to his ship were engraved on his own hide, as though they were connected by some frightening voodoo curse that neither of them could escape or ignore. And now that the ship was dying, could her captain even continue to function?
“I don’t dare order the pumps to cease long enough for us to give that brig the slip.” Jack’s voice twisted with frustration. He scowled at the sky. “And this storm is goin’ t’ turn into a real monster come about three o’ the clock in the morning. We’ll be hard pressed to keep her afloat as it is.”
“If it does,” said Gibbs, having sailed long enough with Jack Sparrow to accept that if Jack said the weather would do something, it did, “won’t we be able t’ sneak past them in all that noise?”
Jack was already shaking his head. Apparently he’d already considered that. “Won’t last long enough. The Pearl will be too slow by then. We’ll still be on the same horizon by the time the storm’s blown itself out sometime before dawn. If she’ll hold together, we might gain some distance, but with the weather calmin’ down, we’ll have lost the advantage of carryin’ near equal the canvas of the Defender. She’ll be free to crack on her full cloud while we’ve got no sails left to add. She’ll catch us soon after sunrise.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is that we’re finished, or we will be tomorrow mornin’,” Gibbs said, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. They’d expected this, he tried to tell himself. Their escape from that trap that had seemed such a miraculous deliverance had in reality changed nothing. They had known from the beginning that they danced this cotillion with death, and the devil was the fiddler. The knowledge didn’t make defeat any easier to accept.
“Unless we can miraculously create sails from baggywrinkles, planks from splinters, and water from rum . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off, and he went completely still.
Gibbs eyed him curiously. Jack never stopped moving except when he was unconscious or about to become very dangerous.
“I’m havin’ a thought here, Gibbs,” Jack said, an introspective finger beginning to trace his chin, pausing to twirl a rain-dripping braid, a wicked glitter appearing in his eyes. “Where is the closest source of re-supply for everything we need on the Pearl? Food, water, medical supplies, canvas, spars, powder, everything.”
Gibbs felt a cold little worm coil around his neck and tap at his spinal cord. Jack’s “thoughts” often had that effect on him, and with good reason. “What bee have you got buzzin’ in that daft head o’ yours, Jack Sparrow?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Why, only this, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack said gesturing grandly as though displaying a priceless work of art. “We are goin’ to take that little brig off the Royal Navy’s hands. Take her and all her provisions and her tackle and her shot.”
Gibbs could scarcely summon words for several moments. Finally he choked, “That’s not possible, Jack. We ain’t got more’n an ounce o’ dry powder between the lot o’ us. All we got is a bunch o’ useless hunks o’ iron!”
Jack had that look in his eyes now that made Gibbs start calculating the odds on whether it was more prudent to be hopeful or to duck and run. It was accompanied by a grin as full of cursed gold as any Aztec chest. Gibbs knew that smile. He could trace nearly every madness-inducing, apoplexy-creating, bowel-voiding, life-threatening adventure in his life to one of those looks on Jack Sparrow’s face. And knowing that, Gibbs still found it as irresistible as an enchantment.
And Jack knew it, the bastard. The gold flashed even brighter. “All the more reason we need that brig more than the Navy does!” the captain exclaimed happily. “They broke my ship! They can bloody well help fix her! All we need is a plan.” He strode off in the direction of his cabin, trailing clouds of insanity like a tattered cloak behind him.
“Oh, I really want t’ hear you explain this one t’ Anamaria,” Gibbs muttered under his breath, and hurried to catch up.
* * * * *
TBC
17 A Fine-Baited Delay