(Disclaimer: I do not own Pintel, Ragetti, Gibbs, Cotton, Marty, Murtogg, Mullroy, or anyone else in this story who sounds familiar. :-) )
Paradise of the Mind
Pintel nodded frantically. "Aye! Rags says there's one ahead of us!"
Gibbs tightened his grip on the wheel even more. "How far've we got left t'go?"
The first mate opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly realized that he had no idea himself. Wrinkling his brow in confusion, Pintel immediately turned around and charged back down the quarterdeck stairs towards the mast.
"Rags!" he called up then. "How far ahead is it?!"
"About four ship-lengths!" Ragetti shouted back.
Below him, Pintel nodded and hurried back up to the quarterdeck.
"About four ship-lengths!" he repeated to Gibbs.
The captain turned the wheel slightly. "Aye! We've got time to spare then!"
However, high up in the ratlines, Ragetti was becoming indecisive.
"No, wait!" he yelled with all his might. "It's three!"
"It's three!" Pintel shouted in turn to Gibbs.
"Actually, scratch that! It is four!"
"Four!" Pintel echoed loudly. Gibbs rolled his eyes in exasperation from this unnecessary game of Messenger.
"Well, it's probably three now!" Ragetti corrected.
Pintel whirled around to glare up at him. "Will you make up your mind?!"
"Ask 'im if 'e sees an empty space in it!" Gibbs interrupted. "A passage!"
Pintel stared at the other man as if he'd just sprouted a second head. "Yeh wanna go through the reef?"
"Either that or we bring 'er 'round and sail back towards those lads!" Gibbs shot back with a nod to the Prowess.
The bald first mate bobbed his head in agreement at first, then sagged his heavy shoulders with dread as he realized the repetitive task ahead of him. Gritting his teeth, Pintel turned once again and hurried down the steps to the mast a second time.
"Do yeh see any way 'frough it, Rags?!" he gasped up to his nephew.
Ragetti looked like he was talking to a madman now. "What? Go 'frough it? Who's muttin-'eaded idea was that?"
"Just answer the bloody question!"
Ragetti paused to squint forward again. "…I can't tell!" he reported. "It's too low down!"
This time, the call reached Gibbs's ears.
"Low down…" the burly captain murmured to himself. He fell silent for a moment, and then a wishful thought suddenly passed through his mind. It sounded ridiculous at first, but then again, he'd learned from years of sailing with the notorious Jack Sparrow that ridiculous things usually worked.
A clever gleam flashed in Gibbs's eyes then, and he lifted his head to look up at Ragetti. "So low, yeh'd say, that it could be overlooked but not over-passed?!" he hollered over the wind. "A sort of in-the-middle depth what could puzzle a man's right judgment somethin' fowl an'lead 'im to wrong?!"
Ragetti blinked dumbly. "…If yeh wanna calls it that! Aye!"
Gibbs nodded sharply and lowered his head in deep thought. Beside him, a panting and wheezing Pintel staggered up onto the quarterdeck one more time.
"Orders, Cap'n?" he managed to ask between gasps.
The Black Pearl's commander hesitated for one more second as he weighed his options, then finally spoke up with determination. "Stay on course! Lose whatever's ballast is left and keep 'er steady!"
Pintel was utterly horrified. "WOT?"
"Set to it, the lotta' yeh!" Gibbs went on, undaunted.
"Yer gonna run 'er aground?!" Pintel roared.
"Aye!" the captain replied with a triumphant grin. "We'd run 'er aground in a full-weight vessel, but with all our cargo thrown overboard…"
The first mate tilted his head oddly. "The hull'll be less submerged?" he guessed. "…But that Navy Ship's won't be…"
Gibbs's only response was a sly glance, and it was enough to spark the energy back in Pintel. A wicked grin split the bald pirate's lips, and he turned with a conniving cackle to face the crew.
"You 'eard the cap'n, lads!" he bellowed with fiery glee. "Set to it or I'll 'ave yer guts for garters!!"
Ragetti dawned an equally huge grin at the order. He quickly adjusted his footing just then, preparing to climb back down, but as he did so, he shifted his gaze over to the Prowess.
And just like that, his grin disappeared.
Pintel and Gibbs wouldn't get to follow their plan after all.
"Pinters?" he called down anxiously. Below on the quarterdeck, the racket of Pintel's zealous orders drowned his warning out. "Pinters?"
"Come on, yeh lazy, mud-lickin' blighters!" the first mate howled on, oblivious. "There's more speed t'catch in them sails! And pitch those barrels! Our cap'n don't like apples anymore!"
"PINTEL!"
Ragetti's shouts finally reached their target, but he was far too late to prevent the damage that was coming.
BOOM!
SMASH!
An instant later, Pintel and every other pirate on the deck was thrown forward as a sickening jolt rumbled through the Black Pearl. A wild shiver ran up the ratlines in turn, and Ragetti felt his stomach wrench as the whip-like effect jerked him sharply away from the ropes. His feet flew out from their holdings, but before the scrawny man even realized his peril, he was slammed violently back against his wobbling ladder. The rest of the crew's startled yelps hung in the air for another tense moment. Two ship-lengths behind them all, the Prowess had broken off from the chase.
Instead, it had turned sideways, preferring to simply fire away at its prey.
Pintel staggered back to his feet in a daze, glancing around irately as he tried to piece together his hectic situation again. Beside him, Gibbs hoisted himself up from the deck with the aid of his steering wheel and whirled around angrily to observe the other ship. He'd barely even glanced at the Naval vessel before his frustration hit him, and he tugged at his hat brim with a colorful hiss of "Festerin' lobster's legs!"
"Wot?" Pintel asked anxiously.
"We've gotta turn the Pearl to the side now too!" the captain explained huffily, and began spinning the wooden wheel for all it was worth. "They'll blast us all the way from stern to bow otherwise!" The layer of splinters that had leapt on deck were proof that their enemy had already tried this once.
He did a fair enough job at hiding it, but Gibbs was immensely disappointed at having to abort his plan; ones this brilliant didn't come that often to him, and he enjoyed reveling in the sense of achievement that they left him with. A small part of him always envied Jack Sparrow's never-ending ability to hatch a perfect scheme at the drop of a hat, and although Gibbs plainly didn't have this skill himself, he felt he was more than capable of keeping Jack's ship in one piece, if nothing else. And sadly, the only way to do that now was by turning the Pearl a full ninety degrees. After all, a vessel's width was much shorter than its length, and a sideward-facing ship would give a cannonball much less to damage. The reef could wait.
While Gibbs struggled to bring the Black Pearl around, Pintel's eyes were glued to the rigging. Ragetti was still latched onto the ropes high above him with a death grip, frantically trying to regain his footing. The crazy lank looked like he'd seen an entire school of Kraken, but he was perfectly alive and unhurt. Relieved at this, Pintel turned his attention back to the Prowess.
The enemy ship was no longer gaining—that was good, at least—but he could tell from both vessel's positions that the Pearl's turn was bringing it closer to its attacker. Pintel knew the black-sailed ship almost as well as any of its former captains, and he wasn't sure how much a fight it'd be able to put up against such a surprising adversary. The Prowess had already shown that it could outrun the Black Pearl; who was he to say that it couldn't outfight her too, especially now that the pirate vessel was damaged?
The thought of such a defeat flustered the aging buccaneer something awful, and the frustration was enough to get his temper boiling, but in the midst of all that anger and panic, Pintel was somehow able to keep a hold on his mind, and an old but unforgotten idea suddenly came to him.
"…Cut off the sea serpent's 'ead…" he murmured, lost in his own dazed world. Gibbs managed to overhear the thought just the same, and glanced over at his first mate in confusion.
"What's that mean?" he asked.
But Pintel was already preparing to hatch Horace Yager's ageless plot. "Wotever I want it to." He stepped closer to the steps and bellowed up to Ragetti again with all of his strength.
"Rags!! You stay up there! Get to the crow's nest!" He began looking about antsily on the quarterdeck. "Cut off the 'ead…cut off the 'ead…"
"For the love of king and county," Gibbs hissed. "What's in your head?"
"Wot—" Pintel spun around and gazed dumbly at the captain like he hadn't seen him standing there before. After a second, the bald pirate's wits returned to him and he spoke. "We can't run away from 'em now. We gotta fight 'em off."
"And just what is this 'serpent's head' what needs cutting off?"
"The captain." Pintel sounded like Gibbs's confusion was entirely unjustifiable. "Take 'im down, they got no one left t'listen to."
The captain's eyes gleamed at this. "And they'll be naught but a boatload of senseless sea snails!" he chimed in eagerly. He turned to glare at the waters ahead. "Aye, it's a madman's plan. That means it's bound to work!"
Pintel grinned with as much pride as he could muster. "'Fought it up all by meself."
Gibbs nodded absently, but when he didn't hear the sound of rushing footsteps, he glared back at his stupidly smiling comrade. "Well set to it!" he shouted.
Snapped out of his happy trance, Pintel suddenly sprang back to life and hurried clumsily down the steps to the main deck.
"Murtogg!" he bellowed to the first crewman he saw. "Mullroy! Get the lads ready! We's 'avin' an old-fashioned sea battle!"
The gawky pair jerked back like they'd both been clapped across the face, and took off to obey the first mate. Pintel watched them go from the shade of his own tri-corner hat, then turned to another crewmember to continue the anticipating cycle. The Black Pearl's crew was going to cut, shoot, and claw their way out of this disaster.
And Ragetti, tucked safely away up in the crow's nest, would have no part in it.
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Or will he? Soon to be updated!
