I've always felt that the Captain of the Edinburgh Trader had to know Elizabeth was a girl. His comment in this chapter about the stowaway being naked was just so unrealistic, that it had to be misdirection. At least, I've always thought so. But please, enjoy and review!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Elizabeth had been introduced to the crew as Edward Cigno. When asked for her last name, she had almost blurted out "Swann", but instead, "Cigno" came out. When her father had said learning Italian would help her later in life, Elizabeth didn't think this was what he had in mind.
Captain Bellamy had told the crew to teach the boy what they knew. "Let's see if we can't make an honest sailor out of him," he said as he gave Elizabeth a hard slap on the shoulder that made her stumble forward. With that introduction, the crew had laughed and proceeded to take her under their wing. That day, she received a crash course in the art of sailing that took up most of the afternoon. By the end of the day, Elizabeth knew how to trim sails and check the rigging to make sure it was tied down properly. She was even allowed to try it herself a few times, and was declared "passable" by one of the Riggers. The job of checking the rigging and sails was dangerous. Elizabeth almost lost her balance several times, but she found job exhilarating. Never before had she felt so free!
That night, Elizabeth almost fell right to sleep. Her hands had blisters, and were bleeding in places. She was exhausted from the day's events and not getting much, if any, sleep the night before. But while she was waiting to be introduced to the crew, Elizabeth had thought of a plan to make the crew want to go to Tortuga.
Once the crew was asleep in their hammocks, and the loud, bullfrog sounding snores started up, Elizabeth rolled quietly out of her hammock. She looked around to make sure no one saw her, and dug her wedding dress out of the rucksack. She gazed at it with sad eyes for a moment, then shook herself out of her stupor. She crept up the stairs to the deck and searched for the night-watchman. There he is, she saw him standing at the port-side bow, staring out at the sea. Elizabeth went to her right instead, and looked around for a place to put the dress. There was a space between a barrel and a crate that would do nicely. Elizabeth stuffed the dress in the space and crept back below and into her hammock. As soon as her head it the cloth of the hammock, she fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, Elizabeth was told to paint a shellac wax on the railings of the ship, as the wax was starting to wear thin. The shellac would act as a seal and protect the wood from the elements. She was given a bucket of the stuff and a brush, and told to get to work.
Let's hope someone finds the dress soon, she thought. Painting was incredibly boring work, as she soon found out.
It was almost an hour later, when she was almost done with her work, that Elizabeth saw a sailor run past her with her dress in his hands. She turned her head slightly to watch as he ran up to the Quartermaster and showed it to him. Elizabeth turned back to her painting as the Quartermaster and the sailor started walking in her direction. They stopped to talk to the Bursar, the man in charge of the ship's finances.
The two men argued quietly for a few minutes, tugging the dress back and forth between them. Elizabeth deemed the piece of railing she had been working on as done, and moved further along the railing so that she could hear the conversation. As she did so, more of the crew gathered around to see what was going on. Elizabeth was closer now, and could hear them, but couldn't make out clearly what the two men were saying. The crew was muttering about the presence of the dress. It sounded like the Quartermaster and the Bursar agreed on the reason the dress was there, but were at odds on what to do with it. A virgin haunting the seas? Elizabeth was amused in spite of herself. They're only half right.
The Captain must have heard the commotion, because he stomped over and pushed his way through the crew shouting, "What's all this?" He stopped and looked between the two men and the dress and said sarcastically, "If you both fancy the dress, you'll just have to share and wear it one after the other." The crew laughed at the two men's embarrassment, and Elizabeth chuckled in appreciation of the Captain's humor.
"It's not like that, sir," the Bursar said, exasperated, "This ship is haunted."
Captain Bellamy nodded mock-seriously, "Is it now?" He turned to look at the Quartermaster, "And you?"
"There is a female presence amongst us here, sir." He looked around at the crew, "All the men, they can feel it."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow as she continued to paint slowly. Well, he's not wrong, she thought.
The sailor who found her dress pushed his way forward. "It's the ghost of a lady, widowed before her marriage, I figure it. Searching for her husband, lost at sea."
Another sailor piped up, "A virgin too, likely as not. And that bodes ill by all accounts." Elizabeth turned to look at the men.
The Bursar took the dress from the Quartermaster, "I say that we throw the dress overboard, and we hope the spirit follows it."
The Quartermaster lunged for the dress and tried to take it, "No! That will just anger the spirit, sir. What we need is to find out what the spirit needs, and then get it back to her." He yanked the dress towards him.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and smiled as she turned back to her work. Thank God for superstitious sailors.
The Bursar and the Quartermaster began to argue again, and play tug-of-war with the dress until Captain Bellamy shouted, "Enough! Enough!" He put his hands on his hips and glared at the two men, "You're a pair of superstitious goats and it's got the best of you." He grabbed the dress himself, "Now, this appears to be nothing more as we have a stowaway on board. A young woman, by the look of it." Elizabeth put her brush in her bucket and looked around nervously, "I want you to search this ship and find her." The crew looked around at each other. "Oh, and, er… she's probably naked."
This got everyone's attention. Heads shot up, clearly interested in finding this potentially naked woman. They scurried over the deck, looking for this mythical woman.
"Cigno! My cabin!" Captain Bellamy shouted from his cabin door.
"Aye, sir!" Elizabeth shouted back. She hurried across deck and into his cabin, shutting the door behind her.
He held the dress up, "This part of your idea, lass?"
She smiled, "Aye, sir. It was my mother's wedding dress. I brought it to save it from being ruined by my father."
He looked at her with appraising eyes, "You're playing on my crew's superstitious nature, are you?"
"Only a little," she murmured with a smile, thinking of Jack Sparrow as she said it.
There was a knock on the cabin door, and Captain Bellamy called for the person to enter. The Quartermaster came in, looking upset.
"No sign of the woman, Captain," he said regretfully, "What would you like us to do?"
"Don't worry about it anymore, Thomas," the Captain said with a sigh, "I suppose it was too much to hope for. Maybe the dress came on our ship by some other means. I'll be leaving it in my trunk to sell at the next port. Carry on with your duties and tell the crew to do the same."
"Aye, sir." The Quartermaster left the cabin, shutting the door behind him.
Captain Bellamy waited a bit before turning to Elizabeth again, "What would you like me to do with the dress, lass?"
"If you could just leave it someplace I can get to easily, I'll pick it up tonight. And could I have the first night watch tonight? I don't want anyone else on deck, if I can help it." She requested hopefully.
He nodded, "Done."
That night, Elizabeth sat on the boom, tying string to parts of the dress and attaching them to two brooms to make a marionette. Her childhood spent with mismatched nannies was beginning to pay off. Once done, she moved up to a platform connected to the main mast that allowed her to stand properly and move around slightly. She could see into the Captain's cabin, and smiled. The Captain and both the Quartermaster and Bursar were inside.
Taking her broomstick marionette, Elizabeth pushed the dress off the platform and let it hang. She practiced for a minute to make sure she remembered how to do it. She did. She swung the dress back and forth until she had the proper momentum, then swung it out to fly past the Captain's window. They must have seen it, because their faces were pressed against the window when the dress came flying back.
It took a moment, but the three men and one sailor came running up from below. The Captain walked forward with a stunned look on his face. Elizabeth moved the dress forward and used one of the broomsticks to point the left arm of the dress at him, then out to sea.
"She wants you to do something," the Bursar whispered.
"She's trying to give a sign," Captain Bellamy also whispered.
When Elizabeth swung the dress of the starboard railing, the Captain and his men ran to the railing to look for her sign. Elizabeth swung the dress back over their heads, almost hitting them, and knocked over a strategically placed lantern. When the men ducked to avoid the dress, Elizabeth yanked upward on the strings, and pulled the dress up to her platform.
Captain Bellamy pointed to the port railing where he had last seen the dress, "Over there! Look for a sign!" They all ran over to the rail and peered over the edge.
Elizabeth watched them from above in frustration. She sighed irritably and rolled her eyes at the men. Idiots, she thought. She threw down her broomsticks in frustration, and slid down a rope to a nearby crate, ignoring the supposed "signs" the men were seeing.
"What's that over there," she called out in her deeper "boy" voice. The men came over slowly to see, in flaming letters:
Tortuga.
Author's Note: Next chapter will be in Tortuga, where she'll see Jack and Norrington!