Port Royal, 1933 II
Three years previously

Unlike the harsh burning sensation of rum, a good brandy was smooth, sophisticated, cooling to the throat like a window pane against a hand on a tropical, hot day. The day on which Admiral Norrington had woken up had been such a day.

Opening his eyes, he had first felt his lashes brush against cool silk pillowcases, had heard the familiar cry of a parrot somewhere about the house and felt an instant, unyielding need for a measure of rum - not grog, not brandy, but best local dark rum.

Sitting up and ringing the bell for the servants, James had thought that, though it was probably an unsuitable first request for an admiral recently delivered from certain death, the drink of cutthroats and buccaneers was a vice he had already been devoted to for too long to ever consider forsaking it. Only once he had been simpered over by his wife, Elizabeth and the servants, he had finally been brought the vile drink, then to be left to rest in peace.

James had known that he had died, because the feeling was quite unlike anything else and he knew it because he had already done it. He had once lost his life aboard the ghost ship which it had been his burden to command and he would always remember the irony of iliterally/i being ferried back into the world of the Living aboard the very ship he had died on.

Once past the sunrise, Turner had left him, not to be lost, but to be found, washed ashore at the roots of a tree in a jungle creek, into which was built a wooden hut that emitted the gentle glow of candlelight. Many weeks had he spent there, listening to the murmuring spells that would make him better, unlikely objects swinging above him, eyes grotesquely arranged and staring at him, a hairy spider the size of a plate watching him upside down, a tiny man hanging on a noose with wooden pins stuck through his heart... He did not care to remember the weeks that passed until finally he had been strong enough to be taken back to civilization, to the astonishment of all who had believed him dead.

That, in James Norrington's mind, had been how you died and came back, until he had survived what he was sure had been several hours at the bottom of the sea. He clearly remembered that night on which iDauntless/i was finally lost to the sea; as though She had no tried enough times previously.

Dragged down by the momentum, the weight of his sword, his soaked coat and his boots, James had allowed himself to gently hit the reef below him, even taking notice of a silver flurry of fish whirling around as he did. He had felt the sting in his lungs and the pressure in his ears, but not recognized them as pain. For a moment, James had even thought that the weight of the sea taking his breath away and pinning him down was strangely erotic, like a possessive lover that wouldn't let him go. He had always wished to be taken so passionately, to be owned so fiercely. He had been ready to give himself up willingly and completely at last. His time had come.

But though the lack of oyxgen had taken his sight and his sense of direction, it had not killed him and as he had lain on the ocean floor, feeling his ship sink into the blue-turned-black some fathoms before him, all illusion of control blissfully gone, something changed. The admiral, it seemed, had died. The ship was gone, and it had simply not come into James' mind to answer for himself this time, to grovel for forgiveness to superiors again. Reduced only to his mind, weightless, the sea whirling about him, a wild thing taking utter control of him, he had decided that he was ready at last. He would never follow orders again.

The sigh of relief that had come with this understanding had brought a shock of fresh air into his lungs, back in his bed in his Port Royal residence, somehow, inexplicably, safe and craving rum.