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To the Rescue
The further they sailed, the colder it became. By the next day, it was so much so that everyone and everything was covered in ice.
"No one said anything about cold," Laura heard Pintel complain as she stood at the stern with her trench coat tightly wrapped around herself.
"There must be a good reason for our suffering," Ragetti replied through his chattering teeth.
"Why don't that obay woman just bring back Jack the same way she brought back Barbossa?" Pintel continued.
"Because Barbossa was only dead," Tia Dalma defended, walking towards the two pirates. "Jack Sparrow is taken, body and soul, to a place not of death, but punishment. The worst fate a person can bring upon himself. Stretching on forever. That's what awaits at Davy Jones' locker."
"See," Ragetti added, "I knew there was good reason."
Tia then made her way over to where Laura was standing.
Handing the open charts to Barbossa, who was at the helm, Will asked,
"Do you care to interpret, Captain Barbossa?"
"Ever gazed upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?" the pirate-captain questioned the first mate.
"I reckon I seen my fair share," was the answer. "It happens on rare occasion. At the last glimpse of sunset, a green flash of light shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives without seeing it, some claim to have seen it that ain't, and some say…"
He was cut off as Pintel enthusiastically finished,
"It signals when a soul comes back to this world, from the dead!"
When Gibbs angrily glared at him, the man put in,
"Sorry."
"Trust me, young Master Turner," Barbossa continued, "it's not gettin' to the land of the dead that's the problem. It's gettin' back."
--
By the time night came upon them, Laura had lost track of which direction Barbossa was steering them in.
She was, however, happy that they had left the cold area and were back in a warm climate.
Sitting about five feet from Elizabeth at the bow, Laura stared at the water as her brother approached his supposed lover.
The reflecting stars made it seem as if the ship was sailing across the sky.
"How long do we continue not talking?" he quietly asked the other woman.
"Once we rescue Jack, everything will be fine," she answered.
"Once we rescue Jack?" Will doubtfully repeated before Elizabeth slipped away, leaving the young man to be approached by Tia Dalma.
"For what we want most, there is a cost must be paid in the end," she said as the fog became thick and the ship sped up.
"Barbossa, ahead!" Laura heard Will warn their temporary captain at the helm.
Tia Dalma had left to go somewhere in the middle of the vessel, leaving the younger Turner staring into the fog and at what lay ahead. Everyone soon realized that they were about to go over a waterfall, though no one knew where it was or how far down.
The girl's eyes widened as orders were shot back and forth along the boat; however, she ignored them all. Instead, her only thoughts were of whether or not this way led to Jack. If it didn't, she had just sacrificed her life for nothing.
As Laura held onto one of the ropes for dear life, the boat flew over the waterfall and into the abyss below.
Crashing into the water along with her crewmates, the girl lost track of time as she swam towards the only visible land, a beach that stretched farther than the eye could see.
They were all eventually washed up onto the sand with some wreckage from their destroyed ship.
-How did we end up on a beach in the middle of an ocean with blue skies from that fog and darkness?-
"This truly is a godforsaken place," Gibbs commented, looking around at the vast expanse of sand.
"I don't see Jack," Elizabeth pointed out, "I don't see anyone."
"He's here," Barbossa confidently stated. "Davy Jones never once gave up that what he took."
"It doesn't matter," Will said to the pirate. "We're trapped here by your doing, no different than Jack."
As she pet a crab in her hand, Tia Dalma suppressed all of their doubts.
"Witty Jack is closer than you think."
Just as she said this, the Black Pearl appeared, apparently sailing over the sand dunes and into the water.
Jack, who had been on the top mast, soon stepped onto the beach from one of his ship's boats and began walking towards the crew.
"Impossible," the leader of the Singaporeans wondered as Ragetti pointed out,
"Boat."
"Slap me thrice and hand me to me momma, it's Jack!" Gibbs cried out. "A sight for sore eyes. Jack!"
"Mr. Gibbs," Jack seriously addressed his first mate after approaching him.
"Aye captain."
"I thought so," the captain continued. "I expect you can account for your actions, then?"
"Sir?"
"There has been a perpetual and virulent lack of discipline aboard my vessel! Why is that, sir?"
"Captain," Gibbs whispered as Laura advanced, "you're in Davy Jones' locker."
"I know that," Jack argued, ignoring his previous partner, to her dismay. "I know where I am, and don't think I don't."
"Jack Sparrow," Barbossa greeted.
"Ah, Hector," Jack answered. "It's been too long, hasn't it?"
"Aye, Isla de Muerta, remember? You shot me."
"No I didn't. Ah, Tia Dalma, out and about, eh?" the captain addressed his old friend. "You lend an agreeable sense of the macabre to any delirium."
"He thinks we're a hallucination," Will stated, causing Laura's joy to go from a nine to the negative.
"William," the pirate responded, "tell me something. Have you come because you need my help to rescue a certain distressing damsel? Or rather a damsel in distress? Either one."
"No."
"Then you wouldn't be here. So you can't be here. Q.E.D. you're not really here."
"Jack," Elizabeth put in, "this is real, we're here."
The captain looked at the woman as if recalling some horrible memory, and walked back over to Gibbs.
"The locker, you say?"
"Aye," the first mate replied.
"We've come to rescue you," the woman insisted, soon receiving a death-glare from Laura.
The two young women had not had a very good relationship since Jack's trip to the locker.
"Have you, now?" Jack questioned. "That's very kind of you. But seeing as I possess a ship and you don't, it seems as though you're the ones in need of rescuing and I'm not sure as I'm in the mood."
"I see my ship," Barbossa countered, pointing at the Pearl, "right there."
-Oh, not this again-
"Can't spot it," the captain answered, "must be a tiny little thing hiding somewhere behind the Pearl."
"Jack," Will began, "Cutler Beckett has the heart of Davy Jones. He controls the Flying Dutchman."
"He's taking over the seas," Elizabeth added.
"The song has already been sung. The Brethren Court is called," Tia Dalma said, completing the semicircle around Jack which cut Laura off from him.
"Leave you people alone for a minute and look what's happened," Jack stated, stepping away from the group, "everything's gone to pot."
"Aye, Jack," Gibbs continued. "The world needs you back something fierce."
"And you need a crew," Will finalized.
"Why should I sail with any of you?" the captain questioned. "Four of you have tried to kill me in the past, one of you succeeded."
He motioned to Elizabeth at the last part of his sentence, who in turn received a shocked look from Will and another glare from Laura.
-I sometimes hate it when I'm right-
"Oh, she's not told you? You'll have loads to talk about while you're here," Jack commented while turning to Tia Dalma. "As for you…"
"Now," Tia flirtatiously began, "don't tell me you didn't enjoy it, at the time."
"All right, fair enough," he gave in, turning to Gibbs.
"Gibbs, you can come."
Laura, who was standing slightly behind the first mate, finally caught the eyes of her captain.
"Ah, Laura! You finally decided to come, eh? You're a sight for sore eyes. You can come."
To Ragetti,
"Don't need you, you scare me."
He then continued down the line to the Singaporeans.
"Marty. Cotton. Cotton's parrot, a little iffy, but at least I'll have someone to talk to. Who are you?"
"Tai Huang," the Asian man stated. "These are my men."
"Where do your allegiances lie?"
"With the highest bidder."
"I have a ship."
"That makes you the highest bidder."
"Good man," the captain finished. "Weigh anchor, all hands, prepare to make sail."
Jack opened his compass. When he found it spinning frantically again, he looked at Barbossa, who was holding the charts.
"Jack," the creepy pirate addressed, "which way ya goin', Jack?"
Everyone was allowed on the ship by a reluctant Jack. The fact that he had actually "chosen" Laura simply made her feel worse about what she and her brother had planned.
"Trim that sail!" Barbossa was ordering, soon followed by Jack.
"Trim that sail!"
"Slack windward brace and sheets!"
"Slack windward brace and sheets!"
"Haul that pallet line!"
"Haul that pallet line!"
"What ARE you doing?"
"What are YOU doing?"
"No, what ARE you doing?"
"What are YOU doing?"
"No, what ARE you doing?"
-What are you DOING?-
"What are YOU doing? Captain gives orders on the ship!"
"The captain of this ship is giving orders!"
"My ship, makes me captain."
"They be my charts."
"That makes you…chart man!"
"Stow it!" Pintel burst in. "The both of you! That's an order! Understand?! Sorry. I just thought with the captain issue being in doubt, I'd throw my name in for consideration, sorry."
As the two "captains" shuffled up the stairs to the helm, Laura staggered to the bow, shaking her head from listening too intently to that heated argument.
She remained there by herself until that night when Pintel and Ragetti decided to try fishing there.
The girl calmly watched the people in the water pass them by, figuring that anything could happen at the end of the world; however, Ragetti dropped his fishing pole as Pintel spoke.
"Eerie, that's downright macabre."
"Wonder what would happen if you dropped a cannonball on one of 'em?" the other joker queried before they walked off to attempt their trick.
Meanwhile, Tia Dalma came to stand by Laura.
"They're souls, aren't they," the younger woman asked. "The souls of those who die at sea."
Getting a nod from Tia, she continued,
"I highly doubt that there are usually this many."
"Men now have much to fear on the sea," Tia Dalma replied as the two returned with cannonballs.
They let them roll away on the floor at a look from Tia.
"Be disrespectful, it would," Pintel muttered.
"They should be in the care of Davy Jones," the woman explained. "That was the duty him was charged with by the goddess Calypso. To ferry them who dies at sea to the other side. And every ten years he could come ashore to be with she who love him, truly. But the man has become a monster."
"So he wasn't always…tentacly?" Ragetti asked.
"No, him was a man…once."
"Now it's boats coming," Ragetti pointed out as Gibbs, Will, and Barbossa approached, with Gibbs loading a gun.
"They're not a threat to us," Will said, stopping the first mate before turning to Tia, "am I right?"
"We are nothing but ghosts to them," the woman replied.
"Is best just let them be," Barbossa commented as Laura saw that Elizabeth recognized the passenger of one of the boats.
"It's my father," the young woman cried out, "we've made it back. Father here, look here!"
"Elizabeth," Jack said, "we're not back."
"Father!" the girl stubbornly continued while Laura nervously watched Jack out of the corner of her eye.
"Elizabeth," the governor began, noticing his frantic daughter, "are you dead?"
"No, no," she replied, walking down the ship parallel to the governor.
"I think I am."
"No, you can't be!"
"There was this chest, you see. And a heart. At the time it seemed so important."
"Come aboard!"
Laura couldn't help but feel some compassion for the other woman.
"I learned that if you stab the heart, yours must take its place," the governor went on. "Sail the seas for eternity. The Dutchman must always have a captain. Silly thing to die for."
"Someone cast a line!" Elizabeth called, grabbing a rope from Marty, who was trying to unravel it. "Take the line!"
"A touch of destiny," Tia Dalma muttered to Will.
"Elizabeth, I'm so proud of you," the governor went on as his boat floated by.
"Father, the line, take the line!" the girl insisted, running to the stern of the ship. "Father, come back with us! I won't leave you!"
She was soon held back by Will after Tia had yelled,
"She must not leave the ship!"
"Elizabeth," the older Turner addressed his lover, trying to console her.
"I'll give your love to your mother, shall I?" Mr. Swann questioned while disappearing into the fog.
"Is there a way?" Will asked, with Elizabeth crying into his chest.
-I wish I had someone like that for me. Wait a minute. I'm not jealous of Elizabeth, am I? No, I have never needed a shoulder to lean on, and I certainly won't need it any time soon-
Though exhaustion crept over Laura, she stubbornly turned to lean on the starboard-side rail and glared at the mist surrounding the ship.
-"You try hard to deny that Jack Sparrow was more than a captain to you," Tia Dalma had said. It feels like, just yesterday, the captain and I were adventuring with nothing and no one to keep us apart. It seemed, then, that he was just a friend, but now…-
A single tear slid down the girl's cheek. Slowly wiping it away, she stared at the salty moisture in shock. The last time Laura could remember crying was when her mother had died.
It was almost a relief to let her emotion show, although she did look around to be sure that no one was watching her.
The infamous piratess sighed with relief and closed her eyes, letting a few more tears fall.
--
"Why is all but the rum gone?" Pintel complained the next evening, failing to get any more liquid from the water canister as the blazing sun poured onto the crew.
"Rum's gone too," Gibbs countered after gaining the last drop of fluid from the bottle he was holding, sitting with his back to the other man on the same crate.
"If we cannot escape these doldrums by nightfall," Tia Dalma stated, looking at the setting sun next to Laura, "I fear we will sail trackless seas, doomed to roam the reach between worlds…forever."
"With no water," the first mate added, "forever seems to be arriving a mite too soon."
Licking her cracked lips, Laura walked over to Jack, who was talking to himself while staring at the charts.
"…Stab the heart," he was saying. "Don't stab the heart. Come again? The Dutchman must have a captain. Well that's more than less than unhelpful. Sail the seas forever. I love the sea. What about port? I prefer rum. Rum's good. Making port. Where we can get rum, and salty wenches, once every ten years. What did he say? Once every ten years. Ten years is a long time, mate. But eternity is longer still. Even longer given the deficit of rum. And how will you be spending it? Dead? Or not? The immortal Captain Sparrow. Oh, I like that. Come sunset it won't matter. Not sunset, sundown…and rise."
"Oh, now I see where you're getting, Jack," Laura commented as she looked over the captain's shoulder while he turned part of the chart upside-down.
The part of Jack talking to his shoulders was a side issue. For now, the captain's genius was giving evidence of once again revealing itself.
"Up!" he continued, standing while he randomly pointed off in the distance to get everyone's attention. "Oh, what's that?"
The young woman couldn't help but grin and play along with everyone else following Jack to the starboard side.
"What's that?" he continued. "I don't know, what IS that? What do you think?"
"Where? What is it?" Elizabeth asked.
"There!" Jack responded, followed by Laura.
"Don't you see it?"
They all followed the captain in running to the other side, as if pursuing something.
"He's rockin' the ship!" Pintel exclaimed.
"Aye, he's onto it," Barbossa confirmed as nearly the entire crew was scurrying back and forth with the sway of the vessel. "Time it with the swell. Loose the cannons, you stinking bilge rats! Unstow the cargo, let it shift!" he ordered the men below decks.
After nearly five minutes, the Pearl was almost on its side with each motion.
Finally, they succeeded in their goal.
"Now up," Jack stated as they all dangled from the railing, "is down."
Laura took a deep breath and clung to the wood when the ship flipped over, top down, in the ocean.
Seeing her brother lose his grip on his anchor, the girl propelled herself through the water after him.
Reaching the opposite set of shrouds as Will was grasping onto a loose rope, Laura grabbed the young man's sleeve, pulling him to the rope ladder next her.
The exertion left the woman's lungs screaming for air as she noticed a rushing disturbance deeper in the water below them.
I know I know…I'm leaving you holding your breath, but I wanted to get this chapter posted…
Thanks for reading! Please, R&R.