DISCLAIMER: Pirate's of the Caribbean is owned by
Disney. Come on, if it were mine, do you honestly think we would have gotten
all the way through the movie without ever seeing Jack shirtless?
Title: A Pirate's Life 13/15
Posted By: Elspeth, AKA Elspethdixon
Ships: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Elizabeth, eventual Jack/Will, eventual
Norrington/OC. Probably a bit of unrequited Norrington/Elizabeth as well.
Warning: This story contains killing, stealing, lots of angst, an OC,
and a non-evil Norrington. Sadly, it probably will not contain any hot, steamy
sex scenes.
Chapter Thirteen: In Which Norrington Dines with the Governor and Jack Feels
Sorry for Himself.
"What are these hills, these hills, my love,
these hills so dark and low?"
"These are the hills of Hell, my love,
where you and I must go.
Where you and I must go."
"I know I've already congratulated you on your capture of Sparrow,
Commodore," Governor Swann said gravely as he buttered a slice of bread,
"but it bears repeating. I really must commend you for your success, even
if the, ah, collateral damage was rather high."
"I was merely doing my duty, Governor," Norrington answered, for what
was probably only the third time, but felt like the hundredth. "My duty to
His Majesty, my duty to the people of this colony." And my duty to Mrs.
Swann, something inside him whispered. He nudged it back into silence. He had
gone after Sparrow because it was the right thing to do, not because Sparrow
had put lines of grief in Mary Rose Swan's drawn face, or because Sparrow had
repeatedly eluded him and made a fool of him, or because he and Turner had
saved Elizabeth when Norrington could not, or because he had somehow seduced
Elizabeth and Turner into abandoning any pretence of morality. Those factors
had only provided added impetus.
Across from him, Mrs. Swann fiddled with the stem of her wine glass, not
drinking. She wasn't eating either; the meat on her plate was untouched, and
she had done nothing with her bread but pick at it. Occasionally, she glanced
over at the empty seat where Elizabeth was supposed to be sitting, and then
looked away, tiny frown lines appearing for an instant around her eyes.
No one was remarking on the fact that Elizabeth was in her apartments with the
door locked firmly from the inside, instead of at the dinner table. No one was
mentioning the fact that she hadn't spoken a single word to any of them since
leaving Mrs. Swann alone in the couch this morning, and most certainly no one
was so much as alluding to any of the reasons why she wasn't at the
table. Instead, they stared at each other awkwardly and said the same things
over and over, and the longer the half-hearted conversation limped on, the more
uncomfortable it became.
"Governor," Norrington ventured after a moment, heading the other man
off before he could say something else congratulatory. "I'm sincerely
sorry on your behalf that your son-in-law failed to do his duty to you. And to
Mrs. Turner."
Governor Swann looked pained, and Norrington immediately regretted bringing the
matter up. True, everyone at the table was thinking about it, but perhaps
mentioning it aloud had not been the politest thing to do. The older man might
not wish to discuss his troubles.
"Poor Elizabeth," the governor sighed, looking away from Norrington and staring
down moodily at his plate. "I wish…. Perhaps I made a mistake in allowing her
to marry the boy. But she wanted it so much, and he seemed so attached to her.
I never imagined…" he trailed off and shook his head.
"Sometimes, once a man gets a taste of piracy, he is simply unable to back
away," Norrington said. "I've seen it before. When a man has made a habit of
taking the law into his own hands, it can be all too easy for him to return to
lawlessness given the opportunity." Though offered as a half-hearted explanation,
it was all too true. The garrison had lost a good two score of men to desertion
over the past decade, and a disquieting number of them had reappeared on the
gallows.
Mrs. Swann, listening, arched both sandy eyebrows in surprise. "How did my cousin's
husband get 'a taste of piracy?'" she asked. Her voice held something that
could have been prurient curiosity, had it not sounded oddly plaintive. "And
how on earth did she get mixed up with that, that Sparrow man?" She shuddered
slightly. "She seems to know him extremely well."
"Too well," Governor Swann said, making a small huffing sound of disapproval.
"I shall feel greatly relieved tomorrow when he is hung. He has been helpful in
the past, but I don't at all like the way he looks at her, and I've never felt
quite easy in my mind about the night they spent on that island."
"She spent the night with him? Alone?"
"It is a very long, very complicated story," Norrington said, feeling tired.
Thinking about the whole Isla del Muerte fiasco generally had the effect of
making him either tired or irritable, sometimes both. "Several months ago, a
gang of pirates attacked the city and carried Mrs. Turner off. Mr. Turner
rather rashly broke Sparrow loose from jail and enlisted his questionable aid
in recovering her. Things didn't go quite as they planned, and the Navy was
forced to intervene and recover all three of them."
"And then," Governor Swann sighed, "my daughter and her husband decided to
rescue Sparrow from the gallows. In hindsight, allowing this to occur was
probably not a good idea." He turned a serious face to Mrs. Swann. "I'm afraid
Robert's fate may be partly my fault, for turning a blind eye to that pirate's
escape."
Mrs. Swann blinked, face blank for a moment. "You mean this man was captured
twice before, and escaped twice?" She glanced unobtrusively around the room,
eyes flicking over the plasterwork, the array of china on the sideboards, and
the wide picture windows. "He won't escape again, will he?"
"Certainly not," Norrington assured her. "This time, Mr. Turner isn't here to
assist him. And I've a Royal Marine on guard outside the jail just in case. And
after tomorrow, you'll never have to worry about him again." He reached across
the table and laid his hand on top of Mrs. Swann's for a moment. Only a
moment—anything longer would have been taking liberties. She had very small
hands, the bones in them delicate and fragile as a bird's, and smooth, soft
skin.
"Yes," Mrs. Swann said softly. "Tomorrow, he will get what he deserves." Her
eyes dropped down to her plate, and she prodded a slice of beef with her fork.
"I'm not certain,' she began, then paused and repeated the phrase, "I'm not
certain I wish to go to the execution. I, I thought I wanted to, but… I've seen
men die. Robert. The Golden Dolphin's crew. I don't know that I want to
see it again. I think just knowing that he's dead, that he's paid for what he
did to Robert, will be enough."
"Perfectly understandable, my dear," the Governor said. "I must confess, I'm
not exactly fond of hangings myself. Elizabeth can stay here with you tomorrow,
while the Commdore and I carry out our duties." He sighed again, the lines in
his forehead deepening. "This is going to be hard on her. She seems oddly
attached to Sparrow. She was always bringing home strays as a little girl;
cats, dogs, rabbits, even a piglet once. They were always filthy and injured,
and usually ended up running away, and she would always cry for days when they
did. I could thrash William for running off like this," he concluded.
There was a long moment of silence, which Norrington finally broke by pushing
back his chair and rising to his feet. "This has been a lovely meal, but I'm
afraid I have duties I must attend to. If you'll forgive me, Governor, Mrs.
Swann…"
"It's been lovely having you for dinner, Commodore," Mrs. Swann said, smiling
slightly in a sincere effort at good cheer. She rose to her feet as well,
smoothing down the fabric of her skirt with both hands. "Let me walk you to the
door."
"Thank you, Mrs. Swann." Norrington summoned up a smile for her as she led him
to the door, her heavy skirts swishing. They paused in front of it, facing each
other, and there was a long moment of silence in which the two of them simply
stood, looking at one another.
"Well, I suppose I shall see you tomorrow," he finally said, adding quickly,
"after the, ah, hanging, of course."
"Yes," she said. "Tomorrow." Grey-green eyes lifted from the floor and stared
straight into his for a moment. "Thank you, Commodore. For, for everything. I
know my uncle has already said it, but I wanted to say it as well. I shall
always be grateful to you, and I am very pleased that you've returned safely to
Port Royal."
And then the Governor's major domo was ushering him out, and before he had a
chance to reply he somehow found himself outside and on the path down to the
harbour. Norrington pushed thoughts of pale skin and a soft voice to the back
of his head, and shifted his attention to duty. The pleasant part of the
evening was over, and he had a prisoner to check on.
^_~
He was standing in the streets of Port Royal, the dirt hot under his bare feet.
Ramshackle wooden buildings loomed around him; warehouses, taverns, all the
official or shady structures that grew up around ports and docksides. These
buildings were different, though, oddly large, as if built for giants. There
was something not quite right about them, about the way they were placed, the
number of them. Something off, yet oddly familiar. This wasn't the Port Royal
he was used to, but it was unmistakably Port Royal.
People streamed through the street around him, taking no notice of him as they
went about their business. There was a strange feel to the air, as if a
hurricane were looming on the horizon. Automatically, he began scanning
passerbyes' faces, looking for someone, though he wasn't sure who he was
looking for. He simply knew, suddenly and viscerally, that someone important to
him was missing, someone who should have been with him was not there, and he
had to find her--or was it him?--right now, because something very, very
bad was about to happen.
And that was when the ground began to move.
The earth heaved and rolled like the sea on a calm day, long slow swells rising
and falling. He fell to his knees, balance stolen by the treacherous shaking,
and watched in terror as the ground pitched violently, the buildings around
shaking back and forth with the force of it until roofs and walls collapsed.
All around him, people were screaming. A man ran past him, nearly knocking him
to the earth in his desperation to escape, though where the man thought he
could escape to when the earth itself had risen against them God only knew.
He pushed himself to his feet, fright warring inside him with the unstoppable
need to find whomever he was looking for, before the earth opened up and
ate them alive. He wanted to scream, like the panicked people around him, or
throw himself flat to the earth and hang on, ride out the horrible, unnatural,
shaking swells, but an insistent voice somewhere in the back of his head was
howling that if he didn't find his missing person now, this very moment,
and grab them and hold on tight and never let go, he would never see them
again.
So he began to run. People screamed and pushed at him, or grabbed him and
pelted him with desperate demands to tell them what was happening, but he shook
himself loose and ran out, shouting out a name--he wasn't sure whose--until his
throat was raw. The ground pitched and rolled beneath his feet, tripping him
up, and as his knees splashed into the water that was seeping up through cracks
in the angry, quaking earth, he saw two people dashing around a corner ahead of
him, sun flashing on honey coloured hair and the bobbing white plume of a hat.
He staggered upright again and ran after them, screaming for them to wait, to
stop, but a stone warehouse collapsed like a breaking wave across his path and
he was forced to halt, to fling himself out of the way of falling rock and
splintering wood. When he climbed over the shifting and dancing wreckage, they
were gone, and he was running again, wild with fear and frustration.
He splashed unsteadily through narrow, flooded streets, dodging falling boards
and frantic people, always chasing that flicker of gold and white, but never
quite catching up. Past the graveyard, he ran, carefully not looking at the
graves that yawned open to disgorge their rotting dead, spilling skeletal
horrors out into the sunlight, past a church where the bells were ringing a
wild and discordant death knell, past a blacksmith's forge that was collapsing
into a fiery inferno, and down toward the docks.
He skidded to a halt within sight of the water, clinging to a corner of a
building for balance as the earth heaved upward yet again, and felt a
great upsurge of hope and triumph as the fleeing couple turned and caught sight
of him. Two pairs of dark eyes widened, and the man stretched out one callused,
scarred hand, reaching, beckoning.
"Will!" he shouted, pushing off from the building and staggering
forward toward them, "Elizabeth!" He meant to shout a warning, to
drag them to safety, wherever that was, to cry "I love you" or
"Don't leave me," or something along those lines, but the words
caught in his throat.
And then the sea rose up in a great wave and swallowed everything.
Jack jerked awake with a hoarse cry, slamming his head back into the stone wall
behind him. An explosion of light flared up behind his eyes at the impact, and
he bent forward, clutching his abused head in both hands and slowly absorbing
the fact that the ground beneath him appeared to be stationary.
No giant waves, no earthquakes. It had all been a dream.
"God," he whispered, hands shaking from the tidal surge of adrenaline
his body had dredged up in response to the images in his head. He could still
see some of them, a handful of moments standing out even as the rest of the
dream melted away to wherever dreams went when a man woke up. Port Royal
surging and rolling around him, rotted corpses climbing out of their graves,
Elizabeth and Will's faces moments before they were swallowed up by the sea.
It hadn't been real. Real was Will falling backwards over the Endeavour's
rail. Real was the look on Elizabeth's stricken face as she had stood next to
her father and a vaguely familiar-looking blonde woman and watched those hulks
in red uniforms haul him away. Real was the throbbing ache in his head and sore
bruises in his side and the cold, depressing knowledge that he was probably
going to hang in the morning.
Gradually, the pain in his head sank back to the dull, baseline ache it seemed
to have settled at at some point during the day, and the jittery, panicked rush
generated by the nightmare ebbed away, leaving a hollow weariness in its wake.
One part of the dream had been real. Will Turner really was dead. Elizabeth was
going to fall apart. She adored the lad, anyone could see that, and now he'd
gone and gotten himself killed and she was going to be left all alone.
She didn't know yet. Commodore Norrington had told her that Will had escaped
with the Pearl--confirmation that the Black Pearl had indeed
escaped was the one bright spot in the whole bloody miserable situation—which
meant that she was still unaware of her husband's fate.
Somehow, he had to tell her. Had to see her, to explain, to apologize—for all
the good it would do—to let her know. She had a right to know. Unfortunately,
he seemed to be pretty well stuck here, in a barren jail cell without so much
as a moldy bone with which to tempt the jailor's dog. Not that that would have
done any good anyway, since the dog was nowhere to be seen. If Will had been
there, he could no doubt have levered the cell door open with some fancy bit of
blacksmith-type knowledge, but of course, Will wasn't there. He was dead. And
come morning, Jack would be dead too, and in no position to tell Elizabeth
anything.
Jack leaned his head back against the wall—carefully, so as not to reawaken the
pain that lay in wait to clamp around his head like a vise if he did anything
to aggravate it—and closed his eyes. He didn't sleep this time, though. More
sleep might lead to more dreams, and he had a feeling they would not be the fun
sort involving naked women and lots of money. Or even naked men.
No, these would be the sort of dreams where ships burned and sank and shipmates
died and rotting, undead ex-crew members attacked and ate you. Or the sort
where you looked down at your own hands and watched flesh rot and slough off,
until white bone gleamed up at you in the moonlight. The not-fun sort of
dreams.
The I've-gotten-someone-important-killed-and-lost-my-ship-and-I'm-going-to-die
in-the-morning sort of dreams.
Jack found himself almost wishing that someone else had been captured along
side him. It was good that his crew had escaped, but if one of them—hell, if
anyone else—were here right now, at least he would have someone to talk to.
Something to do beside sit in an empty room and wait. God, he thought rather
resentfully, really shouldn't require him to spend the last night of his life
alone and bored.
As Jack stared moodily at a stream of moonlight that was slowly coalescing in
the steadily darkening air—it was not shining on him yet, but a few more hours
would have it beaming down onto his feet—his ears caught the sound of footsteps
ringing on stone, as someone descended the steps into the jail. A moment later,
the cells were illuminated by a warm circle of yellow light, as a tall figure
stepped into Jack's line of sight, lantern light gleaming on his white wig and
glinting off the buttons of his uniform.
God, Jack decided, had a twisted sense of humour.
"Commodore. How lovely of you to join me." He smiled at the man, a big, toothy,
insincere smile, and waved a hand at the empty doorway behind him. "I see you
left the lad with the hobnailed boots outside." Vicious little bastard was
probably too busy beating up some other prisoner to come.
Norrington didn't dignify the comment with an answer, but merely stared
silently down at Jack with frosty blue eyes. Once the silence had stretched out
just long enough to be uncomfortable, he asked, "Enjoying the Crown's
hospitality, are we?"
"Well, now that you mention it…" Jack let the sentence trail off invitingly,
waiting for Norrington to pick up his verbal fencing sabre and riposte. He
didn't, simply smiled slightly in an irritatingly smug fashion. Elizabeth would
have come right back with a well-bred but stinging put down by this point.
Anamaria wouldn't even have needed words, just a contemptuous snort or a handy
hard object to chuck in his general direction. Even Barbossa would have made
some smiling, condescending threat, managing somehow to convey with the mere
tone of his voice that Jack was younger and more naive than Will. The Commodore
just kept up that stiff, frosty silence, as if responding were beneath him.
"Well, you have to admit," he tried again, "the accommodations leave somethin'
to be desired." Tired of staring up at Commodore Norrington's looming figure,
Jack planted a hand on the wall behind him and heaved himself to his feet.
There was moment of dizzy, floating giddiness, in which sounds seemed to come
from the other end of a long tunnel, and the abnormally stationary ground swung
and dipped beneath his feet. He covered his momentary stagger with a sweeping,
expansive wave of one arm, the gesture taking in the entirety of the jail. "A
lot of somethin's. Somethin' to drink, for example." He smiled hopefully up at
the other man, who still loomed over him like a ship's mast, the sunken floor
of the jail cell exaggerating the difference in their heights. "Surely a
condemned man's entitled to a last bottle of rum." Rum. Just saying the word
brought a sudden awareness of how dry his throat was. Reminded him that he
hadn't had anything to eat or drink since breakfast that morning, and that most
of that had ended up on Norrington's no-longer-quite-so-shiny black boots.
Those glacial blue eyes narrowed with an almost tangible contempt. "The Crown's
resources, Mr. Sparrow, are intended for higher purposes than supplying you
with alcohol."
Well, it had been worth a shot. He had hoped to wring a few smaller concessions
out of the man before going after the big one, but the Commodore was not the
concessions-granting sort. Jack kept his smile in place anyway, leaning against
the bars that separated him from Norrington as if they were there for his
personal convenience, and not as a barrier to keep him in. We're all friends
here, Commodore, and friends do favours for their friends. "Very commendable
sentiment. You'll at least let me say my farewells to the lovely Mrs. Turner
first, of course? Dyin' man's last request, and so forth. I promise, it won't
cost His Majesty a penny."
"Do you take me for a fool?" Norrington demanded. "Of course you can't see her.
I will not give you an opportunity to plot an escape."
"Escape? But it's so comfortable an' cosy here." Norrington's nostrils flared
ever so slightly, and his eyes darkened with irritation. Jack backpeddled
hastily. "Well, not so much cosy as secure. Extremely secure. Nigh inescapable.
C'mon, mate, just a brief chat? You can stand at the door and glare at us the
whole time."
"Mrs. Turner," Norrington spat, stressing the name, "has no need to
associate any further with the likes of you."
"Please," Jack said, not quite able to control a wince at the word, "just let
me talk to the woman. I need…" he trailed off, taking a deep breath. He was not
begging. Captain Jack Sparrow never begged. And he wasn't begging now. Not
exactly. "Someone has to tell her that Will is dead."
"He's what?" Norrington stared at him, shock eloquent in every stiff line of
his body.
"Dead," Jack repeated. He leaned his head forward, forehead resting against the
hard metal line of one of the bars. Saying the words aloud made it feel more
real somehow, took some of the spice out of the semi-pleasurable activity of Norrington-baiting,
which up until then had been serving as a fairly adequate distraction from
thoughts of Will. "Drowned. Gone to Davy Jone's locker. He went over the side
and you hit me before I could do anythin' about it."
Norrington was still staring, his features still beneath that ridiculous white
wig. He seemed to be considering something. "You're certain of this?"
"I don't lie about things this important," Jack said, too tired to be indignant
at the slight on his veracity. "Not to Elizabeth." The metal bars under his
hands and against his forehead were cool, the only cool things in the warm,
humid night. The coolness felt good against his bruised temple, and the ache
behind his eyes receded a bit.
Norrington watched him for another long moment before the tense set of his jaw
relaxed and something that might almost have been regret flickered in his eyes.
"I will speak to Mrs. Turner," he said, voice slightly softer than it had been
before. "You have my word on it."
He turned to go, boots striking solidly on the stone floor as he made for the
doorway and the stairs beyond it. Jack watched him leave, the warm globe of
lantern light moving away with him.
"Wait," he called after him, actually stretching one hand out through the bars
before realizing that that really made it look as if he were begging. He pulled
the offending limb back quickly.
Norrington half-turned, looking back at Jack over one epauletted shoulder.
"You sure you couldn't see you way clear to gettin' me some rum?" Jack asked
again. "Or ale? Or water, even? It's been a long time since this mornin'," he
added, by way of explanation. A drink would help take away the pain of the
headache and the bruises, and while it wouldn't make Will any less dead, it would
make it hard to think about the fact that he was dead.
"Yes," Norrington agreed, "It has been." And he turned away and continued his
climb up the stairs. The heavy oak door at the top of the steps fell closed
behind him with a solid-sounding thud, followed closely by the fainter thud of
a bar falling into place.
A few minutes later, the door scraped open again, and a second pair of booted
feet descended the steps, this time without an accompanying lantern.
Another wig, another uniform, another frown, but this time the uniform coat was
red rather than blue, and considerably less sparkly. The marine set a wooden
tankard down on the floor with a heavy, forceful thud, and used the toe of one
boot to nudge it forward until it was just within Jack's reach.
Jack bent down and snagged it by the handle. He could tell by the scent that it
was water, and not the rum he had asked for, but at the moment he didn't
particularly care. Nor did he care that he had to drink it awkwardly through
the mesh of bars, with the guard watching him the entire time. The water tasted
wonderful, cool and wet against his parched throat, and he drained the entire
tankard, unhealthy liquid humours and all. It wasn't as if he needed to worry
about falling ill.
The moment he removed the tankard from his lips, the marine glowered at him and
pointed meaningfully at the floor. Jack sighed, suppressed the impulse to roll
his eyes—much good strangling the man through the bars would do him with the
keys left hanging on a hook on the opposite side of the room instead of on the guard's
belt—and set the tankard on the floor, then stepped back away from the bars and
spread his arms, displaying his empty, weaponless hands.
The guard stomped forward, snatched up the empty tankard, and stomped out,
grabbing the keys off the hook as he went and depriving Jack of even the
dubious pleasure of gazing at them longingly. Water delivered, water drunk, cup
reclaimed, and all without a single word being spoken.
Jack went back to his spot by the wall and resumed watching the patch of
moonlight, which was now inches from his boots. It was cold too, like the cell
bars. Absently, he fingered the frayed fabric of his left sleeve, worrying at a
loose thread, eyes seeing not the fabric, but the image inked onto the flesh
beneath it. Memento mori.
He found himself sincerely wishing that the jailor still had that little
dog. It would have been nice to have somebody sympathetic to talk to.
^_~
The Port Royal Earthquake: In 1692, half of the city of Port Royal was
destroyed by a violent earthquake and the tidal wave that followed it. Parts of
the town literally sank into the ocean, and hundreds of lives were lost. This
fic is set in the early 1720s, roughly 30 years later. Talk about an event that
would scar a small child for life…
Royal Marines: The redcoated soldiers in the film. Royal Marines,
who wore red like the British Army instead of a naval uniform, served as guards
on naval bases and extra fighting men on warships. A hold-over from the days
when sailors merely handled the ships and soldier were carried onboard to do
the fighting. This, for the curious, is where the US Marine Corps came from.
water: Jack's personal tastes aside, alcohol actually was safer to drink than most water during the eighteenth century, especially in tropical/sub-tropical areas like the Caribbean. Cholera, dysentery, and scores of other nasty little micro-organisms were everywhere (one of the benefits of tea was that, since you had to boil it, the water in it was safe).
^_~
Thank you to all my reviewers!
Merry1: Thank you! Yea! Another Norrington fan! He's not evil, only doing his job. *ponders* I suppose there really isn't a villain in this story, only adversaries.
Calendar: Thank you! I promise, by the end of the next chapter, Jack will, one way or another, be out of the jail cell. He doesn't like it much either.
Mokonopuff & Eledhwen: Thank you! I'm glad y'all are loving the story, if not Mary Rose (she isn't very tolerant on the whole, is she? Still, she serves an important purpose in the plot). The attempts at in-period lingo sort of crept in in the first few chapters, and after that I started making a conscious effort to do it (or at least, to try and avoid obvious modern slang).
Kaitou Ann: Thank you! So, you don't want me to introduce the plucky young female pickpocket I'd been planning to have imprisoned in the cell next to Jack? The one who was going to pick the locks with her hair pin (after tearfully but bravely suffering untold brutalities at the hands of the guards) and free him so that he could help escape with her and help her recover from her fear of men (caused by said guards' mistreatment) with the magic healing power of his love? Damn. I was planning on making her the godmother of Elizabeth's twins.
JexyBaby: Thank you! Sorry about the long lapse between updates. I'll try to get the last two installments out more quickly, eventual Will/Elizabeth/Jack mush and all.
Angel Spirit: Thank you! I'm thrilled that you like the story even though it isn't your usual pairing. Elizabeth and Will are going to stay together, I'm afraid, but there will be an eventual Jack/Will element.
Honor & Anni: Thank you! I'm sorry it took so bleeding long for me to update—life in Ireland is so full of shiny distractions.
^_~
This severely late chapter was brought to you by
Elspethdixon's new Dell laptop, the film Ned Kelly, and, as always, the UCC
computer lab.
Stay tuned for Chapter Fourteen: In Which Elizabeth Acts Most Unladylike.
It's Piratical Escape Attempt III: Return of the Son of The Great Escape.