Disclaimer: see chapter 1
Author's note: Just a brief note to say a huge thanks to everyone who has reviewed this fic - it's surpassed all my other stories in number of reviews and I'm overwhelmed with the positive response. Thank you.
----
The deck was swathed in dark canvas, and their needles were working in and out of the heavy material.
The Black Pearl had been caught by some stray bullets during a raid. Most of the ship's injuries were minor, but one bullet had gouged a long groove in her decking, and there was a three-foot hole in the foresail. With the loot safely on board, Captain Flint had hove to in sheltered waters and set his crew to mending the damage.
Jack and Anamaria were working on the sail with thick needles and tough thread. Her mouth was set in a thin, concentrated line; he kept glancing up at her and saying something daft. Usually she would have retorted with a sarcastic comment, or laughed at him, but since the incidents in Malacca she had been very cool.
"I give up," Jack said, eventually, pushing his needle through the canvas. "What did I do, Anamaria?"
She looked up, and then looked down again at her end of the rip. Jack sighed, and put his needle down, leaning his elbow on his knee and gazing at his friend. "Look, lass, I can't try and put it right if you haven't told me what's wrong."
"Nothing is wrong." Her voice was taut.
"I ain't stupid," Jack persisted. "May look it, sometimes, but I'm not. Something is wrong."
Anamaria jabbed her needle through the canvas into the palm of her hand. "Aie!" She put the needle down, and rubbed her hand ruefully. "You don't know?"
"What I reckon," Jack said slowly, "is that for some reason you've a problem with us going ashore for the lasses. You knew when you joined this ship we're men and we're pirates, Ana - not some delicate fellow with sensibilities." He shuddered. "God forbid."
She looked down, and picked up her needle again. Pushing it through the canvas, she shrugged. "Ouais. That is it. Sort of. It isn't the others, Jack - it is you."
Aha! thought Jack to himself, and he waited for her to continue. Anamaria did another stitch.
"I ... well, I ... I like you," she said, at last. "I mean, I think ... I think that you ..." She blushed under her tan, and tailed off.
Jack nodded. "I wondered," he said. "You keep looking at me."
"So I should not look at a friend?" she returned, with a touch of her usual fire.
"Nah!" Jack laughed. "Course you can look, lass. But you've got to know - you know I think you're great. Good lass, good pirate. But you're ..." he waved his hand in the air, searching for the words, "you're ..."
She shrugged, and managed to give him a faint smile. "Too young, and not your type o' lass."
"Principally too young," Jack said. "And ... an' you're a shipmate. You see?"
Anamaria finished off her end of the tear, and cut the thread with her knife. "I see. But all the same, it is not right that those girls should have to do that to live."
"What girls?" Thornton had come over to inspect progress on the sail.
"The lasses, in Tortuga and the like," Jack explained, his last stitch meeting Anamaria's.
"Oh, they don't mind," Thornton laughed. "Bit o' money, bit o' warmth in their beds. Though it don't surprise me you're not pleased, young Anamaria - wouldn't expect to see you here if you thought well of 'em."
"It's not them she thinks badly of," said Jack, standing up. "It's us, for using their service."
"Well!" Thornton said. "Let's get this sail aloft, shall we?"
With the wind once again filling all the sails, and the repair to the foresail holding up well, Flint ordered a course set for one of the islands visible on the horizon. The sky was cloudless, a bright, insistent blue, and the water foamed under the Black Pearl's keel. With all his tasks carried out, Jack was free for a while, and he went to sit astride the bowsprit. The breeze caught his braids and flapped them about his face, and spray dried salty on his skin. An observer would have seen a smile of pure contentment playing across his lips.
He was enjoying watching a shoal of flying fish leap about around the Pearl's bow when a shout came from far above him. Anamaria's voice, carrying high over the waves.
"Ship ahoy!"
Jack shimmied back down the bowsprit and landed on deck, where all the men were shading their eyes outwards or upwards. Captain Flint's telescope was out, and directed across the port bow.
"Pirate ship!" Anamaria added, calling the news down. "Jolly Roger flying."
"Friendly or hostile?" Carpenter wondered, out loud.
Flint turned to his crew, snapping the telescope shut. "All right, you knaves - all hands prepare to take off some canvas. Main and fore tops. Jump to it!"
They jumped. Soon the topsails were furled tidily, and the jib stowed too, and the ship was moving a little slower in the water. It was now clear that the other pirate vessel, a neat little brig painted dark brown, was heading towards them. Just in case, Flint ordered some of the men to man the cannon, and the rest of his crew to arm themselves. They waited.
Within an hour the brig was close enough to see that her crew was small, only ten men compared to the Black Pearl's complement of twenty or so, and that she was named the Susanna.
"Had a sweetheart called Susie once," Carpenter said, thoughtfully.
"What happened to her?" Jack asked, glancing at Elias.
"She married someone else. Probably just as well."
"Just as well for what?" Jack said, but his question was never answered.
"Black Pearl ahoy!" came a shout from the Susanna. "Heave to aside us?"
"If you mean no harm, aye!" Flint yelled back. He turned to O'Connell, and nodded. The Irishman relayed the order.
"Heave to!"
The ship swung round, Thornton at the helm and the men hauling on the sheets, and came to a standstill. The Susanna, maybe ten yards distant, did the same, and the two vessels stood alongside each other, within easy calling distance.
A man who was clearly the captain of the Susanna, marked out by his good green coat and a white feather in his hat, came to stand by the rail on his ship. "Cap'n Flint, isn't it?"
"Aye, it is," Flint agreed. He had one hand casually resting on the hilt of his cutlass.
"Cap'n McDonagall, here," the other man introduced himself, and Jack realised that he did indeed have a soft Scots accent. "May I come aboard?" Flint hesitated. "Alone?" McDonagall added.
"By all means," Flint agreed. "Mr Carpenter, the gangplank?"
Carpenter hurried to set the gangplank down between the two ships, and with his crew looking on, the captain of the Susanna came aboard the Black Pearl. He held out his hand, and Flint accepted it, shaking.
"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir," McDonagall said. "Heard a lot about ye."
"Have you?" Captain Flint did not sound convinced. He looked down at McDonagall suspiciously.
"Aye, I have. The Black Pearl is famous, cap'n. Fastest ship in these parts."
"Fastest ship in the Caribbean, too," Thornton said under his breath. Flint shot him a sharp look.
"You didn't come aboard to talk about the speed o' me ship," he said. McDonagall shrugged, the feather in his hat bobbing.
"No, that's right, I did'nae. See, I came to warn ye, cap'n. We ran into a ship of the East India Company as we sailed east."
There was silence. The pirates of the Pearl glanced at each other, and then turned to look at Jack.
"Barely escaped, we did."
"Your ship's looking remarkably well if you barely escaped," Flint observed, casting a shrewd eye over the Susanna . Her paint gleamed and her sails seemed new. McDonagall shifted his feet.
"Careened her in Malacca. Gave her an overhaul. Sweet thing, you'll agree."
"Very," Flint said. "Go on, Captain McDonagall."
"So, we escaped barely," the Scotsman went on. "But before we'd gone, they said they were hunting a ship, and a man who'd escaped them but had been seen in the area."
The men's eyes shifted to Jack again. Jack folded his arms and waited for McDonagall to finish his tale.
"Said he was a young thing, tricky, with funny affectations," the captain said. "Beads and what-not. I told 'em that we had nobody by that name aboard the Susie, but they would'na listen, and so we ran."
"And this pirate they were looking for?" Flint asked.
"Odd name. Like a bird, or somethin'. Nightingale, may have been it."
Now everyone turned to stare at Jack, who gestured at himself. "Me? Why're you all looking at me?"
"Been seen in the area?" Flint said, softly.
"There was a drunk sailor, in Malacca," Jack said. "Said he'd gone Dutch. I didn't reckon he'd remember me. Thought it were safe - savvy? Normally it's a safe rule, that a man in his cups won't recall what he saw."
"Everyone remembers you, lad," Thornton pointed out.
McDonagall looked with interest at Jack. "So you're the one? Nightingale?"
"Sparrow," said Jack. "Jack Sparrow."
"Och, lad, you can tell a fellow pirate your name!" the Scotsman exclaimed.
"It's Jack Sparrow," Jack repeated.
"It really is," Flint confirmed. "So, what do you want with him?"
"Me? Nothing!" McDonagall said, smoothly. "I was just dropping off the warning, to a respected purveyor of our ancient trade. Cap'n."
Flint looked hard at McDonagall for a few moments, and then shrugged and let go of the hilt of his sword. "Gains good in this area?"
"Nae bad," the other returned.
"Thank you for the warning," Flint said. "We'll keep an eye out. But the Black Pearl can outrun anything we want to."
The Scotsman nodded. "So I have heard." He held out his hand, and the two captains shook quickly. McDonagall turned, and came across to Jack, looking him up and down. "Well, Mr Sparrow, you're a unique one and no mistake. Is it all show?"
"No, cap'n, it isn't," Jack said. "Else the good folk of the East India Company wouldn't be looking for me, would they?"
McDonagall frowned. "They really want you, too. I'd not be in your boots, lad."
"Good thing you're not, then, cap'n," Jack replied, coolly.
The Scotsman laughed, and extended his hand. "Well, good luck to ye, Mr Sparrow."
Jack grasped the hand, and let go. McDonagall nodded, and walked quickly back down the gangplank to his own ship.
They watched the Susanna turn into the wind and head off, picking up speed as she went, in the direction of Malacca. Flint, his face impassive, turned to his crew.
"All hands to the canvas! Back on to our previous course, Mr Thornton!" Jack hesitated, casting one last look at the other vessel. "That means you too, Sparrow!" Flint shouted, and Jack sketched his captain a quick bow before hurrying up to the mainmast, and to work.
Author's note: Just a brief note to say a huge thanks to everyone who has reviewed this fic - it's surpassed all my other stories in number of reviews and I'm overwhelmed with the positive response. Thank you.
----
The deck was swathed in dark canvas, and their needles were working in and out of the heavy material.
The Black Pearl had been caught by some stray bullets during a raid. Most of the ship's injuries were minor, but one bullet had gouged a long groove in her decking, and there was a three-foot hole in the foresail. With the loot safely on board, Captain Flint had hove to in sheltered waters and set his crew to mending the damage.
Jack and Anamaria were working on the sail with thick needles and tough thread. Her mouth was set in a thin, concentrated line; he kept glancing up at her and saying something daft. Usually she would have retorted with a sarcastic comment, or laughed at him, but since the incidents in Malacca she had been very cool.
"I give up," Jack said, eventually, pushing his needle through the canvas. "What did I do, Anamaria?"
She looked up, and then looked down again at her end of the rip. Jack sighed, and put his needle down, leaning his elbow on his knee and gazing at his friend. "Look, lass, I can't try and put it right if you haven't told me what's wrong."
"Nothing is wrong." Her voice was taut.
"I ain't stupid," Jack persisted. "May look it, sometimes, but I'm not. Something is wrong."
Anamaria jabbed her needle through the canvas into the palm of her hand. "Aie!" She put the needle down, and rubbed her hand ruefully. "You don't know?"
"What I reckon," Jack said slowly, "is that for some reason you've a problem with us going ashore for the lasses. You knew when you joined this ship we're men and we're pirates, Ana - not some delicate fellow with sensibilities." He shuddered. "God forbid."
She looked down, and picked up her needle again. Pushing it through the canvas, she shrugged. "Ouais. That is it. Sort of. It isn't the others, Jack - it is you."
Aha! thought Jack to himself, and he waited for her to continue. Anamaria did another stitch.
"I ... well, I ... I like you," she said, at last. "I mean, I think ... I think that you ..." She blushed under her tan, and tailed off.
Jack nodded. "I wondered," he said. "You keep looking at me."
"So I should not look at a friend?" she returned, with a touch of her usual fire.
"Nah!" Jack laughed. "Course you can look, lass. But you've got to know - you know I think you're great. Good lass, good pirate. But you're ..." he waved his hand in the air, searching for the words, "you're ..."
She shrugged, and managed to give him a faint smile. "Too young, and not your type o' lass."
"Principally too young," Jack said. "And ... an' you're a shipmate. You see?"
Anamaria finished off her end of the tear, and cut the thread with her knife. "I see. But all the same, it is not right that those girls should have to do that to live."
"What girls?" Thornton had come over to inspect progress on the sail.
"The lasses, in Tortuga and the like," Jack explained, his last stitch meeting Anamaria's.
"Oh, they don't mind," Thornton laughed. "Bit o' money, bit o' warmth in their beds. Though it don't surprise me you're not pleased, young Anamaria - wouldn't expect to see you here if you thought well of 'em."
"It's not them she thinks badly of," said Jack, standing up. "It's us, for using their service."
"Well!" Thornton said. "Let's get this sail aloft, shall we?"
With the wind once again filling all the sails, and the repair to the foresail holding up well, Flint ordered a course set for one of the islands visible on the horizon. The sky was cloudless, a bright, insistent blue, and the water foamed under the Black Pearl's keel. With all his tasks carried out, Jack was free for a while, and he went to sit astride the bowsprit. The breeze caught his braids and flapped them about his face, and spray dried salty on his skin. An observer would have seen a smile of pure contentment playing across his lips.
He was enjoying watching a shoal of flying fish leap about around the Pearl's bow when a shout came from far above him. Anamaria's voice, carrying high over the waves.
"Ship ahoy!"
Jack shimmied back down the bowsprit and landed on deck, where all the men were shading their eyes outwards or upwards. Captain Flint's telescope was out, and directed across the port bow.
"Pirate ship!" Anamaria added, calling the news down. "Jolly Roger flying."
"Friendly or hostile?" Carpenter wondered, out loud.
Flint turned to his crew, snapping the telescope shut. "All right, you knaves - all hands prepare to take off some canvas. Main and fore tops. Jump to it!"
They jumped. Soon the topsails were furled tidily, and the jib stowed too, and the ship was moving a little slower in the water. It was now clear that the other pirate vessel, a neat little brig painted dark brown, was heading towards them. Just in case, Flint ordered some of the men to man the cannon, and the rest of his crew to arm themselves. They waited.
Within an hour the brig was close enough to see that her crew was small, only ten men compared to the Black Pearl's complement of twenty or so, and that she was named the Susanna.
"Had a sweetheart called Susie once," Carpenter said, thoughtfully.
"What happened to her?" Jack asked, glancing at Elias.
"She married someone else. Probably just as well."
"Just as well for what?" Jack said, but his question was never answered.
"Black Pearl ahoy!" came a shout from the Susanna. "Heave to aside us?"
"If you mean no harm, aye!" Flint yelled back. He turned to O'Connell, and nodded. The Irishman relayed the order.
"Heave to!"
The ship swung round, Thornton at the helm and the men hauling on the sheets, and came to a standstill. The Susanna, maybe ten yards distant, did the same, and the two vessels stood alongside each other, within easy calling distance.
A man who was clearly the captain of the Susanna, marked out by his good green coat and a white feather in his hat, came to stand by the rail on his ship. "Cap'n Flint, isn't it?"
"Aye, it is," Flint agreed. He had one hand casually resting on the hilt of his cutlass.
"Cap'n McDonagall, here," the other man introduced himself, and Jack realised that he did indeed have a soft Scots accent. "May I come aboard?" Flint hesitated. "Alone?" McDonagall added.
"By all means," Flint agreed. "Mr Carpenter, the gangplank?"
Carpenter hurried to set the gangplank down between the two ships, and with his crew looking on, the captain of the Susanna came aboard the Black Pearl. He held out his hand, and Flint accepted it, shaking.
"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir," McDonagall said. "Heard a lot about ye."
"Have you?" Captain Flint did not sound convinced. He looked down at McDonagall suspiciously.
"Aye, I have. The Black Pearl is famous, cap'n. Fastest ship in these parts."
"Fastest ship in the Caribbean, too," Thornton said under his breath. Flint shot him a sharp look.
"You didn't come aboard to talk about the speed o' me ship," he said. McDonagall shrugged, the feather in his hat bobbing.
"No, that's right, I did'nae. See, I came to warn ye, cap'n. We ran into a ship of the East India Company as we sailed east."
There was silence. The pirates of the Pearl glanced at each other, and then turned to look at Jack.
"Barely escaped, we did."
"Your ship's looking remarkably well if you barely escaped," Flint observed, casting a shrewd eye over the Susanna . Her paint gleamed and her sails seemed new. McDonagall shifted his feet.
"Careened her in Malacca. Gave her an overhaul. Sweet thing, you'll agree."
"Very," Flint said. "Go on, Captain McDonagall."
"So, we escaped barely," the Scotsman went on. "But before we'd gone, they said they were hunting a ship, and a man who'd escaped them but had been seen in the area."
The men's eyes shifted to Jack again. Jack folded his arms and waited for McDonagall to finish his tale.
"Said he was a young thing, tricky, with funny affectations," the captain said. "Beads and what-not. I told 'em that we had nobody by that name aboard the Susie, but they would'na listen, and so we ran."
"And this pirate they were looking for?" Flint asked.
"Odd name. Like a bird, or somethin'. Nightingale, may have been it."
Now everyone turned to stare at Jack, who gestured at himself. "Me? Why're you all looking at me?"
"Been seen in the area?" Flint said, softly.
"There was a drunk sailor, in Malacca," Jack said. "Said he'd gone Dutch. I didn't reckon he'd remember me. Thought it were safe - savvy? Normally it's a safe rule, that a man in his cups won't recall what he saw."
"Everyone remembers you, lad," Thornton pointed out.
McDonagall looked with interest at Jack. "So you're the one? Nightingale?"
"Sparrow," said Jack. "Jack Sparrow."
"Och, lad, you can tell a fellow pirate your name!" the Scotsman exclaimed.
"It's Jack Sparrow," Jack repeated.
"It really is," Flint confirmed. "So, what do you want with him?"
"Me? Nothing!" McDonagall said, smoothly. "I was just dropping off the warning, to a respected purveyor of our ancient trade. Cap'n."
Flint looked hard at McDonagall for a few moments, and then shrugged and let go of the hilt of his sword. "Gains good in this area?"
"Nae bad," the other returned.
"Thank you for the warning," Flint said. "We'll keep an eye out. But the Black Pearl can outrun anything we want to."
The Scotsman nodded. "So I have heard." He held out his hand, and the two captains shook quickly. McDonagall turned, and came across to Jack, looking him up and down. "Well, Mr Sparrow, you're a unique one and no mistake. Is it all show?"
"No, cap'n, it isn't," Jack said. "Else the good folk of the East India Company wouldn't be looking for me, would they?"
McDonagall frowned. "They really want you, too. I'd not be in your boots, lad."
"Good thing you're not, then, cap'n," Jack replied, coolly.
The Scotsman laughed, and extended his hand. "Well, good luck to ye, Mr Sparrow."
Jack grasped the hand, and let go. McDonagall nodded, and walked quickly back down the gangplank to his own ship.
They watched the Susanna turn into the wind and head off, picking up speed as she went, in the direction of Malacca. Flint, his face impassive, turned to his crew.
"All hands to the canvas! Back on to our previous course, Mr Thornton!" Jack hesitated, casting one last look at the other vessel. "That means you too, Sparrow!" Flint shouted, and Jack sketched his captain a quick bow before hurrying up to the mainmast, and to work.