Caribbean Crusades

Chapter 2

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Hey, it's me again. Thank you to all those who read my last chapter. I decided to post this chapter to give you guys something more to read, cause I know a story's kind of boring with only one chapter to read.

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I slowly pushed the back door to the blacksmiths open.

"Will?" I called. "Will, are you here?" I got no answer.

I motioned for Jack to come in and he headed over towards the anvil, picking up the hammer that was lying next to it.

That was when Brown dropped his whiskey bottle. Surprised, Jack twisted around to see what the noise was, and noticed Brown.

"Don't worry, he just sleeps all day." I said. "Here, gimme that." I grabbed the hammer and started bashing away at the cuffs with all my strength, but it wasn't enough.

Jack looked around the room and made his way over to some piece of blacksmiths' apparatus, the one attached to the donkey. Will once told me what it was for, but I forgot now.

Jack seemed to have a plan and he pulled a hot poker out of the fire and burned the donkey's butt. He broke the chains, leaving the ends of then on his wrists.

"Well, thankee for all your help, luv, but I really must be going now." Jack said, kissing me on the cheek as he turned to leave.

"Wait. I want to come with you." I said.

Jack looked at me incredulously. "Why would you be wantin' to do that?"

"Because I'm tired of living the life I'm living. I want to be a pirate."

"A pirate, luv?"

"A pirate. And I'm coming whether you like it or not." I said, grabbing my sword off the hook on the wall. I strapped the belt around my waist. "Okay, I'm ready, let's go."

I could see Jack rolling his eyes.

That was when the front door creaked open. Will was back.

"Hide." I hissed under my breath. Jack retreated quickly into the shadows.

"Sam?" he looked surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"Err…waiting for you." I bluffed.

"Um, okay. If you'll wait a minute, I'll get my sword and practise with you." He made his way over to the anvil, where he spotted Jack's hat. "What's that doing here?" he mused under his breath. He reached for it, but was stopped by Jack's sword. Will pulled his hand back and turned and looked Jack in the face. "You're the one they're hunting. The pirate."

"Jack, you dumb idiot! What'd you do that for!" I yelled at him.

"Wait a minute. You know him?" Will asked me, looking horrified.

"So what if I do?" I retorted.

"You seem somewhat familiar. Have I threatened you before?" Jack cut in.

"I make a point of avoiding familiarity with pirates."

"Ah. Well, it'd be a shame to put a black mark on your record. If you'll excuse me." Jack turned to leave, but Will pulled out his own sword.

"Sam, get out of here." Will commanded.

"Nah uh. No way, this is too good." I said, folding my arms defiantly.

Will turned back to Jack. "You threatened Miss Swann."

Jack grinned. "Only a little."

I positioned myself on the bench behind me, sitting cross-legged, getting ready for a good show. Pirates were always good sword fighters, but I also knew Will's abilities. I was curious as to how this fight would pan out.

They parried for a while.

"You know what you're doing, I'll give you that. Excellent form but how's your footwork? If I step here very good. Now I step again." Jack said, as he and Will continued fighting, but mirroring each other's footsteps. "Ta." Jack said, sheathing his sword and making for the door. He was just about to open the door when Will threw his sword, making it stick in the door, blocking Jack's escape. Jack's eyes widened at the close call and he grabbed the end of the sword, stopping it from wobbling. He unsuccessfully tried to pull it out, but it wouldn't budge.

"That is a wonderful trick except once again you are between me and my way out. And now you have no weapon." Jack said, advancing on Will again. Will pulled a sword out of the fire, and the tip was red-hot. Jack looked surprised and quickly started parrying Will's blows again.

"Who makes all these?" he asked.

"I do." Will said, parrying a blow. "And I practise with them three hours a day."

"You need to find yourself a girl, mate! Or, perhaps the reason you practice three hours a day is that you already found one and are otherwise incapable of wooing said strumpet. You're not a eunuch, are you?" Jack said, looking down.

I laughed out loud, causing both of them to look at me. "He has found a girl, although he won't admit to anyone that he likes her." I piped up. Will frowned at me. "Sorry. Carry on." I motioned for them to keep fighting.

"I practice three hours a day, so that when I meet a pirate, I can kill it."

They both jumped on a cart, which see-sawed under them. Will hooked a knife into the remainder of the irons that were attached to Jack's left wrist and embedded it in the beam above. Jack hit a loose board, which threw Will off the cart.

I watched excitedly. I wasn't sure who I wanted to win. The guy who taught me how to sword fight and had been my friend for as long as I could remember or the mysterious pirate who I'd just met.

Jack swung his legs up and pushed against the roof to try and use his body weight to get the knife out of the roof. It did just that, and he fell back onto the cart just as Will jumped back on it, which sent Will flying into the rafters. Will, deciding that Jack deserved the same treatment, cut free a large sack, which vaulted Jack up into the rafters as well. They continued fighting as they jumped from beam to beam.

Okay, now they're just showing off, I thought, rolling my eyes.

Suddenly, Will knocked Jack's sword out of his hand, but Jack, never to be defeated, slit open a bag of sand and sprayed it all over Will, who threw his arms up over his face to protect his eyes. Jack pulled out his pistol, and pointed it at Will.

"You cheated!" Will protested.

"Pirate!" Jack explained.

The sounds of the redcoats trying to break open the door filled the workshop.

"Move away." Jack instructed Will, waving the pistol around.

"No." Will said stubbornly.

"Please move." Jack said, getting slightly panicked now.

"No! I cannot just step aside and let you escape."

"This shot is not meant for you." Jack said, before getting hit on the head by Brown with his empty whiskey bottle. Trust him to wake up now.

A still soggy Norrington and his band of merry men broke the door down and rushed in, seeing Jack and Brown with the broken bottle still in his hand.

"Excellent work, Mr. Brown. You've assisted in the capture of a dangerous fugitive." Norrington congratulated.

"Just doing my civic duty, sir." Brown slurred.

Civic duty, my foot.

"Well, I trust you'll always remember this as the day that Captain Jack Sparrow almost escaped. Take him away."

Bloody Norrington. He turned to me. "Samantha, I'm very disappointed in your behavior. I would have thought you were brought up better than this." I crossed my arms and didn't reply. He turned to his soldiers. "Take her away also. She deserves to spend the night in a cell for being in cahoots with the pirate."

Two redcoats grabbed me from either side and lifted me off the ground. I started kicking my feet about.

"Put me down, dammit! I can walk own my own thank you very much! Bloody Norrington!"

After dragging me down to the jail, I didn't make it easy for them, I must add, they locked me in the cell with the still unconscious Jack.

I sat on the outcropping, bored stiff until Jack woke up. He groaned and reached up to the back of his head and rubbed it.

"Welcome back to the land of the living." I said.

"What happened?" Jack asked, shuffling back so he was leaning against the wall.

"The normally comatose Mr Brown decided that he'd join the party in doing his 'civic duty' and do a little bit of headbanging with his empty whiskey bottle."

"You are very unlike any lass I've ever met." Jack commented.

"Good thing or bad thing?"

"Good thing. So how does a lass like yerself decide that she wants to throw herself in cahoots with a pirate?"

"Since she decided that she hated living the high life and became fascinated with pirates."

"What made her decide that?"

"Do we have to talk about me in third person?" I asked. Jack grinned and shook his head. "Well, imagine this. You would rather spend the day in comfortable clothes, at the beach or on a boat at sea, but your parents insist that you dress up in horrible dresses and you're stuck at formal dinners with boring people."

"Well, I don't know much what it's like to be wearing a horrible dress, and being stuck at formal dinners, but I know the sea, and I know freedom, so I can understand what yer sayin', luv."

"So, Jack, what about you? Why did you get into pirating?"

"Long story. Very long story."

"We've got a long time."

"Not me, luv. My hours are numbered." Jack said, but he didn't seem too unhappy about it. It was almost as if he knew that he'd get out somehow.

Not knowing what else to say, the conversation grew dead after that, and we sat in silence, listening to the prisoners in the other cell try and coax the dog to them.

"Come here, boy. Want a nice juicy bone? Come here. Come on."

"You can keep doing that forever, the dog is never going to move." Jack said.

"Oh, excuse us if we haven't resigned ourselves to the gallows just yet." One of the prisoners retorted.

We sat in silence for a while longer, then I heard the faint sounds of cannon fire.

"I know those guns." Jack said, he jumped up and looked out the window. "It's the Pearl."

One of the prisoners from the other cell pressed up against the bars. "Black Pearl? I've heard stories. She's been preying on ships and settlements for near ten years. Never leaves any survivors." He said with a small, scared voice.

Jack turned around and looked at the prisoner as if he was incredibly stupid. "No survivors? Then where do the stories come from, I wonder?"

The prisoner seemed to think about this for a second.

Jack suddenly jumped down from the window and a second later a cannonball hit the stone wall and it crumbled, leaving a large hole in the other cell, and not even enough to fit a head through on our side.

The prisoners in the other cell crawled out. "My sympathies friends, you've no manner of luck at all." One of the prisoners said to us.

"So what are you going to do now?" I asked Jack, seeing as he acted as if he was the all-knowing one.

Jack didn't answer, and instead looked around the cell. He picked up a scrap of bone and stuck his hand through the bar. I rolled my eyes when I realised what he was going to do.

"It's been tried and failed, Jack." I said.

"Maybe so, but you forget. I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy?" Jack said, grinning at me.

"How could I have forgotten?" I said sarcastically, hitting my forehead.

Jack turned to the dog and shoved his hand out between the bars, holding the bone. "Come on, doggy. It's just you and me now. It's you and ol' Jack, come on. Come on, good boy." Well, would you look at that, the dog started to inch closer. "That's it, good boy, come on! Bit closer, bit closer. That's it, that's it, doggy. Come on you filthy, slimy, mangy cad." There was a crash and the guard came rolling down the stairs. The dog ran off. "No, no, no, no, no, I didn't mean it. I didn't..."

Two ugly pirates stomped down the stairs.

"This ain't the armory!" stated one of them.

No, really? I couldn't tell.

The other one saw Jack, and advanced slowly towards the bars, taunting Jack. "Well, well, well, look what we have here, Twigg. It's Captain Jack Sparrow."

"Last time I saw you, you were all alone on a godforsaken island, shrinking into the distance. His fortunes aren't improved much." Twigg mocked.

"Worry about your own fortunes, gentlemen. The deepest circle of hell is reserved for mutineers and betrayers." Jack said, all calm and collected.

The pirate shot his hand through the bars and grabbed Jack's neck, revealing a skeleton arm in the moonlight. Whoa! I shuffled towards the back of the cell, getting as far away from the skeleton arm as I could. But I suppose you could never be too far away from a living skeleton. I pushed up against the wall.

"You know nothing of hell" the pirate growled in a low voice.

"So there is a curse. That's interesting." Jack mused, seemingly not affected by the fact that he had a skeleton arm clutching his neck.

The pirate let go of Jack's neck, and then they left, stomping up the stairs, back where they came from.

"That's very interesting." Jack said, rubbing his chin.

"Jack?" I squeaked. Squeaked! I was very disappointed in my voice at that moment. I cleared my throat. "What was that? Is it just me, or was that a SKELETON arm that just grabbed your throat!?"

Jack grinned at me. Something I would have never guessed would happen after…well, after what just happened. "Yeah, that was a skeleton arm, but don't worry, luv. That's actually a good thing."

Good thing? Being on a first-name basis with the living dead? Yeah, whatever, I thought, leaning back against the wall, deciding that I'd get a bit of shut-eye before the morning. If that was even possible, with all the dancing skeletons on the inside of my eyes.

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Well, there's the end of another chapter. Hope you enjoyed it. Next chapter will be up soon.

Now I'm gonna go order my copy of POTC online now cuz we won't get it until ages! It's still showing in cinemas here! *sneaks off and steals mum's credit card…* Heh heh.

Bye!

~Rhi