It was the end, and he knew that.
He was back on his ship with a crew under his command, and the awestruck young lovers he had just assisted were standing on the battlement in a romantic pose: staring deeply into each other's eyes before breaking into a fit of passion and finally allowing themselves their first, tender kiss.
Yes, typical, He thought with a sigh. But as Captain Jack Sparrow sailed away from Port Royal, he couldn't help but feel uneasy. It was not the weather that concerned him, for the evening was generally warm and somewhat picturesque; orange clouds fading into a blue sky with the ocean stretched endlessly out before him. Unfortunately, the girl on the battlement who was so happily embracing her fiancé could not be declared innocent with such ease.
He had been certain -- so bloody certain -- that she had something within her. That she wasn't just another silly girl caught up in romantic encounters and feverish emotion in secretive places. Somewhere, buried beneath the cool propriety she kept with her at all times, he knew that she felt something society wanted no part of: a lust for adventure. He had felt it in her gaze, heard traces of it echoing behind the words of refinement and decorum that fell from her lips. Somehow, on his island, she had let him see her liveliness; even -- heaven forbid -- her sense of humor.
Now... it was gone.
After their drunken talk, after she had consumed nearly as much rum as he did without a single sign of illness, he was sure that she wouldn't be able to return to that life of parties and tea and powdered wigs. He couldn't see her headed back to marry Will Turner after an escapade such as theirs had been; and -- although he wouldn't have liked it much at all, of course -- he was ready to make room for her aboard the Pearl...
Yet, she defied everything he had told himself. She was back there, chained to a residence, to a lifestyle, to a person. She had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to break away from an average situation and live everyone's dream, and she killed it. Not, of course, that Pirates were treated with respect. They were harrassed, but what did she call the sort of treatment the rich gave to the not-so-rich? What did she call the corsets and tight waistcoats that people were forced into for "Fashion's Sake"?
The two of them could have been martyrs, perhaps, if only she hadn't been so willing to give up her freedom. If she would think a moment about her happiness, and not bloody Will's or her father's...
He sighed, staring off into the horizon with a rather dejected expression upon his face. Elizabeth Swann made him anxious, for he knew -- maybe better than anyone -- what freedom and lack of freedom could do to a person. But, it seemed there was nothing he could do for poor, delusional Elizabeth at the moment -- except to keep an eye on her, and patiently wait for the day she would need him to save her.
Something different had been hidden away, after all, and it would only be a matter of time before dear Miss Swann got tired of acting.