A Tale of Two Captains, Chapter 5
By Khylaren and CinnamonGrrl
Commodore James Norrington's calm visage was the very picture of determined resolution. His pale eyes gazed upon a world that, to him, bore few colours but black or white. People like Jack Sparrow and William Turner, like even Miss Swann, puzzled him because they did not seem to see anything except shades of grey. They were shades of grey, and that puzzled him, almost to the point of anger. Sparrow in particular was grey, a smoldering charcoal version of it, with just enough white to redeem him, and make Norrington the slightest bit uneasy about what he was about to do.
There was no compunction in his mind about following the Black Pearl; the most notorious pirating vessel of the past two decades, it was only a matter of time before its shadow-like sails and dark hull were one again seen along the coasts of the richest islands of the Caribbean. Especially with Jack Sparrow at the helm; yes, just a matter of time.
But the man had done some good in his life. Once Mr. Turner had ceased his inappropriate display of affection with Miss Swann upon the ramparts of Port Royal, he had assured the commodore of Captain Sparrow's numerous merits, and she had joined her voice to his in praising the pirate. It was an indisputable truism that if not for Sparrow's undeniable nautical skills, quick wit, and sheer heroism, both Elizabeth Swann and William Turner would both be dead at the hands of Barbossa and his crew.
Ah, Barbossa. Now, there was a man Norrington could understand. Unfailingly immoral, without a moment's pause in his self-serving malignance, there were no puzzling and infuriating variations in his character. No, he was as he was, and Norrington had not been at all troubled to hear of his demise. That was the problem. Norrington was contemplating the inevitable passing of Jack Sparrow, in likelihood at his very hands, and found himself rather definitely puzzled.
A pirate, yes. And as Mr. Turner had asserted, also a good man. Norrington was quite unable to reconcile the two. How could he hang a good man? And yet, how could he not hang a pirate? It was a most disturbing quandary, one that he did not in the least appreciate, and he found himself feeling entirely irate at Sparrow for putting him in this position.
It was perhaps for this very reason that the commodore put his most eagle-eyed sailor aloft with the strongest spyglass the Royal Navy possessed; to cover his doubt, to assuage his ruffled conscience, Norrington applied himself fervently to the task of locating the Black Pearl and its wayward captain. And thus it was not surprising to him when, hours after he had believed the Pearl had well and truly escaped them, an excited shout sounded from the crow's next top the mainmast.
"Commodore!" The young sailor's voice was near to breaking, and the faint sounds of a clearing throat made Norrington tap his shiny-toed boot impatiently as he waited. "There's a skiff hidden by the mouth of the bay!"
Norrington glanced through his own spyglass off the starboard side of the Dauntless. All of this part of the northern coast of Hispaniola was steep embankments plunging suddenly into the sea, thick vegetation crowding around the water's edge. The faded silver-grey of a small watercraft was scarcely visible under a tangle of vines and bracken, but visible it was.
"Indeed, Mr. Peterson," he acknowledged. "And this would interested me, why? It is likely merely an abandoned boat, left to founder."
Now a huff of exasperation came clearly down from the crow's nest. Norrington made a note of it for Peterson's next quarterly personnel report. "Because, sir, there's two men in it." A pause. "Doesn't seem likely that they'd stay in a foundered boat, not so close to shore."
Norrington's eyebrows lifted a fraction as he digested this carefully. "Indeed," he repeated before turning to the officer at the helm. "Very well. Set a course for that inlet, Mr. Harlowe. Mr. Emmons," he addressed the chief gunner, "ready the long nines."
"Sir," protested Lieutenant Gillette, "what if they're just civilians mucking about in their boat?"
"Then, Lieutenant, we shall apologize with all the graciousness of England," Norrington replied, the corners of his mouth curling in a faint smile of satisfaction. "Better that, than allowing our quarry to abscond because we were afraid of embarrassing ourselves."
Gillette's round face flushed, and he nodded before turning away to command the preparation of the guns. Another good man, Norrington thought, but still a long way from becoming more than a lieutenant. If there was one thing he had in common with Jack Sparrow, it was a captain's absolute need for flexibility. When lives and duty rested on your shoulders, pride was of little consequence. The necessity to tailor one's actions to the situation at hand was a necessity at sea. It was… a shade of grey.
Norrington squared his shoulders within the heavy wool of his uniform coat, and smiled. Perhaps Sparrow with his charcoal and gunmetal tones was not so very different from he, after all.
He himself took the wheel to guide the Dauntless into the bay. The left side was rocky cliff, only a few hardier bits of plant clinging to its sheer face, but the right side was a more gentle slope to shore, and at the far end he could just make out another, smaller inlet. As he watched, a burst of colour erupted with a squawk from the skiff and, after a brief moment of awkward flapping, began to make its way toward the nearly-hidden entrance to a small inlet on the inner left side of the bay. Suddenly, Norrington knew with perfect clarity of Sparrow's location..
"Commodore?" Gillette inquired, startled by the sudden avid gleam in his commander's eye.
"All hands on deck," Norrington murmured, "and all gunners to stations." Gillette's own eyes widened, but he turned and relayed the orders at the top of his lungs. By the time the Dauntless swung in the wide arc it needed to turn direction, Norrington found his interest captured by the imposing sight confronting him.
Halfway down the inlet was the Black Pearl, but instead of sitting in the water length-wise along the inlet, it stretched across it so it faced the mouth, and thus the Dauntless, broadsides. And it wasn't until a flash of fire and smoke erupted from that broadside that Norrington noted (with grudging admiration) that there appeared to be far, far more guns facing them than he recalled from his recent endeavors with that ship.
His admiration swiftly faded, however, when a ball ripped into the Dauntless, causing the mighty ship to shudder as splinters erupted from the new gaping wound in its side. "Fire!" he shouted, knowing his men heard him even over the raucous din of cannon fire impacting them. The deck became a maelstrom of smoke and flame as tinder was touched to fuse; the rumbling of heavy cast-iron recoiling back and loud report of the explosives teamed with the acrid stench of tense sweat, damp wool, and gunpowder.
When the first volley from the long-nines smashed into the Black Pearl, a roar of approval rose among the marines aboard the Dauntless. Norrington thought he discerned a howl of protest that sounded suspiciously like "Stop blowing holes in my ship!" but that couldn't be correct, no. He glanced over at Gillette, who was pacing back and forth, occasionally uttering additional commands to the marines and gunners on the main deck. Though the Dauntless was taking a beating, it was nothing she couldn't easily withstand. Again and again, her guns roared, and the Pearl's responses grew fewer with each thundering volley sent at them.
Until at last, the guns of the Pearl fell silent.
Through the looking glass, Norrington could see the scrambling going on the decks of Sparrow's ship, but the cannon lay quiet. A moment later, and a flag was run up the main mast. But not the white flag, as he'd have expected from any other captain. Any other sane captain, he amended silently. No, it was the flag of parley. Sparrow, apparently, wanted to talk.
"Bloody hell," Norrington muttered. He'd already heard enough talking from Sparrow to last a lifetime.
~ * ~
Jack closed his eyes and leant his forehead against the battered wood of the great wheel that steered his beloved ship. All around him, his crew was almost completely incapacitated. His own ears still rang from the loud report of so much cannon fire, and his eyes stung from the smoke.
Ordinarily, it would have been bloody glorious.
But not this time. The Pearl had been manned with the scantest skeleton crew possible, and now almost every one of them was injured from the fight. Gibbs sported a nasty gash on his brow, Anamaria's sleeve was stained red from where a splinter had pierced her arm, and Jack himself had been blown over when the Pearl had rocked violently from one particularly strong volley, with the result that his knee had smashed into the base of the mizzenmast hard enough to make him see stars.
Worse than that, the Pearl felt differently under his feet. Always, she had spoken to him, whispered in his ear of the secrets of the sea. And now, she was not so much whispering as whimpering. "Aye, darling," Jack muttered to her, and patted the wheel with sad affection. "It's over, now." She'd fought valiantly, the Black Pearl and her crew, but there was nothing more to be done. He would not subject her to more demolition, but the idea of surrender galled him to the depths of his murky soul.
"Ladbroc," he said to the crew member who appeared less injured than the others, "run up the flag for parley." Jack watched as Ladbroc did as he was bid, gaze intent and burning with anger and loss and more than a touch of bitterness. He'd only just got the Pearl back, blast it. He felt a wail of "it's not fair!" rising in his throat, and clenched his jaw to contain himself.
Then he saw a flash of ruddy hair toward the bow, and realized he hadn't spared a single thought for Janeway the entirety of the battle. Pushing himself gingerly to his feet, he bounced a little to test his knee. Sore, but usable. Jack fell into his usual sauntering rhythm as he moved, striding as purposefully as he ever did toward her.
She was crouched beside Quartetto, sponging blood splatters off his face and trying to smile reassuringly at the man. How she managed even that was a miracle, as Quartetto's right leg was twisted into what should have been an impossible angle. She looked up, and he caught the faintest shadow of worry in her eyes before she recognized him, and then the relief set in.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, standing with a grimace. He reckoned she was sore, if she'd been hunched over caring for the wounded throughout the duration of the battle. She rubbed at the back of her neck, and then he knew that's exactly what she'd been doing. Unaccountably, he felt a little twist inside that she would go out of her way to tend to a ragged bunch of pirates.
"No, love," he replied, and then put lie to his words by wincing when a wave caused the deck to undulate beneath his feet, jarring his knee. She was there in a heartbeat, trying to get him to sit, but he refused. "No, madam," he insisted with growing testiness. "I'll not have the victorious commodore find Captain Jack Sparrow sitting on his backside when his ship is boarded."
A shout alerted them to the need to lower a ladder to the expedition from the Dauntless, and Cotton flung one over the side with his unwounded arm whilst his parrot shrieked in protest.
"Morte aux anglais!" the bird cried as the first bewigged head popped over the port railing. "Morte aux anglais!"
Jack heaved himself away from her. "Couldn't have said it better meself," he muttered, then reached up to settle his hat more jauntily on his head. Then he deftly twirled the ends of his moustache, eyes fixed on Janeway's the entire time. "Stay here," he told her firmly. "And don't do anything… stupid." Then he left her there, striding away to meet his destiny.
He wished there'd been time for him to sneak a kiss. Alas.
"Commodore!" he exclaimed cheerily, as if his ship hadn't just been blown half out of the water by the man. "How good to see you again."
Norrington ignored the grimy hand being extended to him, preferring instead to quirk an impossibly aloof brow. "Indeed, Mr. Sparrow. I—"
"That's… Captain Sparrow," Jack interrupted, bowing a little, hands together as if praying. "Captain."
Norrington took a deep breath, then thought better of it when Crimp came to stand rather closely to him. Crimp was, if Jack remembered correctly, the crewmember with that unfortunate and marked aversion to bathing. Norrington coughed, just once. Remarkable self-control the man had. Honestly.
"Captain Sparrow," Norrington amended, emphasis on the word connoting that he attached little to not respect to the title, "You affected a daring and dramatic escape from Port Royal three days ago. We were all suitably impressed, were we not, Mr. Gillette?" He glanced sideways at his lieutenant, who smirked and nodded. "But I am afraid that your capture has merely been postponed, not eliminated."
"Ah, I was afraid you'd say that," Jack said sadly. "But is there no mercy in your soul for me crew?" He looked left and right at the tattered remains of his men. "They've had no share of my piracy. 'Twas only a week ago that Will Turner and I picked them up on Tortuga. There's been no marauding since, as you well know… we were too busy rescuing the lovely Elizabeth Swann, Will and I." He sighed happily. "Ah, young love. Warms the cockles, it does."
Norrington's eyes narrowed; Jack knew he was treading on thin ice, taunting the commodore with his so-recent and doubtlessly painful loss of the beauteous Miss Swann to the lowly yet appealingly earnest blacksmith who'd adored her from afar for so long. But Jack had always been one to prod a bruise. "I have a proposal for ye, Commodore," Jack continued slyly.
Norrington sniffed. "You are hardly in any position to make any type of proposal, Sparrow."
"Ah, but you haven't heard it yet," Jack purred back.
A muscle clenched in Norrington's jaw, and it was clear he was barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes.. "Let's hear it, then."
"I propose," Jack said with an ingratiating smile, sunlight winking off his golden tooth, "that you take me by me onesies back to Port Royal for another of them so-called trials you put me through last time, and leave the Pearl here with me crew, free to take to wherever their hearts shall desire."
A snooty brow moved skyward. "You have already enjoyed the benefit of His Majesty's justice system, Mr. Sparrow. All that remains is the execution of it." He paused for effect. "And you."
Jack waved a negligent hand. "Details," he drawled. "Whether you take me for trial or hanging, the point remains that you'll be takin' me, and leaving me ship here, aye?" Norrington remained silent; Jack leaned in close. "Do we have an accord, Commodore?" he pressed.
Norrington was silent for so long that even Gillette began to shift a little nervously. "No, we do not," the commodore replied at last. "And shall I tell you why?"
"By all means," Jack replied, sweeping his arms outward in a gesture of mocking invitation.
"Because I do not trust Mr. Turner and even Miss Swann to restrain themselves from attempting another heroic rescue." His eyes were cold and hard in his pale English face, but there was also a tinge of regret, 'round the pupils if Jack weren't mistaken. He wondered what it must be like for a man to be so damned rigid.
Jack reeled back dramatically, his own dark brows raising with skepticism. "So, you're going to do what? Hang me here?"
"Yes, actually," was Norrington's reply. "I rather thought I would."