The Commodore's Daughter
Chapter Seven
From his place at the wheel of the Black Pearl, Jack could see the port of St. Catherine's Bay as the ship drew near to it. He smiled in anticipation. He had recently discovered the port when he'd needed to remast the Pearl and Tortuga had been too far away. Since then, Jack had made sure that they docked in St. Catherine as often as in his beloved Tortuga. Annamaria in particular seemed to have taken to St. Catherine, and Jack thought it good to let his sharp-tongued female pirate visit her favorite port as often as she could.
He called over his shoulder to Zhao, the midget, "Coming up on St. Catherine!" Zhao nodded to show he heard and began bellowing orders to the other pirates on deck in a loud voice that had surprised Jack at first, coming from such a small body. Now he had grown used to it, though, and focused his attention on bringing the Pearl into the city.
"Captain?" Gibbs' voice came from behind him. "What'll we do with the prisoners?"
There was a problem Jack hadn't considered. He tapped his fingers against the wheel, thinking. "Keep them in the hold," he said finally. "And put another lock on the door." He grinned to himself, remembering what Anna had said about picking the lock. "A strong lock," he added.
"Aye-aye," Gibbs answered. "I'll go do that now." He turned around and left Jack at the wheel, to steer and think.
Mostly his thoughts were on the prisoners – one in particular. Jack's grin widened as he remembered Anna's scarlet face when he had started teasing her. There was no question she was Norrington's daughter – she was snappish, intelligent, and much too moralistic for her own good. She'd never get any fun out of life if she went around blushing every time she saw someone less than fully clothed. Not, Jack reminded himself hastily, that he had any intention of helping her remedy that situation. He had never liked people who were fond of robbing the cradle, and had no intention of being one himself. "Besides," he muttered, "her bloody father would kill me if I so much as winked at his daughter."
A moment later, he snapped at himself, "And just when do I have to justify my choices to myself?" He shook his head to clear it – and almost rammed sideways into the dock. Jack quickly turned the wheel, and the Pearl just barely made it without smashing the dock to pieces. Why had he let himself be distracted, and by that girl?
All in all, Jack was not too happy with himself when he called to his pirates, "All right, mates, you're free men for now! And free woman," he added quickly. The Black Pearl's crew cheered, dropped the various objects they were holding, and raced down from the ship to the dock. Jack was surprised at their eagerness. He supposed that they had probably been at sea for too long – he didn't mind seven months of sea travel, but some of them might. I'll have to make sure we come in to port sooner next time, he told himself as he followed them off the Pearl, formulating a plan as he walked. He would go to his favorite alehouse, get stone drunk, and be carried back to his ship. Then he could rest up for a few days, and when he recovered, Anna Norrington would be the last thing on his mind. Jack smiled. Life could be very good sometimes.
"They're gone," Thomas whispered. His face was pressed against the door, his eye to the keyhole as he strained to see out of it. Then he stood up. "Give me the pin." Elizabeth pulled the pin from her pocket and put it into Thomas' hand. He was quicker now, used to the mechanisms of the lock. "Hold it there, Anna," he whispered when he had the tumblers lined up. As she had done yesterday, Anna copied his fingers' placement on the pin and handed Thomas the feather. With a neat upward twist, he opened the lock, and Anna tried the knob.
It wouldn't turn.
She went white, and looked at the others, horrified. "It won't open!" she gasped, jiggling the knob to show them.
"That little –" Elizabeth almost swore vigorously, but Will caught her eyes and nodded warningly toward the governor, and she fell abruptly silent.
"He must have put another lock on the door," Will said. "We all heard that one unlock. Can you two pick the new one?"
Thomas shook his head despairingly. "It's an outside lock. I can't see it from here."
"Wait a moment." Anna pressed her face to the crack between the door and the wall. "I can see the bolt holding it shut, at least."
Will stood up and walked briskly over to her. "Where? Show me." Anna pointed with the tip of the pen. Will nodded. "Both of you, get back," he ordered Anna and Thomas. He pulled out his boot knife, and they obeyed instantly.
"What are you going to do?" Thomas asked, but Anna held up her hand to silence him. She had an idea from the appraising look on Will's face as he examined the bolt minutely, and he would need silence to concentrate if she was right.
She was. After a few minutes of scanning what he could see of the bolt, Will carefully began to cut away sections of the door with his knife. Once it was far enough away from the wall, he slid the tip of the knife into the opening he'd made and scraped out a shallow indentation in the bolt. Fitting the knife tip into the indentation, Will put pressure on the bolt, slowly forcing it away from the door. When he stepped back, his face was covered in a fine mist of sweat, but the bolt had been shoved out of its place, and the second lock was picked. "There," he gasped, wiping his face with Elizabeth's handkerchief and sticking his knife back into its boot sheath. "It's open."
Anna pushed the door open and peered cautiously out into the hallway. "No one's there," she reported in a whisper. "I think it's safe." She crept out of the room silently anyway, in case a guard had been left. She doubted it, but there was no reason to underestimate Jack. The others filed out quietly after her.
It didn't take long for them to realize that they were, in fact, alone on the Black Pearl. Once they did, though, they sprang into action. It soon became clear that none of them knew a lot about how ships actually moved, but from Will and Elizabeth's albeit minimal experience, and the Norringtons' random pieces of knowledge that they'd picked up, they put together an idea of what had to be done.
First they located the anchor cable. Anna assigned Thomas and the governor to that, saying, "When we give the word, pull on that thing." Then, after various tugs on various ropes attached to the mainmast, they were able to loosen the sails to catch the wind. There was, in fact, a good wind coming from just the direction they needed. Things couldn't be more perfect, Anna thought happily as she, Elizabeth, and Kate made their way down below the deck to the oar galley – Will had been chosen to steer. Granted, Anna wasn't sure of the ability of two young women and a child to be able to man the sweeps, but once Thomas and Governor Swann had the anchor hauled up, they would come down and help. So it was with optimism and rising hope that Anna sat down, gripped the middle of the Black Pearl's bank of sweeps, and sat down to pull.
"No!" Jack protested, shaking his head vehemently and making his hair fly around his head. "No, no, you see, that's not the best way to rig a mast, because that way..." He trailed off. What had he been about to say? He couldn't remember, so he took a gulp of rum to help his thinking. Which tankard was he on now? He vaguely recalled Gibbs telling him that perhaps five was enough, but that had been a long time ago... Jack swallowed down some more and blinked to bring the man sitting across the inn's table into clearer focus. Not that he had been seeing clearly for half an hour at the least...or was it an hour and a half?
Someone was shouting something, and quite loudly, too. Jack twisted around and yelled, "Bugger off, mate!" Then he realized that the person had a hand on his shoulder and was in fact yelling at him. Jack blinked again, staring groggily at someone who looked like Cotton...but no, Cotton couldn't talk...so maybe it was Hendrikson, the Dutchman who was the Pearl's lookout man and climbed the masts like a spider – unless he climbed a spider like a mast... "Who're you?" Jack asked blearily. "The man an' I were tryin' to have a civilized conversation."
The man sighed heavily. "Hendrikson, Captain," said a voice in accented English that Jack's frazzled brain found it hard to understand. "You must come, Captain! At once!" Hendrikson slapped a few coins onto the table to pay for the tankard of rum, took a firm grip on Jack's sleeve, and hauled him bodily out of the tavern.
Once he was outside, Jack could breathe again. He inhaled deeply, but nothing penetrated his rum-induced haze – nothing, that is, until Hendrikson shook him hard and directed his eyes to the horizon. Then he stood up as straight as a ramrod and blinked harder than ever.
There by the docks, was the Black Pearl...slowly inching away from St. Catherine's Bay.
The first feeling that Jack felt was disbelief. Hot on disbelief's heels came pain, and fear, and then anger. Jack Sparrow was not an easy man to anger, but when he was angered, it was harder to obtain his forgiveness than it was to anger him. He threw aside the tankard he still held, after only one more drink from it, and bellowed, "Get the crew out of there!" Shaking off Hendrikson's hand, Jack took off at a dead run towards the docks. Hendrikson, obedient to his captain's wishes, raced no less swiftly back into the tavern, grabbing by the collar and hauling out the Black Pearl's mostly inebriated crew, and decided that later would be a better time to tell Captain Sparrow what he had heard while Jack was getting drunk.
Anna's relief at seeing Thomas and Governor Swann come pounding down into the galley passed away almost instantly upon catching sight of their white faces. "What?" she asked tensely, giving the sweep she held a good pull. The next moment, she gasped and winced. She had felt the Pearl move, but only a little. Her arms felt torn from their sockets, and she had given most of her strength to that one pull. Elizabeth seemed to be faring little better. Her optimism was bleeding away by the minute. "What is it?" she demanded, summoning her strength for another try at the sweep.
"We got the anchor up," reported Thomas, "but I think we'll all be lucky to escape from this caper with our lives." He elaborated on seeing his sister's suddenly stark white face. "There's a dinghy coming after us with the Pearl's crew."
Anna found it hard to breathe. The ship was barely moving, and real seamen would be able to catch up with them and board them. And she was sure Jack would not be as merciful as he was the last time. She closed her eyes in despair and rested her head on the sweep that she would never be able to move. She felt her eyes sting with bitter tears. How was this fair? How was any of it fair? She had been a fool to think they could escape, and now they would all die because of her.
She started up as Thomas shook her hard. "Anna!" he snapped. "We may be doomed, but do you want to go out crying or fighting?" He took a seat in front of her, grabbed a sweep, and hauled at it. "Help me!" he ordered her tersely. Anna sat up, wiped her tears away, and took a fresh grip on the sweep. "Ready?" Thomas asked, glancing at the other side, where Elizabeth and Kate had one sweep and Governor Swann the other. "And pull!" All five of them hauled, and the Black Pearl inched forward.
Why doesn't the wind push us along? Anna wondered desperately. The thought drove home for her how little she knew of ships, and she laughed bitterly at herself as she heaved and strained at the sweep. "Pull!" she yelled, and five pairs of hands made another attempt to move the ship forward.
And then Anna heard the worst sound that had ever reached her ears – the sound of wild relieved yells, and the pound of booted feet on the deck above her. "It's over," she whispered, feeling light-headed with disbelief and fear. "It's over."
Any minute the pirates would come down to the galley and find them. The thought galvanized her into action. "Does anyone have weapons?" she demanded. Thomas nodded – he had raided the weapons cache on board when they had left the hold. "Good. Everyone take one, and stand ready to fire," she ordered. She chose a small pistol for herself and faced the door, holding the gun at arm's length and chest height. "They'll be here any moment," she whispered as her tiny army took positions. "Don't be distracted."
Silence fell on the galley after Anna's whispered words, a silence that disquieted and frightened. Kate, the only one without a weapon, clutched at Elizabeth's skirt. Anna's breathing rasped in her ears, and she breathed in more air to steady her racing heartbeat. The only thought in her mind was Please don't let me die. Please don't let any of us die.
Footsteps ran toward the door, and a shot rang out. "Down!" shrieked Anna, dropping to the wooden floor and pulling Thomas down with her. The bullet fired through the door soared harmlessly over five heads, all tremblingly pressed to the floor. Anna sprang to her feet a moment after the bullet embedded itself in the far wall and fired her own pistol at the door.
The door was shoved open, and four pirates barreled through it, screaming at the top of their lungs. Instinctively Anna stumbled backwards, and the next thing she knew, they had grabbed her and thrown her hard onto the floor, swiping her pistol in the process. They dispatched the others the same way, and tied them up once they were disarmed. Anna lay, shaking, in her bonds, wondering why they hadn't just killed them. Maybe Jack wanted a word before he hung them all.
He did. The captain stepped through the doorway of the galley a few minutes later, all traces of a swagger gone. His eyes were steely and cold. Anna stared mutinously into them, but she shivered as Jack met her eyes, and she flinched away from the raw fury in his gaze.
"Just to let you all know," he said softly, "no one steals this ship from me. Ever. Not ever again. And those who try pay a high price for that." His eyes flashed icily over all of them, coming at last back to Anna. "Savvy?" She nodded, her mouth dry with pure terror. "Good." He turned on his heel and walked out. He slammed the door shut as he left. The sound reverberated throughout the galley, and no one said anything after he had gone. There was really nothing to say.
Chapter Seven
From his place at the wheel of the Black Pearl, Jack could see the port of St. Catherine's Bay as the ship drew near to it. He smiled in anticipation. He had recently discovered the port when he'd needed to remast the Pearl and Tortuga had been too far away. Since then, Jack had made sure that they docked in St. Catherine as often as in his beloved Tortuga. Annamaria in particular seemed to have taken to St. Catherine, and Jack thought it good to let his sharp-tongued female pirate visit her favorite port as often as she could.
He called over his shoulder to Zhao, the midget, "Coming up on St. Catherine!" Zhao nodded to show he heard and began bellowing orders to the other pirates on deck in a loud voice that had surprised Jack at first, coming from such a small body. Now he had grown used to it, though, and focused his attention on bringing the Pearl into the city.
"Captain?" Gibbs' voice came from behind him. "What'll we do with the prisoners?"
There was a problem Jack hadn't considered. He tapped his fingers against the wheel, thinking. "Keep them in the hold," he said finally. "And put another lock on the door." He grinned to himself, remembering what Anna had said about picking the lock. "A strong lock," he added.
"Aye-aye," Gibbs answered. "I'll go do that now." He turned around and left Jack at the wheel, to steer and think.
Mostly his thoughts were on the prisoners – one in particular. Jack's grin widened as he remembered Anna's scarlet face when he had started teasing her. There was no question she was Norrington's daughter – she was snappish, intelligent, and much too moralistic for her own good. She'd never get any fun out of life if she went around blushing every time she saw someone less than fully clothed. Not, Jack reminded himself hastily, that he had any intention of helping her remedy that situation. He had never liked people who were fond of robbing the cradle, and had no intention of being one himself. "Besides," he muttered, "her bloody father would kill me if I so much as winked at his daughter."
A moment later, he snapped at himself, "And just when do I have to justify my choices to myself?" He shook his head to clear it – and almost rammed sideways into the dock. Jack quickly turned the wheel, and the Pearl just barely made it without smashing the dock to pieces. Why had he let himself be distracted, and by that girl?
All in all, Jack was not too happy with himself when he called to his pirates, "All right, mates, you're free men for now! And free woman," he added quickly. The Black Pearl's crew cheered, dropped the various objects they were holding, and raced down from the ship to the dock. Jack was surprised at their eagerness. He supposed that they had probably been at sea for too long – he didn't mind seven months of sea travel, but some of them might. I'll have to make sure we come in to port sooner next time, he told himself as he followed them off the Pearl, formulating a plan as he walked. He would go to his favorite alehouse, get stone drunk, and be carried back to his ship. Then he could rest up for a few days, and when he recovered, Anna Norrington would be the last thing on his mind. Jack smiled. Life could be very good sometimes.
"They're gone," Thomas whispered. His face was pressed against the door, his eye to the keyhole as he strained to see out of it. Then he stood up. "Give me the pin." Elizabeth pulled the pin from her pocket and put it into Thomas' hand. He was quicker now, used to the mechanisms of the lock. "Hold it there, Anna," he whispered when he had the tumblers lined up. As she had done yesterday, Anna copied his fingers' placement on the pin and handed Thomas the feather. With a neat upward twist, he opened the lock, and Anna tried the knob.
It wouldn't turn.
She went white, and looked at the others, horrified. "It won't open!" she gasped, jiggling the knob to show them.
"That little –" Elizabeth almost swore vigorously, but Will caught her eyes and nodded warningly toward the governor, and she fell abruptly silent.
"He must have put another lock on the door," Will said. "We all heard that one unlock. Can you two pick the new one?"
Thomas shook his head despairingly. "It's an outside lock. I can't see it from here."
"Wait a moment." Anna pressed her face to the crack between the door and the wall. "I can see the bolt holding it shut, at least."
Will stood up and walked briskly over to her. "Where? Show me." Anna pointed with the tip of the pen. Will nodded. "Both of you, get back," he ordered Anna and Thomas. He pulled out his boot knife, and they obeyed instantly.
"What are you going to do?" Thomas asked, but Anna held up her hand to silence him. She had an idea from the appraising look on Will's face as he examined the bolt minutely, and he would need silence to concentrate if she was right.
She was. After a few minutes of scanning what he could see of the bolt, Will carefully began to cut away sections of the door with his knife. Once it was far enough away from the wall, he slid the tip of the knife into the opening he'd made and scraped out a shallow indentation in the bolt. Fitting the knife tip into the indentation, Will put pressure on the bolt, slowly forcing it away from the door. When he stepped back, his face was covered in a fine mist of sweat, but the bolt had been shoved out of its place, and the second lock was picked. "There," he gasped, wiping his face with Elizabeth's handkerchief and sticking his knife back into its boot sheath. "It's open."
Anna pushed the door open and peered cautiously out into the hallway. "No one's there," she reported in a whisper. "I think it's safe." She crept out of the room silently anyway, in case a guard had been left. She doubted it, but there was no reason to underestimate Jack. The others filed out quietly after her.
It didn't take long for them to realize that they were, in fact, alone on the Black Pearl. Once they did, though, they sprang into action. It soon became clear that none of them knew a lot about how ships actually moved, but from Will and Elizabeth's albeit minimal experience, and the Norringtons' random pieces of knowledge that they'd picked up, they put together an idea of what had to be done.
First they located the anchor cable. Anna assigned Thomas and the governor to that, saying, "When we give the word, pull on that thing." Then, after various tugs on various ropes attached to the mainmast, they were able to loosen the sails to catch the wind. There was, in fact, a good wind coming from just the direction they needed. Things couldn't be more perfect, Anna thought happily as she, Elizabeth, and Kate made their way down below the deck to the oar galley – Will had been chosen to steer. Granted, Anna wasn't sure of the ability of two young women and a child to be able to man the sweeps, but once Thomas and Governor Swann had the anchor hauled up, they would come down and help. So it was with optimism and rising hope that Anna sat down, gripped the middle of the Black Pearl's bank of sweeps, and sat down to pull.
"No!" Jack protested, shaking his head vehemently and making his hair fly around his head. "No, no, you see, that's not the best way to rig a mast, because that way..." He trailed off. What had he been about to say? He couldn't remember, so he took a gulp of rum to help his thinking. Which tankard was he on now? He vaguely recalled Gibbs telling him that perhaps five was enough, but that had been a long time ago... Jack swallowed down some more and blinked to bring the man sitting across the inn's table into clearer focus. Not that he had been seeing clearly for half an hour at the least...or was it an hour and a half?
Someone was shouting something, and quite loudly, too. Jack twisted around and yelled, "Bugger off, mate!" Then he realized that the person had a hand on his shoulder and was in fact yelling at him. Jack blinked again, staring groggily at someone who looked like Cotton...but no, Cotton couldn't talk...so maybe it was Hendrikson, the Dutchman who was the Pearl's lookout man and climbed the masts like a spider – unless he climbed a spider like a mast... "Who're you?" Jack asked blearily. "The man an' I were tryin' to have a civilized conversation."
The man sighed heavily. "Hendrikson, Captain," said a voice in accented English that Jack's frazzled brain found it hard to understand. "You must come, Captain! At once!" Hendrikson slapped a few coins onto the table to pay for the tankard of rum, took a firm grip on Jack's sleeve, and hauled him bodily out of the tavern.
Once he was outside, Jack could breathe again. He inhaled deeply, but nothing penetrated his rum-induced haze – nothing, that is, until Hendrikson shook him hard and directed his eyes to the horizon. Then he stood up as straight as a ramrod and blinked harder than ever.
There by the docks, was the Black Pearl...slowly inching away from St. Catherine's Bay.
The first feeling that Jack felt was disbelief. Hot on disbelief's heels came pain, and fear, and then anger. Jack Sparrow was not an easy man to anger, but when he was angered, it was harder to obtain his forgiveness than it was to anger him. He threw aside the tankard he still held, after only one more drink from it, and bellowed, "Get the crew out of there!" Shaking off Hendrikson's hand, Jack took off at a dead run towards the docks. Hendrikson, obedient to his captain's wishes, raced no less swiftly back into the tavern, grabbing by the collar and hauling out the Black Pearl's mostly inebriated crew, and decided that later would be a better time to tell Captain Sparrow what he had heard while Jack was getting drunk.
Anna's relief at seeing Thomas and Governor Swann come pounding down into the galley passed away almost instantly upon catching sight of their white faces. "What?" she asked tensely, giving the sweep she held a good pull. The next moment, she gasped and winced. She had felt the Pearl move, but only a little. Her arms felt torn from their sockets, and she had given most of her strength to that one pull. Elizabeth seemed to be faring little better. Her optimism was bleeding away by the minute. "What is it?" she demanded, summoning her strength for another try at the sweep.
"We got the anchor up," reported Thomas, "but I think we'll all be lucky to escape from this caper with our lives." He elaborated on seeing his sister's suddenly stark white face. "There's a dinghy coming after us with the Pearl's crew."
Anna found it hard to breathe. The ship was barely moving, and real seamen would be able to catch up with them and board them. And she was sure Jack would not be as merciful as he was the last time. She closed her eyes in despair and rested her head on the sweep that she would never be able to move. She felt her eyes sting with bitter tears. How was this fair? How was any of it fair? She had been a fool to think they could escape, and now they would all die because of her.
She started up as Thomas shook her hard. "Anna!" he snapped. "We may be doomed, but do you want to go out crying or fighting?" He took a seat in front of her, grabbed a sweep, and hauled at it. "Help me!" he ordered her tersely. Anna sat up, wiped her tears away, and took a fresh grip on the sweep. "Ready?" Thomas asked, glancing at the other side, where Elizabeth and Kate had one sweep and Governor Swann the other. "And pull!" All five of them hauled, and the Black Pearl inched forward.
Why doesn't the wind push us along? Anna wondered desperately. The thought drove home for her how little she knew of ships, and she laughed bitterly at herself as she heaved and strained at the sweep. "Pull!" she yelled, and five pairs of hands made another attempt to move the ship forward.
And then Anna heard the worst sound that had ever reached her ears – the sound of wild relieved yells, and the pound of booted feet on the deck above her. "It's over," she whispered, feeling light-headed with disbelief and fear. "It's over."
Any minute the pirates would come down to the galley and find them. The thought galvanized her into action. "Does anyone have weapons?" she demanded. Thomas nodded – he had raided the weapons cache on board when they had left the hold. "Good. Everyone take one, and stand ready to fire," she ordered. She chose a small pistol for herself and faced the door, holding the gun at arm's length and chest height. "They'll be here any moment," she whispered as her tiny army took positions. "Don't be distracted."
Silence fell on the galley after Anna's whispered words, a silence that disquieted and frightened. Kate, the only one without a weapon, clutched at Elizabeth's skirt. Anna's breathing rasped in her ears, and she breathed in more air to steady her racing heartbeat. The only thought in her mind was Please don't let me die. Please don't let any of us die.
Footsteps ran toward the door, and a shot rang out. "Down!" shrieked Anna, dropping to the wooden floor and pulling Thomas down with her. The bullet fired through the door soared harmlessly over five heads, all tremblingly pressed to the floor. Anna sprang to her feet a moment after the bullet embedded itself in the far wall and fired her own pistol at the door.
The door was shoved open, and four pirates barreled through it, screaming at the top of their lungs. Instinctively Anna stumbled backwards, and the next thing she knew, they had grabbed her and thrown her hard onto the floor, swiping her pistol in the process. They dispatched the others the same way, and tied them up once they were disarmed. Anna lay, shaking, in her bonds, wondering why they hadn't just killed them. Maybe Jack wanted a word before he hung them all.
He did. The captain stepped through the doorway of the galley a few minutes later, all traces of a swagger gone. His eyes were steely and cold. Anna stared mutinously into them, but she shivered as Jack met her eyes, and she flinched away from the raw fury in his gaze.
"Just to let you all know," he said softly, "no one steals this ship from me. Ever. Not ever again. And those who try pay a high price for that." His eyes flashed icily over all of them, coming at last back to Anna. "Savvy?" She nodded, her mouth dry with pure terror. "Good." He turned on his heel and walked out. He slammed the door shut as he left. The sound reverberated throughout the galley, and no one said anything after he had gone. There was really nothing to say.