Chapter 4 - Norrington's Story

Norrington had washed and changed into the fresh clothes. He was sat slumped at the table with Jack's bottle of rum by his elbow. He looked a lot steadier than he had before, which probably meant that the bottle was a lot emptier than it had been.

There were all kinds of ways that Jack knew to get people to talk. Some were friendly, others were, well, best used in emergencies. Sometimes it was best to just start simple.

"What happened?" he asked, drawing up a chair opposite the Commodore. Anamaria, who knew her business in this sort of affair, sat down in the corner, so that Norrington could just focus on Jack.

Norrington poured himself another tot of rum and downed it in a gulp. After a brief pause to let it settle, he began.

"We set sail in the Dauntless on the twentieth of July, just for a routine patrol. I don't know how long ago that was."

"It's the sixteenth of August today" replied Jack "so that's" He gave up trying to work it out in his head and started to count on his fingers.

"Twenty eight days" muttered Anamaria.

"Quite right love. Twenty eight days."

"We had good weather for the first three days and just before sunset on the third day we caught sight of a buccaneer a mile or so off our starboard bow. We gave chase and followed them for the next day and a half, got quite close on a couple of occasions, but they lost us in some shoals."

"Did you see the name of the ship?"

"Clementina"

"Aye, I know the one. Captain Shawcross - good pirate. You aren't the first played for a fool in that spot."

Norrington glared, showing a bit of his normal character for the first time.

"I'm sorry Commodore. Please go on"

"I'd just given the order to head about and return to our patrol area when the wind started to pick up. Within a couple of hours it was a full gale and I decided to just ride it out. By the time the wind dropped, about two days later, we were well out of our normal waters and had lost track of our position."

"What direction do you reckon you'd been heading?" A ship lost at sea could meet with some nasty accidents thought Jack, but not many of them so deadly as the one that had afflicted the Dauntless.

"North west. We were heading back towards home when the lookout spotted two ships close together a couple of miles away. One of them was a Navy vessel and there was no sign of hostilities on either side. I hoped that they could give us a precise location for our navigation, so we set course for them."

Jack started to feel cold. He had a horrible idea that he knew where this might be headed. Norrington had started to shake again. He picked up the bottle, but couldn't hold his hand steady enough to pour a tot. Jack took the bottle off him and did it for him.

Norrington sank the measure and continued.

"We were flying colours, they could see who we were. I never saw the name of the second ship, because naturally we approached the naval vessel. She was a ship of the line, First Rate, the Vigilance."

Jack looked at Anamaria for a second. She was sitting frozen with shock in the corner.

"Everything seemed quite normal until we came alongside, no sign that anything was amiss from the men on deck, then they fired all their port guns. Dauntless never stood a chance against a First Rate ship at that range. She must have taken five or six holes below the water line and she started to sink immediately."

"I took the only course of action, gave the order to abandon ship. We managed to launch three boats before Dauntless went down, enough for the men who managed to make it to the deck. They waited until we were in the boats, with nowhere left to hide, and then they started to fire their muskets."

The Commodore fell silent and put his head into his hands. Jack stared across at Anamaria again. They had heard quite a bit about the Vigilance and her captain, but nothing to indicate that he would go this far. Jack could remember a time or two, fighting in close quarters, where things had got bad, very bad indeed, but nothing like this tale. Thank God. No matter how he tried he could not shake the images from his mind, those poor sods, crammed in together as the musket fire slammed in to them. Most of them wouldn't have been able to swim, even if the first volley had spared them to try it.

"I hit my head on the gunwale when my arm was hit and I don't know any more until I came around. I suppose they thought I was dead like the rest. Douglas, my midshipman had taken a bullet through the lung and he fell against me when he was hit. So much blood He was only seventeen. This was his first real posting."

It always felt worse when they were young, thought Jack. As though dying should be less painful somehow for an old man, just because he had longer to work up to it.

"I have no idea what happened to the other two boats, but I was the only survivor in mine. I was feverish from the wounds and the oars were gone. It seemed as though I drifted for days before I washed up on the island. I managed to drag myself out of the boat and find some fresh water. After that I was ill. There was nothing I could do; until you found me."

Best not to mention the graves. If it really had been a couple of days in the boat, under a tropical sun, before they had washed ashore, then the condition of those men when they finally got buried was not something Norrington would want to remember. It seemed typical of the man that he had tried to give his fellows a proper burial. No one would have blamed him, or even known, if he had just sent them out into the lagoon for the fishes.

The story seemed to have come to an end, and for once in his life Jack was stuck for something to say. He was rescued by the rum. Norrington had worked his way through the whole bottle in the course of his narrative and now he had reached the conclusion, he surrendered to its effect, put his head down on the table and slept.

Authors Notes:

This is the chapter that made me up the rating to "R". I'm British and in the UK censors tend to have a much stricter attitude to violence than to sex or language, so I thought I'd be cautious. I hope I got it right!

A "First Rate" ship was the type of warship that carried the most cannon (100 or more). I may be cheating a bit to have such a large ship in the area to do the dastardly deed, but the Caribbean was the scene of a lot of naval activity in the 17th Century, so I hope I can get away with it. I couldn't find any mention of a Royal Navy ship called Vigilance, but if there was (or is) one, then no offence is intended.