It was surprising he'd not given himself away; he was not an actor, he could not keep the flare of fear from his eyes when he glanced up and found Jack watching. But thankfully, Sparrow seemed to have taken it as further evidence of his maidenish modesty, and not looked closer. There was some advantage in being known as a prig.
From the tinder box kept below the lamp in Jack's cabin he had taken one of the flints, which he kept rolled up in his shirt cuff. These two disparate ingredients were the closest thing to a weapon he had yet managed to find - the pirates slept with their cutlasses and pistols, and kept an unerring eye on him when axes and marlin spikes were in use. He found it reassuring to know he had some secret advantage, but it would have helped his mood greatly if he'd known what he meant to use it for, and how, and if he had not had to contend with being embarrassingly explosive in the mean time. The danger was one thing, but he was sure that not even in the afterlife would he be able to bear the shame of having accidentally blown himself up.
Now he considered abandoning the powder - it would certainly be of material disadvantage in any boarding action against the Conquerant. As he was relying on the smoke and confusion of such a battle to enable him to arm himself with some dead Frenchman's sword and pistol, it would be a hazard at the very point where he needed it least. But it felt too much like defeat to let go of even this one small possibility of surprise. Unhappy though he was at admitting it, he knew he was not as cunning, as machiavellian as Sparrow, so any other advantage he could lay hands on should be exploited to the full, even if he didn't yet know how.
"Le Pelley," he said, leaning gently over the great chart of Guadeloupe's torturous coastline - spread on the table in Jack's cabin and weighted down by a full rum bottle, a brass monkey, a soup plate and a shrunken head - "will almost certainly be here, heading for home after a successful sweep on the trade route between Georgetown and Port Royal. If we lay off the headland of this cove we should be invisible both to the fort and to the Conquerant herself until she's almost on top of us. A swift action and you can be away before the French fleet even knows you're there."
Jack walked his fingers over the map, calculating angles. Tilting his head to one side, he frowned, bit his lip, waved his hand in a non committal way, sidled backwards, then grinned. "It's not a bad plan at that. Dull." He nodded, as if to agree with himself that yes the plan was very dull. "Not much call for feeling m'lovely Pearl's wings. Not a flying plan, with a rush and a chase and a 'let slip the dogs of war'. Which is not to say I'm not denying that it might very well work. Because it might at that. It's just a little, well, Commodore-ish, if y'catch m'drift."
"I fail to see why everything must be a drama." Sparrow could afford to have flying plans, James thought, as could any man in possession of the fastest ship in the Caribbean. The Dauntless, bless her valiant heart, was not by any stretch of the imagination a cutter, so Norrington had learned to anticipate where the prey would be, and to lie in wait. As this had proved an extremely successful strategy, he felt no need to apologize for it. "But I'm sure we could fit in some zombie skeletons if you feel it would add to the ambience."
Sauntering to the cabin's largest chest, Jack gave him a smile of such radiant mischief that he felt, very briefly, a wish that he could be equally carefree. He shook it off, as a child's desire, not a man's, just as the pirate raised an explanatory finger in his direction. "Your lieutenant Gillette - now there's a lad who could do to get into a different line o'work - gave me this idea. Had been saving it up for him, but I'm guessing he won't be commanding a ship o'is own in the near future, and it's callin out to me. Jack, Jack, it's sayin' I'm gettin' s'bored o'sittin in yer head. Let us out! So y'can see if it'd have the same affect on a different Frenchman - a more French Frenchman, agreed?"
And he pulled from the chest a high piled, elaborately curled lady's wig, and a froth of blue material which shook out to form the tapering sweep of a tail. "Done zombies. Always a bad mistake to do the same thing twice. But mermaids - mermaids luring the poor doomed ship into the grasp o' the notorious pirate? Now that's a tale worth telling. Right legendary eh?"
.oOo.
Looking up at the youngest of the pirates - Matelot and a fine-featured, elegant Chinaman whose name he did not know - sitting on the headland attired in tails and flowing locks, scowling at the horizon, Norrington had to admit that this would not have formed an element of one of his plans. Of course that might be because he would not dream of subjecting Groves or Gillette to such an indignity. He tried not to snort with laughter at the thought and succeeded in only coughing delicately into a hand that covered the tell tale smile.
"Even men who've been at sea for months are not that desperate, surely?"
"French," said Jack, dismissively. "And a man that'll pine for a eunuch'll pine for a lass who's half fish, like as not. No accounting for taste." There was an element of readiness to his relaxation, as he swept the decks with a proper Captain's look - the clutter had been cleared and the splinter nets rigged, the guns run out ready for action almost as sweetly as a proper Naval crew could do it. Norrington turned his eye back to the mermaids. In addition to being a distraction they were the Pearl's lookouts, for on deck, even in the crows nest, only the bay's rocky sides could be seen, dotted with guillemots and speckled with clinging grasses that hissed in the warm wind. A strong breeze came off the headland, lush with the scent of jungle, and if Le Pelley shortened sail as he came around the point - the better to gawp at real live mermaids - then the Pearl, in addition to surprise, would have the weather gauge of him.
The anticipation of action began to curl slowly through Norrington's blood, and his fingers itched for a sword. Not long now, and the pirates would be too distracted with fighting to keep an eye on him. Doubtless Sparrow thought he had chosen the Conquerant as prey because, whoever won, one more threat to British shipping would be removed. And that was true enough. Whatever happened, James would have the satisfaction of having dealt another blow to his country's enemies, and done it while powerless and imprisoned.
But what he had not told Jack - nor would, for it formed the secret kernel of his own strategy - was that Le Pelley had been targeting British sloops, making a small fortune in head money for captured officers and men of the Royal Navy. If luck and the best intelligence held, Le Pelley's brig would be full of angry Englishmen. In the confusion of battle, all Norrington had to do was to get aboard the Conquerant, sneak down to the hold and liberate them - and then.. then things would become a little more even, and considerably more interesting.
There was a cry, reedy and thin down the wind. The lookouts were signalling, turning their flailing gestures abruptly into pantomime beckoning. Jack's face was alight with a joy Norrington recognized only too well - he could feel it dancing through his own bones, an intoxication with danger and death that made life seem wholly brilliant and bright, swift as shot, sharp as a blade.
"Weigh anchor! Full sail! Up into the rigging ye swabs and lively with it!"
The sails sheeted home. Pearl shuddered like a race horse gathering her haunches beneath her, and sprang forward. For a moment James was entranced by the long, eager glide of her through the waves; the song of the rigging scaling up from deep to shrill as topsails and togarnsls followed courses. The masts bent beneath sudden strain, eased back bravely as she began to fly.
The Conquerant came into view around the cape, and yes, she was spilling her wind, listing to port as all her complement crowded to the rail to see the mythical maids. Even the lookout had his glass trained on the waving decoys - Matelot blowing him a kiss - as the Pearl ran out behind them, stole the very wind from their sails and began the turn for a broadside. James kept his breathing even and deep with some effort. Soon... soon the privateer would be close enough for him to leap the gap, lose himself in the knots of fighting men. The chance tasted like brandy; warming, soaring. He was ready.
"Gibbs? Take the Commodore below and lock 'im in the brig. Don't want i'm gettin no ideas now do we?"
Sparrow watched him with a mocking little smirk as his fighting spirit became fury. Damn it! That was not how it was supposed to work! In the brig? Locked in the hold like a civilian? Unable to do anything until it was over? No!
"Anyone'd think y'didn't want t'stay in our fine company, James. A man could feel unappreciated."
As if he'd decided that plainly one was not quite enough to be certain to kill, Gibbs had a pistol in each hand - one trained on Norrington's face, the other at his heart. There was just a touch of apology in his determination, but nowhere near enough for Norrington to feel charitable towards him. Bloody pirate!
"Down'ee go then, sir."
Only bitter, ingrained pride prevented Norrington from answering him with a string of curses. He bowed his head and began the climb down below decks, rethinking. It had been too much to ask for. Of course Sparrow was clever enough not to let him take part - but perhaps if Gibbs came a little closer... just a little closer and he could turn; a well placed kick and the chances were both shots would go wide. He'd put all his mind into resting and recovering this past week, and he was certain he could take on a middle aged drunkard with little difficulty, once the pistols were out of play.
But Gibbs was obviously well aware of the same thing, for he never did come close enough.
Norrington smelled the brig before he saw it. A sweet, nauseating reek of decay, like the smell of the hanging corpses on Dead Man's Cay, but heavier - the miasma not swept away by the cool sea. The iron cage was open, but there was a figure propped against the hull, hat over his face, his hands bloated and livid, the stench like a visible veil over him.
"Ah God blind me!" said Gibbs, gesturing for James to go on inside, "forgot about that. Name of Skankin. Took a cutlass cut from one of the Nimrods and died of the gangrene couple o' days ago. Didn't wanna be buried at sea, the lubber. Tis terrible bad luck to be carrying cadavers - last wish or no - but ye'll find him quiet enough company if y'hold yer nose. All the way inside if you please sir, and just turn about while I lock the door."
Had it not been for the corpse, Norrington would have lingered in the doorway, forced the pirate to come closer by sheer disobedience and tried an ill advised and obvious attack. After all, fortune favoured the brave. But now he had a different idea, equally foolish, but worth trying. He bowed his head meekly and walked to where the cage was made fast to the hull, leaned his hands and forehead against the planks and waited for the grind of the key. The wood beneath his palms was trembling with fierce life, dry, taut, hollow - above the waterline.
He turned, examined the box in which he found himself. Gibbs lingering, disconcerted, outside the door. "Best wish us luck then. Or you'll be going down with the ship."
The Pearl's broadside sounded out, a distinctive sound - the low, deep roar of fore and aft carronades mingled with the higher whining din of grapeshot from the main battery. "I think not," said Norrington, noticing with a rising of the heart that the lock plate of the door and the pins of the hinges were steel. Le Pelley returned fire, and impact jolted in six nervous shudders through the whole frame of the ship, sending Gibbs racing above deck, leaving him alone and finally unobserved.
Working with the rapid calm he'd learned as captain of a gun crew, he unwound the bandage in which he had knotted the gunpowder and poured all but a handful of it together, transferring it from the less flammable silk to a large square of linen he tore from the sleeve of his shirt. When he had a small, fabric wrapped bomb, he jammed it into the space between the cell's first iron bar and the hull - hoping that the metal would direct the blast outward. If it didn't, he was willing to wager that the cage itself would pull away from its bolts in the wall and he could pass that way.
The fuse was a long linen thread rubbed in the remaining powder, and it brought him almost to the opposite corner - still ridiculously close. He would be lucky if he didn't blow his own head off with this trick, but if Sparrow could swan about the cranes in the harbour with a hundred marines shooting at him, Norrington was damned if he was going to let the risk deter him.
Le Pelley's broadside was faster, but lighter, there was a great boom and cloud of dust, a groan from the wall as a ball hit the brig and bounced off. It was probably the first time in his life he had wanted to cheer for the French. That weakening of the timbers should make everything easier.
Well, now or never. He took the flint from his cuff and spent some anxious moments striking sparks that would not catch from the lock plate, before finally obtaining a small, red cinder in the corner of his discarded sleeve. Taking a deep breath, the glow cradled in his hands, he commended himself to providence, touched the spark to the end of the fuse. It burned eagerly, snaking across the darkness, nosing towards the wall, and he got hold of the corpse - fingers sinking into ghastly suppleness - folded small as humanly possible into the corner and draped the dead man over himself, tucking in, trying not to retch at the feel and the stench and the liquefying stickiness of it.
So long. It took so long, a small eternity of darkness, waiting, while the decayed flesh pressed softly into his face, and something trickled down his arm, and then - horrifyingly sudden - a red blaze and heat he felt even through closed eyes, a crack of noise so loud it stopped his heart for a second, set it racing after, his veins flooded with fury. The spine burst and cold blood and matter sprayed as a plank drove straight into the corpse's backbone; ribs pushed into his, slamming against the tender skin of his newly healed wound. A yard long splinter sliced through the body's flank, pinned his abused shirt to the floor. Instinctively he held on, ducked and huddled closer, and then it was over and the cell was full of dim light, and the wind off the sea flowed into the cage clean and bright as salt.
He pushed the mess away, yanked the splinter out of his shirt - amazed to see it had passed close enough to bruise, but had not cut him - and walked to the hole he had blasted in the side of Jack's ship. After some struggling with loose planks he managed to squeeze through, to find himself standing in a corridor of wood. Above, the rails of the two ships came at times close enough to touch, sidled apart only to pull taut the network of boarding cables. Beneath him, a strip of shadowed sea knocked hollowly against the two hulls, the guns fallen silent. Distantly into the dim cool came the yells of battle, the screaming of injured men.
Picking the splinter up - it would double as a smallsword until he found something better - he sighed with satisfaction. Free. He was free. Determined to stay that way, he smiled, put the weapon between his teeth, and lowered himself gently down into the sea.