Fic: Daring Rescue, Daring Escape Ch. 6: A Real Live Pirate
By Honorat Selonnet
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Thank you Disney for the use of these wonderful characters. I'd have had a hard time of it by myself.
Summary: Elizabeth's POV—in which the governor's daughter discovers who her rescuer really is and everyone else behaves badly. Another movie novelization—Jack's first rescue of Elizabeth. I've discovered that Jane Austen's trick works. If you want to keep your audience in the dark about the thoughts and motives of one character, switch to another character's point of view. It's amazing how changing the POV focus of a story changes the way it's told. Expect a "romantic" side to this section courtesy of Elizabeth's deplorable taste in literature.
A Real Live Pirate
As Commodore Norrington sharply sheathed his sword, Elizabeth sighed with relief. She would have felt awful if this man had been mistreated simply for doing his best to save her. He looked terribly out of place amidst all the spit and polish and firepower of the increasing number of military men surrounding him, and she felt a little sorry for him.
The commodore seemed to be making an attempt to be civil to the man, although she could tell from his sour expression that it went against his fastidious grain. James was not a man to trust riffraff. Nevertheless, he held out his hand, admitting, "I believe thanks are in order."
Her rescuer looked even more reluctant than the commodore. His partly raised hands shrank back at first, and he stared at Norrington's proffered hand as a man might look at a poisonous snake he has been asked to pick up by the tail. Hesitantly he extended his right hand, the palm of which was hidden by a strange leather covering.
Norrington seized the man's hand in a grip like a trap closing. The stranger's eyes flew to the commodore's face, betrayal written in them. Elizabeth wondered why. Her question was answered when the commodore yanked the hand forward and, with his free hand, shoved the grimy sleeve back.
Elizabeth caught her breath. There, above a ragged black wrist guard, a shiny white scar stood out against darkly tanned skin. It was a scar such as she had never seen before, but she knew very well what that pale letter "P" stood for. She had read the stories . . .
Her rescuer glanced swiftly and calculatingly between his exposed arm and the commodore's uncompromising face. The stakes in this game had just gone way up.
In a condescending voice, Norrington asked, "Had a brush with the East India Trading Company, did we? Pirate." The commodore was looking extremely satisfied, as though the discovery of that brand had merely confirmed his suspicions and freed him to do what he had all along wanted to do to this man.
Apparently there were teeth in the commodore's grip, for the man—a pirate, a real live pirate—winced and tugged back futilely, his eyes on his captured hand.
Her father made an expression of disgust and sang out, "Hang him!"
The pirate's head jerked in shock as he glanced up at the governor. His eyes brushed past Elizabeth, and she shivered at the look in them. She wanted to help him, but what could she do? The commodore had always made perfectly clear what his intentions were towards any pirate he came across.
"Keep your guns on him, men," Commodore Norrington ordered, glancing over his shoulder. "Gillette, fetch some irons."
The air filled with the sounds of rifles being cocked and once again Elizabeth's rescuer was the center of a ring of bayonets. Lieutenant Gillette jogged off to follow his orders.
Elizabeth admired how unconcerned the pirate managed to look with violent death only a breath away. Really, she had no patience with the military mind. Was everyone forgetting that she would have died if it hadn't been for him?
Apparently so. Norrington pushed the pirate's sleeve back further on his wiry arm, revealing the faded lines of a conspicuous tattoo—a sun sinking into rolling waves, and over the waters a bird flying towards the horizon. Only one pirate Elizabeth had heard of had that tattoo.
Jack Sparrow. Elizabeth had read all the stories she could find about him. And this man standing on the Port Royal dock, the man who had saved her from drowning, this man was the famous pirate captain. He was not what she had expected. For one thing he was a much smaller man than she had imagined. His looks were odd, his movements odder. But his eyes were exactly what she had thought they would be like—wary and intelligent and dangerous. Just now he was looking angrily at the man who had seized him.
Commodore Norrington was likewise familiar with the description of that tattoo. "Well, well," he sneered. "Jack Sparrow isn't it."
The infamous Jack Sparrow finally succeeded in ripping his hand from the commodore's grip. The small increase in his freedom appeared to relax him and he grew more mobile as he insisted, his hands moving with his words, "Captain Jack Sparrow, if you please, sir."
Glancing around in a parody of curiosity, Norrington turned back to the pirate and smirked, "Well, I don't see your ship—Captain."
Sparrow widened his eyes and nodded his head. "I'm in the market—as it were," he said. He matched the commodore's smirk, but without any genuine amusement. Elizabeth had never seen anyone with a more expressive face.
One of the marines who had been there when Elizabeth woke up piped up, "He said he came to commandeer one."
Captain Sparrow glared at the man as though he were a traitor.
"Told you he was telling the truth," added the other marine. He bent over and brought up a worn baldric and battered pistol. "These are his, sir." He held them out towards Commodore Norrington.
As the commodore lifted the pistol from the pitiful little stack of possessions, Elizabeth noticed the expression on Jack Sparrow's face—as if sacrilege were being committed. The pirate raised his hand futilely, reaching out as though to protect something very valuable to him.
Norrington tossed the pistol lightly to his other hand, and slapped it back down in the marine's hands commenting sarcastically, "No additional shot or powder."
Sparrow's hand clenched in a fist and shook as he seemed to resist snatching the pistol away.
The next object the commodore examined was an eight-sided box with a round raised lid, attached by a cord to the pirate's baldric. It turned out to be a compass, but as Norrington snidely remarked, it was "A compass that doesn't point north."
Again Elizabeth noted that tiny hand motion as Sparrow restrained himself from reaching for the strange mechanism.
When the commodore drew the sword part way out of its scabbard, the pirate looked down and swallowed. Really, thought Elizabeth, it was indecent of James to paw through a man's private effects as though they belonged to him. They seemed to mean so much more to Sparrow than they appeared.
The sword whispered its musical slice of steel as it was drawn, but Norrington smiled mockingly at his captive, sneering, "And I half expected it to be made of wood."
The soldiers holding their rifles aimed at the pirate laughed. Elizabeth glared at them.
Jack Sparrow returned the commodore a rather sickly smile, then dropped his eyes to the blade again as Norrington jammed it back in. The marine holding the objects winced as his hand was pinched between the hilt and the scabbard.
"You are, without doubt, the worst pirate I've ever heard of," the commodore insulted Sparrow.
That, thought Elizabeth indignantly, was not the truth. She had read the stories of Captain Jack Sparrow. In them, the man was some sort of fey genius, clever and canny and nigh uncatchable. If he was carrying those odd items with such care, she'd be willing to bet there was more to them than met the eye.
Sparrow himself seemed to brighten at that last comment. He held up both index fingers in the commodore's face.
"But you have heard of me," he exclaimed, gently triumphant. His eyes then narrowed in a pleased smirk and he tossed his head lightly.
It was a small enough victory, because Lieutenant Gillette had returned with a heavy set of iron shackles. The commodore seemed to lose a little of his temper at this point. Grabbing Sparrow by the arm, he yanked the slighter man along in a most uncomfortable looking way towards the lieutenant. His men parted to allow him through, still training their rifles on the pirate.
At the moment, Elizabeth was not feeling very much in charity with the man who had proposed to her. That Captain Jack Sparrow should die simply for an act of kindness to her was intolerable. The girl pushed out of her father's concerned embrace, shedding his coat, and ran after Norrington and Sparrow. Her father hurried along in her wake, holding out the coat. But Elizabeth could not care less for propriety and modesty.
"Commodore, I really must protest!" she exclaimed.
Norrington ignored her. "Carefully, lieutenant," he cautioned Gillette as the lieutenant began to lock the irons around Jack Sparrows outthrust wrists.
Planting herself between the scowling officer and his resigned-looking captive, Elizabeth insisted, "Pirate or not, this man saved my life!"
TBC