Aboard the Dauntless Ch. 4: All I Ask Is a Tall Ship

By Honorat Selonnet

Rating: K+

Disclaimer: Everybody stay calm. I'm taking over POTC. (Just kidding. Pout.)

Summary: Jack is itching to get his hands on the Dauntless. Tag with Murtogg and Mulroy. The commodore shows up. We have now abandoned the movie and are sailing uncharted seas. Just some fun playing with an idea I got from Ted and Terry and Co. that Jack is hooked up to the universe a little differently than most. He seems to know what the weather will be before anyone else, and anyone who would sail the Interceptor in that sort of storm without reefing her sails has to be either mad or a genius at knowing just how to sail to avoid split canvas and snapped spars—or both. Hey, I know it was a model. You know it was a model. But in the movie universe that storm happened. More movie novelization including deleted scenes and filler—the second trip to Isla de Muerta.

Thanks and one small Caribbean Island in a nearby universe go to geekmama2 for beta work on this. Thanks also to torn eledhwen for checking on my sailing terminology. Any errors and inconsistencies remain mine.

All I Ask Is a Tall Ship

Jack was pacing about the Dauntless's poop deck like a caged animal. Murtogg and Mulroy were puffing to keep up with him, which as far as he was concerned, they deserved for the way they had hauled him around like he was a barrel of salt cod-fish. He was quite sure he would soon combust with frustration. It would take a month of holystoning to remove the groove he'd wear in the deck.

Provide them with a bearing, Norrington had ordered. But what bloody use was that when this behemoth might as well be becalmed?

The Dauntless was a lumbering cow elephant of a ship. Her purpose as a first-rate ship of the line was the deliberate movement of those hundred guns to any Caribbean hot spot. Even wounded as she was, the Black Pearl was likely capable of sailing circles around the Dauntless, in spite of what he had told Norrington. And with the curse upon her, there was no telling what she might be able to do. To be trying to catch her in this battle wagon seemed well nigh impossible.

But a charging elephant has a surprising turn of speed. The problem was that no one on this ship had goaded the Dauntless into putting on that speed. Even without his hand on her helm, Jack could tell from the set of her sails and the feel of the sea under her keel that he could pull at least another knot out of this monster if they'd let him give the orders.

The Dauntless was close hauled on the starboard tack, but he knew she could be sailed closer to the wind. There was a fine line in a square-rigged ship between her fastest speed and stalling if she came just too far over. Jack had pushed the ships he'd piloted and captained to the edge for so long that he knew he could take over the Dauntless with scarcely a shiver in her sails and drive her as far as she'd stand.

Then there was the problem of her course. He'd given the helmsman the bearing to Isla de Muerta, but leaving up to that dull man the ways and means of actually getting there when they were forced to tack into the wind and sail against a head sea was proving to be a bad idea. He'd swear the man was paying no attention at all to the sea if he didn't know that his own sense of it was on the shady side of abnormal.

Bootstrap had used to shake his head and tell Jack that a hundred years earlier they'd have burnt him at the stake for witchcraft. But it was all there for anyone to find, wasn't it? The ever-changing pattern of the waves, the rhythm of light stretching across the water to the horizon, the shimmer of the dance of the air, the racing courses of the clouds, the capricious shifts in wind and air pressure, the variations in temperature, the slopes and angles of nearby land, the breathing of the ship and the seas and the life above and below the water. It was all connected. Push on one part and it all moved. A quickening in the wind seven leagues away changed the air where he was standing. The very fact that the Dauntless was moving through wind and waves and sky was altering the entire picture.

A man in a crowded room would look up when a door slammed, knowing someone had just entered. That was all it was. Just listening for what was happening, anticipating what would happen. Not, he'd insisted to Bootstrap, anything to carry cold iron against.

But this helmsman was not listening and he'd swear the mate who was navigating was blind. Oh, he was clever enough with the sextant, always knew where they were. But he had no ability to tell where they wanted to be instead. The officers would order a course change when Jack knew that ten more minutes on the same tack would bring them to an air current far swifter than the one the ship was labouring under now. And even worse, the great head seas were crashing against the bow of the ship, sometimes burying her bowsprit, spritsail and jib boom and washing over the decks. Granted, the Dauntless would never skip as lightly through such seas as the Pearl, but she could move through them infinitely more gracefully and hence speedily if the helmsman had even half an idea where they'd be and adjusted her course accordingly—which was admittedly a trick when one was sailing as close to the wind as Jack liked.

They were almost a day behind the Black Pearl, a faster ship sailing under a curse. She would go where Barbossa wished, as far as he could tell from the brief, wondrous and terrible time he'd spent aboard her benumbed decks. She'd seemed nearly unconscious to him then. But the curse drove her on. Their only hope of catching her lay in the fact that Barbossa had always been as blind and deaf as the Dauntless's crew—with the added bonus that he could no longer feel. He would not be taking the swiftest course, but he would be inexorable. For that reason the Dauntless must sail as fast as ever she could.

Jack needed to get his hands on this ship. He needed to give the commands. A navy crew made up in discipline what it lacked in imagination if he could just get them to cooperate. But the problem seemed to be that no one knew just where a captive pirate captain fell on the chain of command.

At last he could endure it no longer. The mate had just begun bellowing out the orders for a tack that Jack knew, from the soles of his feet to his wind-whipped hair, was going to take them into a current that, combined with the head seas, would actually result in their losing way.

"Belay that order!" he snapped out as he would have on the quarterdeck of the Pearl. The crew responded instinctively to the authority in that voice and halted in their tracks, but the mate rounded on Jack like a striking snake. The hulking officer towered over the pirate, but Jack Sparrow could project an aura of menacing command, rather like a cat fluffing out its fur, that completely belied the disparity in size. The big man took a step back.

"Look, mate," Jack attempted reason first. "You're about to head us into a passel o' trouble. We need to stay on this course for another thirty minutes at least. There's a current out there you don't want to be running into."

The mate's lip curled in scorn. "I don't know who you think you are, pirate, but this is a King's ship, and I give the orders here." He nodded to Murtogg and Mulroy, "Lock him in the brig!"

Jack dodged the clumsy attempts to restrain him. "Take my word for it, man!" He scooted around the helm just ahead of the galumphing Mulroy. "This is the best course to be holding." Which was more than could be said of most of the courses the Dauntless had been put on so far. He eluded Murtogg's wild grasp. "We'll have better winds and calmer seas in another thirty minutes."

"Maybe he knows something . . .what . . . what he's talking about," Murtogg suggested helpfully. "Commodore Norrington did say he was supposed to give us the bearing."

Jack nearly forgave him for the corset incident.

The mate eyed the pirate consideringly. The chase having died down, Jack slowed to a brisk pace again.

"I'm having a thought here," Jack coaxed, making the man spin around to follow him. "What say I tell you how to set the sails and where to steer. I know how to get us to that island as quick as you can say 'Robert's your uncle.' You give the orders, and the commodore will think you're the best navigator in the fleet, eh? What say you to that?" He halted on the other side of the helm.

"Think a lot of yourself, don't you?" the man growled belligerently.

"I'm not thinking about myself at all," Jack snapped. "I'm thinking about how many seconds it takes a man to bleed to death when his throat's been cut." He drew an illustrative finger across his neck.

The man looked confused.

"The future Mrs. Commodore wants young Mr. Turner alive and well," Jack explained impatiently. "And every minute you're wasting, lad, makes that outcome more and more unlikely." Not to mention that he needed Will alive himself.

"Now," he barked at the officer. "Are you going to do what I tell you, like a sensible man, or do I have to get Miss Elizabeth up here to give the orders?" It was a threat, whether the man recognized it or not.

"What?" sneered the mate. "Hiding behind the lady's skirts, eh, pirate?"

"Son," Jack rolled his eyes. "She's got more clout than me. I'd be a bloody idiot not to let her use it."

"What seems to be the problem here?"

Ah! The perfect addition to this little discussion. Just what Jack needed—commodore interference. Actually what he really needed was rum. But no one looked likely to be giving him some anytime soon. He thought wistfully of the rum Elizabeth had burnt.

"Well now!" Jack pasted on an artificial welcoming smile and turned to face Norrington. "Just who I was wanting to see," he lied.

"Mr. Sparrow," sighed the commodore. "You are causing a disturbance on my poop deck. You are interfering with the functioning of this vessel. Just what part of the word 'silent' would you like me to clarify for you?"

"That would be Captain Sparrow, if you please, sir," Jack reminded Norrington yet again.

"Sparrow, this ship already has a captain, and you are avoiding my question."

Jack would have preferred to be avoiding the commodore. "Look, mate," he explained. "Your officers here were all set to be ordering the Dauntless into a blood great head-on current. I didn't think you'd want us halted dead in the water, so I took the liberty of suggesting that they remain on this course until we're out of range of that current."

"And how do you come to know about this current?"

This was not an explanation he planned to be giving the commodore. Jack remained silent.

"Sailed here before, have you?"

"Yes, if you like," Jack prevaricated. No point in pulling out a useless truth when a far more functional lie would suffice. He'd not actually approached the island from this direction before, although he'd known the current would be out here somewhere.

"Very well, Mr. Sparrow. Since you are familiar with the area, you will give to these fine gentlemen any information that will increase our chances of catching the Black Pearl. Gentlemen," he addressed the men on the deck. "You will follow Mr. Sparrow's . . . directions . . . unless it seems obvious that he is trying to sink us."

Jack noticed the commodore couldn't bring himself to say "orders."

Nevertheless, that was almost reasonable of the commodore. Jack gave Elizabeth credit. She could wrap a man around her little finger tighter than a chain on a windlass. Norrington obviously knew that they were playing a long shot here and had decided to gamble. Jack turned to the helm, his entire body tingling with the knowledge that the ship was now, to all intents and purposes, his.

First he had to get Madame Behemoth closer to the wind.

James Norrington returned to the quarterdeck, his skin crawling. Had he really just given control of his ship to a pirate? He needed to have his head examined when he got back to Port Royal.

TBC

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