A/N – New chapter, yay! Finally! Sorry it's a bit on the short side, I did have plans for more, but it was taking so long to write up, I thought I'd better post SOMETHING before you all totally loose interest.

Oh, and in a shameless plug kinda way – if anyone wants to go have a look at 'Mistress Swann' and tell me what they think, I'll love them for ever and ever!

Ana was downstairs, in a small back room, when I came in she called for another plate of bread and bacon.

I sat down wordlessly and began to eat. The bacon was thick and tough, but fresh, a world away from the half-spoiled salted pork on the Pearl.

Ana had neither met my eye, nor spoken a word to me since I walked in. Mindful of the pain in my own head, I assumed her to be feeling the same, and said nothing between my mouthfuls of bacon and gulps of hot coffee.

Presently, Jack joined us. He signalled to the barkeep for some breakfast, but before the man left, Ana slammed her mug down and spoke decisively, in a voice hash and low.

"You need to go. Duncan was up at dawn." The Captain's arms hung dejectedly in the air. Ana looked up for instant, mouth full, eyes burning, and gestured towards the door. He glanced over at me, questioningly. I could feel my face reddening, however, and looked away.

"Aye, then." He muttered, and almost as an afterthought turned to me and asked. "You coming?"

The Black Pearl stood in Levrett's shipyard, shored up with heavy blocks of wood. Out of the water, you could see her narrow hull shape, sharply pointed at the fore. I began to see why she was so deceptively fast.

Most of the men working at careening her, that is – clearing off the barnacles, weeds and other debris collected while at sea, were unknown to me. However, Duncan was there, directing the work with his short, simple orders. When he spied Sparrow, he picked up a piece of wood, broken away from the hull and wandered over. Levrett, who was smoking a long, thin pipe, in the shade of the Pearl's jib sails, caught Jack's eyes with his own sharp ones and gave a nod of greeting as he sidled over.

"What's the problem, mates?" Jack's smile was brittle.

"You know what the problem is, Capt'n." Duncan spoke in the sharp tone I remember him using with Jeff the night of the mutiny. "The problem that let us be broken no better than matchwood in that storm."

We all leaned over to look at the hulk of wood Duncan held out. It was riddled with holes, and almost as light as balsa.

"Teredo's." Levrett muttered the word like a curse. And indeed, those small worms were a curse to any sailor of the Caribbean. Every ship's years were numbered once they spend anytime in our warm, life-filled waters.

"No problem, then." Jack snatched up the wood and crumbled in between his fingers. "Patch her up, coat her hull, she can take it. She's strong, my girl."

"She's just oak, rope and canvas. And she can't take much more of this. I'm only telling you what any man worth his salt would. Get a new ship, or get the Pearl out of these waters." Were Duncan's parting words as he hitched up his toolbelt with a grunt and returned to his work.

"What say you Levrett?"

The man shrugged, half closing his eyes has he inhaled on his pipe.

"She'll hold." He scratched his head with the stem of his pipe and was quiet a while, indicating that thesubject wasclosed. "I just wish you'd let me fit her out."

Something in Jack's stance changed, relaxed, and I got the feeling they were on familiar ground.

"The Black Pearl was born a lady, Scrivner, and so she will remain."

"She's a great galumping pansy." Levrett retorted quickly. "Think on it Jack, the others out there laugh at you. And that great fancy ship of yours."

"They laugh all the way to the gallows." Commented Jack dryly.

"That's as may be, but when they were cornered, they had space on their decks to fight, and holes in their side to shoot from."

"But what about – style?" Jack waved his arms frantically, Levrett chuckled softly, his face for all the world an oversized shrivelled walnut.

"Aye Sparrow. I reckon you couldn't do without that." Levrett looked about to continue speaking, but at that moment a man fell from the block and tackle ropes that were holding him up alongside the hull. There was a general commotion and Levrett hurried off quickly, but Jack seemed unruffled.

"What do you think then?" Jack asked, waving his arms expensively.

"It looked a bad fall, Captain."

"No!" He let out a sigh of annoyance. "The ship, Cathy, the ship!" He easily took hold of my arm and steered me closer to the shored-up Pearl. I blushed furiously at the sudden contact.

"Nice lines." I managed to murmur, thinking of some of the homely, plodding merchant ships my father owned. I searched for something else to say, to keep his attention and company. "What is it that Levrett wants to change?"

Jack gave an imperious snort, and for a moment I thought he felt the discussion of Levrett's ideas below his consideration.

"Fit her out." He practically spat out the words. "For. Piratical. Account." He let go of my arm to indulge in an expensive gesture. "Piratical! Pirates have respect for their ship. Or else you're just a thieving bastard who lives on the water. Do you know what that wrinkled old wood-wright would have done to my ship?"

He paused, evidently expecting an answer. Watching him, though, my mind was full of the moment when the night wind caught my hair and his mouth melded with mine. Coming back to earth, I muttered a 'no'.

"Rip down the forecastle and the quarter deck for speed, tear out the bulkheads for space. And have every man jack of us sleeping, eating and living in a vast den of disease. He'd have off with all her carvings and gut her sides so that she could bristle with guns. Then he'd call to overcrew her, so I could have the sailors to man that useless ordinance."He rolled his eyes dramatically. "And they wonder why most pirates got caught."

"So he wants to give her more space inside, more guns outside and make her faster?" Even I, who was doing so well, could not follow Jack's logic here. He gave me a withering look.

"Let me explain in terms you can understand." He spoke ridiculously slowly, as if talking to a simpleton. "He wants to take away her, her...silk dress, and give her calico."

"That's not right." I replied, riled at his implication I only cared for dresses. "He wants to turn her from a ship into a mere floating mode of transportation." Jack, who had been leaning against the hull, grinning, suddenly stood to attention.

"Ye-es." He replied cautiously.