PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE AFRICAN STAR

By ErinRua

CHAPTER 13

"Captain!"  A shout rang from the foretop.  "There's somethin' in the water, about a cable's length off the port bow!"

Sparrow tilted his head to squint upwards through the forest of dark sails.  "What sort of something?"

"A body, I think!  It's just floatin'!  There, you see it?  I think it's a woman!"

Jack turned towards the rail and was nearly bowled over by Will Turner's flying arrival.  For an instant he thought the lad would pitch right over the side, but he merely leaped to the ratlines where he hung peering across the water.  Indeed something did float about three hundred yards out, and Jack pulled his spy glass from his pocket to look.

"Jack - what is it?"

A moment to focus ….

"Jack!"

"Steady, mate."  Yet Sparrow's jaw tightened at what the glass revealed and with a sharp click he collapsed its length.  "Loose sheets to lie-to!  I want a boat in the water."

He did not even think to order Will to stay behind, as he leapt into the lowering boat.

It was not her.  Will resumed breathing as burly Tearlach reached a boathook gently as he could to nudge the half-submerged body closer to their boat.  The blanched face, strikingly pretty even in the waxen stillness of death, was not Elizabeth Swann.  The boat jostled as Jack leaned to look, his own face scrunching in an uneasy grimace.

Softly Will asked, "What do you think happened?  Did she fall overboard?"

Water slapped and gurgled as the body floated alongside, unseen currents gently playing in the soft brown locks of her hair, spreading it upon a watery pillow.  Cold as a snuffed candle those sweet features were, yet one wondered how she may have looked when alight with laughter or passion.  Behind them one of the men murmured something that could have been a superstitious prayer.  Jack however peered at the body with a contorted expression somewhere between revulsion and morbid fascination.

Then he abruptly announced, "Not likely."

He reached gingerly outboard to touch sodden cloth, where it was darker than the rest of the material.  "Water's carried most of it away, but she bled before she went in the water."

As he sat back Sparrow flicked his fingers dry.  "Someone killed this girl."

Tearlach's brief rumble asked the question no one had.  "What do we do with 'er, cap'n?"

The pirate captain's eyes were very dark as he replied, "A canvas shroud and a ballast stone.  That's the best we can do for her."

Beside him Will clenched a fist and bowed his head, and his shoulders were rigid as wooden oxbows.

Some while later the solemn deck of the Black Pearl came alive once more.  "Hands to make sail!" Sparrow shouted.

Anamaria's sharp voice rang in echo, barking commands as men leaped to the rigging and smoke-grey sails bloomed above.  At the helm Sparrow gripped the wheel firmly, his eyes narrowed to the play of wind on canvas, his arms taut against the pull of the rudder.  He was aware of the silent figure standing abaft his shoulder but chose not to look, not until the Pearl lifted her head to the wind and bright water curled at her bows.

Only then did he speak.  "You don't know that woman was aboard the same ship."

Will's reply was clipped.  "And you don't know she was not."

The Pearl reached for her wind like a hound to a scent, even without full canvas. Something in the ship seemed to mirror something in her master, and Will turned his head to narrowly study Jack's profile.

"You think as I do, Jack.  The Royal Venture is ahead of us.  I can almost smell her."

Aye, Sparrow knew that look in the boy, the curl of the lip that bespoke fine disdain for fear or hesitation - and occasionally an alarming recklessness.  There were times when the simmering fire of Bootstrap Bill's temperament was all too evident in his son.

"If I do, mate, I'm still keepin' me wits sharp.  Away out yonder is Hispaniola, and even if the French chose to ignore us, the Spaniards 'ave no reason to love us."

He knew without looking that Will had bowed his head, though the lad's brooding stubbornness would not relent.

"If you want to be useful," Jack drawled, "You can relieve Matty in the foretops and stand lookout."

"All right."

Sparrow pasted on a heavy scowl.  "And no wool-gatherin', savvy?  I don't want to sail us into the arms of the Royal Navy. "

Will's head came up with a jerk and his gaze focused, regained clarity.  "I'm on my way."

Then the young blacksmith was gone, bounding down the ladder to the lower deck.  Sparrow watched him until the lanky form stepped up to the ratlines and began clambering skywards.  Will would do his job, that bit of a jab to his pride would assure that.  Better he had something to occupy his mind than chewing over dark thoughts that could only keep a man awake at night.  But whatever came, he had a cold feeling they would all need clear heads in the days to come.

Then he shook himself back to the task at hand, and tried not to see a lovely girl with the look of all lost Ireland stamped on her dead face.  Best to focus on his plans for a certain perfect gem, a diamond that was the envy of kings and soon to rest in the hand of Captain Jack Sparrow.  Yes.  A sly smile crept across Jack's face.  Perhaps young Will could be more valuable than he anticipated.  After all, every hunter could use an eager hound.

***

Hispaniola.  Beneath a scorching Caribbean sun the first landfall appeared as little more than a smudge of cloud on the eastern horizon, but ere long birds came wheeling and crying on the wind, gliding through the blue on long slopes of air.  The Black Pearl beat northeast against the prevailing trade winds on long, easy tacks, Sparrow's skilled hand at the helm holding her steadily full and by the wind.  Will recognized the headland of Cape Dona Maria from his foray to Tortuga the year before, when he and Jack shepherded a stolen Royal Navy brig to pick up a crew for the pursuit of Captain Barbossa and rescue of Elizabeth Swann and the Black Pearl.  Now they had the Pearl and they had a willing crew, but their mission was no less dire.

As the leagues slid by Will readily accepted another turn at lookout duty, for though he neither feared nor shunned any work, he had not mastered an able seaman's skills above deck.  However, keen eyes and an agile mind could be put to other uses.  High in the crow's nest he swayed between sun and deep water and the world bent away before him in a broad blue haze.  At times the topmast leaned slowly so that he hung over nothing but water, and then it leaned back so he looked down to the impossibly small wooden island of deck below.

Occasionally there were other sails far out on the waters leading to the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola, glimmering fragments of white that forged on their own mysterious journeys.  But upon scrutiny of size and shape through Sparrow's spy glass, the Pearl kept away and let them pass unmolested.  Grimly Will kept his vigil, for somewhere sailed the Royal Venture; somewhere Elizabeth needed him.

At last vibration in the rigging told him that someone was climbing up.  A moment later the tousled red head of Matty Whitlock poked above the edge of the crow's nest.

The pirate offered a horse-toothed grin and said, "Cap'n says I got the watch now."

Long and gangling as if built of bundled sticks, Matty's beak-like nose and protruding Adams apple were nearly matched in size and his wide blue eyes seemed set in an expression of perpetual surprise.  Those eyes were, however, acknowledged to be the keenest aboard the Black Pearl and so Matty often found himself posted as lookout.  Not that he minded, and his grin remained in place as he clambered up next to Will, crowding the small platform.

"See anything?" he asked.

"Not a thing," Will sighed.

"Aye."  Matty bobbed his head and shaped his thin, freckled features into a glum expression.  "But we'll find 'er, mark my words.  Cap'n Sparrow's got a nose for such things, 'e does."

Whether he referred to Elizabeth or the Royal Venture, Will did not know, but he wished he could take those assurances to heart.  What if they simply missed the slave ship's course?  What if she passed beyond their knowing sometime in the night or amidst a morning haze and Elizabeth was sold into bondage before he could ever find her?  Cuba lay somewhere to northward and Hispaniola crouched off their starboard side.  And in between was all that empty water ….

"Wot ye goin' to do wi' your share o' the loot?"

Startled, Will looked at the grinning face beside him.  "What?"

"Your share o' the loot."  Pale blue eyes twinkled merrily.  "Cap'n says ye signed th' articles, so when we sack the Royal Venture, you gets a share o' the plunder same as us.  O' course, it'll be a littler share on account of you're new 'ere, but it should fetch ye a tidy purse.  So wot ye goin' to do wi' it?"

Biting back his opinions of pirates and thieves, Will shook his head.  "I just want Elizabeth safe."

"Ah."  Matty nodded wisely.  "The girl.  She's pretty, eh?"

"She's beautiful."

He sighed before he could stop himself, but the lanky pirate simply nodded once more.

"A trim an' shapely craft does that to a man, they say.  I fancied a girl once, but she went off and married a baker."  One bony shoulder lifted in a philosophical shrug.  "Her loss, sez I."  His long teeth gleamed cheerfully again.  "I reckon I'll 'ave silver enough to 'old a girl's attention, when we're through!"

Knowing he had probably seen Matty's sort of girl, during his brief but memorable stop amongst the rum-houses of Tortuga, Will could only muster a squeamish smile.  "I'm sure you will."

"Ye know wot I want to buy?"

Will lifted his eyebrows in silent query, and was amused to see the other's grin take on a rosy glow of embarrassment.

"Ye promise not t' laugh or tell?"

"On my honor," he replied.

"Right.  Well, I'll tell ye."  Matty set his freckled face forward into the sun.  "I want a fiddle."

"A fiddle?"

"Ye said ye'd not laugh!"

"I'm not laughing!  I'm just … surprised."

"Well, that's all right then.  But I want a fiddle.  I learnt t' play away back, and a bloke back there in New Town 'ad a fiddle wot 'e let me play.  After this voyage I'm buyin' me a nice one wit' a sweet voice."

Befriending anyone on the Pearl's pirate crew was not on Will's list of priorities, but he remembered the merry fiddle that had so skillfully accompanied Irish John's singing across the campfire.  Oddly, he realized he really could not find offense in this cheerful if uncouth fellow and he looked at the freckled pirate beside him and smiled.

"I think that would be a fine thing."

Matty bobbed his head again.  "Me too.  They make a 'appy sound.  I like that.  Man needs to hear 'appy sounds sometimes. 'Ere, wot's that?"

He leaned sharply forward and Will pivoted to follow his stare.  Tiny sails shimmered far away in the sun, the white sails of a square-rigger reaching away towards Hispaniola's distant shore.  Will fumbled Jack's looking glass from his waistcoat pocket and extended it to full length to peer through it.  Then he handed it to Matty, nudging the pirate's arm.

"Here.  What do you make her?"

For a long moment both held still, oblivious to the sway of the mast between them.  Matty squinted through the glass seeming to scarcely breathe.

"C'mon, love," he murmured.  "Let's 'ave a look at ye …."

Finally, the glass still to one eye, he said thoughtfully, "She's a brig.  Good-sized one.  Might be our girl."

"Sail, ho!" Will shouted and then filled his lungs, leaned over the edge and bellowed downward for all he was worth.  "SAIL, HO!  Starboard bow!"

Then he swung down and into the rigging with reckless speed, scrambling towards the deck below.

***

It was the Royal Venture.  The long rays of the sinking sun spilled across the Caribbean Sea by the time the Black Pearl was close enough to clearly identify her prey, and even then she held back on the very edge of visual contact.  For Sir John Biltmore had veered from his northeasterly course and turned inland, towards the vast bay the charts marked as Cul de sac de Leogane.  Around the northerly tip of the Isle of Gonave the slave ship sailed, with the Pearl little more than a smoky ghost on the horizon.

Amidships Will gripped the starboard rail so that his knuckles were white.  His teeth clenched as he watched the flash of distant canvas recede towards Hispaniola's shore.

"He said Port Paix.  I know he said Port Paix."

"And probably he did."  Jack Sparrow stood beside him, watching the same sails with narrowed eyes.  "But Saint Marc comes first, and a shrewd businessman is not going to pass up a good prospect."

Will wheeled with eyes ablaze.  "A good prospect for what?  To sell those poor girls to the highest bidder?  For me to lose Elizabeth?  Why have we taken in sail?  We need to catch him!"

"William, me boy …."  Jack patted the air between them in a pacifying gesture.  "I know what you're thinking -."

"Do you?"  The young man's gaze was fierce as he took a step closer.

"Indubitably."  Jack hooked his thumbs in his belt and beamed a mocking golden smile.  "You wish to fly to the rescue, damn all hazards and save the fair maiden with no thought for cost or peril to your gallant and faithful self.  Right?"

Wordlessly Will scowled.

"Wrong!"  Jack widened his eyes and then he spun tipsily away.

"Jack, if you -."

"You're not thinkin' like a pirate, mate.  Anamaria!  Set our course that way, if you please."

Perhaps not the most nautical directive ever heard, but the helmsman - helmswoman - understood the ostentatious wave of his hand well enough.  They would alter course towards the barren Isle of Gonave.

Will found himself following and talking to the back of Sparrow's head as the pirate captain ambled forward.  "Then tell me, Jack, how does a pirate think?"

"Sneakily, mate," came the reply.  "We must bide and choose the right time."

"Which is?"

Sparrow swung in a flurry of beaded braids to face him again, forefinger raised to command attention.  He spoke one word.

"Dark."

"Dark?"  In sudden interest Will cocked his head and regarded the gleam in Jack's black eyes.  "Dark is good."

***

TBC …

A/N:  It's not my practice to thank all reviewers by name, simply because I also hear from readers by email and other means, and I'd feel terrible if I left any deserving soul out.  Therefore, I hope it does not seem redundant or shallow if I repeat myself by saying how much I appreciate everyone's continuing words of critique and encouragement.  This is the first sea-faring tale I've ever written and sometimes I look at the growing scope of this thing and fear I've bitten off more than I can chew.  However … the beauty of fan fiction is a live audience and I can't say enough how much I appreciate you all.  Thank you ever so humbly.  ~ E.

P.S.  Batten the hatches, there is a lot more to come!  :-)