PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE AFRICAN STAR
By ErinRua
CHAPTER 17
The plans of men and the plans of God are seldom the same. As the morning grew older the Royal Venture became aware that she trailed shadows far astern, two sets of sails, one tall and strangely dark, the other small and swift. Nor did they pass from view or change to a divergent course, as random vessels would tend to do.
The sun was gone and a rising wind keened through the rigging, when First Mate Thomas Fry climbed to the quarterdeck and stood beside his captain. "What do you think, sir?"
Sir John Biltmore stood with legs wide apart and his hands clasped in the small of his back. "They could simply be other ships bound for Tortuga or even Cuba."
"But you don't think so."
"No, I do not." Biltmore's heavy features settled into an even bleaker look, for here there was no need for masks or disguises. "They are a little too precise about keeping us in view."
"Pirates?"
"Perhaps so."
Fry frowned as he stared at the distant sails pacing them. "How would they know we're carryin' anything but slaves?"
"Who is to say what friends pirates might have in a heathen town like Port Royal? For all I know, the governor himself might keep privateers." Then Biltmore pivoted sharply and said, "Alert your gun crews, but let us prepare to meet this blow."
Indeed, above them all sailed a greater foe, a vast grey cloud that dragged its belly heavily across the sea. Before long the storm burst upon them in a thunder of wind and driven rain.
Soon men scrambled across heaving decks and clung to lines that shuddered like struck violin strings, as they threw their meager mortal strength against the tempest. High aloft canvas billowed in wet, angry heaves that could hurl a man screaming to his death, if any made the least mistake. Hands were scraped raw as they clutched and fought to reef that canvas in. Shortened sails lessened the wind's ability to wrench control away from the vessels' masters, but the ferocity of this tropical storm swiftly grew beyond all expectations.
***
Green water surged in massive billows that rose one after the other, like mountains swelling from the deep and the rain poured without letup. On board the Lady Elizabeth, Will Turner was thankful for Original John's powerful grip on the tiller beside him.
"Can you see the Pearl?" he shouted, as water exploded across the rail and swept foaming down the decks.
"Aye, cap'n!" rang back Irish John's shrill reply. "But just barely! She's bearin' away nor' west!"
Rain slashed like daggers until a man could scarce tell where sea and sky parted ways. Will flung wet hair from his face with a savage toss of his head.
"What of the Royal Venture?"
A moment passed and the sloop shuddered as she heaved to the crest of another watery peak.
"Aye, she's still beyond the Pearl, but sail is all I see. We're going to lose her in this soup!"
"Just keep your eye on the Pearl!"
Down the wave they plunged, Will and Original John together battling to keep the sloop aimed at an angle to the huge swell. If they allowed her nose to point straight into a wave they could be swamped and driven under, or lose all steerage when it passed beneath and her stern and rudder were lifted out of the water. If they turned broadside the towering seas could capsize them. Will could not remember being so scared.
For it was not his life only, but the lives of his crew, Original John with his legs planted like tree trunks and great shoulders bowed, Matty Whitlock quick as a monkey to adjust the scraps of sail still up, and Anamaria strong and undaunted and sopping wet - 'Jack, you should have sent Gibbs. If I make a mistake I've killed them all.' If he failed … he could only pray that Jack would remember his promise, and see Elizabeth home safe in the end.
***
In the bowels of the Royal Venture Elizabeth felt the floor surge heavily beneath her. Up it pressed and then dropped with clutching speed, her shriek knifing the gloom as she went suddenly weightless. She threw her arms about her head just before colliding into her cellmates in a tangle of knees and elbows. The next heave pinned them there in a bruised heap of misery, while just outside angry seas wrenched the hull.
***
On board the Black Pearl, canvas boomed like a rifle shot, leaving tattered remnants of a blown sail streaming down the gale. The two men gripping the wheel looked up.
"Sorry, Jack!" Gibbs shouted over the howling deluge. "We shoulda taken that one in more."
Yet as Jack Sparrow wrestled the Black Pearl's helm, he bared his teeth in a snarl of defiance. "Never mind, Gibbs!" he shouted back. "Ol' Poseidon thinks he has us, but not now, not the Pearl!"
***
Will Turner had never faced seas like these; huge swells of water that rolled at them so as to blot out the pouring sky, and then swept his sloop giddily upwards until she surged over the crest. For that breathless moment they could see only a rain-riven wilderness of heaving waves, until they plummeted into the next trough once more. Each time they sank down a wave's sweeping back, he feared they might never rise again. Yet somehow they did, somehow the Lady clawed her way clear, angling valiantly into one enormous swell after the other.
Then at last Will looked up, and it appeared the ocean itself bent and rose and curved in a vast, gleaming green wall before them. The Lady Elizabeth started to climb, shuddering beneath the hands that gripped her tiller, but it was not enough. Above them the head of that great sea began to curl.
"God help us," he breathed.
And the world broke in thundering chaos upon them.
***
Sunrise beamed upon the Caribbean in a warm flood of gold and violet. From horizon to horizon the waters shimmered, as fleets of little flat-bellied clouds drifted above the deep. Almost it appeared that the storm had torn itself to pieces, and the cottony puffs of cloud were all that was left.
That, and a tall black ship which glided alone amidst the golden seas. On her foredeck First Mate Gibbs paced a slow but anxious circuit, every so often casting a troubled glance up into the rigging. Nearby Tearlach and Cotton turned their silent gazes across the water, and even the parrot seemed subdued. Meanwhile far overhead, above the crow's nest, at the highest point a man could climb or would even attempt to climb, Jack Sparrow clung to the main topmast. To some he might have resembled a large, bedraggled bird blown in by the storm, but one look in those black eyes would have squelched the words unspoken.
"Blast you, show yourself!" he muttered.
But though he peered and squinted and scowled completely around the points of the compass, the horizon remained hazy and absolutely empty. With a grimace that may have smothered an oath, he whipped his spy glass from his pocket and snapped it to full length, then hugged the mast with one hand while he repeated his scan with the glass in the other. Nothing. He snapped the glass closed, dropped it into his pocket, and swung to clamber swiftly towards the deck far below.
"Did you see anything?" Gibbs asked, even before Jack's feet touched the deck.
Sparrow landed with a thud and turned frowning. "Did I say I did?"
Gibbs' grizzled features wrestled with a cross between chagrin and apology. "Sorry, Jack."
"Not a bloody thing," Jack growled, turning his angry stare towards the rising sun. "But they 'ave to be out there. They 'ave to."
Nor was Gibbs about to ask what "they" Jack referred to, whether it was the prize they hunted or the captain and crew of their missing sloop. He had his guess which it was, but he kept it to himself.
"What are yer orders, then?"
"We bear towards Port Paix," Sparrow said.
"But if the lad is somewhere lookin' for us -."
"He'll make for Port Paix." Again that black stare skewered the older man. "Will Turner is clever enough to remember his orders. Head us towards Port Paix, Mister Gibbs. We 'ave a ship to plunder."
With that Sparrow spun on his heel and stalked away aft towards the helm. Behind him Gibbs sighed and cast one last look at the empty sea. The cold fact was, Davy Jones had welcomed the bones of many a clever lad, and young Will Turner would not be the last. Not to mention Anamaria, with a spirit like a flame that drew and scorched a man at once, but whom the sea could so easily quench. Then Gibbs crossed himself hastily to ward off such ill luck and turned to his duties. He had a hunch what emotions Jack's temper really masked, for he was struggling with them himself.
***
Bathing under whatever conditions had long since been reduced to fond memory for the captives aboard the Royal Venture. All the previous day and most of the night, it seemed that Hell had found them and its name was slavery. Neither light nor clean air nor the merest comfort availed them, while the ship pitched and heaved their living bodies about. Ere the night was done, those trapped within felt certain the hull would burst and the green sea pour in upon them.
Now … now the ship once more rose and fell easily, and eight bedraggled women could sit hunched in dark, miserable peace. Elizabeth clasped her arms around her knees and stared up at the ceiling, never minding that the tracks of dried tears stained her face. No one had fed them since before the storm. No one had come in at all, and the foulness of the place only worsened. Thirst was becoming a physical torment that grew with each passing hour. As much as the women feared and hated every sight of their captors, now they wished fervently for that door to open and admit at least a bucket of cool water.
Elizabeth did not stop her thoughts from turning to her sighting of Will on board that boat, a miracle in the dark where she had expected no hope to be. How had he found Anamaria? Did that mean Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl were somewhere near? What were they planning? And there remained one question she feared to face … had Will and his pretty boat even survived the storm?
"Oh, Will," she whispered, and felt new tears scalding the back of her throat. "Where are you?"
***
The crew of the Lady Elizabeth stared in silence at the sunrise, as if they had never seen such a lovely thing. Perhaps after their long night, so it seemed. In the rigging overhead a loose line slapped an awkward rhythm and somewhere a block clattered. There were a number of things that rattled strangely aboard the sloop, now.
"Nothin'," drifted a voice from the topmast. "I don't see nothin'."
"All right. Maybe we'll see them … in a little while. Come down, Matty. One of the men is going to see if there's anything for breakfast."
Will leaned on the tiller and tried not to notice the trembling exhaustion in his legs. When had he last slept; when had any of them? Somewhere east beyond that sunrise was Port Paix and Elizabeth. At least he thought it was east, as they were beyond any sight of Hispaniola now, blown off-course and out of visual contact with either the Black Pearl or the Royal Venture. He could only assume they were now northerly of their original course and out in the main channel of the Windward Passage.
'They must not make Port Paix.' Jack's admonition rang in his weary mind. Will had no doubt the larger ships had weathered the storm more handily than the little Lady Elizabeth, and perhaps even now Jack was tracking the Royal Venture and wondering where the rest of his crew had gone.
"Will …."
They dared not fail him now. He dared not fail Elizabeth now. Thus Port Paix must be their goal, and somewhere between here and there he must trust they would find the Black Pearl. Hopefully before it was too late …
"Will!"
He started and straightened and looked into two pretty but troubled brown eyes.
"Are you all right?" Anamaria asked.
"Yes … I think. How is the crew?"
"Other than some bumps and bruises, everyone is still with us. One of 'em cracked his head pretty hard, but we got a bandage on it."
"Good."
"Will?"
"Hm?"
"Why don't you get some rest?"
"I'm all right."
He hoped the swaying he felt was just the boat, and not his wits taking leave. Although the thought of simply falling face-forward was marvelously enticing.
"You look like you're drunk." She fixed him with a penetrating stare that reminded him disconcertingly of Jack. "I'll take the helm. We'll all stand four-hour watches. You go get some sleep."
"You first."
Anamaria's head barely reached past his shoulder, but he backed up when she took a fast step towards him. "You're no use to me if you pass out on your feet! I already slept early this mornin'. Now go sleep!"
"What happened to 'yes, captain'?"
She whipped her right arm out to point rigidly towards the main cabin hatch. "After you sleep. Go!"
Mustering a feeble grin, Will said, "Aye, First Mate."
"And don't worry." He paused in mid-step as she continued, "We'll need a bit of patchin', but any repairs can be made while we're underway. I'll see to it."
"Thank you, Anamaria." Will turned and glanced back over his shoulder. "Thank you."
His legs were numb as wooden blocks as he fumbled down the companionway, and within moments of crawling into an empty hammock, he was sound asleep. Outside the sun climbed into a glorious blue sky, and the Lady Elizabeth lifted her nose into the wind.
***
TBC …
A/N: Fear not, dear readers, Commodore Norrington will reappear in the next chapter! He's far too interesting to leave behind. :-) LOL, and the bad guys will get their just desserts, of course … but they are not done being bad, yet. Heh heh heh. And THANK YOU for liking my Will! I thought the guy had a whole lot of moxey to come storming out of his shop with a sword and a hatchet, ready to take on Barbossa's entire crew all by his onesies. Young, naïve, idealistic, you bet - but he's no wuss. I hope I will continue to please you, gentle readers, in all my segments to come.