Barbossa met Simbakka's fascinating and distracting selection of facial scars upon stepping out of his cabin. "Spanish merchant ship, cap'n," he said, succinctly, in the same voice he might have said, "Blind and daft old lady wandering around laden with jewels."
Barbossa grinned and turned to face the deck. "MAN THE GUNS, YOU ROTTING SONS OF WENCHES," he bellowed, superfluously as it turned out. The air was almost viscous with the smoke of cannons, and the noise was crushing. "HARD-A-PORT!"
The merchant vessel was in trouble. Heavily armed as it was, the large hull made it cumbersome in the water, and the cannons, whilst big, heavy and capable of doing serious damage if The Revenge held still for long enough, were what Barbossa cheerfully referred to as 'a bugger' to load. Already there were more agonised screams than frenzied battle activity going on over on that side of the water.
With a neat swipe of his hand he picked out about seven men. "Grappling irons, boys! Board that floating gold-hoard!"
The Spanish captain evidently had had the same idea, as there were sailors, in uniforms (ergh) unsteadily clambering aboard The Revenge. Barbossa hated uniforms on a man. He picked a sailor at random, thumbing back the hammer of his gun.
"How's yer luck?" he asked, as the fellow raised his sword.
The sailor made the mistake of being distracted from his task of cleaving Barbossa's head open for a nanosecond. "Bad, I'd think!" Barbossa said happily, and blew his brains out.
The sailor's companion swung round with a Spanish curse but his ribcage collided with Barbossa's drawn sword with an interesting 'gristle-gristle-crack' noise. He fell over, very much dead.
"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me," Barbossa hummed madly under his breath, absentmindedly breaking the nose of another boarding sailor. Ketchum dropped the cannon ball he was carrying on the sailor's head, picked it up and ran for his cannon, picking off organic bits as he lumbered.
"FURL THOSE SAILS, YOU MAGGOTS," Barbossa affectionately called, then spun round to meet the indescribably petrified face of Lovehaste. He blinked and readjusted his mindset.
"Getbelowdeckrightnow," he blurred at her. Lovehaste just stared at him, apparently too in shock to even scream in an irritating and fainting-blossom-heroine manner. Barbossa noticed she was clutching her brat to her chest. The thing was oddly quiet; Barbossa caught himself wondering whether she'd suffocated it by holding the thing too hard. Shots whistled around their ears, but she was too stunned to even duck.
"NowLovehastenow," he blurred, and shot the fingers off the Spanish boatswain creeping up behind her. "Move."
She stared at him still, flecks of the boatswain's blood on her twitching cheek. To his mild surprise, the boatswain himself hadn't given up and was struggling to draw his sabre. "Lovehaste," he said quietly, and she emptied a look of complete frightened blankness at him. "Lovehaste, move."
Wham.
The boatswain's eyes rolled up in his head and he keeled over sideways. Latonya slowly lowered her fist. Her sleeve was rolled up and, in the moment she'd thrown the punch, every single muscle was picked out on her arm. In a series of heavy, graceful movements, Latonya picked the boatswain up and swung him over her shoulder.
What a woman! thought Barbossa. More a man than my men! Someone shot the feather in his hat off. "HIT THE SMALL GUNS! ON MAXIMO'S MARK!" he yodelled, not taking his eyes off the two females.
At the sound of Latonya's grunts of effort in getting the boatswain on her shoulders, Lovehaste suddenly came alive. She snapped round to Latonya. "Can you carry him down?" she barked, and it took a moment for Barbossa to realise she was talking about the brat.
Latonya took it in the crook of one elbow. She didn't look afraid in the slightest- Barbossa suspected she didn't have the mental agility to comprehend fear. "I'll take him down to de crew's quarters. You want I should stay wi' him?"
Lovehaste nodded ferociously, and Latonya swung coolly off, staggering slightly under the weight. The deck splintered up around her as someone unloaded a flintlock pistol at her ankles, but Latonya seemed to bear a charmed walk. She made it to the steps unharmed and vanished into the black beneath the ship.
"And yer just going to watch her go, are ye?" he asked Lovehaste, in a voice that suggested he knew all about Lovehaste's total lack of maternal instinct.
She tried to stick out her chest. It was a tragic sight. "I'm going to help you fight," she said, and drew her ridiculous costume sword.
Barbossa swore liberally, and seamlessly added, "SHIFT! SHIFT! AIM FOR THE RUDDER CHAIN!" for the merchant ship was sluggishly attempting to move away. He vaguely saw Monk on board the boat slit the helmsman's throat.
"Don't be stupid," he snarled, striding off towards the cannons. "Get below deck where ye can only harm yerself."
"I want to help you!" squeaked Lovehaste indignantly. "Listen! STOPPER THE SMALL GUNS," she shrieked suddenly, resembling a demented banshee. "CONCENTRATE FIRE FROM THE CANNONS!"
"What are you doing?" yelled Barbossa, and threw himself onto the deck as a cannon ball came whistling through the air towards his skull. He heaved himself back upright. "For one, that's not proper fighting language and for two, it's a bloody stupid idea! BELAY THAT ORDER, YOU CRETINOUS ROACHES!" he added.
"Let me help you!" shouted Lovehaste, and she actually stamped her foot.
Barbossa laughed, more out of fury than amusement. "This is not a game, wench!" He made a swift decision and seized her by her sparse, mousy hair. She hollered as he started to drag her to the 'funbox'- a small grille in the deck leading to a tiny space at the edge of the filthy bilges, under the deck, where Barbossa occasionally threw prisoners, and then scorpions. (He'd made sure one was put on The Revenge especially.) "I hope to hell yer don't get claustrophobic, Lovehaste," he told her, and chucked her inside the narrow hole. It was a longer way down than he remembered.
"Let me out!" wailed Lovehaste, to his retreating back.
The Spanish captain had ordered renewed fire from the cannons. It was clearly a last desperate act of bravery- the ship was sinking before Barbossa's very eyes. A few of his men swung aboard, laden with booty which they threw down the stairs to the hold, grim expressions on their faces.
It was, however, a gesture of some defiance. An unpleasant crunching sound suggested to Barbossa that they had better finish off the ship soon or The Revenge would be unpleasantly low in the water.
"Water comin' in, cap'n," Maximo reported in his ear.
"Curses," muttered Barbossa. "TOSS A THUNDERBOX," he roared. "ALL MEN RETURN TO DECK! SWING TO STARBOARD! UNFURL THE SAILS! MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!"
A barrell full of gunpowder was duly fetched and thrown towards the merchant ship as The Revenge started to move shakily, but speedily, away, awash with new plunder. Some good shot fired a bullet through it and it exploded as it hit the merchant ship's deck.
Hot air lashed across The Revenge. There was a brief moment of what Barbossa felt sure must be Hell momentarily flashing across the sea, and the ship groaned from its heart. Burning ash drifted gently onto his cheek. A ragged cheer stuttered up.
"Shut that," he snapped. "Save the celebrating for when we've emptied out belowdecks of the water."
"Cap'n! The funbox!" He glanced up sharply towards the speaker.
"What?" he demanded.
"The bilges are bulging with water!" the pirate blurted out, stammering a little over the alliteration. Barbossa's eyes widened and he flung himself towards the grille.
The top of Lovehaste's head was pressed right up against the grille, or what was visible of the grille amongst the debris. A fallen cannon had caved most of it in. A frantic stream of bubble was frothing over the bars, and her fingers poked up through the gaps, grasping at the air as if she thought she could pull herself out. The water from the grille stank abominably. The commotion within suggested she was kicking, in some sort of mad dying spasm.
"Get her out!" Barbossa thundered. "Move that cannon, you sons of mothers!"
He took her stiff, groping fingers in his fist and squeezed hard. She scratched at the calloused flesh of his palm so frantically she tore her nails.
How long can a human being survive without air? he wondered to himself, as Maximo bellowed some buccaneers into lashing ropes around the fallen cannon. Two minutes? No, call it three, Lovehaste must be pretty good at holding her breath with all those plot twists she has to deal with...
The fingers became quite contorted but the kicking and the bubbles had stopped. The pirates succeeded in lifting the nose of the cannon, but pieces of the broken up deck were blocking the way.
How long has it been now? Call it a minute and a half. Isn't there a few second or so after yer lose consciousness that ye can stay alive? He wished he'd experimented on prisoners a little more, instead of just tossing them over the side or slashing their throats. Bear that in mind for next time.
Rough, ripping hands were trying to clear the deck. The index finger moved weakly in his fist. Everything else about her was still.
Two minutes? Two and a half? She must be conserving oxygen now that she's... stopped... moving...
He gave a nonsensical bellow and, with strength astonishing in a man of years so advance, helped the pirates heave another piece of deck up. Nearly there, nearly there.
Lovehaste was dragged up into the open, through the vile water. She looked like a dirty rag doll someone had thrown away, and she wasn't breathing. Barbossa slapped her around the face a couple of times, then realised this probably wasn't helping. He pounded at her chest instead.
Lovehaste's eyes flew open as if the lids were attached to strings that had just been rather suddenly jerked. She turned onto her side, coughed up even more of the foul water, then was graphically ill all over the place. Barbossa breathed out.
A weird giggle came from behind him, sounding oddly as if it was oscillating. He turned and saw Latonya, holding the cheerfully sniggering child.
"Bit of trouble?" Latonya asked, absentmindedly jiggling the thing.
Barbossa watched Lovehaste wipe her mouth and look around blearily. "Nothing serious," he said, and realised with a strange sinking feeling he was lying.