This chapter is pretty much the conversations (or lack thereof) that our characters have at dinner

Chapter 4- In Which Sarah Relearns the Meaning of Silence

Daniel laughed, it was a wild reckless laugh, out of character and strangely happy, but Daniel didn't notice. He had laughed this laugh many times even though he was only seventeen and a half. This laugh had won him his manhood even if he couldn't remember anything from that night it didn't matter, nobody cared. Only good society cared if you were a drunk and Daniel held company with pirates.

His eyes swam a little throwing the world in and out of focus. Gibbs pummeled him on the shoulder and offered him more to drink, but he waved it away thinking of how he must look to her already. He glanced at his plate and gave his dinner a disgusted look. All that was left was rock hard bread and a green apple. He blinked to clear his vision and tried to peer through the windows of his father's cabin.

"My blood and yours, eh?" Jack was saying.

They had finished their dinner and were slowly drinking themselves into a stupor while Will made his proposition.

"Yes, that would be the general idea," Will said placing his feet on the table.

"Tell me, what is so useful about the blood of a pirate and the blood of a merchant, soon-to-be governor?"

"Well it solves our little problem, doesn't it?"

"Aye, that be true, but will they agree?" Jack leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with interest and rum.

"You said he had a hand with the ladies, right?"

"Women of Tortuga luv, not exactly high society."

"There's a reason why she's never known boys her age, believe me, she'll fall."

Jack raised an eyebrow, and then sat back a strange look on his face.

"After all you've been through, after all you've seen, you're going to tell me that you still trust blood? In the end, blood is what killed Norrington, blood is what drove Barbosa to kidnap Elizabeth-," Will cut him off.

"It was also blood that got you to come with me, and that was probably the best thing that could happen to me."

"Hhhmmmmm," Jack raised his rum bottle, "To blood, both mine and yours, perhaps the last thing that will save the Caribbean."

Will smashed his bottle against Jack's and they drank.

Sarah wrinkled her nose at the "food" on her plate; she supposed that at some point in its being it once resembled a fish, but no longer. At least the wine erased anything that she might taste.

"This is disgusting," she muttered for the thousandth time, "I'm going to go speak to my father about this."

As she stood up Mr. Cotton shook his head sadly and patted the barrel next to him. She had been complaining all night and he was getting rather tired of it, but he supposed that since she was a girl no one listened to her, and it wasn't truly her fault that she was a bit spoiled.

"I don't have to listen to a pirate! I am the governor's granddaughter, and I was raised to be at the head of a household NOT on a pirate ship!" she said, though not without much conviction. Mr. Cotton remembered how high born women were always to be seen, never heard, and how Elizabeth always hated it. This girl did not understand how silence could hold power. He patted the barrel next to him again.

Sarah sighed and sat down, always obedient. Mr. Cotton patted her shoulder consolingly and then covered his eyes, Sarah did the same.

"Excuse me, but I don't see how-," Mr. Cotton's hand on her mouth stopped her, 'He wants me to listen,' she thought.

So, she did. She heard the roar of the waves splashing against the hull and the less noticeable groan of the wood as it held up to the battering waves. She heard Daniel's laugh, it was like and unlike his own, it was his voice but not his laugh. It was a far from sober night and the men were teasing each other about the women that waited for them in Tortuga. She heard something to her left and turned her head towards the noise. Two men were talking about their children, it wasn't rare for pirates to have children, she was sure that Jack did, it was rare for pirates to care. Mr. Cotton removed her hand from her eyes and motioned for her to place them on her ears.