Disclaimer: Not mine, blah, blah, blah.

Author's Note: Newly edited version. I must say here that I know next to nothing about ships or sailing, so if somebody knows more than me and spots anything I got wrong, please let me know. I've been doing a lot of research...yes, research...but I still have to fake it a little. The mizzen, by the way, is the third mast from the bow and thus, I have assumed, the rearmost mast on the 'Lady Swann.' Also, late summer is indeed hurricane season, much to my excitement when I looked up Caribbean weather patterns. I love it when the facts actually correspond to my plot ideas.


V
A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea

There's a tempest in yon horned moon
and lightning in yon cloud
and hard the music, mariners
the wind is piping loud
the wind is piping loud, my boys!
the lightning flashes free
while the hollow oak our palace is
our heritage the sea.

--"A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea"


"Cap'n Turner!"

"Enter," calls Will, frowning as he endeavors to survive the harrowing daily adventure of shaving aboard ship with only a bowl of soapy water and an aging razor. It would be easier to let the beard grow; his wife has even urged him to do so. Leave it, she begged him once, when he had just returned from a lengthy cruise, and had been chased home by hard weather all the way from Boston. It makes you really dashing, Will. Like a regular pirate.

Exactly, he'd retorted, and set to work until the scruffy scalawag in the mirror resembled a respectable merchant seaman once again.

It's Gabriel McBride's grizzled head, of course, not Elizabeth's glossy-haired one, that is now poking round the cabin door to interrupt his morning ablutions.

"I think ye'll be wanting t' have a look at yon sky," Gabe says, and withdraws.

The first mate sounds troubled. Will puts aside his razor to dry his face hurriedly, and winces as he hits a raw spot on his chin. Ducking out of the great cabin onto the maindeck, he finds Gabe McBride standing at the bow, arms crossed, squinting at the eastern horizon. The sun has not yet lifted over the rim of the world, but the gathering clouds there glow an ominous blood-red above a glassy sea.

Will glances up at the sails, hanging limp and unstirred, and back at the crimson sky. "When did we lose the wind?"

"First light. Sudden-like." The old sailor licks a finger and holds it up, testing. "Nae a whisper...air's uncanny heavy too, can ye feel it?"

Indeed, the atmosphere is thick with humidity and a sense of forboding that vibrates against Will's skin, prickling at the back of his neck. "Something's coming," he agrees.

"Aye, an' nothin' good, tha's certain! Tis' gettin on to summer's end, and we all know well what that means..."

Will nods. "Hurricane season."

"I'm bound t' tell ye, Cap'n, in all me years at sea, I've rarely seen a dawn as red as that sky yonder," says McBride. "I canna' be sure, but I fear we be in for nae less than a devilish squall." He moves toward the hatch. "Best I go and wake the watches."

Will frowns at the preternaturally smooth ocean. "Let them sleep while they can, Gabe. With us becalmed like this, there isn't much we can do but wait."

"Aye, but there's much tae say for bein' ready for the worst," says Gabe quietly. "An' I'd wager me best boots we willna' wait long aforeyon wind rises again wi' wicked vengeance, an' yon sea tries her level best to take us all for a visit t' Davy Jones."


The first real gust hits the ship broadside, throwing Elizabeth violently against the hull.

She lies still for a second, breathing hard, waiting for the wild pitch of the vessel to subside, but it only worsens. Thunder shakes the air; under it she hears the unearthly shriek of the wind, swelling and rising.

Since what she can only assume were the wee hours of the morning, she's huddled, wakeful and uneasy, in the oppressive darkness of the cargo hold; she should have recognized the tense, breathless atmosphere that signifies an approaching storm. She's lived in the Islands long enough to know the signs. But she's been too used to sleeplessness to question it these days.

The ship rocks again; one of the piles of crates behind which she's concealed herself topples over, missing her sprawled body by a few inches. She rolls, covering her face to protect it from the flying splinters, only to see the heavy barrels that she has pushed away from the side of the hold to form her hiding place sway and then slide precipitously towards her. With a gasp, she dives sideways as the barrels crash against the hull in the precise spot where she lay just a moment ago.

I have to get out of here.

Her first attempt to get to her feet is thwarted by another onslaught of wind and the steep tilt of the ship as it climbs a wave. She hasn't, after all, gotten her sea legs back yet, and this is hardly the time she would have chosen to regain them.

She staggers finally to the foot of the hatchway steps, remembering at the last minute to restuff her unruly hair inside her cap, and half-stumbles, half-crawls up to the crew deck. Stopping to listen to the noise from above--faint shouts and orders, the snap of canvas against timber, and over it all the furious roar of the wind--she is forcibly bowled over by one of the men in his hurry to get topside. He pauses long enough to haul her to her feet.

"C'mon, laddie, cap'n wants all hands on deck--"

She's trapped now; she has no choice but to follow him, praying that she can stay clear of Will in the confusion of the storm.

In fact, the chaos above deck is more than she hoped for. It must be afternoon by now, but the clouds are so dense that it seems more like twilight, and the downpour is so torrential that she almost can't make out the bow some twenty feet ahead. A sheet of water drenches her, and she only knows it's seawater rather than rainwater because of the salt sting in her eyes. Half-blind, she barely manages to catch the heavy rope tossed her way before it smacks her in the face.

"Tie that off! Handsomely, now!"

She does her best, struggling a bit with the knot. Drawn fast at least, if not handsomely, she thinks with grim humor. Then the deck seems to drop from beneath her; the ship plummets down into a trough, nearly leaving her behind in the crush of water that pours down in their wake. Abandoning all thought, she clings desperately to the thick coil until the wave drains away.

"You!" The shout comes from the starboard bow. She turns with a sinking heart; sure enough, Will Turner is looking straight at her. "You're light, boy! We need you up with Johnny on the mizzen-stays!"

Thank Providence. He hasn't recognized me. She steadies herself, tips her head back until she spots the dim figure far above her in the rigging, grappling with a sail that has come unfastened. As she hesitates, the whip-crack of breaking rope echoes like a gunshot. The loosed canvas fills and billows, and the Lady leaps sideways in response.

"What are you waiting for, lad? Get up there!"

Elizabeth has shortened a sail or two in her life, despite the protests of either her father or her husband, and she's watched it done time and time again, but now...Soaked and shivering, buffeted by the gale, she knows that she's afraid.

Fool! she berates herself. This is your chance! Show him what you're made of. You can't fail him now.

Can't fail yourself.

She grabs onto the mizzen ties, hoists herself upwards. Will pauses a second to make sure she heard and understood, but his attention shifts quickly elsewhere. She breathes a sigh of relief and scales the ropes, concentrating on hanging on tighter than she's ever held onto anything in her life.

Good thing he didn't ask me to climb the main topsail.

Lightning flares, eerily illuminating the boiling clouds, followed closely by another throbbing growl of thunder. Another deluge of seawater swamps the ship. She rides the unstable braces, rain slapping at her face, while the Lady Swann climbs the next heavy swell. Adrenaline surges through her body; strangely exhilarated, she laughs out loud into the raging wind.

She hasn't experienced real fear for years, faced the very real and imminent possibility of her own death, the realization that her life can be saved or lost by one split-second choice of action or one misstep. Not since before her marriage. Not since those splendid, terrible days that followed the coming of the Black Pearl.

She laughs again. She laughs because she is alive, and because she's forgotten to appreciate that fact until this moment.