Chapter Twelve
We stalk and attack and capture and sink.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Darkness settled over the ocean and on the ship, like a dark blanket, isolating each man from his neighbor. Gibbs gave the order to light no lanterns - the sailors were not even to light their pipes.
Elizabeth remained at Will's side. Where Norrington went, Will didn't see.
Jack returned after quite a while and ordered full sail. Even he seemed subdued by the darkness; he gave his order almost quietly.
The wind was light, and the Black Pearl glided slowly through the night. Sometime during the dead of night, they lost the wind altogether. "Shall we run out the sweeps, Cap'n?" Gibbs asked.
"Wait 'til dawn," answered Jack, studying the southern sky.
Will relinquished the helm to AnaMaria around midnight, and he and Elizabeth talked and dozed together quite cozily next to one of the aft capstans. The off-duty sailors slung hammocks around the deck, adding ghostly webbing to the dark ship.
When the sun rose, no one could see it. Dawn turned the air gray. The Black Pearl was mired in pea-soup thick fog, without a breath of wind. The pirates performed some of the early morning chores Will was familiar with, such as swabbing the deck, but the fog kept everyone's thoughts only half on what they were doing.
Jack was at the helm.
"I hope you have a real compass, Sparrow," Norrington said to him.
"Don't worry, Mate," replied the ineffable pirate. "I know where we are."
"Then man your oars and row us out of this."
"I know where we are, but who can say what's ahead of us? Stanley's out there somewhere. We've caught a good current taking us east. It's enough."
"Ship ahoy!" called a youthful voice from the foremast rigging.
The entire crew came alert.
"Cap'n, she's burning!" the young man added.
Will and Elizabeth clambered forward on the starboard side, with most of the rest of the crew. The patchy fog floated before their gaze like waving curtains, but Will could make out the glow of a fire, through the mist.
"Run out the starboard sweeps!" ordered Gibbs, but half the crew was already clambering into the galley.
It was remarkable to Will the way Jack's crew anticipated their leaders' orders. It was as if the whole crew understood what needed to be done, and only waited for confirmation from Jack, Gibbs, or AnaMaria.
Before long the rowers had brought the Black Pearl around, and moved her nearer to the flames. The skeleton of a good-sized ship protruded grotesquely from the placid waters, masts and bowsprit afire like cockeyed candles on a cake. No other pieces of wood clung together large enough to support even a single man above water.
"Could it be the Tarantula?" asked Elizabeth, as she, Will, Norrington, and much of the crew stood staring at the wreck.
"Too many masts," Will told her.
Jack had the dinghies lowered, and his crew rowed carefully amid the burning wreckage. They returned with fishing nets full of salvaged goods. As the crew picked gleefully through the pile, taking anything they saw that they liked, Will sensed Elizabeth's growing indignation.
"Jack," she demanded. "Your men weren't looking for survivors?"
"Calm yourself, Missy," Jack said, plucking a fine tri-corner hat from the pile and trying it on, experimentally. "If they'd found anyone, they'd have brought them aboard."
"Captain Sparrow," said Norrington, also watching the crew's antics with distaste, "did your men find any evidence of what ship she was and what happened to her?"
"Here you go, Commodore," called a scrawny pirate. The man tossed a large piece of planking at Norrington, who caught it awkwardly.
"M.S. PATRIO" was painted on the wood in green. Will saw it, and he saw Norrington tip the planking away, so others could not easily see it. Others, like Elizabeth.
"The Patriot?" she asked. She moved in front of Will to grip the planking by one end.
Norrington moved slightly to prevent her, but was too well mannered to simply snatch it away from her. "Mrs. Turner . . ." he began.
"Will!" Elizabeth gasped. "My father was to return on the H.M.S. Patriot! That's his ship!"
Will reached for her, but she whirled away in a panic to confront Jack.
"Jack! You have to look for survivors! We have to look again. Please!"
She was ringed by Will, Jack, and Norrington, each of whom regarded her with combinations of shock and pity. Even the other pirates curbed their gaiety, as Gibbs hushed them.
"I don't care if it delays us," she aimed at Norrington, before turning back to Jack. "Look again, Jack, please! They might have missed someone in the fog." Tears spilled down her face.
Will knew a sick feeling in his stomach that told him no one had survived the explosion that must have destroyed the Patriot, and he suspected that Jack and Norrington knew it too. But it would have taken a stronger man than Will to deny her, and, apparently, a stronger man than Jack, as well.
"Aye, Lass," he said simply. "We'll look again."
Will held his distraught wife as the crew readied every boat they had on board. He wished desperately that he could think of something to say that would comfort her.
Norrington waited discreetly until she had regained some composure. Then he approached.
"Mrs. Turner, please take some comfort," he said, formally. In his hand he held a beaker of some drink, which he extended to her. She accepted it cautiously.
"We can't know he was aboard. It's quite possible that he was delayed in London. The Patriot would have returned on schedule with or without him; I needed them here."
For the first time it occurred to Will that Commodore Norrington had lost men and, quite possibly, friends, on the Patriot.
"Thank you, James," Elizabeth said, in an uncharacteristically small voice. She took a sip of the drink. "But he wrote me that he planned to return with them."
"I beg you, do not lose all hope. We don't yet know all of what has happened." He bowed slightly and retreated. Will watched him go, both jealous of his manners and grateful for them.
Elizabeth turned in Will's grasp to face him. "Rum?" she offered with a brave smile.
"No, thank you," Will smiled back. "You drink it."
"I hate it," she confided.
"Consider it medicine," he said.
She frowned, but managed a few more swallows. Then she gave him an alarmed look, squirmed free of his embrace and moved to the stern where she was violently sick over the rail.
Alarmed himself, Will hurried to procure some water for her, which she accepted gratefully. "You really don't like rum," he said as she drank.
She nodded, still recovering.
Will looked for something to distract her. "Do you want to go out in one of the boats?" he asked.
"No," she said, and her hopeless expression wrung Will's heart, "he's not out there anywhere. I know it."
The pirates searched the waters surrounding the wreck, calling into the fog, but found no one. They could not be deterred from looting anything of value they found in the water, but at least they didn't celebrate within Elizabeth's hearing.
Will found a blanket to wrap her in, and stayed with her, even when the boats had all returned, the last of the Patriot had sunk beneath the sea, and Jack began giving orders to row the Black Pearl to the south. Norrington, Will could see by his gestures as he spoke to Jack, didn't agree with the course change. Will was curious about it himself, but figured he'd learn its reason soon enough.
Jack stood forward at the bow, peering constantly through his spyglass. Will couldn't imagine what Jack thought to see through the fog, but as time wore on, the fog thinned, and Will thought it would be gone before long.
Jack lowered his spyglass and left his position, approaching the two of them.
"Elizabeth," he said gently, "do you remember you told me your father couldn't find the Isle de Muerte if his salvation depended on it?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Do you really believe that?"
Elizabeth gave Will a puzzled look. "My father has never had any interest in sailing. He's no navigator." Will noticed she didn't say "was."
"Norrington tells me they talked, though, on the way to the Isle de Muerte. Your father knew enough to know it's located south from the Greater Antilles."
"What are you getting at, Jack?" asked Will, wishing the man wouldn't talk to Elizabeth about her father just now.
"Come with me," Jack said to Elizabeth. "I want to show you something."
The two of them followed Jack forward, to where he had been standing for the last hour. He handed Elizabeth the spyglass and pointed. "What do you see?"
Elizabeth didn't take long. She started, and looked at Jack in astonishment. "A ship!" she cried, attracting the attention of the nearest crewmen. She looked again, as Jack nodded.
"It's the Tarantula," he said calmly.
Will held out his hand for the spyglass and Elizabeth gave it to him. As Will focused on the Navy ship occasionally visible through the thinning mist, Jack asked her,
"Why do you think they suddenly turned to the south?"
Elizabeth gasped and looked at Jack with hope renewed.
The pirate grinned hugely at her and bellowed, "Ship ahoy! Double speed and run out the guns!"