Adult-FanFiction.org : Movies

Ship in a Bottle	By : EvilE Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 4205 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
Chapter 7: Whirlwind

Mary rushed out on deck, calling orders and pointing up at the masts. He followed close behind, finding it odd not to be the one responsible for everything. Crewmen swarmed as the boat tilted crazily to one side, and then the other. They had to furl or cut the sails, with the wind blowing up the way it was. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed, and although it was not yet raining, the wind was so strong that sea waves sprayed up on to the deck.

Jack squinted up at the sky, but could see nothing in the dark. The noise was deafening, as the wind howled, the waves crashed, and the crew shouted just to be heard over the wind and sea. They tried for a few minutes to keep order, but as the ship rolled, crewmen were tossed from their posts and from the lines they were climbing. Jack saw some of them get up and begin to climb again. Some did not.

A large wave swept the deck, then, and even Jack was knocked down and soaked, sliding over a few feet before standing back up. Not good. There were a lot of sails still out, and in this wind... they could lose a mast. Or three.

As though in keeping with his thought, he heard a crackling sound from a few feet away. The mizzenmast. She wouldn't be able to take much more pressure before breaking. He turned toward it, looking for unoccupied crewmen, but seeing none, withdrew his dagger from his belt and placed it between his teeth. He found the rope ladder and began to climb, which was no easy task considering the ropes were swinging back and forth as the ship moved, nearly flinging him into the waves. He clutched the ropes tighter and stopped climbing for a moment, wondering if this was how the other Jack Sparrow met his end.

And there was a great flash of lightning to his right, and he looked out to sea.

What he saw froze the blood in his veins. It was every sailor's worst nightmare.

Worse than pirates, or the Navy. Worse than the Black Pearl when she was a ghost ship. Worse than the Kraken. He immediately climbed back down, hanging on with one hand as the ship continued to pitch, and heard the crackling noise again. The mast was breaking. But soon, that wouldn't matter anyway.

He made his way along the deck, getting splashed with the waves and tossed by the motion of the ship, looking for Mary. He saw her, pointing frantically at the main mast, where a number of crewmen worked as fast as possible to secure the sails.

“Mary!” He called through the howling wind. A clap of thunder nearly drowned him out. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled again. “Captain Sparrow!”

She glanced toward him, then, and he waved his arms wildly to get her attention. He was making his way down the deck, but progress was slow, if he wanted to stay on his feet. He dodged running crewmen carrying lines, weapons, and canvas along the deck.

“Mary! Captain! Listen, we've got to get off the ship,” he called as he approached her.

She looked at him as though he had sprouted a second head, and pointed at the mast. “I've got to get the sails secured, or the mast will fall!” she called back.

“That's not going to matter once the waterspout hits us!” he yelled.

“What? I can't hear you, there's too much noise!” Another clap of thunder and shot of lightning, directly overhead.

“I said, there's a bloody waterspout headed straight for us!”

He saw she had heard, then, because she turned to scan the ocean behind her.

“Not there! There!” he called, pointing off the port bow. “You've got to ready the longboats!”

He saw the terror register in her face, as she backed away from the main mast. He finally was able to cross the deck and reach her, and he extended his arms and grabbed her shoulders, whirling her to face him. “I know it's not easy, love, god knows, I'd never give up the Pearl without a hell of a fight, but we've got to go. Now. If we're in a small craft on the water we might have a fighting chance.”

“I've never seen one,” she said dreamily, staring off in the direction he had pointed. It was too dark to discern anything, and the sea was lit only by flashes of lightning. “Only heard of them, the whirlwinds on the ocean.”

“Then you're damned lucky. But I have. And we've got to get out of its path. Now. Forget your Pearl, and save your life.”

She turned her face toward him, and clutched at his shoulders when the ship rocked perilously, almost twenty to thirty degrees, if he wasn't mistaken. “It's my destiny,” he thought he heard her say, still in the slightly dreamy voice.

“Your what?”

“The Destiny! It's the Destiny!” she argued, throwing his hands from her with a violent gesture. “The ship!”

He understood, then, that it wasn't called the Pearl after all. Not exactly surprising, but also not of a great amount of consequence at the moment. Since it was going to sink. He thought of how he could bring her out of this trance, this denial that was clouding her judgment. He knew Elizabeth, knew how stubborn she was and how she would nearly die before backing down before anything, but this... this was a fight she could not win. He stepped in closer, the wind and sea howling around them, together with the desperate cries of the crew, and took her face between his hands.

“You've got to give the order to ready the longboats! You have to do it, now, or we're all dead! And believe it or not, I've no wish to die. Do it, Mary. Call the order!” He had to shout to be heard above the din.

For a moment he thought she hadn't heard him, and that she would remain stupefied and insist on going down with the ship, and taking them all with her. He smoothed sea water off of her face with his thumb, watched the wind whip her hair across her forehead, and thought again that she was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen.

Her open-mouthed cry took him by surprise, nearly knocking him backward.

“Boooooooooooooooats!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Into the boats! Now! Move, if you value your lives!” Another crewman heard and repeated it, and soon the cry had reached all around the leaping deck.

She twisted out of his grasp and stumbled away, extending a hand to keep from falling. “Mary - ! Where are you going?”

“Get to the boats, Jack, I'll be there in a moment.”

“No, no, love, we've got to go now. No time.” But she was already fighting her way back down the deck, toward the stairs to the quarter deck. He swore and took off after her, dodging a wooden piece of debris that the wind had picked up. The wind was swirling more intensely, now, and Jack didn't want to know how close the waterspout had gotten. Too close, he was sure.

“Mary!” he yelled uselessly after her, chasing her on wobbly legs across the aft part of the main deck. The crew had lowered one of the boats and was loading it, climbing down the ropes from the deck. The other would be lowered soon.

Just then, the crackling Jack had heard from the mizzenmast became a more rhythmic snapping, and he saw the column begin to buckle. It was going to fall forward, he saw, right onto the quarter deck. Right where Mary was heading, having rounded the stairs toward the cabin.

“Mary!” he bellowed, breaking into as much of a run as he could, being thrown from one leg to the other by the incessant bucking of the ship. “Mary! Careful! Look out!”

His feet flew along the deck and past the steps as though by magic, and he looked up and saw the mast falling, saw it cascading toward them, and left his feet and dove, lengthwise, for Mary's legs. He caught them and they both tumbled to the ground of the quarter deck with a thud. But the sound of their landing was drowned out by the crashing of the mizzen as it hit the deck and splintered, sending debris flying in all directions.

Mary, lying on her stomach in confusion, stared open-mouthed at the mast that had landed not two feet in front of her. She bent her knees and got to her feet, looking behind her to see Jack, looking madder than hell, as he picked himself up off the sopping deck.

“Mary, we've got to go. Lost your mind, have you? That waterspout'll be upon us any second!”

“I can't leave without it!” she screamed back at him, and before he could stop her, she had dashed inside the cabin door.

* * *

The dawn was breaking.

Gibbs stroked his salt-and-pepper beard with his thumb and forefinger, and sighed. Still no sign of Jack. But the fog that had given them cover yesterday had mostly lifted, and the darkness of night was lifting, too. They had put out the lanterns so as not to be seen. But the Navy ship was still there. And when the dawn broke, they'd be fully exposed to their view. The ship was closer already than it had been.

They were making pursuit.

It was close enough for him to tell some details of the vessel, as well, and he was now fairly certain it was the Dauntless. A ship they could never best in battle, not in a hundred years. Their only choice was to run, and he was dreading giving the order to the crew to make sail, knowing it meant they were abandoning Jack. But keep to the code, as Jack always said. He would understand.

But she wouldn't. The lass. She had fallen asleep right on the deck, like a true sailor, her back against the side, having collapsed after watching half the night for Jack to return. And having seen her temper before - aye, he had - he thought it perhaps better to give the order to set sail while she was still asleep. And peaceful.

With a heavy heart he summoned a crewman and sent him to rouse Will. It was time to go. He scanned the seas for any sign of an unusual mist, or Jack. There was none.

Here's luck to you, Captain Jack. Gibbs withdrew his flask and took a long, steadying swill.

* * *

Jack stared incredulously at the cabin door that had swung closed behind Mary, as the wind became a gale in earnest, nearly knocking him backward. The rain began, issuing from the sky in torrents, the noise adding the deafening roar of air, thunder, and sea. Shading his eyes with his hand, he peered off the port bow into the dark and chaos, scanning for any sign of the waterspout. He heard the churning of the sea from all directions, and the wind was a screaming whine in his ears, but he couldn't see well enough to determine how close they were to destruction.

Another flash of lightning. Then he saw it. Not a hundred feet from where they stood, a whirling column of wind and sea that reached heavenward in a black mass of mist. His eyes went wide and he stared at this new enemy, feeling the salt spray whip against his face so hard it stung. This was not something Jack could wheel and deal with, not someone he could trick, not a woman he could charm into obeisance.

As he watched in disbelief as the mouth of hell descending upon them, he wondered if this was how he was supposed to die. Right here, on the deck of the Pearl. Perhaps he'd cheated fate too many times in the course of his life. Perhaps in this world - the one he was currently in - Jack Sparrow's number had come up more than two days ago, and he would soon perish, as well. He thought of Mary, and how rapidly he had dismissed the idea of abandoning her, although it had occurred to him, as she ran away to the cabin while everyone else was jumping into the longboats. Funny, the witch had said that the woman he loved was the price of regaining the Pearl, not that his own life would be the price of the woman he loved. And even though he hadn't had time to sort out the complications of who was who and if he even wanted to be married to her, he knew that his feet were absolutely rooted to the spot on which he stood, and would be until he saw Mary's face emerge from that cabin.

He heard the doors and turned, and she was there, staggering but keeping her balance, clutching a leather satchel under her arm. “I've got it!” she shouted over the din. “Let's go to the boats!”
She lifted the strap of the satchel over her head so it hung across her body. “Go!”

Jack turned back to port, and saw that the sea had risen on that side of the ship, the water approaching them like a wall. Perhaps he was supposed to die. Right here, right now.

But then again, Captain Jack Sparrow had never paid much attention to what he was supposed to do.

He grabbed Mary's hand and dragged her across the deck to the starboard side, grasping a line to pull himself up on the side. He hauled her up with him, and she turned and saw the waterspout closing on the ship, and then met his eyes with a nod that confirmed his last-ditch, desperate plan for survival. He squeezed her hand tightly, and as he heard the cracking of another mast and the squeal of the wooden boards being torn apart, he swung outside the ropes, and he and Mary jumped, their legs flailing as they plummeted down toward the sea.

The water was a shock from which Jack recovered soon enough, and when his head broke the surface he began to swim around the stern, with broad strokes covering as much distance as possible. At a certain point he wasn't sure if he was swimming toward the waterspout's path or away from it, only that he was swimming for his life, and Mary was right next to him.

Somewhere close by there had to be the boats, but in the swirling chaos, it was impossible to see where they were or if they might get to them. His only thought was to evade the path of the whirlwind to the very extent of his ability. Mary kept up with him, gasping for breath as they dove and rose among the crests.

A loud sound drew his attention back to the ship, a short distance from where they presently were, and he turned in the water to see the winds and water begin to rip the Pearl completely apart. The main mast broke and slammed down into the surf. The aft deck and cabin were torn apart from the top to the hull. Loose sails and strips of canvas flew in a rotating circle around the still-floating pieces, like hungry gulls.

It tore at his heart, and Jack groaned. Mary caught up with him and turned, too, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him in the water, as they were tossed by the waves.

“That's at least the third time I've lost my ship,” Jack murmured sorrowfully against her neck, his eyes wide as he absorbed the destruction.

“Your ship?!” she protested. But she seemed to forget his words as she watched the waterspout barrel through the remains of the vessel, shielding it from their view in a dark mass of sea and air.

And it was still moving.

“Jack,” she said. “Think we ought to keep swimming!”

They separated and swam, but it became increasingly difficult as the wind wreaked havoc on the surface of the water. Water came from above, from below, from the side. It wouldn't do to start swimming downward. If they did, they might never find the surface again.

They had lost the Pearl. They had missed the boats. And now they were being robbed of their ability to swim. Jack felt that despair again, as he searched his mind for a plan, for any possible means of escape, as the roar of the whirlwind blistered his ears.

What would happen to a person underneath a waterspout, he wondered. Would they be sucked up into the air, lifted to the clouds? Or would they be suctioned downward into the sea, to be drowned in a swirling drain of ocean and sky? Or would they be torn apart by the winds, a painful yet mercifully quick method of death? He really didn't want to find out, but they seemed to have exhausted their avenues of escape.

And then he remembered the bottle.

“Mary, stay close to me, and keep on swimming! May be able to get us out of this!”

He plunged his hand into the sea water to find his leather pouch, and carefully withdrew the small bottle of golden potion. Don't drop it, Sparrow, he warned himself as a wave threw him and he tightened his fingers around the bottle's neck.

Two drops. All he needed were two drops to part the mist to go back. But the waterspout's wall of black water was almost upon them. He uncorked the bottle.

“Mary, when you see some water shoot up, and a mist, swim! Swim toward it, and don't look back, savvy?”

He couldn't see her nod amidst the pandemonium of wind and water, but he hoped she had heard, and held the bottle above his head, releasing two painfully slow, golden drops. He withdrew his arm and re-corked it, hanging onto it for dear life.

“Come on, come on.” He glanced back at the rapidly closing monsoon of wind, at certain death. Mary slid into his shoulder, surfacing after being submerged by a wave.

Then, a sudden, deafening spout of mist. White mist. It spiraled upward into a cloud above the surface of the ocean.

“Now! Swim, now! Go!” he cried, and the two of them leapt and struggled and paddled in the roiling water. He heard Mary shriek and saw she was being pulled backward by the current, the very motion of the sea altered by the whirlwind. He grabbed her wrist and pulled, hard, as he kicked with his feet toward the mist.

And then they were inside the mist, and the hellish turmoil outside seemed to fade, slowly, as though they were being carried away from it on an invisible ship.

He pulled Elizabeth - Mary - into his arms and she clung to him, gasping for breath, as they floated in an eerily calm sea, unable to see farther than a foot from their shoulders, shrouded in the tingly white mist. His mind had time to register that they were still alive, that he held her in his arms, and she was warm beneath her sopping clothes and he might yet live to find out if he wanted to be married to her or not.

Then the mist fell away, and they were alone on an open, calm, sea. It was dawn, and the sky was pink, with the lightest of fogs making the sky hazy. He knew where they should have been, where he left in the longboat and rowed away, and he wasn't quite sure they were there. He kicked his feet to turn him about in the water, still clutching Mary's head against his shoulder, and scanned the water around them.

The Elizabeth was nowhere in sight.
- 6
- 7
- 8
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ship in a Bottle