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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
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Chapter 9: A Merry Chase

Commodore James Norrington began to shout orders to his right and left, running along the deck as soon as he'd seen the Elizabeth come about, sail back toward their original location, and then stop. This was their chance - the chance he'd been anticipating for a very long time.

“Man the cannons! Man the guns! Get to your stations! Move!” He checked for his sword, and stopped to load his own pistol, adding the powder and then the shot. “Full speed ahead! And as soon as we're in range of the cannons, wait for my order!”

“Aye, sir!” came the replies as the midshipmen scrambled about, frantically preparing for battle. The Commodore held his pistol up and peered down it, feeling the weight in his hand. If it came down to boarding, he was more than ready. He took a deep breath to steady his anxiety: in, out. What he really needed was a drink, but he resisted the urge, putting the thought far from his mind. He then tucked the pistol into his belt, braced his feet a shoulder-width apart, and waited.

~ ~ ~

Captain Jack Sparrow buttoned a dry -if not quite fresh - tunic over his change of shirt and breeches and turned around to see Mary struggling to divest herself of her wet shirt.

“Let me help you with that, love,” he offered as he approached her from behind, and lifted the wet fabric from her shoulders.

“Oh, thank you.” She untied the cravat she had suspended around her neck under the collar, and the whole garment came away. “Can't imagine what I'll put on, since I haven't any other clothes.”

“I fail to see the problem,” said Jack as he laid the wet shirt on the back of the chair.

She turned her head to look up at him, her eyes bright and her lips parted, as though she were gauging the seriousness of his intentions. Jack leaned over to kiss her, as though drawn by a magnet. He brushed his thumb over the tiny scar in her eyebrow, making a mental note to ask her how she'd gotten it. Later.

A knock sounded at the door. “Erm... Cap'n?” It was Pintel.

Jack emitted a low snarl of frustration. “Go away. 'M busy.”

“Uh, Cap'n, Mr. Gibbs an' them need to see you.”

“It can wait,” Jack replied, and continued leaning in to touch his lips to Elizabeth's... Mary's, he reminded himself.

“But Cap'n, we've got a bit of a... problem.”

After brushing her full, soft lips, and drawing back after hearing Pintel's last comment, his patience, considering the events of the past twenty-four hours, was nonexistent.

“Listen,” he barked toward the door. “Tell them I'm bloody unavailable, I don't care if the bloody flagship of the Royal Navy is after us, captained by the Commodore himself. Savvy?”

“Uh...” Pintel's voice drifted up, then down.

Jack paused above Mary's lips, waiting for an 'aye' from outside. It didn't come.

“It's not actually the Navy, is it?” He turned his head toward the door, a nervous flutter dancing through his innards. “It's not Norrington and the Navy? It can't be. Is it?”

“Well, sort of... Cap'n, you'd better come out and see.”

Jack turned back to Mary, his eyes wide with concern, and his mouth twisted into a sneer of frustration. “Bugger it all!” he grumbled as he charged out of the cabin and onto the deck.

~ ~ ~

Jack examined the rapidly approaching ship through the spyglass, taking in the cannons, the sails, and the officers standing on the highest deck - one with a brown knot of hair, and who happened to be holding up a spyglass pointed straight at - him.

“Damn!” he said to Gibbs, who took the spyglass from him. “It is bloody Norrington.”

“Aye. Worse than the whore's pox, he is... how he keeps poppin' up in the most annoying places,” Gibbs replied.

Jack eyed him with a slightly wary, mildly revolted look. “You could say that.”

“What should we do?”

“Unroll every scrap of canvas we've got on this whale of a ship,” Jack said. “We'll have to outrun them.”

“We can't run forever,” said Will, who had just joined them. “They've been following us for more than a day. They mean to pursue us until we take a stand and fight.”

“Then we'll lead them on a merry chase. The merriest.” Jack waved a wrist back and forth. “We haven't got to outrun them forever, just stay out of range of the cannons.”

“And then?” Will drew up to the rail, between Gibbs and Jack.

“Then, we go somewhere they can't follow,” Jack murmured thoughtfully.

“The other place? The other mist?”

Jack recognized Gibbs by pointing a finger. “Exactly.”

Will's black brows lifted and then knit with worry. “What if they do follow us into the mist?”

“Then it's their folly, mate,” Jack replied. “Because if they do, they're not ever getting back without our help, now are they?”

“What if we...” Will's mind raced. “What if we led them to the Pearl? Let this other pirate, this Lady E, battle them for us?”

“That's a half-decent plan, Will, I'm proud of you. You're starting to think like a pirate.” Jack tapped first his own temple, then Will's, with several grimy fingers. “But I can't have them blowing the Pearl to kingdom come, savvy? Mission's kind of a wash if all we manage to do is sink her.” He blinked slowly, and sighed. “Got at least two sunken Pearls already. Not sure I could stomach a third. No, we'll do something else. But that bridge we'll cross when we come to't.”

“For now, we sail?” Gibbs inquired.

“You've got it, my pox-plagued friend,” Jack answered with a smile, curling his fingers slowly into a determined fist.

“Aye-aye,” Gibbs growled, and turned to yell orders to the crew.

“Say, where's Lizzy?” Jack asked, scanning the deck in the mid-morning light. “Wasn't she just out here causing a ruckus?”

“She's collapsed in her cabin,” Will informed him. “Exhausted. Excuse me,” he said and moved off.

“Exhausted? Really?”

Gibbs finished yelling his orders, and turned back to Jack. “Aye, and no wonder 'tis, too. The lass watched for ye to come back the whole night through. 'Bout busted her girdle when we told her we had to go on from that place or the Dauntless would tear us into driftwood.”

“That's interesting,” Jack muttered to himself, a smile warming his features. “That's very interesting.” Turning back to Gibbs, he lifted his eyebrows. “You, of course, kept to the code.”

“Aye, 'twas that, or be of no use rescuin' ye at any time, now or later.”

“Good man. Knew there was a reason I left you in charge. Even if it did result in my behind being left... behind.”

“Aye. And hopefully your arse isn't all we'll be leavin' behind, once we catch the wind.”

“Indeed.” He felt the air more strongly against his face, and saw the yards of canvas filling, swelling out with the breeze. “We're off to a good start. I'd better get my bottle, just in case.” He turned away to go to his cabin, then had a thought. “Say, after this whole Dauntless mess is taken care of, I'll have a proper captain's dinner. Tonight. In my cabin. Say, seven.”

Gibbs smiled. “Ah, ye will? And what's the occasion?” He took a swill of rum, then patted his mouth with his sleeve.

“Why, to welcome my wife, of course. Never thought I'd get to celebrate my wedding. You're invited. The Turners, too. Arrange it with the cook, won't you?”

Then he returned to his cabin, in search of the magic bottle. All that remained for him to do was let a single shimmering golden drop fall, at the opportune moment, off the port bow of the ship.

~ ~ ~

“Commodore, they're on the move!” called a midshipman.

Norrington sucked air in through his teeth. “Follow them. Are we in range of the cannons?”

“Not yet, sir! And they're big, but they're lighter than us, it seems. And they're sailing with the wind.”

“Then we haven't a moment to lose, have we?”

“No, sir!”

And so the chase began, with the Elizabeth going from clearly discernable to a more vague brown-and-white speck near the horizon, and dozens of crewmen swarmed over the deck of the Dauntless, tending the sails to keep her in pursuit. It continued for several hours without a change across the low Caribbean waves; the Elizabeth was sometimes farther ahead, sometimes closer. But never close enough to fire on. After pacing the deck constantly, Norrington found himself grinding his teeth in annoyance.

“Commodore, look!”

At the crewman's call, he lifted the spyglass. The Elizabeth was closer than ever before. In fact, they'd stopped. The Dauntless was gaining on them.

“Ready the cannons!”

“Aye! Yes, sir!”

And then, as he watched, a geyser of mist seemed to shoot straight up from the ocean, directly off the Elizabeth's port bow. A whale, expunging his blowhole? Norrington thought, puzzled.

Then the fountain of mist widened to become a cloud, a cloud as tall and wide as the Elizabeth herself, and seemed to hang over the blue ocean, completely still in the afternoon sunlight.

“What devilry is Sparrow up to now?” he wondered in a dry monotone.

Then, as he watched, the Elizabeth came about, and sailed directly into the cloud. He aimed his spyglass toward the other side, waiting for her to emerge.

She didn't.

“Commodore...” came a cry of bewilderment from a lieutenant, who had drawn up next to him on the poop deck. “Where did they go? What happened? Is this some sort of a trick?”

“With Sparrow involved, you can bet the King's knickers it's a trick,” the Commodore nearly growled, snapping the spyglass shut. He could see the mist plainly, half a mile in front of them, unchanged.

“Do you... do you mean to follow them, sir?” asked the lieutenant.

Norrington sighed, rubbing his stubble-ridden jaw with a thumb and forefinger. This was how he'd lost his commission in the first place, chasing Sparrow blindly into a storm. He should have waited, been patient, given up the pursuit and saved the ship. He didn't mean to make that mistake again, unless there was absolutely no other choice.

“Not immediately. Drop the anchor, and wait for them to come out of that blasted cloud. I'm going below. I want to be informed instantly if there's any change, and I mean the slightest change, to the looks of that mist. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Commodore Norrington climbed down to the hold, and procured a bottle of spirits. He then returned to his quarters and did something he had sworn off upon being restored to his commission: he poured himself a drink.

After several more, he found himself more relaxed, and yet just as determined to thwart Captain Jack and his band of miscreants as before. It had been two hours since the disappearance of the Elizabeth when his lieutenant called to him from the deck.

“Commodore, it's changin'!”

He set down the bottle and his glass, and set his hat on his head before striding out onto the deck. “How so?”

“Well, it seems to be fading, a little. Little pieces on the edge of it breaking off and floating away, jus' like little clouds. Rather pretty, if you ask me.”

Norrington fixed him with a blistering look, and snatched the spyglass from his hands to confirm the report. It was true. But they were only a half mile away.

“Make sail,” he growled. “Sail us into that mist. And I mean, without any further delay.”

The lieutenant dashed down the steps to call the orders. Commodore Norrington folded his arms across his chest. Tricks or no tricks, he fully intended to capture Captain Jack Sparrow.
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Ship in a Bottle