Fic: Metal and Words, 8/16
Sunday, 10 February 2013 18:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aletheiafelineaTitle: Metal and Words, 8/16
Author: Aletheia Felinea
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
compassrose7577. Thank you so much!
Rating: PG-13 overall
Wordcount: 4000, this chapter
Characters: (this chapter) Jack Sparrow, OCs
Genre: Gen fic supposed to be a crime story.
Time: Months before CotBP.
Summary: The sweet air of Tortuga can be dangerous sometimes, even for the certain Captain. And curiosity can kill a sparrow. Or... save?
Disclaimer: Not my hunting territory, The Big Black Mouse prowls here.
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Note: The fic was translated from Polish. Jeśli wolisz czytać w oryginale, zapraszam.
The door slammed and the bolt grated home. Jack Sparrow bumped against the far wall and slid down.
“Didn’ deserve that,” he said to the nearest brick.
He really thought so. Now he was missing the cutlass, pistol, one shilling, and two livres. Fred found less than half of his hidden pockets, but still one might expect some courtesy, in Jack’s opinion. Really, the Company’s men must be overpaid.
“Da kept sayin’ the same. When ‘e used to talkin’ yet,” a voice rumbled nearby.
A tug at his hair checked Jack to a half turn. A splinter in a plank, he found. The bricks ended some foot above the ground, the upper part of the wall being wooden. He unhooked himself, sat and squinted to where the voice had come from. Half-blind in the gloomy interior after the sharp sunlight, he managed to see no more than a roughly shirt-shaped, crouched form. He looked around, groping for his hat on the floor.
As his eyes grew accustomed, the place turned out to be not so dark. A small window near the ceiling allowed enough light to see the straw-scattered ground. The smell hovering at dirt level made Jack peer suspiciously at the hat he had just found and ask the question that fleetingly took the lead among many others.
“Where’s Felicita?”
“In three dozen stomachs,” replied another voice, and clucked. José sat cross-legged against the wall next to the door, with his usual expression of lazy unconcern, sucking his pipe. No one had ever seen him actually smoke it, not that anyone could remember it anyway – the only object nearby older from José seemed to be the rocks that formed the bay. And mockers used to say even that was questionable.
“An’ her horns chucked behin’ the barn,” the rumbling from the corner added scrupulously. The corner was the darkest part of the cowshed. Over the once-white shirt was a barely visible gleam of eyes. Still, enough could be seen that Jacinto’s face couldn’t be described as unconcerned. Though, to tell the truth, Jacinto could be usually described just as towering. Usually he was also seen with his brother.
“Where’s Jenaro?” Jack asked.
It suddenly seemed colder in the shed, and certainly quieter.
“Aye” Jacinto muttered after a while. “Da quit talkin’ jus’ then…”
“An’ began to do what ordered,” added José. Jacinto cast him a somber glance, and fixed his eyes back on the dirt at his feet.
Jack stood up, put his hat on, and warily peeked through the window. It opened onto a forested hillside; branches almost touching the shed’s wall. Distant sounds of the camp came from around the corner.
He turned back and sat next to José. Experience said better not to be in front of the door, in case the company should increase.
“Do what ordered by who?” he asked.
José glanced at him from the corner of his eye and smirked. The pirate’s tone said I’m beginning to be fed up.
“Such guys from one brig,” said José. “Mebbe you saw ‘em on the way here.”
Jack sighed heavily and outstretched his legs, leaning against the wall. “How did they enter the bay?”
José clicked his tongue again at his pipe. “D’like to know it ‘emselves, methinks. T’was that storm a week ago, eh?”
“Maybe there was,” agreed Jack, who a week ago had had a rum-sweetened break in life, but was not necessarily willing to confess it at the moment.
“Aye, t’was, as if all devils had a brawl in Hell. We thought it would blow us away togetha’ wif the whole inn. No one dared to poke their nose out. They all sat and kept drinkin’ for courage, wif faces as if t’was vinegar in their mugs.” José cackled. “All kept ‘eir mouth shut up, only Bald Moses cursed dat his boat left at the pier would go to splinters, Well, he wasn’ right, cos later it turned out what had boomed agains’ the wall, d’been his boat, whole.”
Jack sent him a long look. Moses’ Susie was hardly smaller than Anamaria’s Jolly Mon.
“Right, we hadn’ found her mast,” José admitted. “But we didn’ try anyway, for t’was already more than enough masts on the bay. By dawn it calmed, so we got out, we’re lookin’ and a boat is ‘ere, and ‘ey’re swarmin’ on the beach like crabs on a dead dolphin. Got no time to blink, and we stood rounded up like sheep, a dozen of ‘em pokin’ our arses wif bayonets, an’ the rest searchin’ the farm and pulled out from hay those who ‘ere sleepin’. ‘Ey were runnin’ around like madmen, and dat Captain of ‘em the most. Pump the bilges, he bellowed, unload the hold, move the balla—!”
“A week?” Jack cut in.
José scowled, irritated by the interruption. “Jus’ told it, eh?”
“So they aren’t in such hurry, as it seems.”
“The reef fondled ‘em well...”
“Aye, can be seen. So what ‘ey’re doin’ from a week?”
“Pumpin’.” José spat. “And eatin’.”
“What about feeding?” Jack recalled the original reason he had come to the inn.
“Sure! Generous chaps, ‘ey are! Have eaten ‘emselves all we had, and gave us the best o’ what was left in dat hold of ‘em.” José waved his pipe toward a corner occupied by no one.
There was a bowl on the ground. Its contents was trying to crawl out, in all directions. Jack blinked and decided he wasn’t that hungry as yet. However, next to the bowl was a wooden pitcher. He stood and peeked into it. The water smelled relatively fresh. Well, at least it didn’t move.
Wiping his moustache, he stared unseeing at the lush foliage outside the window, meditative.
What the brig needed was careening and new planking, the sooner the better. Yet those infestious buggers had done nothing to haul her ashore, as if they hadn’t the time… time they had wasted in the waters, where no one other than the Brethren and less than a first rate would dare to venture.
Jack sat again next to José.
“They’re waiting or searching,” he stated rather than asked. “For what?”
“Well, now it’s everythin’ what didn’ flee yet,” José grumbled. “The cow lasted one day, all goats and hens another, t’was nothin’ except bare hooks left in the larder last time I saw it, and haven’ heard our mule’s brayin’ from long time…”
“Da comes later an’ later, an’ you cannot hear the musket’s boom,” Jacinto said.
“They wouldn’ manage to sneak up on a deaf boar splashin’ in mud,” José explained in the reply to Jack’s questioning glance. “So they’re spurrin’ Jorge into the forest every mornin’, for he shoot everythin’ lookin’ edible.”
“Huh?”
“Well, first ‘e said it would be over ‘is dead body. And ‘ey said it needn’ be his own. And… well, later ‘ey said ‘e still has the other one yet, Jacinto, they meant. An’ dat Jorge decides as it pleases ‘im, but ‘ey have lead’n’powder yet, and ‘ey wanna eat. So he quit resistin’. An’ talkin’.”
“Mhm,” Jack muttered after a long heavy silence. “Jorge’s hunting. Jacinto’s, uh, warranting. Moses and the others certainly wasted…” He glanced at the bowl. “Wasted air?”
“Aye.” José nodded. “Somehow all failed in weanin’ from it, within’ droppin’ dat fathom or two.” He looked at Jack and shrugged. “As for Jenaro, he got a ball, but ‘eir Cap’n raged for wastin’ the powder. So the rest went to the rope…”
“Ah,” Jack said, and lifted a brow, fixing an expectant gaze at José.
“An’ I’m the best pilot within a hundred miles around.” The old man proudly stuck out his scrawny chest. “No one knows the reef like me. I’ll see any boat ‘rough, even a big ‘un.”
Jack lifted the other brow.
José’s wide grin didn’t falter in the least. It was quite eloquent. Just try to think a bit louder, it said, about those two dinghies I’ve sunk just this year, and I’ll bite through your throat with all my three teeth.
Jack averted his eyes. It was better not inquire into that which he had not been asked so far, especially when he wouldn’t know the answer. It’s bad luck to find oneself at the wrong end of a muzzle, but real troubles begin at hearing “Save him for the time being”.
The door slammed open, and Jorge was pushed in. He stood in the middle of the shed and blinked in the dimness, looking hastily around till he came to Jacinto. He slowly relaxed his fists, clenched so far. Then he stepped to the wall, sat next to his son and fixed his eyes on the scattered straw.
Jack eyed him for a while. “Who, apart from Jenaro and Moses?”
A lengthy suck indicated that José was rummaging his memory. “Lemme think… Fatty Sam, Abe Higgins… Dammit, ‘e won’t gimme back me six livres ‘nymore. Oh, since we’re at givin’ back, tis’ reminds me—!”
“So, two more, right?” Jack cut in hurriedly.
“T’was Hong Lee Hobbler yet… Ah, an’ Goldie Miller.”
“Her too?”
“Too. Though ‘ey grumbled at ‘eir Cap’n for dat haste of ‘is, me heard. An’ one laughed, no worries, ‘e said, French lasses will be better yet.”
“Huh? An’ there were any?”
“Nay, only Goldie and us, nine men. An’ now ‘ere’s six dead ‘uns on the bottom.”
Jack frowned and counted once more. “Six?”
“Aye, wif Hans would be seven, hadn’ he scrammed.”
Silence hovered for a moment.
“Rusty Hans?” Jack said.
“Rusty.”
“An’ just he, of all...?”
“Gets easier on four legs,” José snorted.
“Ah. Where did he get four legs from?”
“Borrowed ‘eirs. Methinks ‘e wasn’ goin’ to give it back, though.” José clapped his thigh and burst into a wheezing giggle. “T’was a sight!”
Jack lounged more comfortably. “Could use a laugh too. Somehow there’s been few opportunities recently. We’ve time aplenty.”
“Y’see, t’was like this. Once we’re all herded, ‘ey got down to unloadin’ an’ mendin’ dat tub of theirs. The ones wif muskets are guardin’ us, others are runnin’ to an’ fro, their Cap’n is hollerin’ an’ the Bosun louder yet. An’ suddenly there’s runnin’ some dandy scrag and yellin’ Captain, the horse went mad, we must have it out of the hold! An’ other one’s followin’, a swarthy chap wif ‘is head wrapped up in some rag, an’ he’s draggin’ a horse down the gan’plank. To tell the truth, t’was more the horse who did draggin’, so the swarthy one tried to steer the course at least.” José chuckled again.
“They dragged tis way each other ashore, an’ soon there was no one round of ‘em, cos the horse was kickin’ about better than our old mule, an’ dat been a devilish beast…” José sighed sadly. He claimed he had earned bunk and board in Jorge’s inn by chopping wood. In fact, he was hardly weightier than the axe, so he mostly scrubbed pots, fished the reef, and went for supplies in a mule-drawn cart, cause for some mysterious reasons the ‘devilish beast’ tried to kick him less than others.
“So the horse’s squealin’ an’ kickin’,” the old man went on, “an’ the swarthy one’s danglin’ from the reins like a puppet. Dat popinjay ordered ‘im to move the beast from sand to firm ground, what happened t’be next to us, before the inn, since t’was most trodden there. Calm the horse down, ‘e told, before it’ll get any harm. An’ Hans, me hearin’, next to me’s mutterin’ dat if he wouldn’ yell so… But one of those roundin’ us whacked ‘im right away, so he fell quiet. M’lookin’ at ‘im, an’ he’s starin’ at the horse, eyes gleamin’ as if he had a candle plugged into each ear. An’ there looks like the beast s’not goin’ to calm down in the least. Aye, methinks I’d went mad too, after such a night in dat hold of ‘eir!”
José had become so caught up in his tale, Jack was obliged to delicately move beyond the reach of the pipe, brandished to punctuate the words.
“So dat swarthy’s clutchin’ the bridle like a shroud in storm, getting’ more an’ more green aroun’ the gills, an’ he’s tryin’ to say sumthin’. We couldn’ hear dat, but the popinjay was closer, so he got it. Frowned an’ is thinkin’ hard. Jus’ then the Cap’n came, an’ they both started to confer. Tell ya, never before I’ve seen a whispered squabble. At last it looked ‘ey came to accord, an’ the Cap’n went onboard. Yet he eyed us first, in such way dat I felt cold, though we’re in the full sun. Didn’ take long, we’re lookin’, he’s comin’ back an’ luggin’ sumthin’. An’ it gleamed so much, dat we’re only at close range saw t’was a saddle. Tell ya, dat been long time from I’ve seen so much silver at once, an’ t’was janglin’ even more than you, methinks.” José chuckled, casting a glance at Jack.
“And what was then?” Jack asked in a tone of icy politeness, which caused José another burst of wheezy laugh. Finally, wiping tears, he took up the tale:
“Well, ‘ey managed to put it on dat buckin’ beast, both saddle’n’bridle. All three of ‘em got down to dat, an’ a damned hard job t’was, cos even the dandy lost ‘is breath at last, an’ the reins slipped off the swarthy’s hands. ‘E tripped an’ fell just under the hooves. So we all laughed an’ waited what’s on. An’ could’ja guess? Once the horse felt let up, it quit neighin’ an’ strugglin’, stepped over ‘im an’ is goin’ where more room was, t’ward us. The dandy tried to grab the bridle, but ‘e only got slapped ‘is face wif the tail an’ toppled over on ‘is arse. Now even those wif muskets were laughin’. An’ all of a sudden we’re hearin’ Help ya catch ‘im, M’lord? Dunno when, but Hans had slipped from among us an’ gotten in the horse’s way. Silence had fallen, nobody’s movin’ an’ all starin’ at Hans, only the horse’s not givin’ a damn an’ sniffin’ at Hans’ hat. You’d have hardly time to hit a mosquito, so long it lasted, an’ the next we saw t’was mud splutterin’ from under hooves an’ horse’s rump wif Hans on it, fleein’ away up the road. Those wif muskets began to shoot right away, but the dandy raised a racket again, Stop the fire! he yelled, Y’kill the horse, you scum! He ordered the chase, all who were on the beach.
“They hadn’t more horses?” Jack asked.
“Looks like only those in barrels… Didn’ last long, ‘ey began to come back, breathless an’ empty handed.
“An’ their Cap’n?”
José scratched the grey bristle on his cheek.
“Well,” he said after a silence, “he bellowed an’ ordered back those ones who had guarded us. Promised ‘em dat if they let someone flee any more, they’ll be peelin’ barnacles off the keel with ‘eir bare hands. The dandy came to ‘im an’ talked sumthin, but the other cut ‘im shortly. Blunders from the very beginnin’, ‘e said. Too few horses, an’ now less an’ less time, an’ we’re takin’ more an’ more water, ‘e said.”
“Didn’ whisper anymore?”
“Nay, we could hear ‘im well. An’ he looked at us an’ said ‘ere’s too many ears’n’eyes, but at least tis can be fixed.”
For a long time, Jack stared at the ground between his boots. Finally he swore so foully that José winced and peered at him, as if expecting to see sparks scattering. Indeed, he saw sparks, but gathered in the pirate’s narrowed eyes.
Jack sprang to his feet. He was beginning to choke in there, and it had nothing to do with the smell. He looked up at the roof, and then the walls. He walked along them. If a plank or two could be removed, unnoticed… He stopped. Unnoticed? No. He turned back and eyed the door.
José sucked his pipe and watched, his face becoming more bored than mocking. After the week of counting straws and knots in wood, the daft pirate was the most entertaining object within sight. Funny thing, he always stumbles over his own legs, and now is pussyfooting like a cat round a dovecot, with not a jangle. And his stare, catlike as well. Is he expecting to set the door on fire or what? And now he’s sat down and shut his eyes.
Jack was trying to recall the details of what he had seen before entering the cowshed. The guard had been at the bolt side of the door, not the hinges’. When they had approached, he had leaped up from a small stool and tried to appear as if he hadn’t just wakened. What if he had moved the stool? Nay, the door faced east, the shed’s shadow must fall away, not back. The bolt had no padlock. It was just a crude iron bar, loosely resting in rings driven into the wood, two in the planks, third in the sturdy frame timber. The construction was aimed more toward preventing exits rather than entrance. Cows are hardly known for initiative, but Felicita had tended to be adventurous.
He opened his eyes and frowned. The door was considerably narrower than its frame, a half-inch gap all around. Jack took off his hindering hat and peeped into the slit. Almost two inches of wood and yet an inch of air to the bolt; the rings weren’t visible.
He knelt on one knee, and reached into his bootleg. Fred still needed to learn a couple of things about searching.
Jack slipped his dagger’s blade into the gap until its guard met the timber. He squinted, trying to see the tip of the steel, almost white against the bolt’s black iron. The majority of it was outside, but it was the weaker part of the blade. However, if it was turned perpendicular, the well-tempered steel should endure… he hoped.
He pressed the blade against the frame and slid it upward. The steel clinked against the iron, and Jack kept lifting until the bolt budged. He winced at a faint sound of the bolt grating against a ring, but moved the bolt as far as the door’s plank allowed, rested it again on the rings, and withdrew the blade from the gap. Then he remembered to breathe.
He put the dagger aside and brought his ear to the slit. There were distant laughings and voices from the beach, and much nearer bird chatterings in the thicket. Snoring next to the door would be too much to ask… On the other hand, neither did he hear “Hey, what’s going on here!” So far.
Jack sat down more comfortably, flexed his fingers and picked up the dagger again.
“Three dozen?” he asked, sliding the blade against the frame.
José, long ago bored with the pirate’s doings, gave up trying to nestle his old bones more comfortably on the hard ground, and closed his eyes. It was probably well after noon…
“Huh?” He woke.
“You said there’s three dozen of them.” Jack watched the slowly moving metal.
“Four, mebbe. Or more. Didn’ report ‘emselves t’me,” José grunted. He wished to doze through the sweltering hours before evening.
“Few…” The bolt stopped, stuck on a bigger notch. Then it slid off to a loud clang. Jack almost bit off his tongue.
“Three dozen of damned Limeys is enough t’me. Oh, an’ remember I’m Smith!”
“Which one?” Jack muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nevermin’. So t’was no one but ‘em, all the week?” The blade repeated its laborious half-inch track; the bolt rasping quietly at each one.
“One can hardly see ‘rough the walls.”
“And what one can hear?” Half inch, and another, and again… Time seemed to stretch into the same increments as the black metal crawling beyond the gap.
“Dat ‘ey hadn’ cleared out so far,” José snarled.
“No shootin’?”
“Echo’s carryin’ at times from the forest. An’ mebbe two days ago… no, three. T’was rumblin’ nearby, from dat guns on ‘eir boat, like as not.”
“How long?” The bolt was now noticeably less weighty at the frame’s side.
“Fired twice, methinks…”
Another turn, and again… and the bolt’s end appeared through the gap. Jack pushed it along, until the blade lost contact.
He carefully moved away from the door, and hid his dagger back. Then he picked his hat, rose and walked to the window. He measured the distance to the forest for the last time.
Thirty, maybe forty men. They must have quite a toll along the way. He had seen carpenters onboard, when walking through the camp; certainly there were at least several more men at the bilge pumps. There were no more than twenty in the camp itself, and probably some in the forest. How many would be armed? And after a week of anxious tension in the relative idleness…
“They don’t know the place well,” he said. “The farther, the less.”
“Damn you, lemme sleep at la—!“
“Shut your big mouth, José,” a voice raspy from disuse cut in. Jack turned his head. Jorge was gazing at him, acknowledging him for the first time.
“The forest is just beyond the wall,” Jack said. He slowly stepped back, his eyes fixed on Jorge’s. Now the all three were watching him. He backed up to near the door.
“Between trees they’ll be hinderin’ each other.” He donned his hat. “Yet better not to count on them giving up.”
He grinned slowly. Gold shined in the dusk.
The next moment the door banged against the wall from outside, almost tearing it off its hinges.
José, Jorge and Jacinto stood stunned for three heartbeats before they rushed to follow the pirate. Outside, the guard struggled up from the ground, searching for what had just snatched the stool from under him. Sobering quickly, he leapt up and… collided with Jacinto. He only managed to utter an alarming cry.
In a short time, the beach resembled a brothel on fire. Yells and shots would have drowned out the chattering of the birds if they hadn’t already fallen silent, frightened. A rumble on the gangplank announced the men working onboard had joined the chase. Crackles and curses came from the thicket, where all ran into each other, stumbled over roots, snagged musket barrels against branches, and took the pursuers for pursued. Nevertheless, the all racket moved away, until at last the lapping of waves was the predominant sound and the first squawks came shyly from trees.
The open door budged, and a scrap of faded red silk followed by an eye appeared over the edge. No “Here he is! Take him!” was heard, so the door moved from the wall. Jack Sparrow slipped from behind it, hat in hand again. He put it on and grinned, surveying the deserted camp.
Just as he had expected. A week of constant awareness of Tortuga’s proximity had its effect. The brig’s crew had time to hear and brood over what would occur if the captives escaped. The pursuit would be long and fervent, in spite of growing hopelessness as time passed. Most importantly it engaged them all, because all of their lives depended on it, from the highest ranked to the lowest swab.
The guard sprawled on the ground. It looked like his head would give him hell, once he’d woke up. If he’d woke up. No need for his pockets’ contents to add to his bruises, Jack decided.
Raising from a crouch, the guard’s musket in hand, he looked to the other side of the camp. The table still was under the tree, with no maps though. Here and there laid a few guns, apparently forgotten in haste. He resisted the itch to bury them in the campfires’ ashes in case some officer recalled the camp had been left unguarded. So, with an armful of muskets and pistols, Jack trudged toward the water.
A little time later, sneaking between boulders at the cliff’s feet, he raised his eyes at the brig, and grinned again.
One should never flee to where one will be pursued.
The next part
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your thoughts welcomed, as always. :)
Author: Aletheia Felinea
Beta:
compassrose7577. Thank you so much!Rating: PG-13 overall
Wordcount: 4000, this chapter
Characters: (this chapter) Jack Sparrow, OCs
Genre: Gen fic supposed to be a crime story.
Time: Months before CotBP.
Summary: The sweet air of Tortuga can be dangerous sometimes, even for the certain Captain. And curiosity can kill a sparrow. Or... save?
Disclaimer: Not my hunting territory, The Big Black Mouse prowls here.
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Note: The fic was translated from Polish. Jeśli wolisz czytać w oryginale, zapraszam.
The door slammed and the bolt grated home. Jack Sparrow bumped against the far wall and slid down.
“Didn’ deserve that,” he said to the nearest brick.
He really thought so. Now he was missing the cutlass, pistol, one shilling, and two livres. Fred found less than half of his hidden pockets, but still one might expect some courtesy, in Jack’s opinion. Really, the Company’s men must be overpaid.
“Da kept sayin’ the same. When ‘e used to talkin’ yet,” a voice rumbled nearby.
A tug at his hair checked Jack to a half turn. A splinter in a plank, he found. The bricks ended some foot above the ground, the upper part of the wall being wooden. He unhooked himself, sat and squinted to where the voice had come from. Half-blind in the gloomy interior after the sharp sunlight, he managed to see no more than a roughly shirt-shaped, crouched form. He looked around, groping for his hat on the floor.
As his eyes grew accustomed, the place turned out to be not so dark. A small window near the ceiling allowed enough light to see the straw-scattered ground. The smell hovering at dirt level made Jack peer suspiciously at the hat he had just found and ask the question that fleetingly took the lead among many others.
“Where’s Felicita?”
“In three dozen stomachs,” replied another voice, and clucked. José sat cross-legged against the wall next to the door, with his usual expression of lazy unconcern, sucking his pipe. No one had ever seen him actually smoke it, not that anyone could remember it anyway – the only object nearby older from José seemed to be the rocks that formed the bay. And mockers used to say even that was questionable.
“An’ her horns chucked behin’ the barn,” the rumbling from the corner added scrupulously. The corner was the darkest part of the cowshed. Over the once-white shirt was a barely visible gleam of eyes. Still, enough could be seen that Jacinto’s face couldn’t be described as unconcerned. Though, to tell the truth, Jacinto could be usually described just as towering. Usually he was also seen with his brother.
“Where’s Jenaro?” Jack asked.
It suddenly seemed colder in the shed, and certainly quieter.
“Aye” Jacinto muttered after a while. “Da quit talkin’ jus’ then…”
“An’ began to do what ordered,” added José. Jacinto cast him a somber glance, and fixed his eyes back on the dirt at his feet.
Jack stood up, put his hat on, and warily peeked through the window. It opened onto a forested hillside; branches almost touching the shed’s wall. Distant sounds of the camp came from around the corner.
He turned back and sat next to José. Experience said better not to be in front of the door, in case the company should increase.
“Do what ordered by who?” he asked.
José glanced at him from the corner of his eye and smirked. The pirate’s tone said I’m beginning to be fed up.
“Such guys from one brig,” said José. “Mebbe you saw ‘em on the way here.”
Jack sighed heavily and outstretched his legs, leaning against the wall. “How did they enter the bay?”
José clicked his tongue again at his pipe. “D’like to know it ‘emselves, methinks. T’was that storm a week ago, eh?”
“Maybe there was,” agreed Jack, who a week ago had had a rum-sweetened break in life, but was not necessarily willing to confess it at the moment.
“Aye, t’was, as if all devils had a brawl in Hell. We thought it would blow us away togetha’ wif the whole inn. No one dared to poke their nose out. They all sat and kept drinkin’ for courage, wif faces as if t’was vinegar in their mugs.” José cackled. “All kept ‘eir mouth shut up, only Bald Moses cursed dat his boat left at the pier would go to splinters, Well, he wasn’ right, cos later it turned out what had boomed agains’ the wall, d’been his boat, whole.”
Jack sent him a long look. Moses’ Susie was hardly smaller than Anamaria’s Jolly Mon.
“Right, we hadn’ found her mast,” José admitted. “But we didn’ try anyway, for t’was already more than enough masts on the bay. By dawn it calmed, so we got out, we’re lookin’ and a boat is ‘ere, and ‘ey’re swarmin’ on the beach like crabs on a dead dolphin. Got no time to blink, and we stood rounded up like sheep, a dozen of ‘em pokin’ our arses wif bayonets, an’ the rest searchin’ the farm and pulled out from hay those who ‘ere sleepin’. ‘Ey were runnin’ around like madmen, and dat Captain of ‘em the most. Pump the bilges, he bellowed, unload the hold, move the balla—!”
“A week?” Jack cut in.
José scowled, irritated by the interruption. “Jus’ told it, eh?”
“So they aren’t in such hurry, as it seems.”
“The reef fondled ‘em well...”
“Aye, can be seen. So what ‘ey’re doin’ from a week?”
“Pumpin’.” José spat. “And eatin’.”
“What about feeding?” Jack recalled the original reason he had come to the inn.
“Sure! Generous chaps, ‘ey are! Have eaten ‘emselves all we had, and gave us the best o’ what was left in dat hold of ‘em.” José waved his pipe toward a corner occupied by no one.
There was a bowl on the ground. Its contents was trying to crawl out, in all directions. Jack blinked and decided he wasn’t that hungry as yet. However, next to the bowl was a wooden pitcher. He stood and peeked into it. The water smelled relatively fresh. Well, at least it didn’t move.
Wiping his moustache, he stared unseeing at the lush foliage outside the window, meditative.
What the brig needed was careening and new planking, the sooner the better. Yet those infestious buggers had done nothing to haul her ashore, as if they hadn’t the time… time they had wasted in the waters, where no one other than the Brethren and less than a first rate would dare to venture.
Jack sat again next to José.
“They’re waiting or searching,” he stated rather than asked. “For what?”
“Well, now it’s everythin’ what didn’ flee yet,” José grumbled. “The cow lasted one day, all goats and hens another, t’was nothin’ except bare hooks left in the larder last time I saw it, and haven’ heard our mule’s brayin’ from long time…”
“Da comes later an’ later, an’ you cannot hear the musket’s boom,” Jacinto said.
“They wouldn’ manage to sneak up on a deaf boar splashin’ in mud,” José explained in the reply to Jack’s questioning glance. “So they’re spurrin’ Jorge into the forest every mornin’, for he shoot everythin’ lookin’ edible.”
“Huh?”
“Well, first ‘e said it would be over ‘is dead body. And ‘ey said it needn’ be his own. And… well, later ‘ey said ‘e still has the other one yet, Jacinto, they meant. An’ dat Jorge decides as it pleases ‘im, but ‘ey have lead’n’powder yet, and ‘ey wanna eat. So he quit resistin’. An’ talkin’.”
“Mhm,” Jack muttered after a long heavy silence. “Jorge’s hunting. Jacinto’s, uh, warranting. Moses and the others certainly wasted…” He glanced at the bowl. “Wasted air?”
“Aye.” José nodded. “Somehow all failed in weanin’ from it, within’ droppin’ dat fathom or two.” He looked at Jack and shrugged. “As for Jenaro, he got a ball, but ‘eir Cap’n raged for wastin’ the powder. So the rest went to the rope…”
“Ah,” Jack said, and lifted a brow, fixing an expectant gaze at José.
“An’ I’m the best pilot within a hundred miles around.” The old man proudly stuck out his scrawny chest. “No one knows the reef like me. I’ll see any boat ‘rough, even a big ‘un.”
Jack lifted the other brow.
José’s wide grin didn’t falter in the least. It was quite eloquent. Just try to think a bit louder, it said, about those two dinghies I’ve sunk just this year, and I’ll bite through your throat with all my three teeth.
Jack averted his eyes. It was better not inquire into that which he had not been asked so far, especially when he wouldn’t know the answer. It’s bad luck to find oneself at the wrong end of a muzzle, but real troubles begin at hearing “Save him for the time being”.
The door slammed open, and Jorge was pushed in. He stood in the middle of the shed and blinked in the dimness, looking hastily around till he came to Jacinto. He slowly relaxed his fists, clenched so far. Then he stepped to the wall, sat next to his son and fixed his eyes on the scattered straw.
Jack eyed him for a while. “Who, apart from Jenaro and Moses?”
A lengthy suck indicated that José was rummaging his memory. “Lemme think… Fatty Sam, Abe Higgins… Dammit, ‘e won’t gimme back me six livres ‘nymore. Oh, since we’re at givin’ back, tis’ reminds me—!”
“So, two more, right?” Jack cut in hurriedly.
“T’was Hong Lee Hobbler yet… Ah, an’ Goldie Miller.”
“Her too?”
“Too. Though ‘ey grumbled at ‘eir Cap’n for dat haste of ‘is, me heard. An’ one laughed, no worries, ‘e said, French lasses will be better yet.”
“Huh? An’ there were any?”
“Nay, only Goldie and us, nine men. An’ now ‘ere’s six dead ‘uns on the bottom.”
Jack frowned and counted once more. “Six?”
“Aye, wif Hans would be seven, hadn’ he scrammed.”
Silence hovered for a moment.
“Rusty Hans?” Jack said.
“Rusty.”
“An’ just he, of all...?”
“Gets easier on four legs,” José snorted.
“Ah. Where did he get four legs from?”
“Borrowed ‘eirs. Methinks ‘e wasn’ goin’ to give it back, though.” José clapped his thigh and burst into a wheezing giggle. “T’was a sight!”
Jack lounged more comfortably. “Could use a laugh too. Somehow there’s been few opportunities recently. We’ve time aplenty.”
“Y’see, t’was like this. Once we’re all herded, ‘ey got down to unloadin’ an’ mendin’ dat tub of theirs. The ones wif muskets are guardin’ us, others are runnin’ to an’ fro, their Cap’n is hollerin’ an’ the Bosun louder yet. An’ suddenly there’s runnin’ some dandy scrag and yellin’ Captain, the horse went mad, we must have it out of the hold! An’ other one’s followin’, a swarthy chap wif ‘is head wrapped up in some rag, an’ he’s draggin’ a horse down the gan’plank. To tell the truth, t’was more the horse who did draggin’, so the swarthy one tried to steer the course at least.” José chuckled again.
“They dragged tis way each other ashore, an’ soon there was no one round of ‘em, cos the horse was kickin’ about better than our old mule, an’ dat been a devilish beast…” José sighed sadly. He claimed he had earned bunk and board in Jorge’s inn by chopping wood. In fact, he was hardly weightier than the axe, so he mostly scrubbed pots, fished the reef, and went for supplies in a mule-drawn cart, cause for some mysterious reasons the ‘devilish beast’ tried to kick him less than others.
“So the horse’s squealin’ an’ kickin’,” the old man went on, “an’ the swarthy one’s danglin’ from the reins like a puppet. Dat popinjay ordered ‘im to move the beast from sand to firm ground, what happened t’be next to us, before the inn, since t’was most trodden there. Calm the horse down, ‘e told, before it’ll get any harm. An’ Hans, me hearin’, next to me’s mutterin’ dat if he wouldn’ yell so… But one of those roundin’ us whacked ‘im right away, so he fell quiet. M’lookin’ at ‘im, an’ he’s starin’ at the horse, eyes gleamin’ as if he had a candle plugged into each ear. An’ there looks like the beast s’not goin’ to calm down in the least. Aye, methinks I’d went mad too, after such a night in dat hold of ‘eir!”
José had become so caught up in his tale, Jack was obliged to delicately move beyond the reach of the pipe, brandished to punctuate the words.
“So dat swarthy’s clutchin’ the bridle like a shroud in storm, getting’ more an’ more green aroun’ the gills, an’ he’s tryin’ to say sumthin’. We couldn’ hear dat, but the popinjay was closer, so he got it. Frowned an’ is thinkin’ hard. Jus’ then the Cap’n came, an’ they both started to confer. Tell ya, never before I’ve seen a whispered squabble. At last it looked ‘ey came to accord, an’ the Cap’n went onboard. Yet he eyed us first, in such way dat I felt cold, though we’re in the full sun. Didn’ take long, we’re lookin’, he’s comin’ back an’ luggin’ sumthin’. An’ it gleamed so much, dat we’re only at close range saw t’was a saddle. Tell ya, dat been long time from I’ve seen so much silver at once, an’ t’was janglin’ even more than you, methinks.” José chuckled, casting a glance at Jack.
“And what was then?” Jack asked in a tone of icy politeness, which caused José another burst of wheezy laugh. Finally, wiping tears, he took up the tale:
“Well, ‘ey managed to put it on dat buckin’ beast, both saddle’n’bridle. All three of ‘em got down to dat, an’ a damned hard job t’was, cos even the dandy lost ‘is breath at last, an’ the reins slipped off the swarthy’s hands. ‘E tripped an’ fell just under the hooves. So we all laughed an’ waited what’s on. An’ could’ja guess? Once the horse felt let up, it quit neighin’ an’ strugglin’, stepped over ‘im an’ is goin’ where more room was, t’ward us. The dandy tried to grab the bridle, but ‘e only got slapped ‘is face wif the tail an’ toppled over on ‘is arse. Now even those wif muskets were laughin’. An’ all of a sudden we’re hearin’ Help ya catch ‘im, M’lord? Dunno when, but Hans had slipped from among us an’ gotten in the horse’s way. Silence had fallen, nobody’s movin’ an’ all starin’ at Hans, only the horse’s not givin’ a damn an’ sniffin’ at Hans’ hat. You’d have hardly time to hit a mosquito, so long it lasted, an’ the next we saw t’was mud splutterin’ from under hooves an’ horse’s rump wif Hans on it, fleein’ away up the road. Those wif muskets began to shoot right away, but the dandy raised a racket again, Stop the fire! he yelled, Y’kill the horse, you scum! He ordered the chase, all who were on the beach.
“They hadn’t more horses?” Jack asked.
“Looks like only those in barrels… Didn’ last long, ‘ey began to come back, breathless an’ empty handed.
“An’ their Cap’n?”
José scratched the grey bristle on his cheek.
“Well,” he said after a silence, “he bellowed an’ ordered back those ones who had guarded us. Promised ‘em dat if they let someone flee any more, they’ll be peelin’ barnacles off the keel with ‘eir bare hands. The dandy came to ‘im an’ talked sumthin, but the other cut ‘im shortly. Blunders from the very beginnin’, ‘e said. Too few horses, an’ now less an’ less time, an’ we’re takin’ more an’ more water, ‘e said.”
“Didn’ whisper anymore?”
“Nay, we could hear ‘im well. An’ he looked at us an’ said ‘ere’s too many ears’n’eyes, but at least tis can be fixed.”
For a long time, Jack stared at the ground between his boots. Finally he swore so foully that José winced and peered at him, as if expecting to see sparks scattering. Indeed, he saw sparks, but gathered in the pirate’s narrowed eyes.
Jack sprang to his feet. He was beginning to choke in there, and it had nothing to do with the smell. He looked up at the roof, and then the walls. He walked along them. If a plank or two could be removed, unnoticed… He stopped. Unnoticed? No. He turned back and eyed the door.
José sucked his pipe and watched, his face becoming more bored than mocking. After the week of counting straws and knots in wood, the daft pirate was the most entertaining object within sight. Funny thing, he always stumbles over his own legs, and now is pussyfooting like a cat round a dovecot, with not a jangle. And his stare, catlike as well. Is he expecting to set the door on fire or what? And now he’s sat down and shut his eyes.
Jack was trying to recall the details of what he had seen before entering the cowshed. The guard had been at the bolt side of the door, not the hinges’. When they had approached, he had leaped up from a small stool and tried to appear as if he hadn’t just wakened. What if he had moved the stool? Nay, the door faced east, the shed’s shadow must fall away, not back. The bolt had no padlock. It was just a crude iron bar, loosely resting in rings driven into the wood, two in the planks, third in the sturdy frame timber. The construction was aimed more toward preventing exits rather than entrance. Cows are hardly known for initiative, but Felicita had tended to be adventurous.
He opened his eyes and frowned. The door was considerably narrower than its frame, a half-inch gap all around. Jack took off his hindering hat and peeped into the slit. Almost two inches of wood and yet an inch of air to the bolt; the rings weren’t visible.
He knelt on one knee, and reached into his bootleg. Fred still needed to learn a couple of things about searching.
Jack slipped his dagger’s blade into the gap until its guard met the timber. He squinted, trying to see the tip of the steel, almost white against the bolt’s black iron. The majority of it was outside, but it was the weaker part of the blade. However, if it was turned perpendicular, the well-tempered steel should endure… he hoped.
He pressed the blade against the frame and slid it upward. The steel clinked against the iron, and Jack kept lifting until the bolt budged. He winced at a faint sound of the bolt grating against a ring, but moved the bolt as far as the door’s plank allowed, rested it again on the rings, and withdrew the blade from the gap. Then he remembered to breathe.
He put the dagger aside and brought his ear to the slit. There were distant laughings and voices from the beach, and much nearer bird chatterings in the thicket. Snoring next to the door would be too much to ask… On the other hand, neither did he hear “Hey, what’s going on here!” So far.
Jack sat down more comfortably, flexed his fingers and picked up the dagger again.
“Three dozen?” he asked, sliding the blade against the frame.
José, long ago bored with the pirate’s doings, gave up trying to nestle his old bones more comfortably on the hard ground, and closed his eyes. It was probably well after noon…
“Huh?” He woke.
“You said there’s three dozen of them.” Jack watched the slowly moving metal.
“Four, mebbe. Or more. Didn’ report ‘emselves t’me,” José grunted. He wished to doze through the sweltering hours before evening.
“Few…” The bolt stopped, stuck on a bigger notch. Then it slid off to a loud clang. Jack almost bit off his tongue.
“Three dozen of damned Limeys is enough t’me. Oh, an’ remember I’m Smith!”
“Which one?” Jack muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nevermin’. So t’was no one but ‘em, all the week?” The blade repeated its laborious half-inch track; the bolt rasping quietly at each one.
“One can hardly see ‘rough the walls.”
“And what one can hear?” Half inch, and another, and again… Time seemed to stretch into the same increments as the black metal crawling beyond the gap.
“Dat ‘ey hadn’ cleared out so far,” José snarled.
“No shootin’?”
“Echo’s carryin’ at times from the forest. An’ mebbe two days ago… no, three. T’was rumblin’ nearby, from dat guns on ‘eir boat, like as not.”
“How long?” The bolt was now noticeably less weighty at the frame’s side.
“Fired twice, methinks…”
Another turn, and again… and the bolt’s end appeared through the gap. Jack pushed it along, until the blade lost contact.
He carefully moved away from the door, and hid his dagger back. Then he picked his hat, rose and walked to the window. He measured the distance to the forest for the last time.
Thirty, maybe forty men. They must have quite a toll along the way. He had seen carpenters onboard, when walking through the camp; certainly there were at least several more men at the bilge pumps. There were no more than twenty in the camp itself, and probably some in the forest. How many would be armed? And after a week of anxious tension in the relative idleness…
“They don’t know the place well,” he said. “The farther, the less.”
“Damn you, lemme sleep at la—!“
“Shut your big mouth, José,” a voice raspy from disuse cut in. Jack turned his head. Jorge was gazing at him, acknowledging him for the first time.
“The forest is just beyond the wall,” Jack said. He slowly stepped back, his eyes fixed on Jorge’s. Now the all three were watching him. He backed up to near the door.
“Between trees they’ll be hinderin’ each other.” He donned his hat. “Yet better not to count on them giving up.”
He grinned slowly. Gold shined in the dusk.
The next moment the door banged against the wall from outside, almost tearing it off its hinges.
José, Jorge and Jacinto stood stunned for three heartbeats before they rushed to follow the pirate. Outside, the guard struggled up from the ground, searching for what had just snatched the stool from under him. Sobering quickly, he leapt up and… collided with Jacinto. He only managed to utter an alarming cry.
In a short time, the beach resembled a brothel on fire. Yells and shots would have drowned out the chattering of the birds if they hadn’t already fallen silent, frightened. A rumble on the gangplank announced the men working onboard had joined the chase. Crackles and curses came from the thicket, where all ran into each other, stumbled over roots, snagged musket barrels against branches, and took the pursuers for pursued. Nevertheless, the all racket moved away, until at last the lapping of waves was the predominant sound and the first squawks came shyly from trees.
The open door budged, and a scrap of faded red silk followed by an eye appeared over the edge. No “Here he is! Take him!” was heard, so the door moved from the wall. Jack Sparrow slipped from behind it, hat in hand again. He put it on and grinned, surveying the deserted camp.
Just as he had expected. A week of constant awareness of Tortuga’s proximity had its effect. The brig’s crew had time to hear and brood over what would occur if the captives escaped. The pursuit would be long and fervent, in spite of growing hopelessness as time passed. Most importantly it engaged them all, because all of their lives depended on it, from the highest ranked to the lowest swab.
The guard sprawled on the ground. It looked like his head would give him hell, once he’d woke up. If he’d woke up. No need for his pockets’ contents to add to his bruises, Jack decided.
Raising from a crouch, the guard’s musket in hand, he looked to the other side of the camp. The table still was under the tree, with no maps though. Here and there laid a few guns, apparently forgotten in haste. He resisted the itch to bury them in the campfires’ ashes in case some officer recalled the camp had been left unguarded. So, with an armful of muskets and pistols, Jack trudged toward the water.
A little time later, sneaking between boulders at the cliff’s feet, he raised his eyes at the brig, and grinned again.
One should never flee to where one will be pursued.
The next part
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your thoughts welcomed, as always. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-03-11 21:34 (UTC)