Pirates of the Caribbean: Crossing the Bar

2 To Fill the Mouth of Deep Defiance Up

Anamaria watched as Captain Sparrow made his way along the plunging decks as though he were glued to them.  In calm weather, and especially on land, the captain walked like he was five sheets to the wind on a storm-tossed ship, but when the seas rolled high and heavy, an uncanny stillness seemed to flow over him.  Everyone else fought the storm, but Jack became it—or had been it all along and was only now returned to his rightful element.  He was trailing one hand along the ship's railing. 

She grinned at the familiar gesture.  When he'd first got the Black Pearl back, Jack hadn't been able to take his hands off her, as though without the evidence of his fingers, he couldn't believe his eyes or his ears that she was really there and his.  As though, if he just once let her slip through his fingers, someone would separate them again. He'd walk entirely around her deck rather than let her loose in order to cross it. Even yet, he never took her wheel without a caress of the silken wood and that luminous look of a bridegroom coming to his beloved.  The grin left her face as she considered what Jack must be thinking now.

Her fists clenched, needing to be shedding some Navy blood more than anything, but in the absence of that delightful option, she needed to be doing something.  She whirled on Gibbs, spoiling for a fight, any fight, but that scabrous dog had fled back to his watch, his sense of self-preservation being second only to Jack's. 

Through the pelt of rain, Jack was becoming an indistinct shadow up by the bowsprit.  Then he disappeared entirely.  He would be crawling out on that pitching spar, Anamaria knew, slipping down between the Black Pearl's windblown wings and lying there communing with his ship.  She'd known him to spend hours there.  She had no idea if the ship ever had anything to say back. 

They didn't have time for such indulgence if this ship was to be ready to meet the Dauntless and her companion in combat on the incoming tide.  But it was throwing words to the wind trying to make Jack Sparrow see sense.  Sometimes she was convinced he wasn't quite occupying the same world as the rest of them.  She scowled down the deck.  Jack had given no orders to prepare the guns.  She wondered if she should take the initiative.

Anamaria decided she'd climb to the foretop to prevent herself pulling out one of those cannons and blowing a hole in something or someone just to improve her temper.  She'd take a look at those Royal Navy ships herself.  And maybe wish really hard for a hurricane to plunge the two of them right to Davy Jones' Locker. Bloody bastards threatening to take Jack from his ship or his ship from Jack.  Anamaria enjoyed a good fight on the open sea, but this would be a slaughter—not a sporting engagement at all.  As the wind high on the mast whipped her hair across her face, she clung to that swaying spar and glared across the heaving seas to where the indistinct forms of the warships bobbed on the ocean—but they did not catch fire and explode. 

As her feet hit the deck again, she saw Jack returning slowly from the bow, his face drawn into even finer, sharper lines than usual. His hand, no longer willing to brush lightly along the rail, gripped it with whitened knuckles.

She didn't know what to say to him. He hadn't had that look in his eyes since she'd met him before he'd stolen her boat, when he'd told her about losing his ship. 

But he said simply, emotionlessly, "Anamaria, muster the crew, will you, love?"  passing by her without pausing and continuing on up to the Pearl's helm.

Anamaria turned to see him relieve Mr. Gibbs of the watch.  Then Jack took the Pearl's wheel, not with his usual caress, but with a fierce, protective hold, pressing up against her, his head bowed so that the rain ran off his hat and over her spokes like tears.

Damn Commodore Norrington and every last one of those Navy dogs to the deepest circle of hell!

Anamaria ran to call up the crew, her strong voice pitched to drown out the storm and the ship and any dreams of sleeping men.  Everybody jumped when Anamaria bellowed.