Chapter Three

**"What cat's averse to fish?"**

Elizabeth spent the rest of the day in a nervous state. The guards were unable to find and question the two men who had been in her house, and Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to mention Sparrow to them. There were many ships in port, and no hint as to which one had brought the men. An afternoon squall hampered the search, and Elizabeth sensed that the Captain of the Guard had only a lackluster interest in the invasion of the house of a woman of somewhat dubious reputation, Governor's daughter or not. But it was not the violation of her home that unnerved Elizabeth; it was the not knowing why.

Or at least that's what she told herself. She stared disconsolately out her window at the sheets of rain. Scarcely four days could go by in Jamaica without such a squall, and woe betide the creature that had no shelter from it. What shelter had Jack Sparrow? Elizabeth thought of him, unprotected and hungry, and was angry at herself for wanting to shelter him.

Behind her she heard a crack and sizzle. She returned to the hearth to find that the pot she had been boiling chicken eggs in had gone stone dry and cracked. The eggs had fallen into the ashes among the shards of the pot. She sighed and fished the cracked eggs out from the embers. Cooking was one of the many woman's skills she had had to learn when she left the privilege of her father's household, and she had far from mastered it. Poor Will had taken many of his meals at the tavern, before he had left, and Elizabeth had never blamed him. She put the blackened eggs in a basket, and added the burned scones from breakfast. Fortunately, she did seem to have the knack for gardening, so she and Will had some fresh vegetables.

The squall passed at sunset, leaving a world shiny and clean and glowing umbar. Elizabeth watched the sun set, alone in her cottage, as Port Royal dried off and settled down for the night, as she had seen it do countless times. She knew she should be spinning - another endless woman's task - but she couldn't bring herself to go near the spinning wheel. She viewed it rather like a prisoner viewed a ball and chain.

Suddenly, she knew what she wanted. She rose from her stool, and packed a bag with the peacock brooch, a few changes of clothes - including trousers - and the pistol. As the clock tower rang eleven times, she took the bag and the basket of food, placed a note on the kitchen table, and left her cottage home for the jungle.

The jungle at night could have been terrifying, and would have been to most of the "friends" Elizabeth had grown up with. To her, it was only otherworldly. This had been her back yard playground for most of her life, and nighttime was just another of the jungle's moods. She picked her way with confidence through vegetation still dripping from the squall, unconcerned by the ghostly land crabs, translucent and ankle-high, which drifted across her path like specters seeking salvation.

Pirate's Cove was, she had always assumed, misnamed. The approach was too shallow for even a schooner, let alone the deeper draft ships such as the Black Pearl. Mostly it was used by lovers, for the broad, soft beach. Elizabeth approached from the jungle, but she studied the moonlit strand before she emerged. She saw no one.

She stepped out and let the moonlight show her. She stood still for a moment, listening to the soft lapping of the ocean as it kissed the shore. Then came a whistle from her left - a sound no night bird made. In fact, it sounded a bit impertinent, more like a catcall.

She turned and walked slowly toward the sound, trying to see into the shadows. The bright moon had affected her night vision that had led her so well through the jungle.

"Jack?" she called softly.

"Here, Lass," replied his deep voice.

She found him a few feet inside the thickest part of the verge, perched snugly on a hammock at about the height of her head, beneath a thick roof of trees. She forced her way into the overgrowth, so as not to be visible on the beach.

"Where's Will?" he asked. He was only a solid silhouette masking the vines and leaves, but even had Elizabeth not recognized his peculiarly slurred voice, she would have known it was him. There was something about the pirate that turned the normal, solid world on its ear, and Elizabeth felt the tilt begin.

And she welcomed it.

"Aboard the Deadly Earnest, looking for you."

Elizabeth wasn't sure she'd ever heard Jack Sparrow's laugh, but she heard it now.

"Deadly Earnest? Did the good Commodore choose that name?"

"Jack, they're hunting you. Everyone is. What's going on?"

"So, Mrs. Turner, with her husband away at sea, is meeting midnight assignations at Pirate's Cove. Tsk," he teased. "People will talk."

"That ship's already sailed," she said, trying, but failing, to keep the bitterness from her voice.

"Ah," he replied. Then, "Is that my food?"

"I want answers first."

"Good lass. Never give what you can leverage. All right. Someone has a ship outfitted like the Black Pearl and is slaughtering poorly defended settlements all over the Spanish Main without hardly bothering to loot. Over half the English and Spanish navies are hunting for us, which is a damned nuisance, because we can't go anywhere near port and we need provisions and repairs badly. Even open water is dangerous with this level of naval activity, so we haven't been able to pillage any ships. I don't know who he is, and I don't know how he avoids being caught, but I have an idea of what he's up to. Now, give us the food, there's a good girl."

"Tell me your idea."

"No, now, that's not right. I paid in information, so you have to come up with the goods."

"You didn't tell me everything."

"So you don't give me everything."

"Ah," said Elizabeth, considering her basket. "Do I give you the good stuff as incentive, or the not so good stuff?"

"The not so good, but let me believe there's better to come."

Elizabeth smiled in the darkness, and handed the scones up.

Sparrow made no attempt to see what he was eating. He bit into a scone and coughed.

"Drink!" he demanded.

She gave him a flask and he drank deeply.

"Water?" he complained. "No rum?"

"So where is the Black Pearl?"

Sparrow choked down the scones, washing them down with the water.

"Far from here, I'll tell you. Hidden nowhere near civilization. And we're getting very tired of fish. I came by boat."

"By yourself?"

"Aye. What's the next course?"

If he'd truly come that far in an open boat, by himself, it was an impressive feat of navigation, but Elizabeth decided she had no reason to doubt him. She was also impressed that he made no complaint about the rock hard, burned scones. Her conscience twinged. When had he last eaten?

She handed him the onions.

These he did not bite into right away.

"More water?" he asked.

Elizabeth took the empty flask from him and stepped away a few feet. Her jungle playground provided water reservoirs in the broad, flat leaves of palms and other plants. These were still full of rainwater, and she drained a few large ones into the flask. When she returned to him, he was halfway through one onion.

He accepted the water and drank deeply. Elizabeth struggled to hold her questions while he worked his way assiduously through the onions. She refilled the flask twice.

When he was done, he took a deep breath and smiled. Elizabeth could see him better, now. He held out his arms.

"You want to come up, love? Your skirts must be soaked."

He lifted her easily, and placed her next to him in the hammock. Elizabeth had to admire the hiding spot. She could see the entire cove, but felt completely invisible, and even well sheltered from the rain. Sitting this close to Sparrow, she could tell he was relatively dry. She needn't have worried about him.

The impropriety of her position occurred to her, but she had to push the thought away. If she got what she wanted, propriety would be left behind her in Jamaica, shrinking into the distance. She pulled the food basket close on her lap.

"What is your idea, Jack?"

"Someone wants to find the Isle del Muerte," he said, simply. "He knows the Black Pearl amassed beaucoup treasure there - not just the cursed stuff. He has to keep us away from it, so we don't carry off the gold. So he combines slaughter with his hunt for the island."

Elizabeth found herself nodding. "He knows the Navy will scour the waters for you and you won't dare come near. But how does he avoid the Navy?"

Jack's hand crept into her basket. Elizabeth slapped it away.

"And, isn't that island supposed to be impossible to find?"

"Not everyone believes that, love."

Elizabeth remembered her own skepticism about "ghost stories" and had to agree.

"But I think he's come to believe it now," Sparrow went on.

"Why?"

"It's time for another course, my dear. What else have you got?"

Reluctantly, Elizabeth turned over the eggs. She was running out of things to buy his information with.

Sparrow shelled and devoured the eggs in a twinkling.

"Those men in your house. I was there to reclaim my gold. I hid when I heard them coming, and I heard them say they were there to kidnap Will."

"I thought you just made that up."

"As you pointed out, love, I could make up something better than that. I was as surprised as you. But I think I know why. The Isle del Muerte can only be found by someone who already knows where it is. I think my evil twin is looking to capture someone who knows where it is."

"Will! Jack, I've got to warn him!"

"Now don't get your bloomers wadded up, Missy. Will should be quite safe with the King's Navy. And there are others who know where it is, now."

"The entire crew of the Dauntless!"

"Not the entire crew. Most sailors have no head for navigation. Even the officers are not all advised on every course change. I'd say the helmsman, the navigator, Norrington and his first mate. Beyond that, there's myself, most of my crew, Will and maybe your father."

"Jack, Will and my father couldn't find the Isle del Muerte if their salvation depended on it."

"But you could, couldn't you, Missy?"

Elizabeth didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

Sparrow chuckled. "They came for the wrong Turner," he said, leaning meaningfully over her basket.

Elizabeth took out the last of the food. A big, green apple. "We've had that problem before, haven't we, Jack?"

Sparrow laughed as he took the apple, and Elizabeth couldn't help but grin at him.

As he finished the apple, Sparrow stiffened, then went very still. Startled, Elizabeth took in a breath, but held it rather than speak. She had heard something, too. She leaned forward to look back toward the curve of the cove where she had originally emerged.

The hammock tilted as Sparrow dropped almost soundlessly to the ground. Then he had his hands at her waist, lowering her. Before she could protest Sparrow put one dirty hand across her mouth, but released her when she recoiled. Twisting away from him and peering out, she saw a soldier, red-uniformed and musket toting, appear on the beach before being pulled back into the jungle by an unseen hand.

Behind her, Sparrow took down the hammock so quickly Elizabeth wondered how it had been suspended. "Come on," he whispered in her ear, before sidling through the bushes and branches away from the beach, angling toward the opposite arm of the cove.

For one agonized moment Elizabeth paused, torn. If she showed herself - concocted some story to explain why she was there and stalled the soldiers ... Sparrow would escape but she would lose her chance.

She caught him up, and followed, trying to judge where he thought he was going. Sparrow made no acknowledgement when she joined him. He moved quietly, but, smaller, lighter, and more familiar with the terrain, Elizabeth crept all but silently behind, her skirts bundled and draped over one arm.

When he slowed to spy out the best passage over the slight rise above the cove, Elizabeth whispered, "Left." Sparrow obeyed, and soon they crossed the sand dune crest still hidden from the moonlight in the only narrow band of vegetation that snaked over to the other side.

With the rise behind them, Elizabeth risked speaking. "There's nowhere to hide over here," she whispered urgently. She spoke from childhood experience of hide-and-seek games. The best cover was behind them, between Pirate's Cove and Port Royal. For miles this stretch of Jamaica's shoreline was only waist-high bracken. Even now, if a soldier crested the rise behind them, they would be seen.

Sparrow glanced back at her, then looked beyond, to the rise, and at her, again. "So no one would come this way to hide, would they?" he said, his tone mild and cheery as if they still sat in the hammock.

He quickened his pace and Elizabeth struggled to keep up, shaking her head. As a tactic, it seemed lacking, to her. If there were enough soldiers they could just sweep the area, and hiding beneath a thorny bush wouldn't serve them long. She eyed the bright moon, and was encouraged to see the outlines of clouds near it.

Sparrow slowed, stopped, bent down, and, to Elizabeth's surprise, lifted a huge piece of the earth, bracken and all. She blinked as the beach in his hands resolved into a large canvas, sand and bushes spilling off of it. Elizabeth hurried to help.

In less than a minute they had uncovered and turned upright, a fifteen footer. Elizabeth watched the terrain behind them - flat and unobstructed all the way back to the rise - nervously, as Sparrow hauled out casks and gear from their hiding places, and tossed them into the boat. She pushed the opposite side as he slid the boat to the water.

The sound of a shot, muffled by wind and distance, reached her and Elizabeth looked back to see what she had been dreading. A silhouetted soldier on the small sand dune. The two of them were out of range of his musket shot, but the sound would bring others. "Jack?" she said, her heart pounding.

Sparrow walked calmly back to the dislodged sand, and dug once again with his hands. "Decide now, Missy," he said, his low voice sounding like a growl. "If you're coming, get in and get down." He began hauling something long and heavy out of the ground.

Elizabeth gasped, but didn't hesitate. Could it really be this easy? She tossed her bag of belongings and the food basket into the boat, followed them in, and crouched down as much as she could. Grunting, Sparrow wrestled what turned out to be a mast, into the boat. Elizabeth took a painful smack on one shoulder from it, before she managed to twist out of the way. She held herself still as Sparrow threw himself against the now much heavier boat, inching it toward the water. Spying an oar, Elizabeth gripped it in order to be ready. She heard another shot, closer.

The boat swayed as water slid beneath it, and then swayed more severely as Sparrow leaped in. Elizabeth sat up, took her place, positioned her oar, and waited for the panting Sparrow to position his. He gave her one surprised look, then committed to his single oar. They began rowing for their lives. Elizabeth realized, belatedly, that Sparrow had chosen the top of the tide as the time of their meeting; it was now ebbing and aiding their escape.

Her rhythm in no way matched his, and their first hundred feet straight out from land was gained only in desperate spurts. On shore, a dozen soldiers clambered to the water and leveled their muskets.

"I'll row," Sparrow gasped. "Stay down." Sweat poured down his face, glistening in the moonlight, and his chest heaved.

"No," cried Elizabeth. The disparity in their strengths was part of the cause of their uneven strokes, but he was tiring more quickly than she, and they had now found a matching rhythm. Fear and determination flooded her, giving her strength. "Row," she ordered, her voice strong.

Exhausted he might be, but he grinned almost carelessly at her, and pulled his oar. He continued to grin as the soldiers shot at them, their shots falling short, for the little boat sped away now, like a racing boat taking the lead. Elizabeth tried not to think, for she knew that as soon as her fear left her, she wouldn't be able to row another stroke.

Eventually it happened. Jamaica dwindled in the distance, and Elizabeth began to believe she would live. At that moment, she faltered on the oar, and it flew wildly from her hand. Sparrow grunted and dragged his own to lessen the force levering Elizabeth's free oar. Somehow, her every muscle protesting and her arms shaking with fatigue, Elizabeth managed to catch hold of it before it slid completely into the water.