Chapter Eight

Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.

They did not leave at dawn. All night the weather worsened until by morning eastern Cuba was in the grips of a tremendous storm. Shortly after midnight, "all hands" were called, and the Larboard Watch, Will's watch, turned out to assist the Starboard Watch in battening the hatches. All hands were on deck, but for Will. As they tumbled out of the forecastle, the Second Mate stopped him. "Not you, chum," he said. "We can't watch you in the dark and the rain. You're not deserting again." So Will stayed behind, useless, in a locked forecastle, his tired mind trying to keep track of the various deceptions. They might pretend they were watching that he not desert, but he was really under guard. Will was as much a prisoner as Jack Sparrow was, but he was not supposed to know it.

The storm kept them in port for three days, and they should have stayed another few days to repair the damage it did to their hull, but Stanley ordered them to sea at the first opportunity.

It had been a miserable three days for Will. All around him were men who had committed the brutal attacks on a dozen settlements for no more reason than to implicate the Black Pearl. These men were fast growing tired of the deception they had to maintain around Will, just as he grew tired of pretending he knew nothing of it. Everyone on board knew they had Sparrow, and if they didn't know that Stanley had the location of the Isle de Muerte, they assumed that he would soon have it. Eager for the gold, but trapped in port, tempers ran high and the other men grew incautious of what they said around Will. Many times he overheard "What do we need 'im for?" It occurred to Will that by corroborating Jack's story, he had made Jack valuable to Stanley at the expense of his own worth.

All Will could learn of Jack was that he had been moved to the brig when the hold began to leak. Will had volunteered to help with the repairs in the hold, in the hopes of seeing Jack, but the Mate had only laughed at him. He thought wistfully of his snug cottage in Port Royal and was thankful that at least Elizabeth was safe.

As they left port on the fourth day, Will watched his only real hope for escape fall behind him, and finally drop off the rim of the horizon. He tried to boost his spirits by thinking of Jack. What would Jack do? Well, he told himself, Jack wouldn't give up. Even though they were now literally between the Devil and the deep blue sea, Jack would still try something. The best thing Will could do would be to try to be ready for any opportunity.

Although his sword had been appropriated when he went in the brig, and somehow never returned, no one had taken his sailor's knife. It was seen as more tool than weapon, and, since everyone had one, having one was not viewed as any particular advantage. Will removed the hilt and put the blade in the sole of his boot.

As the Tarantula sped across the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola - across, not into, because Stanley was loath to meet any returning Royal Navy ships on their way to Jamaica, and had decided to round Hispaniola the long way, from the south - repairs were carried out while under full sail. Sealing leaky planking with hot tar and oakum was a nasty job, made even more unpleasant when it had to be done on the outside of the hull while hanging from the Boatswain's chair, but it gave Will an idea.

Mindful of the Mate's laugh at his obvious ploy to get to see Jack, Will didn't volunteer for the Boatswain's chair. Instead, he busied himself as far from that activity as he could manage, until it became obvious that he was ducking his turn. Then he was promptly ordered onto the chair, supplied with hot tar and a loggerhead, and lowered over the side. He was just above the area in steerage where the brig was.

He worked diligently at sealing the planks, but he wanted to be lowered to just outside the brig, and that wasn’t in the pattern the Boatswain’s mates were working with him.

“Hey!” he called up. “Not so low! There are sharks!”

The faces of the two mates leered at him over the gunwale. The lines holding his platform abruptly played out, dropping him sharply to just above the waves. One of the buckets of tar tumbled into the sea. The spray soaked Will, and the Boatswain’s chair swung wildly, thumping against the hull. The hold itself was below the waterline, and could only be repaired from the inside, but now Will was just outside the brig, and below the curve of the hull, where he could not be seen. He had to work fast before the Boatswain’s mates decided they had enjoyed their joke long enough.

One end of the loggerhead was for prying planks, not sealing them, and Will put all his strength behind loosening the planking at the brig level.

“Jack!” he called, but his voice was carried away by the wind and the waves. He abandoned any hope of hearing or being heard under those conditions.

He struggled further to do the very last thing one would normally want to do to a ship under weigh - weaken its seals. He managed to bend open a crevice just far enough to cram the loggerhead in. Was he imagining it, or did it feel like someone had gripped the other end of the tool, and pulled? Will couldn’t be sure, because once the planking snapped back in place, he had no way to pry it again. All he could do was hold on, wet and cold, and wait.

Eventually the Boatswain’s mates pulled him higher again, and when he showed them that he had lost a bucket of tar and his loggerhead, they hoisted him all the way up.

“That wasn’t funny!” he yelled at them. “I told you there were sharks!”

The mates thought it was funny. They laughed.

The Chief Mate approached. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“Mr. Turner dropped his tar and a loggerhead, Lieutenant,” one of the mates said, all innocence.

Will stayed silent as the Mate looked him over.

“On your way, Turner,” he said. To the Boatswain’s mates he said, “Get someone else in the chair.”

Will moved to the bow of the ship and looked out over what seemed like endless sea. They were still headed south, as fast as the world's winds could take them, in order to get out of potentially busy traffic lanes. Although the ocean was a moat, imprisoning him, he couldn’t look off the bow without being stirred by a feeling of excitement. The safety of his smithy was a distant dream of normalcy, but it also now looked to him like a prison of another kind. He wondered with a strange detachment if he would survive this adventure, and if he did, if he would be able to return to life on land.

A flash of blue-green against the grey of sea and sky caught his attention. He looked up to see a parrot perch on the foremast shroud. That struck him as odd, since they were well away from land, now. He looked down again, and saw what he was leaning against. It was a third capstan in the bow of the Tarantula, and he had once wondered what it was for. The other two raised and lowered the forward anchors, as on the Deadly Earnest, but the chain from this one went . . . he followed it forward, and saw that the chain must go to the lion figurehead. Of course. They had to have a way to change figureheads while under sail.

"What are you doing, Turner?" Will had not heard the Chief Mate come up behind him. His voice was full of suspicion.

"Nothing!" he answered, not very convincingly.

"Getting an eyeful?" growled the Mate. "Have you figured out what it's for?"

Will recovered quickly. "No sir, but I was curious. What is it for?"

"Enough of this!" the Mate said, and grabbed Will by the bicep. He dragged him from the bow. "Take him!" he yelled to two crewmen, who stepped up and gripped Will's arms. "I'll get the Captain."

Will said nothing as Captain Stanley approached with the Mate. Behind him, two more men brought Jack Sparrow, blinking in the sunlight, his hands bound in front of him with rope.

"So, Turner, how much have you learned?" Stanley asked, without any trace of friendliness.

"I don't know what you mean, sir," Will tried, but his protest sounded forced, even to his own ears.

"What really concerns me," Stanley said, looking out at the sea, "is how long you have known it. How long have you been in league with Sparrow?"

"I'm not!" Will cried. "You must believe me!"

Stanley looked now at Jack, who gave him a genial grin. "So now," Stanley mused, "I can't trust your information."

"Of course you can," said Jack. "What's Turner to do with my interest in the gold? When could we have agreed on a story?"

Stanley appeared to consider that. "In the street before you were caught. You could have planned it then."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Bilge water," he said. "Why would I agree to be captured? Just to mislead you and then get myself killed?"

As Stanley regarded Jack, something white and fluid fell from above onto his blue uniform. An expression of outrage spread across Stanley's angular features, and guffaws passed through the watching men.

"A guinea to the man who kills that bird!" Stanley cried.

The laughter turned to greedy cheers as the Watch sprang into the rigging. Will watched in amazement as normally agile sailors overreached themselves trying for the parrot, and slipped and stumbled, and tangled themselves in rigging. The parrot, for its part, hopped and flapped, and kept just out of reach.

"And someone tie a noose!" Stanley ordered. "Turner, I'm afraid you've outlived your usefulness."

"Sir!" Will gasped. "What . . . what will you tell the Commodore?"

Stanley showed an evil smile and said, "I don't expect to ever see His Nibs again. But if I must, I'll tell him Sparrow murdered you." He looked to the Mate. "Tie the noose on that yard, there."

In the rigging above, the converging sailors were now banging heads and trying to push each other away from the parrot in their attempts to be the first to reach it. The parrot flew down around the heads of the men on deck, calling "Anchors aweigh! Anchors aweigh!" before landing on a mizzenmast shroud.

Every man looked at the parrot in surprise. Behind them was Spanish Cuba, and to the east was French Port-Au-Prince and this bird spoke in English? Then the men aloft dropped to the deck or swung across in a scramble aft to the mizzenmast.

Though Will had been trying not to look too much at Jack, now their gazes locked in a moment of mutual, perfect understanding. Then Jack looked away and began shaking his head.

"Captain Stanley, Captain Stanley. You can't hang the boy."

"Oh? And why not? Why should you want him spared, if you're not in league?"

"You're still thinking like a military man. Hanging? Come now, what would a pirate do?"

Will spotted the two vicious Boatswain's mates, watching avidly.

"Shut up, Jack!" Will hissed, and his performance was perfect. "There are sharks!"

The two mates hooted.

"You think he should walk a plank," Stanley said, his anger at the parrot fading into amusement.

Jack shrugged. "It's always more fun for the men."

"He's terrified of the water, sir!" called one of the mates. "Thinks there's sharks in every wave!"

"The men have been wanting to throw Turner overboard for days, sir," added the Chief Mate, grinning.

"Very well, then. You arrange what's needed." Stanley ducked into his cabin.

The men in the mizzenmast rigging never reached the parrot. It flew off the stern, heading northwest, amid many disappointed cries and oaths. Will marked its heading carefully, and he saw Jack doing the same.

Jack gave cheerful instructions to the men on how to rig a plank for "walking," which they seemed to ignore, though Will thought they would have done a better job of it had they listened to him. The whole scene became dreamlike for Will. Isolated at sea with an entire shipload of men who wanted him dead. It had to be a nightmare he would waken from. He had to fight back a growing panic that was making his knees shaky. He reminded himself he was a strong swimmer, and if they tied his hands, he had a blade in his boot.

Finally the plank was ready, on the starboard side of the ship, and Stanley reappeared, wearing a clean uniform jacket. Will was forced onto the plank, his heart beating so hard it hurt his chest. He couldn't stop seeing Elizabeth on the Black Pearl's plank, so lovely and so brave. How he hoped he would see her again.

Before Will got very far onto the plank, someone called "Sail ho!"

As frightened as Will had been of walking the plank, now pure terror gripped him that they would hang him after all, rather than risk him reaching another ship. Sure enough, before he could move, Stanley ordered him hauled back on deck.

"Who is it?" bellowed the Mate.

"Deadly Earnest!" came the reply. The lookout directed everyone's gaze to the southeast, where the sails were sighted.

Stanley swore, showing an impressive proficiency with sailors' profanity. "Now we'll waste more time with that man."

"You're still not thinking like a pirate, Mate," said Jack.

"Be still! I've had enough of your games," Stanley ordered.

"But you're still playing your own games. How long do you keep up this charade? Lure him in close with all that Navy falderol, then hoist your true colors and blast the Bejeezus out of him. He's the only thing standing between us and all that treasure!"

Will's head was spinning too much for him to make sense of what Jack was up to now.

"Captain," added the Mate, "he'll just delay us some more. And we've got to get rid of Turner before he talks to him."

Stanley nodded. "Put Turner overboard, and this time, tie his hands. Get Sparrow out of sight, back in the brig. Break out the pirate ensign, and make ready the guns. One last battle and then we're all rich men!"

"Aye, aye!" came the response from the crew. Will's hands were bound in front of him with rope, and he was shoved once again onto the plank. He managed a glimpse of Jack, who was watching Will as they forced him to the hatch.

"We'll meet again!" Jack called to him.

"You'll see, Sparrow!" Stanley called in a ringing voice. "I am a pirate!"