Marooned, 5

In Which the Black Pearl Meets Her Fate

by

Gloria Mundi

Devils would've been better.

The fog had rolled towards them over the sea like a vast slow wave, smoothing the water beneath it. The Pearl's black sails had slackened when the wind died suddenly. Jack Sparrow cried for the canvas to be reefed, and hauled himself aloft with the rest of them, struggling to breathe as the fog engulfed them, clinging to sail and stay and skin as though it sought out warmth.

"'T'isn't natural, such a fog in these latitudes," Gibbs muttered.

Jack shot him a sharp, reproving glare, but he said nothing. Had he (he wondered now) spoken to any of them? Or had he just cried orders to the crew in large?

The light that filtered through the fog was pearly and indistinct, and none of the crew cast shadows on the wooden deck. But there were shadows around them, moving. Not cold enough, not south enough, for ice, and these shadows moved at mast-height, like birds.

"Albatross!" yelled someone, pointing: and the rest of them crowded to the rail. But nothing came out of the mist.

The Black Pearl was making almost no way now, gliding slow and stately as a ship in a bottle over the green-glass sea. Jack strained his eyes, but he could see nothing except the grey curtain of fog. According to the charts they were miles from land. Off to the west lay Brazil, and somewhere nearby a Spanish treasure-ship lurked, bristling with forty guns and hundreds of bloodthirsty Spanish sailors. No ship could outsail the Pearl: the Santa Isabella must be in these waters.

Up ahead, they all heard something large heaving itself out of the water. A disturbingly long moment later, it splashed back into the ocean.

"Whale!" cried someone.

"That weren't no whale," muttered Hendricks, who'd sailed with the whaling fleet out of Hull before he came south to the Caribbean.

And then—Jack had been at the helm once more, peering into the bright cloudy blankness, tapping the compass in its binnacle as it spun frantically—something tremendously strong had taken the Black Pearl, and tipped her as though she were no more than a child's toy spinning on a millpond. The men had cried out in prayer or blasphemy or simple anger. Jack had stumbled back from the wheel as it span crazily.

"Rudder's gone!" Stone had yelled from the taffrail, but Jack had known it already. He'd drawn his pistol from his sash, but balked: nothing to aim it at, and though some of the sailors were firing into the empty whiteness all around, there was no sound of pain or cry of rage to show that any shot had found a home. The only sounds were of the creaking, whirring wheel, of the waves lapping at the Pearl's black hull; of water rushing, and Joe Turk's cry "We're struck!"; of something vast moving swiftly through the water, coming closer. Coming for the Black Pearl.

"'Tis no whale, Captain," Hendricks had been telling him, as though it made a difference. "'Tis something evil from the deep."

And he'd turned to—

No. No more.

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