Marooned, 18

In Which Norrington Checks his Charts

by

Gloria Mundi

Besides, as soon as the French knew that a lone English frigate was harrying their ships, the tables would turn, and the Ariel would be prey. Norrington the man might wish to be merciful; Norrington the strategist knew that it was a human weakness he couldn't afford.

Instead, he had men at the masthead day and night, scanning the broad blue bowl of sea for pale slivers of sail. Looking too, though they didn't know it, for a signal; for any sign of life out here in the middle of the South Atlantic.

Whenever he thought of Sparrow signalling, Norrington had to force back a smile. Elizabeth's no-nonsense approach to lighting a beacon had enraged the pirate beyond measure; Norrington could still remember the scowls the two had exchanged when they'd thought he wasn't watching them. Things had been simpler then, and the Dauntless's journey back to Port Royal—Sparrow in the brig, Elizabeth smiling and radiant at Norrington's side as though she truly wished to marry the Commodore—had been almost like a holiday.

Thinking of that voyage tended to make Norrington unusually irritable, though his temper had improved in recent months. Perhaps it was the fact of having a pirate to hunt again, this time not for hanging but for ... Norrington was not sure what he'd do with Jack Sparrow, if he found him; if Sparrow were still alive. Pick Sparrow's brains for any knowledge, be it ports or people or nefarious tricks, that might mean another small defeat for France; engage Sparrow in his private war; simply leave Sparrow where he found him, if that would make for a quieter life.

Sparrow would be back in the Caribbean by now, sneaking his way past Norrington just as he'd done before. Or he'd be living incognito—no, not incognito; liked the sound of his own voice, and his absurd stories, too much—in one of those pretty Brazilian ports. There were no islands this far from the coast; apart from the specklings of small, rocky islands up near the Equator (so poorly rendered on the old Admiralty chart that Norrington scraped at them with his thumbnail in case they were actually mouse-droppings or mould) there was nothing between the coast of Brazil and Ascension Island. Nowhere for a pirate, even Jack Sparrow, to hide; nowhere for a shipwrecked sailor to find rest.

He hadn't realised that he was waiting, expecting, until they'd been out of sight of land for three days. Then—just as Anamaria had told him, in the tale that Norrington profoundly hoped his crew had not heard in any of the taverns between Port Royal and Rio de Janeiro—a fog rolled in from nowhere ("from the south," amended Norrington, scribbling in the log) and suddenly they were alone, becalmed, and blind.

Norrington squinted into the pearly grey sky as the fog began to lift, hoping to find the disk of silver that, in this dull weather, would mark the sun. He had no idea of the time of day, but if he could determine noon—

"Land on the starboard bow!" yelled the lookout. Half a dozen of the men on deck rushed to the starboard rail. Norrington didn't join them. He listened hard. There? There. Like a heartbeat, the crashing of waves against solid rock.

"But there's nothing on the map!" cried Bailey. "Nothing at all 'twixt Recife and Bahia!"

"Here be monsters," Norrington murmured to himself. "I wonder...."

When the lookout cried "Smoke—a signal!" Norrington nodded, for it seemed to him that he'd known it would be there.

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