DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. If Pirates of the Caribbean were mine, it would probably be a bit more historically accurate. And slashier.
Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).
Author's Notes: As before, I've only seen the movie once, so if you find any mistakes, inconsistencies, or inaccuracies in characterization, please tell me.
Ships: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Elizabeth, eventual Jack/Will, eventual Norrington/OC. Probably a bit of unrequited Norrington/Elizabeth as well.
Warning: This story contains killing, stealing, lots of angst, an OC, and a non-evil Norrington. Sadly, it probably will not contain any hot, steamy sex scenes.

Chapter Six: In Which the Gallant Commodore Norrington Sails Forth in Search of Pirates.

There was a gallant English ship
A-sailing on the sea,
(Blow high, blow low, and so say we;)
And her Captain he was searching
For a pirate enemy,
(Cruising down along the coast
Of the High Barbaree.)

            Why did the confounded woman have to be so headstrong? Norrington fumed inwardly as he supervised the loading of the Endeavour, still angry at Elizabeth's self-destructive stubbornness. He understood her need to be loyal to her husband, but surely there came a point at which any law-abiding Englishwoman ought to draw the line?

            Except that Elizabeth's lines always seemed to be drawn a bit further to windward than most women's.

            It ought not to have bothered him on so deep a level--after all, Elizabeth Swann was none of his business anymore, now that she had become Mrs. William Turner instead of Mrs. Edward Norrington. Still, he had had an interest in her fate for too long to simply close it off now, whether it was his business or not. Confound the woman! One would think that actual exposure to pirates would have cured her of her silly, romantic notions, and eradicated any sympathy she might have had for the species. And confound Turner, too, for dragging her into this mess.

            "Handsomely does it, Mr. Billings," he called to one of the Endeavour's midshipmen, currently occupied with directing one of the hoists that was lifting provisions onto her deck for storage in the hold. "No need to tip her load into the harbour." Billings flushed and barked an order at the seamen manning the block and tackle, and the ropes stopped their uneven swinging. The Endeavour was a new ship, the gold paint on her bows still fresh and un-faded, and she would get knocked about soon enough without assistance from over-eager midshipmen.

            Overseeing the loading ought to have been part of Gillete's job as first officer, but Norrington was simply too impatient to get to sea to sit quietly by. Every moment that the big three-decker sat in harbour gave Sparrow more time to escape, to slip by him, to weasel his way out of the hands of justice once again. He would apologize to Gillete for interfering later; it wouldn't do to let the man think he doubted his ability to do his duty.

            "Preparing for sea already, I see," came a voice at his elbow. Norrington spun around, startled, to find Governor Swann observing him, Mrs. Swann trailing behind him like a silent, fragile shadow.

            "Yes, Sir," he managed. "I'd like to take her out on the evening tide."

            "Good," the governor nodded. "Good on you, sir. The sooner you sail, the sooner you can bring those buccaneers to justice, eh, Commodore?"

            "Something like that, Sir." Norrington essayed a smile. He still felt slightly uneasy in the older man's presence. The secret of Turner's whereabouts and Elizabeth's complicity weighed upon his mind. He had felt a proper hypocrite, telling the governor that he'd received word of Sparrow's course without mentioning the source, as if keeping Elizabeth's involvement with the man a secret somehow made him an accomplice as well. He had told himself that there was no need to worry the man when he had no concrete proof, but still, it bothered him.

            Governor Swann sighed. "It would have been better for all concerned if we had simply hung Sparrow last summer. I regretted the need for it at the time, but now…" he let the sentence hang.

            Norrington nodded. "Once a pirate, always a pirate. The cat doesn't change it's stripes just because the dog's almost caught it once before. This time, though, I mean to catch him and string him up. Without any last minute interruptions."

            "Hmm, yes," the governor harrumphed. He preferred to forget the part his daughter and son-in-law had played in that little debacle. In fact, most of Port Royal's government preferred to simply forget that the whole thing had ever taken place. The day they had almost hung "Captain" Jack Sparrow had been terribly embarrassing for all concerned.

            Why couldn't the bastard have had the grace to drown when he'd fallen off the rampart into the water?

            "We are all hoping that you will return victorious, Commodore," Mrs. Swann put in softly, perhaps sensing the slight awkwardness that hovered around the mention of Sparrow's abortive hanging. "Our prayers will go with you." Her words were soft, but there was an edge of steel under them, especially when she mentioned his returning home victorious.

            "Thank you, ma'am," he said, meaning it. Prayers very rarely went anywhere with His Majesty's navy, unless one counted those of the sailors themselves. Most of the colonists in the islands had begun to take their presence for granted, muttering about incompetence when they were unable to prevent some piratical outrage, and shrugging it off as "nothing more than their duty" when they did succeed in thwarting some seagoing rogue. "As I said before, I shall do everything in my power to obtain justice for your husband. You have my word on it." He meant that, too. God knew the poor woman deserved some sort of recompense for the loss of her husband, even if it was only the dubious pleasure of seeing his killer hang.

            Mrs. Swann nodded, and their eyes met for a moment. She had grey eyes, he noted. Grey with a hint of green in them. "It's I who should be thanking you," she told him. "You have been very kind to me these past few days. And if you do catch this man, I shall be grateful a thousand times over. Please do be careful out there, though," she added. "I'm sure it would be a great loss to Port Royal were you not to return."

            Norrington smiled again, a real smile this time. "I assure you, Mrs. Swann, Governor, I have no intention of not returning. And when I do return, I hope to have Sparrow and his verminous crew in chains."

^_~

            The quarterdeck, an old commanding officer of Norrington's had once told him, was a lonely place. Norrington had shrugged the comment off at the time, but the higher he rose in the navy the more he came to realize that the older officer had spoken the truth. A captain at sea was God on his own vessel, lord of life and death, which meant that he must never show indecision, or voice his doubts or qualms where others might hear them. Ashore, Governor Swann had occasionally acted as a sympathetic ear to Norrington, and he had once had hopes that Elizabeth might someday fill the position of concerned listener, but at sea, there was no one to truly talk to.

            It wasn't that he had any doubts about his current course of actions, he mused, as the Endeavour bore east from Jamaica, her topsails close-hauled against an easterly wind. It was just that, damn it all, he didn't want to have to hang young Turner. The trouble was, catching and hanging Sparrow and his crew was practically the whole point of this little expedition, and one couldn't very well hang all of them but one.

            Turner had been a good lad, if a bit impetuous at times, and he truly was a talented swordsmith. The blade Norrington had bought from his smithy was the best he'd ever owned, and if the boy's old sot of a former master had made it, he'd eat his uniform hat. Turner would have made a halfway decent naval officer, as well, if he'd had the foresight to accept Norrington's offer, instead of throwing any prospective career away by joining up with pirates. If he so desperately wished to go to sea, why the devil could he not have done it legally? Especially since, a little voice whispered deep in Norrington's head, it would have gotten him out of Port Royal and away from Elizabeth before he managed to steal her away from you.

            Norrington paced back and forth across the Endeavour's quarterdeck, feeling the planks heave slightly beneath his feet. She was a stately thing, this new command of his, far larger and better armed than the poor, lost Interceptor, if not quite so fast, and her rigging was barely worn, ropes freshly tarred and sails white and unpatched. Her deck gleamed so white in the bright tropical sun that it almost hurt one's eyes to look at it for too long, and in her waist and below decks the big, black guns waited silently for a chance to be fired in their first action. Endeavour had three full decks of guns, some of them massive 32-pounders, and she was going to smash Sparrow's smaller, more lightly armed frigate into flinders.

            The thought of the Black Pearl's hull disintegrating into so many shards of black-painted wood under the force of his broadside made for a very satisfying mental image. Sparrow and his wretched, cursed ship were at the heart of this mess. It was Sparrow who had lured young Turner away to sea, Sparrow who had helped sway Elizabeth away from her duty as a proper young Englishwoman (and not for the first time, either--he had his suspicions that Sparrow had somehow had a hand in her decision to marry Turner), Sparrow whose ship had played such merry havoc with shipping in the area lately, and Sparrow who had made Mrs. Swann a widow at so young an age. It was that last, oddly enough, which angered him the most, though as a naval officer it was the threat to local shipping which really ought to concern him. Mrs. Swann had deserved better than to have her husband taken from her by a mad, drunken lout of a buccaneer. She had made a brave decision, following Robert Swann to relocate in the West Indies, only to lose him and most of her capital before ever setting foot upon the soil of her new home. Now she was alone in a strange land, living on the charity of her husband's relations in a town where she knew no one, and somehow she still found the strength to be concerned about his safety.

            The least he could do for her in return was to carry out his duty and apprehend Sparrow. Perhaps some of her lost possessions could be reclaimed at the same time, though Norrington rather doubted that. Likely, Sparrow had already sold or traded them all, and given all of the jewellery away to other people's wives. Lecherous little blackguard. Norrington had seen the way the man had looked at Elizabeth, hadn't missed the way he'd sliced her corset open that day back on the Port Royal docks. He'd followed that outrage up by manhandling her in front of half a squad of Royal marines. Probably, the piece of scum had treated Mrs. Swann in the same cavalier manner. In fact, she was lucky that her jewellery and her husband were the only things she had lost in that encounter.

            No, he wasn't going to regret hanging Sparrow at all, whatever he thought about hanging Turner. "Captain" Jack Sparrow had it coming to him. And when the Black Pearl sailed for Jamaica in a few days, or weeks, as she must eventually, he would find Endeavour waiting for him, more than anxious to deliver.

^_~

Ship of the Line: The largest class of ship in the British Navy, having three square-rigged masts and three gun decks with up to 140 guns. Generally made pirates flee in terror.

Windward: the direction the wind is blowing from, as opposed to leeward, the direction the wind is blowing toward. Facing windward, one would have the wind in one's face, while facing leeward would put it at one's back. The lee side of a ship or island was the side sheltered from or away from the wind.

handsomely: Eighteenth-century British navy slang for slowly and carefully.

Close-hauled: bracing one's sails about so as to sail as close to (into) the wind as possible.

 

Easterly wind: A wind blowing from the east. In sailing, winds are named for the direction they blow from, not the direction the blow towards.

Frigate: A mid-sized ship, three-masted and square-rigged like a ship of the line, but much smaller and with only one and a half gun decks (20-40 guns). The Black Pearl isn't exactly a frigate in the movie (she's some weird mutant ship that Disney made up), but it's the closest real ship type I could come up with.

Yes, I did name Norrington's ship of the line after the space shuttle (though it was also the name of Captain Cook's ship). The British navy seems to have a long tradition of giving ships names that sound like they belong to space shuttles (Intrepid, Indefatigable, Resolution, Reliance, ect.) so I decided that this one would fit right in.

^_~

Next up, Chapter Seven: In Which Elizabeth and Mary Rose Quarrel, and Elizabeth Comes to a Disconcerting Realization.

There will be shouting, vicious remarks, rather graphic visual aids, and quite possibly tears.