“you knew i was coming.” From Anne to Charles !

He’d guessed, honestly – but he hadn’t been about to place expectations on Bonny; she was too unpredictable for it. In truth, he was glad she had shown up even if it was just to see him off. Doing this wasn’t something that came light or easy, and it absolutely wasn’t something he could explain to Jack. The man would never get it – but her?

She had enough of her own demons to know the necessity inherent in killing them once and for all, of that, he held no doubts.

“You’ll keep things going in my absence.” It’s not a question – he knows she has what it takes to manage affairs alongside Jack – and to keep their mutual friend from asking too many questions, or doing anything stupid of his own. He hesitated a moment, and in the end he wasn’t sure who he was assuring when he stated frankly, “I will be back. Soon. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone, yeah?”

‘ you did the best you could. ’ [ @ silver! ]

{ House Of Broken Angels }

“Clearly I didn’t,” The words were spat out before he could think, “Or this – none of this – would be a fucking issue right now.” If he had done his best he wouldn’t have gotten sucked in on the mad scheme to begin with. He didn’t even know why he was telling Flint all of this, when the best he could hope for was the man getting incensed enough to storm back to the Walrus and demand his fucking job back – rendering Silver useless in the process, no doubt.

There was nothing to gain in revealing failures to this man – but at the same time he honestly couldn’t tell any longer if the crew was so much to lose. They were hardly good men – not that Silver himself could boast any better now – and as it stood the only real value they offered was in the value they gave to Silver, which was a terrible thing he always had to fight and lie and cheat and steal to maintain. It was that, or pity, and that was not a medicine he intended to swallow any time soon.

“I see two paths before me,” He shifted, managing to contain a grimace as the ache in his leg spiked all the way to his hip with the motion, going quiet a moment as he forced himself to breathe through it – making it look like it was for effect rather than adjustment to the searing light in his fucking skull. “Either I lie, and claim repairs for the ship under the wing and prayer of hope that nobody questions why we were in a position to be hounded by 24-pounders in the first place – or, I wash my hands of all this and play the same card as you. And right now that latter idea is looking mighty appealing.”

The Walrus maintained itself in Nassau under the bullshit premise that everyone aboard that ship was now a merchant for ‘His Majesty’ through the ordinance of one Woodes Rogers. So long as that remained true, there was no hard feelings apparently. Of course any act of piracy done by those who now bore those pardons meant hanging without trial, and no pirate ship was packing 24-pound guns anywhere in this area.

Some of mister majesty’s frigates, however….

Silver sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. It had been foolish for any man to think the Walrus capable of taking that damn ship, regardless of the wealth of the prize aboard her he should have deterred the men better, rather than letting the damn quartermaster rile them up. If he’d tried harder in that moment none of them would be in this position now, and some part of him honestly hated how easy and tempting it still was to run off and abandon them all to their twisted fates.

“Or alternatively,” The words seemed to fight their way past the grit of his teeth, his reluctance was so great, “I could do both.”

An important note about sailing with Jack Sparrow is that he keeps both an impeccable ship and a ( generally ) clean crew. If a man ( or woman ) should board his ship and he should discover at any point that they cannot swim, chances are fairly high they will be taught at least some rudimentary basics in their time under his tenure.

Everyone aboard the Pearl needs to be able to jump into the water at a moment’s notice to attend to outer damages in the event that the gear on board is not efficient enough to block holes below the waterline. Everyone needs to have enough skills to manage this because simply having three or four is not good enough on a pirating vessel. Battle is inevitable, men dying is an inescapable fact, and Jack will not run the risk of losing the Pearl because the few people capable of sealing her wounds have been taken out in the skirmish.

This is the argument he provides to the reticent. There is, however, another reason for this and that is that Jack honestly does have limits for how ripe he will let his crew get before he demands that they swim and clear themselves off at the very least. Refusal to do so has seen men thrown overboard, so it is generally a good idea to at least take those lessons when they are on offer.

Jack and his crews tend to swim fairly regularly, and because of this being becalmed is not so terrible as it can be for other vessels – provided their rations are in a good place, at any rate. Though not all crew members are taught by Jack directly, especially as crews tend to overturn regularly, his core crew all have the skill, and when he can be discerning about whom he hires ( which is less often than he would like ) it is generally one of the questions asked prior to hire.