Disclaimer: Pirates? Not mine.

Author's Note: Written for the "Insults" challenge at Black Pearl Sails

Main Character: Jack

An Unexpected Gift

It was widely agreed that the Blue Mermaid Tavern boasted the best ale and the friendliest girls in Tortuga.  Coincidentally, it was also where Captain Jack Sparrow received his correspondence.   Those who needed to know, as well as a few who didn’t, were well aware that letters and parcels intended for him could be sent on to the Blue Mermaid, and that they would eventually find their way into Captain Sparrow’s hands. 

 

Jack studied the small parcel that the Mermaid’s proprietor had just placed on the table in front of him. It was wrapped in brown paper and secured with a bit of twine, and it would have fit easily into Jack’s palm.  

 

“You expecting something?” Gibbs asked. 

 

“Not that I remember, no,” Jack said.  He tilted his head slightly to one side as if to get a better look at his parcel.  “No sense in waiting, I suppose,” he said after a few moments.  He cut the twine and stripped away the paper to reveal what appeared to be a small, cylindrical ivory box.  Gingerly, he lifted the lid, and immediately realized that it wasn’t a box at all.  It was a compass—a brand new one, from the look of it.  Its brass parts were still perfectly polished. 

 

“Now who would have sent me a thing like that?”  Jack turned the gift over in his hands.  It was a beautiful instrument, mysterious though its origins might be. 

 

“Why don’t you read the note and find out?” Anamaria handed him a folded slip of white paper that had been brushed to the side with the wrapping. 

 

Jack unfolded the paper.  The hand was unknown to him.  It was neither Elizabeth’s feminine, flowing script nor Will’s workmanlike writing.  A bit confused, he read aloud the two short lines that were written there:  “For Captain Jack Sparrow.  A compass that actually points north.”  The word ‘actually’ was underlined with a single brisk stroke. 

 

Jack’s face took on a slightly offended cast.  “As if I didn’t have one already,” he grumbled as he pocketed his new acquisition.

 

~ ~

 

Many miles away, Commodore Norrington looked up from the work spread across his desk and smiled for absolutely no reason in particular. 

 

 

Fin




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