White and Black Pearls 3 - Ten Pearl Strand

Chapter Seventeen

“But I don’t understand,” Will argued again, slamming his hand down on the rail of the Flying Dutchman. “It can’t be true, it’s not right!”

“There’s no two ways of tellin the tale boy,” Barbossa affirmed, ignoring the outburst and attributing it to Turner’s sorrow. “Celestiana ain’t with the livin no more!”

“It’s not right!” Will yelled loudly, turning his back to Barbossa and disappearing into his quarters, slamming the doors shut behind him.

Barbossa sighed and shook his head. He’d passed the news along, and that was about as much time as he wanted to be spending on the deck of the Flying Dutchman, no matter who was captain of it. He looked over at the Black Pearl where she was anchored a short ways away, the two ships waiting patiently near the desert island he’d had far too much to do with these last long years. Barbossa climbed down the side of the ship and onto the waiting rowboat, where his men rowed him away from the Dutchman and towards shore once more. He’d delivered the message of when the funeral was to take place and that was his sole duty; there was no compulsion to try and comfort William Turner or try and convince him that the woman he idealized was as a matter of fact as dead as dead could be.

For once, his crew was properly silent and somber at the right time, and not even Ragetti and Pintel spoke up as they reached the shore and pulled the boat to higher sands.

Barbossa got out of the ship and dusted his clothes off. They’d been out here for over a week already, almost two, waiting for Calypso to finish whatever preparations she was making for this bloody funeral, and he wasn’t the only one feeling anxious to leave. There was an all around unhappy and deathly aura about this place – which was odd, since Celeste had left the living world on his ship’s deck, not on the island – and even the animals seemed to sense it. There hadn’t been a bird call or monkey’s chatter since that morning.

He spotted Jack sitting on the shore some ways down, in the same place he’d stayed put all week. As usual, the man was hammering back yet another bottle of rum, but there was no carousing or laughter coming from him whatsoever. Jack drank all through the day, passed out in the night time, got up in the morning to find more stores of rum and started the process all over again the next day, without a word to anyone.

With a shake of his head, Barbossa turned his attention instead to the man with a shaggy beard who was walking past, carrying a great stack of wood over his strong shoulder. The ring on one of the fingers of his left hand glinted in the sunlight as he went by, and Barbossa smiled, ignoring the shudders of his crew as the man passed.

“I still can’t believe that’s Davy Jones,” Pintel whispered.

“He’s just not the same without the…” Ragetti put his hand to his own chin and wiggled his fingers like tentacles.

“Put an end to your yappin before I put an end to it myself, and help with whatever it is they need,” Barbossa interrupted, scaring both men off to do as told.

When they were all gone, he moved down the shore towards Jack, until he was standing next to the man. Slowly Barbossa got down and sat in the sand with Jack, picking up one of the bottles of rum and opening it, taking a swig for himself. There was a silent – albeit likely temporary – accord between them as of late. Barbossa did not miss noticing the fact that Jack was twirling the ring on his finger with his thumb, or that he’d gotten rid of all his other rings on his hands, instead choosing to wear them as a necklace. It also didn’t slip past him that Jack refused to be conscious as long as the moon was up, even last night during the New Moon when there was technically no moon to be seen.

“Is this it then?” Barbossa finally asked after long minutes had stretched by. “Captain Jack Sparrow lives out the rest of his days drinking rum on a beach? He never sails again, he never accomplishes anything else again, except for perhaps bringing about his own demise from malnutrition and the poisons of alcohol?”

“T’wouldn’t be so bad,” Jack slurred thickly. “Then we could be together.”

Barbossa’s jaw clenched tight and his mouth pulled into a hard line. He looked at Jack for another long minute before shaking his head and standing once more, dropping his half-empty bottle beside the man with no doubt that it wouldn’t go to waste and leaving Jack alone on the beach.


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