White and Black Pearls 3 - Ten Pearl Strand

Chapter Two

The rocks under his hands and knees were painful and his hands were cut up quickly as he crawled. Jack paused every few minutes to take a rest and just breathe. His immediate weight loss from these last two weeks was very evident; his ribs stuck out monstrously and his cheeks were hollowed, making his cheek bones seem to jut out like a frightening skull with skin peeled over it. His eyes were sunken and the blackness around them was not just kohl, and there were splashes of blood across his whole body and darkening his pants.

Still, he got up again after only a few moments of rest, and resumed climbing, higher and higher through the narrow hole. The incline was getting steeper and more difficult to follow, but after two weeks of staying in that cell, Jack could announce the moment when that flood would come every time, just before it happened. That time was coming soon; if he did not make it up to the source of this hole before the flood came, there was no doubt in his mind that the tumble back down in the rushing water, banging against the rocks followed by the final drop onto the cavern floor, would shatter every bone in his body, if not kill him. He shook his head and climbed faster in the pitch darkness.

Out on one of the ridges of the island, were two large rocks, amidst a pile of smaller ones, creating a tiny hill of rocks that were covered in grass near the top. As the tide started to come in and the waves splashed against the shore, their fingers reaching higher and higher, every now and again the end of a wave would reach the base of the two huge rocks, allowing a tiny trickle of water to enter the weed and grass-shrouded opening between them. When tide started to reach peak, the waves would splash against the opening with more and more frequency, but not strongly enough to send more than a little wash of water down into that hole.

Off in the distance, a large wave rose and began to build. This wave came once every hour, and it was rolling across the waters faster and faster, growing from slightly unnerving to enormous and terrifying rather quickly. The white hands of froth gathered at the top of the wave swelled and grew as though anticipating crashing down upon the island’s shore. The ocean drew back and away from the beach rapidly then, revealing small crustaceans and shells of the shore floor as the wave got nearer – it was as though the ocean was drawing in a deep breath and holding it as the wave rose up to its peak in the waters – before the roaring wave dove down towards the shore, ready to crash upon the land powerfully.

Jack Sparrow’s terrified cry rang out as his hands ripped at the grass at the opening between the two rocks, and he struggled to get out of the narrow opening as fast as he could. Some small part of him became thankful for his starvation then; had it not been for that, he would never have been able to fit through this hole two weeks ago. His shoulders presented the biggest problem but with a final burst of strength he pushed his way out from between the rocks and scrambled to his feet, just as the huge wave came crashing down onto the island’s beach. It caught Jack in its flood and slammed him back against those two enormous rocks like a full-body tackle from a wall, and his head cracked against one of the rocks with a dull thump under the water.

When the wave drew away, Jack Sparrow was left lying on the beach with his face up to the sky, his arms and legs splayed out and his mouth open. His eyes were closed however, and the wet sand about him was a soft pink around his head and limbs. The small waves of high tide tickled at his fingers on his right hand, cleaning up the blood from inside the cuts and gouges across his palm and fingertips with their salty sting as Jack lay unconscious on the beach, free in only a minor sense of the word.

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