"G'morning, Miss Elizabeth."
        Her first instinct upon seeing a stranger on the doorstep was to draw back, one hand going to her middle in an age-old protective gesture. 
        The man's gaze followed, and his face split in a broad, beaming grin that bowed his bushy sideburns out on his reddened, grizzled cheeks. 
        She gasped. "Mister Gibbs?"
        "Aye," he said, tugging away the false beard and moustache and eyepatch that had left her initially unable to recognize him. "How d'ye like me disguise?"
        Elizabeth floundered, then recovered her wits. She darted a swift glance around and saw that no one else seemed to be paying undue attention. "Won't you please come in?" she asked. 
        Gibbs entered the house, his expression turning appreciative as he took in the fine furnishings. 
        They had arranged a compromise, she and Will and her father. These surroundings were far less opulent than those of the governor's mansion on the hill, but, as she often reminded him, they were considerably nicer than the smithy loft that had once been his lodging-place when he had toiled thanklessly as Mister Brown's apprentice. 
        "No servants?" he asked, shifting from one hand to the other a large bulky sack.
        "A cook and a maid," Elizabeth said, hearing that same defensiveness in her voice that she'd heard when first her father, and then Commodore Norrington – their first dinner guests, an affair rather stilted by all that went unsaid – had placed much the same question. 
        Indeed, the curious gimlet eyes of the housemaid peeped down through the railings of the second floor landing. Elizabeth sent her scurrying back to her work with a single raised brow, and beckoned Mister Gibbs into the parlor. 
        He stood uncertainly on the rug, the sack at his feet, twisting his hat into a shapeless crumple. His waistcoat was straining at the buttons, and she noted that he had some sort of squarish parcel imperfectly tucked inside it. 
        "Will you join us for tea?" she inquired, already on her way to the small passage that gave onto the kitchen. 
        Inside, she was bubbling with curiosity, a tea kettle herself ready to sing with questions rather than steam, but her father always said that manners should come first. 
        What her father would make of her manners, entertaining as she was a pirate in her very parlor, she couldn't hazard a guess. 
        Of course, Mister Gibbs had not always been a pirate. When they had first met, twelve years ago, Elizabeth had been a girl not yet on the cusp of womanhood and Gibbs had been in the royal navy. He had been an officer from time to time, even rising as high as bo'sun or first mate, before a few too many nips at his trusty and well-worn flask led him slipping back in rank to a common sailor, or lower. 
        And, of course, Port Royal had not always been like this. It had once been such a pirate's haven, despite nominally being under English rule, that Henry Morgan himself had been considered governor. He was known for opening a keg of wine in the very street and obliging all passing sailors to stop to drink with him. 
        "Aye, some tea would go down nice," he allowed. His hand crept to a pocket – she was almost certain he was unconscious he did it – and she hid a smile in the knowledge that he'd be sure to tip that selfsame flask to 'hearten' the tea. 
        She went into the kitchen and asked Cook to prepare a tray, then hurried to the back door. Their yard was high and fenced, climbing with vines. The air was heavy with balmy breeze and the sweet scents of the sea and tropical fruits. A few bright birds chattered in the boughs, scolding the resonant clangs and scrapes that came from the building at the far end. 
        "Will!" she called, lifting the hem of her skirt as she trod the stepping-stone path. 
        The clanging stopped. A wooden shutter swung open and her husband leaned out. Several strands of his brown hair had escaped his ponytail, his forehead was stippled with beads of sweat, and his face and leather apron were streaked with grime. But his eyes, as deep and dark and soulful as her own, warmed as he saw her, and made her heart skip and flutter. 
        He came to her, wiping his strong hands on a rag. "Elizabeth." Two years married, and he still said her name as if tasting a fine wine. 
        She nearly danced in place. "Will, Mister Gibbs is here."
        "What? Here? In the house?"
        "Yes!"
        "And … the Pearl?" They gripped each other as her giddy excitement swept them both.
        "I haven't asked. I've invited him for tea."
        Will laughed, that quiet boyish chuckle as if he had never quite learned the way of roaring aloud. It was one of the hundred, nay, thousand things about him she loved. But his eyes danced and sparkled, just as she knew her own must be doing. He looked down at himself and shook his head in chagrin. 
        "I'll clean up, shall I?"
        "Be quick," she said, brushing a soft kiss on his lips.
        They returned to the house, Will rushing upstairs. It was silly, she knew. Mister Gibbs had seen them both at their soaked and bedraggled worst. He had – her cheeks burned to remember it – seen her in outfits that would have made any decent lady clutch her head and swoon in shame. 
        Mister Gibbs stood in the parlor exactly as she'd left him. Perhaps he feared to move. 
        Once her father had finally understood her and Will's intention to have a home of their own, he had insisted on lavishing them with gifts. The house, yes, and decorated to suit the style to which he thought she'd been accustomed. Little knowing that as far as Elizabeth cared, she could have lived quite happily in the little loft over the blacksmith's, so long as she'd had Will there with her. 
        "Please, do sit down," Elizabeth said as Cook bustled in with the tray. "Will is just upstairs. He'll be down in a moment."
        Gibbs perched on the chair as if afraid its delicate legs might snap under him and dump him to the carpet. Elizabeth busied herself pouring, feeling as she did an almost irresistible urge to hum. And she knew just the tune, oh, yes. 
        Will appeared, his hair wet and slicked back, his face clean, struggling to secure the tiny pearl buttons at the high collar of his shirt. "Mister Gibbs! It's good to see you."
        "Not going to throw a pail of water on me, are ye, young Mister Turner?"
        "Today, I was the one more in need of a bath." Will rubbed his chin, which was coarse. "No time for a shave, though. When Elizabeth told me …"
        "It's such a welcome surprise!" Elizabeth said. She gave Gibbs a tea cup, which looked dainty and out of place in his thick, scarred fingers. 
        "What news?" Will asked, sitting forward eagerly on the edge of his chair. "Is the Black Pearl here?"
        "Ah, now," Gibbs said, scratching the back of his neck, "much as we respect your Commodore Norrington and all, we didn't think as it was wise to sail the Black Pearl straight into your harbor bold as brass. No, I came alone. Booked passage out of Tortuga."
        "Tortuga," Will said, and smiled. That port city was now all that Port Royal had once been, and perhaps more. The clergy called it the new Sodom and Gomorrah, and when their exhortations for temperance and chastity fell on deaf ears, they pleaded with God Almighty to strike it down just as he'd struck down Port Royal in 1692.
        "You've never yet told me all that went on there," Elizabeth reminded him in a sweet voice, just to watch him fidget.
        He cleared his throat, dug a finger into his collar. "Alone, Mister Gibbs? Why?"
        "Jack asked me to."
        "How is Jack?" Elizabeth asked. "He's all right, isn't he? Not ill, not hurt?"
        "Not jailed?" Will added. 
        "Aw, you know Jack," Gibbs said. "He's had himself slapped by a fair number of ladies since last you saw him, but that, he's used to."
        "I shouldn't wonder," murmured Will. 
        "I'm sure he deserved it," Elizabeth said archly. "But it is good to know that our Jack Sparrow is as much a devil as ever."
        "Aye, Miss Elizabeth – or should it be Missus Turner now?"
        "I am Missus Turner, but please, Mister Gibbs, call me Elizabeth."
        "Well, Miss Elizabeth, ye're right … he's still Jack Sparrow, sure enough. Not so much driven as he was, though, not now that the Pearl's his again."
        "We have not heard many tales of the Pearl," Will said. "Don't tell me, Mister Gibbs, that you've all given up pirating?"
        "Ye say that like ye miss it, boy," Gibbs said. "Jack was right about you."
        Elizabeth touched Will's arm and smiled at him. "He's a pirate."
        "Once," Will said. "I'm back to blacksmithing now."
        "Are ye? Jack's gone on and on about those swords ye made."
        Will nodded. "But what about you? What about Jack? Surely he hasn't turned into a … a legitimate businessman."
        "Bah," Gibbs scoffed. "I'll admit there's not so much call for pillaging, not since we went back and took all the plunder that old Barbossa had stored up."
        "Oh, my," Elizabeth whispered. 
        She remembered that cave, would remember it the rest of her life. Though she had been in a state of icy terror, captive as she was of men who were not men at all but cursed undying skeletal monsters, she had still not been immune to the wonder of the treasure. It had been heaped all around the grotto. Gold, glittering gold in coins and platters and chalices and necklaces. Silver. Jewels. Long ropes of pearls. Heathen idols. Gem-studded crowns.
        "All of it?" Will asked, his tone guarded. 
        Gibbs snorted. "Not that, man. We're none of us that great of fools, for God's sake."
        Will relaxed. 
        "No, that stone chest with its deadly accursed Aztec gold, we left untouched," Gibbs said. "T'was a sorry scene there in the cave, I'll tell ye. Bones everywhere, and what be left of Barbossa –"
        "We remember," Will said, and Elizabeth shivered. "We were there."
        Not all of Barbossa's crew had died in the final battle, which took place partly aboard the Dauntless and partly down in the cave. Several of them had surrendered at the end, not wanting to throw away their restored lives once Will and Jack had released the curse. 
        She did not like to think of what had come of that. 
        A part of her still felt pity for them. Though they had been cruel to her, would have killed her, had in fact marooned her and left her to die on a deserted island, she had an inkling of what their empty existence might have been like. She had felt that way herself after pledging to marry James Norrington though it was Will she loved. Had circumstances forced her to go through with it, might not she have felt the world was grey, ashen, hollow?
        And those who had been given their lives back lost them a few days later. 
        The multiple hangings had not been the island-wide spectacle at the fort that Jack's was meant to be. Fearful that at any moment, the captives might revert to their unstoppable, immortal state, Norrington had ordered them up the rope with all due speed. Their bodies, reduced once more to bones and rags, still swung at the entrance to the harbor as a warning. 
        "Aye, sorry, that ye were." Gibbs stirred his tea. "One thing, though … d'ye happen to remember that monkey of theirs?"
        "Yes," Elizabeth said, grimacing. "The horrid little beast."
        "That horrid little beast were waiting for us in the cave. It had gotten back into the chest, gotten itself another coin, as Jack found out when he slashed at it. Bugger sprang back up and went for his face, it did."
        Thinking of those awful fangs, Elizabeth shuddered. "What did you do?"
        "Killed it," Gibbs said. "Took some doing. It'd gone and hidden the coin, and that were a mighty lot of swag to search through. All the while, we had that monkey penned up in a barrel. Ye should have heard how it screeched and scrabbled."
        "But I take it you found the final coin," Will said. His thumb was absently rubbing the white line of scar across his palm. 
        Elizabeth looked down and saw that she was doing the same. She, Will, and Jack, all with their matching scars, as if bound in blood to some pact or contract. 
        "Found it, aye." Gibbs sipped, then set the tea aside as if the story had shrunken his appetite. "Then we popped the lid open just enough for it to reach out, and when it did, Jack had him. Sliced him, and back went the coin. For good measure, we slung some chains around that chest and padlocked 'em, and sunk the works into the deepest part of the grotto. Should anyone ever now go looking for Isla de Muerta, they'll find naught but the bones to give it that well-deserved name."
        "So it's over, then," Elizabeth said. "All of it, finally and truly over."
        "But for this bit." Gibbs picked up the heavy, bulging sack at his feet. "Jack wanted ye to have this."
        He hefted it at Will, who caught it easily and then nearly dropped it from the weight. Metal clinked. 
        "What … what is it?" Will's dark eyes were large and wide. "Not …"
        "See for yerself," Gibbs said. 
        Will spilled the contents across the carpet. Elizabeth caught her breath. Gold and silver, rubies, emeralds, pearls, diamonds, cups, bracelets and more rolled in a sparkling river from the mouth of the sack. 
        "Oh, Mister Gibbs," Will said. "We can't –"
        "Ye can and ye will, that's what Jack says," Gibbs replied. "He says ye should think of it as partly being yer share, and partly being yer inheritance."
        "My … my what?"
        "Yer share, boy. For a time, ye were part of Jack's crew. Ye were Jack's only crew, before the two of ye found me in that Tortuga pigsty. And yer inheritance as well, as a goodly sum of this plunder should have belonged to yer father."
        "Elizabeth, what should I do?" Will asked her, his expression so dear and earnest. 
        "Take it, Will," she said. "It's yours."
        He scooped up coins and gems and let them run through his fingers. Elizabeth knew that although he was entirely confident in her love for him, he had never fully felt that her father approved of either his birth or his station. 
        Governor Swann, the man who had helped restore order Port Royal, that man's only child marrying a blacksmith? A boy of no family, no fortune, who had been found floating in the debris of a fiery shipwreck? Yet here was wealth to rival any governor in the islands, treasure enough to impress anyone. 
        Will let jewels cascade into her lap. She touched his arm and would have kissed him, if not for Gibbs looking on like some indulgent uncle. 
        "And there be this," Gibbs said, squirming as he tried to extricate the bulky square parcel from his waistcoat. He held it out to Will. It was large and flattish, wrapped in frayed and faded cloth, and tied with a hank of twine. 
        "What is it?" Will asked, accepting it. He untied the twine and unfolded the cloth to reveal a scuffed and battered leather-bound book. It resembled a journal, a ledger, or a ship's log. 
        "Yer father's diary," Gibbs said. "His sea-chest and effects were long gone, but old Bootstrap had himself a hiding place aboard the Black Pearl. Jack found the book there and thought as how you might want to have it."
        "My … father's …" Will's hands were trembling. She had never seen his hands tremble. 
        As he stared at the book, too overcome to speak, Elizabeth looked back to Mister Gibbs. 
        She had heard from Will the story of how his father had left home with the intention of becoming a merchant sailor, and had somehow become a member of the crew of the Black Pearl. 'A good man, a good pirate,' in the words of Jack Sparrow, and the only one to speak out against the mutiny that had left Jack marooned. 
        Then, as the true and awful implications of the curse became clear, it had been the senior William Turner who sacrificed himself by sending away a piece of the forbidden gold to his son. He had done this to keep the curse alive, and make sure that Barbossa and the others suffered eternally for their wickedness.
        She burned with curiosity about the contents of that diary. Her husband's father's tale in his own words. But she wondered, for Will's sake, if this was for the best. It had been a hard and bitter pill for him to swallow, that initial revelation of his father's piratical past. Her lovely Will had come to terms with it, largely through finding out for himself that, yes indeed, some pirates could be decent and honorable men. Had, in fact, come to be proud of it. 
        Suppose, though … suppose that there were ugly truths in that diary. Truths that Will would be unable to deny, written as they would be in his own father's hand. He had hated himself for a time, there aboard the stolen Interceptor. She did not know if she could bear to see him hurt like that again. 
        "So, er," Mister Gibbs said, faltering, bobbing his head at her. "I take it, Miss Elizabeth, that there be congratulations in order?"
        "Yes," she said, fondly stroking the gentle curve of her stomach. "The sickness, I could do without, but at least for now I am shut of those horrid corsets. It'll be a few months yet."
        "Chosen a name for the little lad or missy?"
        She glanced at Will, but he was lost in thought, his eyes far and clouded. His lips moved slightly, soundlessly. Was he thinking what she had been? Weighing whether it might be better to burn those yellowed pages with their secrets left unread?
        "Well," she said, coloring, "there was never any question. If we have a son, we'll call him Jack."
        "That'll make him right pleased, that will," Gibbs said. 
        "And for a daughter, naturally, Pearl."
        Will came back to himself with a start. He clutched his father's book to his chest and took a deep, quaking breath. "Mister Gibbs, I am in your debt, sir."
        "Not mine, boy. I'm but Jack's messenger in this."
        "In Jack's debt, then." Will laughed, a trifle weakly. "Though, in truth, that is nothing new. We owe him more than we can ever repay."
        "Ye saved him from the gallows, restored him his ship," Gibbs said. "He might argue over who's indebted to who. But I'll give him yer thanks."
        "Please do," Will said, once more captivated by the book. "There's something else as well I wish him to have … I'll give it to you before you go, if you'd be so kind as to take it to him."
        Elizabeth pressed Mister Gibbs to stay as their guest, but he demurred. It seemed that for all their fabulous wealth – Jack had divided Barbossa's treasure into equal shares among the crew of the Black Pearl, not even taking extra for himself – they still deemed themselves but simple sailors and pirates. She did not dare to ask how much of his fortune Mister Gibbs had already squandered on drink.
        He did agree to stay for dinner, and regaled them with tales of the past two years. Anamaria, as it turned out, had put her share of the treasure into a ship of her own, and had sailed with Jack for a time. The powerful Pearl and the small, swift Kestrel had made a splendid team. But they had parted ways in Jack's usual style … on the receiving end of a smart farewell slap after some argument or indiscretion.
        "I'll tell ye, though," Gibbs said at one point. "Ye'll be having no thanks from the crew, Miss Elizabeth, for that song ye taught him. We were all fair sick of it before the first week be out. Ye should see how well ye like it yerself after ye've spent a little time in a longboat, hearing it incessantly. Grates on ye, it does."
        By now, according to Mister Gibbs, Jack was more than rich enough to retire and live out his life like a king on some lush island plantation. 
        "He won't, though," Elizabeth said. "Not Jack."
        Her memories were of bonfires and rum and sprays of sand kicked up under wildly dancing feet. And singing, and laughing. And the heartfelt longing in his voice as he spoke of his ship. The Black Pearl was more than a vessel, more than wood and rope and canvas and tar. It was a dream made real, a soul's yearning given form. 
        "No, not our Jack," Gibbs agreed. "They say Jack Sparrow's blood is equal parts rum and seawater."
        Later, after Mister Gibbs had departed with promises to bear their best and fondest wishes to Jack, Elizabeth sat at her dressing table combing out her hair with long, smooth strokes. 
        She could see Will in the glass. He sat behind her, at the foot of their bed. Turning the leather-bound volume over and over. His face was set and pensive, his eyes troubled. He had removed his boots and vest, and unfastened his shirt so that the sides hung away from his tanned and muscular chest, but had made no further progress than that. 
        "Will?"
        He raised his head. 
        "Aren't you going to read it?"
        "I … I don't know if I quite dare," he said. 
        Setting aside her comb, her tresses falling in long loose curls around the lacy shoulders of her nightgown, she went to him. As well as her gravid body would allow, she folded herself to kneel in front of him. 
        Her hands closed over his, still holding the book. 
        "You're afraid of what you might find?" she asked gently.
        "Foolish, I know. But, Elizabeth, what if …?"
        "What, Will?" She pried one of his hands from the book and kissed it. The back, the knuckles, the palm and the scar. Then she rested the curve of her cheek in it, and lifted her eyes to his. "Do you think you'll find some truth in those pages that will make me stop loving you?"
        His eyes closed in a tight, pained expression. 
        "William Turner," she said in a sterner tone. "Look at me."
        "Elizabeth –"
        "Hush. Will, I told you how it was on that island, remember? With Jack? And that if he hadn't drunk himself senseless that night, who knows what might have happened. I gathered my wits the next morning and set that rum afire, every last bottle of it, and a good thing, too. I told you about it, and did it change your feelings for me?"
        "No," he said, sounding both shocked and alarmed that she could even think so. "Never, Elizabeth! Though …"
        "What?"
        "Though I would not have blamed you if you had fallen in love with Jack."
        Now it was she who rocked back on her heels in shock and alarm. "Will!"
        "He was much bolder than I was," Will admitted, shamefaced. "I had loved you since the moment I opened my eyes. You were like an angel hovering over me, Elizabeth. I had expected to drown, to die, and you saved me. How could I not love you? All those years … yet I never spoke. I never found the courage. I would have stood by and said nothing and watched you marry Commodore Norrington, even as my heart was torn to pieces inside me."
        "I knew you cared for me, Will."
        "But I did not speak, did not act," he said. "You needed, no, you deserved a man who could be bold. Who would know the opportune moment when it was in front of him."
        "You are that man."
        "Now. If not for Jack, I never would have been. And so, Elizabeth, if you had fallen in love with him, I would have died in my soul, but I would have understood."
        "For heaven's sake!" she cried. "I love Jack as I might love a brother. If there was that one night of temptation, Will, it was the wicked and vile rum that made it so. What I am trying to tell you is that I love you." She plucked the book from his grasp and held it before his eyes. "And there is nothing in these pages that will make me feel otherwise."
        "But there may be –"
        "There may be anything, I know. Even if there is, you are not your father. You may bear his name, and you may be the very image of him, but his deeds are not yours. I trust in what Jack said, that your father was a good man. If he had to do terrible things, well, have not you and I also? It changes nothing, Will. Nothing."
        He took the book from her and set it aside. 
        "What are you doing?" she asked. 
        "Whatever is in that diary or not, it does not matter now. Not tonight." He drew her upright, and gathered her into his arms. "I don't want it to matter tonight."
        "Oh, Will," she sighed, leaning her head against his chest. Between them, the child fluttered and kicked. 
        They retired to their bed, where he held her and caressed her and they made a careful and tender love. Elizabeth marveled at the sweetness of it. He had been as unsure and inexperienced as she their first night together, yet they had somehow found their way to an effortless and joyful completion. 
        After, then and now and all the times between, she curled snugly into the warm comfort of his arm, her head pillowed to hear the steady drumming of his heart. She sank into a dark and soft sleep. 
        When she woke, Will was already up and destroying their bedroom.
        Or so she thought, seeing every drawer pulled to its stop and every trunk opened with contents seemingly scattered from here to Panama. He muttered to himself as he burrowed through boxes of old clothing and other belongings. 
        "Will, what on earth?"
        "It's here somewhere," he said. "Just to know. Just to be sure."
        "What is?"
        "Aha!" He emerged triumphantly, holding a browned and much-folded piece of paper. "This. When my father sent the gold coin, he sent a letter with it."
        He gingerly unfolded it. The paper split along two of the creases. The ink had smeared and run, but was still mostly legible. 
        Elizabeth bent her head next to his as he tipped the letter toward the bright fall of sunlight at their window. 
        "You think that the diary might not be his?" she asked. 
        "This is his script," Will said. He opened the cover of the book. An inscription there read This is the journal of William Turner. Will tapped it, then pointed to the faded smudges of the letter. At the signature. They were the same. 
        "It is his, then," she said. "It must be."
        "Not that I doubted Jack," Will said. 
        She looked at the letter, handling it with care so as not to further abuse the fragile paper. She read it aloud. 

March the 26th, 1707
My dearest Will,
         How I hope that this letter finds you well and happy and strong. I miss you and your mother dreadfully, and have for these many years. I hope that my Anne forgives me for not writing until now. And for it being so short a letter when finally I do. 
         I have enclosed something for you that I came across in my travels. Keep it well, son, and look after it. Keep it always and never sell it, nor give it away. This is of the utmost importance. I ask you to believe me. 
         I wish with all my heart that I might see you soon but I fear it is not to be. I am under a terrible burden that I cannot explain.
                     Your absent father, William Turner

        "A terrible burden," Will said.
        "Now we know."
        "He sent it to me to keep it away from them. He must have known that by doing so, he would never be able to escape the curse."
        She nodded. "But he must have thought it an acceptable price to pay to prevent Barbossa and the others from breaking it. He must have seen that they were evil men, who would only grow more evil."
        "I do not want to read this alone, Elizabeth."
        "Are you certain, Will? It is your father … perhaps it is private, and meant for your eyes alone."
        "I want to keep nothing from you. Not now, not ever."
        He opened the diary and paged to the first entry. 

**

From the Diary of William Turner

August the 8th, 1701
         I write this by candlelight as you sleep in the next room, young Will. Tomorrow is a momentous day for me and I would take this chance to begin a journal to chronicle my adventures. From what I have heard of shipboard life, my opportunities for quiet writing may be few and far between. 
        You may wonder as you grow older why it was that I chose to leave. Have we not money enough? Was I not happy with my wife, my home, my son?
        Yes, we had money saved up. Some, at least. Enough to buy a new fishing boat, once mine had been foundered on the rocks and dashed to ruin. I was lucky to escape that disaster with my life. But with our debts steadily mounting, and the fishing being so poor of late, I came to another decision. 
        The money that we had saved could either buy that new boat and give me a means to go on fishing … or it could keep you and your mother in relative comfort for some years while I sought a new way to earn a living. 
        Your mother, as you must know, is a genteel and learned woman. T'was she who taught me to read and write and do sums, all skills not often found in a man of such humble beginnings as am I. She can take in a modest wage inscribing letters or teaching the French should need arise. The spare room might also be leased to a lodger for a few extra shillings. So it is that I feel confident that you and she shall not go hungry in my absence. 
        A stout man can earn good pay as a sailor, or so I am told. I am no stranger to the wind and the waves, though seldom have I ventured far from the sight of land. I am deft with my hands, adept at wood-working and cooperage as well as fishing, and those skills are prized aboard most ships. 
        And, too, there is the call of the open sea. Your mother, bless her, knows and understands this. I was never, she says, meant for a life entirely on dry land. 
        I have signed on with a ship called the Dolphin, a fine merchantman bound for the New World. It will carry a cargo of cloth and cut wood, and return laden with the exotic goods of those tropical seas. Sugar, fruit, spices, perhaps slaves, perhaps even silver and gold. There is much gold to be had in the New World, most of it being greedily taken by the Spanish. 
        The journey will be long. Months, likely even years. I undertake this diary so that when I return, or if I do not, you will have some record of my travels. 
        Be well, my son, and know that I am …
        Your father, William Turner

August the 13th, 1701
        At last, a moment to take up pen and ink. 
        We are now five days out from port, and I am coming to realize that my perceptions of a sailor's life had not been altogether accurate. 
        The living conditions are abominable, and promise only to get worse. Seen moored in a harbor, the Dolphin looks an immense and impressive ship with her tall masts and furled sails and the graceful wooden planks that curve to form her hull. It seems that there would be ample room for the crew to lodge in comfort. 
        That is far from the truth. 
        The Dolphin is large, yes, but most of her holds are taken up by cargo and supplies. We cannot count upon purchasing more provisions, and must therefore take with us enough to feed the entire crew for many months. Of premium importance is fresh water, casks of it by the ton. 
        Also there are spare sails, rope, planks of wood, tools, tar, paint, nails, pots and pans, gunpowder, cannon shot in several varieties, the cannons themselves and all the gear of their use, and the countless other items vital to the keeping of a ship. Add to this the tonnage of cargo and how quickly the Dolphin becomes full. 
        The crew, of which there are one hundred and seventy men, must crowd themselves in wherever they can. In the sleeping hold – which is shared also with pens of goats, pigs, and chickens that the officers might enjoy milk, fresh meat, and eggs – swing row upon row of canvas hammocks. These are always in use, for the men are divided into two watches and take their turns at scant four-hour stretches of sleep. One's hammock is therefore always warm, as the man before has just vacated it. Warm, and more often than not acrawl with verminous bedbugs. 

August the 14th, 1701
         I had been describing the conditions in which we common sailors must abide, and already it is sheerest misery. When one sleeps, one's hammock is in constant sway, and when the sea is rough one will bump into one's neighbors on either side. 
        The hold where we sleep is dark and cramped, and ripe with stench not even a week into the voyage. The men are told to relieve themselves in the head, at the forefront of the ship, or over the side. Many ignore this and choose to make use of the lower holds instead. Those laid low by seasickness are often unable even to reach the rail, and spew their stomachs onto the floor. Too, there is the smell of the animal pens, and in the galley stores, some of the foodstuffs have already begun to rot. 
        Many a time when I partook of a drink in some tavern by the docks, I would hear sailors-in-port bemoaning their rations. I took them to be whiners, for it was widely known that sailors were comparatively well-fed, and that shipboard life was, for all its discomforts, still preferable to a poor man's life on land. 
        Now, having sampled for myself the rations, I cannot fault those sailors for their complaints. True, the meals are generous in portions, but the quality and variety are sadly lacking. 
        I pray, Will, that you shall never know such meals as these. I think of your mother serving you a hearty supper, and wish I could be there with you. 
        The staple of our diet is hardtack, an unleavened bread tough as bricks and prone to infestation by weevils. Those men who eat these biscuits at table have the habit of rapping them smartly on the boards to cause the creatures to scurry out. Others take them to their hammocks, to gnaw them in the dark that they might not have to witness what it is that they consume. 
        Our meat is mainly dried and salted beef and pork. It must be soaked in water to leach out the salt, else it would be flatly inedible. Often it is served in a stew with onions and root vegetables, dried peas, and beans. We drink beer, and each man is afforded a daily measure of grog, a watered rum. 
        Meanwhile, the officers – on the Dolphin, these consist of the captain, a lieutenant, a first mate, an officer o' the watch, a quartermaster, a bo'sun, a carpenter, a navigator, and the ship's surgeon – fare relatively better in all ways. They bunk four to a room, with the captain having small but private quarters of his own. They often eat the same stew and hardtack, but supplemented with roast chicken, hard cheese, and hot tea. 

August the 17th, 1701
        We are well and truly out to sea now, with nothing on all sides but rolling water that spans to the horizon. Our lives are regulated not by the turning of the sun, but the tolling of the ship's bell. 
        What I should give for an uninterrupted night of sleep! To be rousted from one's hammock when it barely seems that one's eyes have closed is a hardship indeed. 
        I have learned that many of my companions are not here by choice. Some were pressed, seized from their homes and held bound and blindfold until the Dolphin was too far from shore to allow them to escape. Others are petty criminals and debtors who opted for a term of service as a sailor rather than prison. 
        And I, who am here by choice, have had cause to wonder at my decision. I had been beguiled, Will, by the love of the sea and the belief that all sailors would be good and honest men, bound by a common purpose. 
        I witnessed a man flogged today. 
        He had shirked his duties. Our waking hours are full to the very minute with the countless constant tasks that must be done to keep the Dolphin shipshape. There are always sails or clothing or ropes to be mended, wood to sand and paint, weapons to tend, rigging to adjust. But this man had simply given up. He sat with his back to the mainmast and his arms 'round his knees, and refused to get up. 
        It was a ghastly thing. After thrice mutely shaking his head when the lieutenant gave him orders, and once refusing Captain Hollister himself, this man was hauled bodily to his feet and tied so that his arms stretched above his head to a hook that had been suspended from a spar. Then the bo'sun's mate – a wretched bastard of a man, though I suppose I risk discipline myself for daring to write such a thing – took up the cat-o-nine-tails. 
        This is a terrible weapon, Will, terrible. It is knotted lengths of coarse rope sprouting from a leather-wrapped handle. I am told that upon some ships, the rope is braided with barbs of metal wire. Not so on the Dolphin, I was similarly told by an old salt whose grin was sickly and strained. On the Dolphin, he said, the officers deemed themselves merciful. 
        Merciful! The first stroke shredded the man's shirt from his back. The second laid open his skin in long scarlet welts. How he screamed, Will! I had never heard the like. By the time the lieutenant had counted off twenty lashes, the man merely hung by his wrists with his head drooped and his back a sheet of blood. We might have thought him dead if not for the ragged gasps that heaved his chest. 
        They cut him down and he reeled, nearly falling unconscious. To revive him – and this cruelest of all! – the bo'sun dashed a bucket of sea water over him. The pain of the salt in those wounds makes me flinch and shudder to think of it. 
        Still, they would not let him rest. He was ordered to take up his tasks and did so, his eyes as wide and wild as those of a frantic beast, but he worked with a fierce diligence. So did we all, after what we had witnessed. 

August the 28th, 1701
        Such a storm, Will! For ten days it tossed and rocked our ship. Lightning split the sky in stitches of fire, the thunder was a cannonade. The wind whipped the waves into such a frenzy that they smashed over our decks. 
        Two men were carried overboard and lost, and a third would have followed but for a rope that ensnared him. Alas for him, it wrapped 'round his neck and he strangled to death even as he was saved from drowning. 
        Ten days, and the living quarters are now unbearable from the stink of vomit. We are all weak and shaken from hunger, and the state of our clothing is shameful. 
        Each man has but a change or two of shirt and britches, you see, and some not even that. When our garments become filthy from sweat, we attempt to wash them, but fresh water is too precious for laundry and the salt of the sea water crusts in the cloth. When it dries – not that our clothing ever wholly dries, with the dampness in the air – the crusts of salt scrape and itch and sting our flesh. The clothing and scant personal effects of the dead men were auctioned off to others in the crew. 
        The officers dress in uniforms, with striking red waistcoats and buff-colored breeches, stockings and buckled shoes, belts and plumed hats. The common sailors wear whatever they like. Most of them choose to go barefoot for ease of climbing about, though this leads to them treading on unsanded splinters or errant nails. 
        One man got such a gangrene of the foot that the surgeon and carpenter together had him held down and sawed it off. Their efforts might be to no good; that man is feverish from the infection and now they are saying he is apt to die. 
        Though it is an affectation that bewilders and amuses my shipmates by turns, I, Will, persist in wearing good leather boots. The ones your mother gave me, the knee-high ones with the straps across the front. They have held up wondrous well thus far, protecting me from those splinters and nails. However, they do make my feet swelter, that I must admit. 

August the 31st, 1701
         Clear skies at last! The storm had largely blown itself out but the clouds had remained threatening. This morning they parted like a benediction, shining down rays of blessed golden sunlight. 
        The ship looks like a washerwoman's alley, all strung with drying clothes. Because the sea is also calm, the captain has struck the sails and allowed us to try fishing. We are powerfully weary of salt beef, and the promise of white and flaky fishmeat is more tempting even than gold. 
        Some few have gone swimming, but it was a surprise to me to learn how many of them lack this skill. I suppose it is sensible … why waste their time and strength in learning to swim? Any man who falls overboard from an ocean-going vessel such as this will only prolong his suffering if he seeks to battle the waves. 

September the 1st, 1701
        I am in high regard today, Will. After writing to you yesterday, I tried my hand at fishing and landed three. Two of middling size, but one the likes of which I had never seen, and which was enough to ensure us all a fish dinner. 

September the 20th, 1701
         We passed another ship today. Close enough to hail. A Dutchman, bound for home. How we envied them! 
        It has only been some ten weeks, but it seems so much longer. One's world shrinks until it is the ship, only the ship. We are beginning to see the signs of wear and tear on our bodies and our minds. 
        The diet leads our teeth to rattle in their sockets. Sores chafe us and are slow to heal. Three men have been injured in falls, one of them so severely that the surgeon's only recourse was to put him out of his pain. 
        Two more men have been flogged, one for stealing, and one for striking the lieutenant. This latter man could have, by the laws of the navy, been put to death for his offense. Had he not been nephew to the quartermaster, I do not doubt that another auction would have been held at the foot of the mainmast. We are all called out to witness any sort of punishment, and it is grim.
        Not all of the officers have become tyrants, but it seems that as the days go on, and the blue water rolls endlessly past, they are more demanding and short-tempered than ever. 
        Two men were in fact shot dead. Their crime was one that I'm told is more common than many might think aboard these long and lonely journeys. They were caught together in an act of buggery, and summarily executed. 

October the 15th, 1701
        Becalmed.
        For six days now.
        Not a breath of wind to so much as flap the sails. Not a drop of rain. We are short of water, too, and our lips grow parched and crack. The sun is merciless. By the calendar it is autumn, but it seems not so here. 
        I swear that steam rises from the deck, steam born of the humid sweat of our bodies. Now and then, someone will seek to rouse us with a song, a pipe, or a fiddle, but the melody soon falters and dies. 
        A man went mad from the heat. He began raving at people who were not there, calling for his mother and his sweetheart. We bound him to his hammock, yet somehow still he managed to sink his teeth into his wrists and so let out his blood and die. 
        I think of Anne, my lovely Anne. What I would give to see her face, her smile. To touch her and hold her.

October the 19th, 1701
        A brisk and cool breeze out of the north has swept the deck clean of the malaise that had gripped us. The sails snap full and brisk, white bells overhead. Our flags flap gaily and every man goes about his duties with renewed vigor. 

October the 27th, 1701
        Land, a port, a town, at long last!
        This is St. Augustine, Florida, currently under English control. The New World, Will, the Americas! 
        This is a frantic and bustling place, and to see so many strange faces after nearly three months of having only my fellow sailors to look upon is dizzying. The voices chatter at us in a variety of languages. Merchants wave goods and shout prices. Children swarm about us, offering to show us to a good tavern or brothel. 
        We fled ashore as if we had not set foot on land in a year. Each of us had some small amount of money to spend, out of the pay we shall be due at the end of the voyage. We bore straight for the taverns to slake and stuff ourselves, and to gamble – a practice forbidden aboard the Dolphin for the bad blood it can cause among the men. Some swiftly availed themselves of the company of local women. 
        What a place this is! A mingling of nationalities, a mingling of peoples of all colors. We took on six able-bodied sailors here and replenished our water casks, and when all too soon it was time to sail, we trudged back aboard with our pockets bulging with fruits and sweets and what little items we had purchased in the marketplace. 

**

Port Royal, 1718

        Will stopped reading and leaned back, stretching his neck and rubbing his eyes. Elizabeth did the same. 
        Though William Turner had been possessed of a neat penmanship, an oceangoing vessel never did provide for the steadiest of surfaces. In places, the inked letters skidded and looped across the paper in drunkard's scrawls. 
        "Was it like that when you crossed?" she asked, frowning as she tried to remember her own impressions of the voyage from England. 
        In 1707, that had been, years later than the times William Turner was describing. Her father's duty and honor was to raise Port Royal from the rubble. It had once been the most notorious nest of pirates, nominally under English rule that could not be enforced until it was rebuilt after an earthquake had smote it to ruins in 1692. 
        She and her father had been appointed a luxurious cabin, a tad small perhaps but nicely furnished, and their meals had been served on covered silver dishes. She had never seen the galley, or the midshipmen's quarters, and whenever she had gone on deck, an officer had preceded her so that the sailors made an effort to straighten up and look presentable and mind their language. 
        Had belowdecks been as William Turner's diary described? Had the crew dined on hardtack and stew of salted beef, and slept in hammocks so close that they jostled their neighbors with each crest and trough of the waves? 
        "Mine was a working passage," Will said. "I had not the money for a cabin of my own, just a narrow berth off the galley. I earned my keep by being small and spry enough to fit into places where grown men could not reach. I fetched water, and gunpowder, and ran messages from one end of the ship to the other."
        "And you only ten! Was it dark, and cramped, and terrible?"
        He nodded. "I saw men flogged, too. A dozen lashes apiece for drunkenness."
        "My poor Will." She caressed his head when he leaned it to her shoulder. "How glad I am that times have changed."
        His silence somehow changed, and she had the clear certainty that he was refraining from speaking. 
        "Will? They have changed, haven't they?"
        "I wouldn't know, Elizabeth."
        "But you do. You hear the sailors' talk, I know that you do. Your swords have become the very thing among the officers. What have you heard?"
        "That discipline is a vital component of the royal navy," he said, drawing slightly away from her and running his fingers through his disheveled hair. "And even our own Commodore Norrington has been known to order men lashed for their offenses."
        She sat blinking, trying to imagine Norrington giving such an order. Punishing pirates for their crimes, yes, she knew he had done that. Her father the governor had denied her pleas to attend the hangings until she was fifteen, but she had heard of them. Had seen for herself the final fate of Barbossa's crew. 
        "He had his own men flogged?" she asked, incredulous. "Norrington?"
        "He knows his duty, and follows it without fail," Will said. 
        Elizabeth supposed that was true. The Commodore had always seemed to her to be a gentle man of manners and polite humor. As a girl, she had thought him jesting when he declared that all pirates deserved 'a short drop and a sudden stop.' His behavior toward her had never been anything but kind. 
        Yet, as she thought of it, she had heard him speak sharply to his men now and again, and he certainly had not balked even at trying to have Jack hanged. He would have put Will to the rope, too, and never mind Elizabeth's pleas, had not the governor bid him otherwise. Duty first, duty above all else. That was James Norrington.
        Will turned again to the diary. She read over his shoulder. The entries became more sporadic, sometimes weeks going by without so much as a note, then several days in a row covering many pages. 
        It went on in much the same vein. The food, the living conditions, the tyranny of the officers, the ports, the discipline, the weather. The dismayed realization that his meager earnings would never be the substantial sum he had expected. Half the crew being laid low with the bloody flux, a dozen men dead of it. Storms that snapped the yardarms, men mangled by flying ropes and wood. 
        William Turner wrote of how he had become apprentice to the ship's carpenter. He was awarded not much greater pay, but was treated to the addition of a slab of hard cheese with his breakfast and a mug of tinned cocoa or sometimes coffee with his supper. 
        He was called upon to assist in amputations, sawing through the shattered bones of men whose limbs had been crushed. He also helped to keep the ship's books, which included the daily muster and the cook's log. 
        Once, he saw a man named Barry, with whom he had forged a friendship, be struck by lightning atop the highest mast, saw Barry's smoldering body tumble away into the sea. 
        Another entry told of the crew fancying they saw mermaids leaping in the waves, and heard their sweet and mournful songs. There, too, was the time that nine men swore on their mother's names that they had seen the coils of a finned serpent thrashing off the starboard side, a serpent of gigantic proportions. 
        And there were skirmishes with pirates. These, Elizabeth and Will read most attentively. A crippled ship flying Dutch colors had turned out to be a trick, when all of a once a hoard of savage men erupted from hiding and attacked those unfortunates of the Dolphin, William Turner among them, who had gone to render aid. 
        Turner had escaped that battle with a single cut to the thigh, thanks to the captain's foresight in arming the boarding party. As it happened, that was the day that William Turner discovered he was that rarest of creatures – a true natural and untrained marksman. He had scarcely ever fired a pistol before, but found that his shots unerringly hit their targets. 
        Reading this seemed to please Will, and Elizabeth kissed him and knew that he was thinking of his own skill with a blade. It had come to him so easily, even with all of his diligence. More than one member of the garrison envied him deeply that skill. 
        On another occasion, the Dolphin was engaged with cannons by a 20-gun French vessel. It was a shaken William Turner who inscribed that day's entry, as he fought to accurately describe the din and smoky horror of the battle. 
        He wrote of how the ship's gunners stuffed their ears with wads of cotton, and it was still to not much avail because the boom of the cannons soon had them bleeding in trickles down the sides of their necks. 
        And how a single twelve-pound ball could punch through a hull or a rail, sending a deadly hail of splinters to shred sails and sailors alike. Or chain shot, two iron weights connected by a chain, spinning to shear through masts and bring down rigging. Or grapeshot, the deck-clearer. 
        The Dolphin was saved that day by the timely arrival of another English ship, the Westminster, a massive 74-gun man-o-war that sent the French fleeing for their lives. The Westminster had lent what help it could to the foundering Dolphin and its men, and shepherded them all to a safe port in St. Kitts. They had then been months ashore as the damage to the hull and masts was repaired. 
        "Listen to this," Will said in sudden excitement. "Here, as we languished in St. Kitts awaiting the day we would be able to take to the seas – how odd it is that while one is at sea, one yearns for land, yet no sooner has the salt spray dried from one's cheeks that one begins to hunger once more for the waves – we have heard fearful rumors of a new pirate scourge of the islands. 
        "It had been said that the age of piracy was passing, thanks to the presence and diligence of His Majesty's fleet, but perhaps that is wishful fancy on the part of the navy. This new ship is held to be painted black as night, with black sails. Her captain is said to be very young for the rank, but canny as a fox. These rumors do little to appease the wounded morale of my shipmates. Having twice escaped falling into pirate clutches, we all wonder if our luck would hold a third time."
        "Canny as a fox," Elizabeth said. "A fox who'd near drowned in a rum barrel."
        "They say he wasn't like that until after Barbossa marooned him," Will said. "Not completely."
        "I find it hard to imagine Jack Sparrow any other way. Read on, Will."

**

From the Diary of William Turner

April the 19th, 1704
        We are quit of St. Kitts, finally. Delays at the last minute. A good number of men have abandoned the Dolphin, a matter which causes the new captain much apoplexy. He has found it necessary to hire on nearly a dozen sailors, and some of them not at all what we would call able-bodied. 
        It is the tales and worries that have done this, I think. Before seeing it with our own eyes, many of us had not truly known how ferocious and terrifying a pirate attack can be. 
        I have heard such tales from old salts in the taverns of St. Kitts. They say that the goal of any pirate is to inspire such fear by his mere presence that his victim ship will surrender without a single shot fired. If this is done, the pirates are said to be lenient with the crew. They will loot, but will in general leave the ship and its men intact. 
        If, however, a ship chooses to resist, the pirates will show no mercy. They commit hideous atrocities upon captains who refuse to surrender. I was told of one defiant captain whose belly was slit that a section of his gut be drawn out through the hole, said section then nailed to the mast. This captain was then made to dance a jolly hornpipe about the mast while the pirates clapped and chanted and played tunes, and his gut unspooled and his feet slid in his own blood, until at last he was dead. 
        Other horrors, too … and I stop myself to recall that I had originally meant this journal to be a keepsake for my son. Do I wish to subject him to these gruesome tales? My poor, dear Will, who must be a fine tall lad by now. Yet I have resolved to myself that I must be honest, else this account has no meaning. 
        The purpose of these atrocities – men stuck chest-deep in barrels full of gunpowder and made to hold matches in their teeth, unlucky female passengers and officers' wives abused so severely that they died of it – was to inspire all other ships with a sense of terror, and thus encourage them to be quick to surrender. 
        This sense of terror now well and truly holds the Dolphin in its grasp. Our new captain, who had been lieutenant until Hollister was caught by grapeshot, will tolerate none of it. Captain Danvers is determined to prove himself and thus be promoted to the rank he now holds by default. 
        He has stressed his authority by ordering floggings for infractions so small as to have passed by unpunished under Hollister's tenure. Fully half the crew have tasted of the cat, most of these the new men. It was Danvers' belief that he must well and strongly prove to them that he is in command. 
        We will sail, he tells us, on toward Kingdon. It is, he says, by-God-and-thunder an English holding, and he will not shirk from our course no matter how many reports he hears of pirates in that area. 

April the 26th, 1704
        We are nearing Kingdon, and there is a grim surety among the crew that we shall not live to see it. 
        Even some of the other officers have pled with Captain Danvers, begging him to rethink his plan of action. He scoffs at them and reminds them that the Dolphin was completely refitted and resupplied in St. Kitts, and that any man who would turn tail at the merest whisper of danger should have stayed home with his mother. 
        He will lead us to doom, I fear. Because of my peculiar status, somewhere between crewman and officer, I hear all the talk of both. It is the widely-held belief that Danvers will never surrender. 
        John Parsons, my master in carpentry, is in a particular fright. He was near paralytic with it in the prior attacks, and is now working himself to a froth at the very notion of more pirates. He tells me that it is custom for pirates who seize a ship to seize also any men of skill. 
        "Be warned, William," he told me. "They take carpenters, even apprentices. Any man who knows one end of a hammer from the other is good enough for them."

April the 27th, 1704
        I have seen the Black Pearl. 
        We came upon the scene of a battle, and the very sight left us slack-jawed. Our old friend the Winchester was ablaze. Flames scurried up her rigging like quick and able sailors, and her deck was awash in fire. 
        Near the dying Winchester was a ship the likes of which I had never seen. I had discounted the rumors but now saw them to be true. It was black, black as a ship carved from midnight. Only the stark white of its skull-and-crossbones stood out. 
        Longboats had set off from the Black Pearl to board the Winchester. Many man-to-man fights took place on the fire-swept deck. Pistols spat smoke, cutlasses clashed with swords. The screams of the injured and the yells of the pirates reached us across the waves. 
        And Captain Danvers stood still as stone, and wide-eyed as a child. His officers asked him if we would go to the aid of the Winchester, if we should attack the Black Pearl now, while her crew was scattered in the longboats. 
        I thought that he must surely have grasped at this chance for glory. What a prize it would have been, to take this renowned pirate ship, and to save the Winchester! 
        But Danvers gave the order instead to make speed away from the battle. Without so much as firing a single cannon. He claimed that it was to see us all to safety before the Winchester's powder magazine blew; such an explosion would tear us to pieces if we were too close. 
        Not a man aboard gave argument. We counted ourselves lucky to have come across the Black Pearl while she was engaged, and unable to give chase. 
        I took up a spyglass and scanned the decks, my curiosity leading me to wonder about this canny young captain. I saw that the pirates were typical of their ilk, dressed all in a hodgepodge of colors and patterns, some of them having gone to great lengths to make themselves look all the more vicious.
        It has been my observation, Will, that the stories one hears of daring and heroic feats are more often legend than fact. Yet believe me when I tell you that I saw with my own eyes two men dueling on the Winchester's yardarm. They balanced upon it like spiders on a web as they went back and forth, blades flashing in the fire that crawled up the rigging toward them. 
        One of these combatants, I knew from our rescue before. He was an officer of the Winchester, a tall and cold-featured blond man who wielded a sword as though it was a part of his own arm. Yet he was evenly matched by his foe, a slim figure with wild black hair that flew about his tanned face in a welter of braids. With the spyglass, I could see the wink of gold as he grinned – grinned, Will, for he was clearly having the very time of his life. 
        This, I am certain, was the Black Pearl's captain. He seemed almost to dance on the yardarm, heedless of the occasional pistol-shot, his lips moving as he no doubt taunted his opponent. 
        And then it was over. In the blink of an eye. One moment they fought, the next this dark young man darted in and smashed the hilt of his sword into the blond officer's mouth. The Winchester's man teetered and fell. I followed his body with the spyglass and watched it strike the deck, imagined the snapping of his bones. 
        When I swung the glass high again, I was struck with a chill. The pirate captain still stood upon the yardarm, as carefree on that precarious perch as I might have been on a London cobblestone street. 
        And he was staring directly at me. 
        It gave me a jolt, Will, that it did. I knew almost at once that he was looking at the Dolphin, but it seemed that our eyes met and he was not marking the ship in his mind, but marking me. His eyes were wide and clear, unsquinting despite the sun. Uncommon eyes. Lined and dark.
        Then he doffed his hat and waved it in a gallant bow, and leaped down and twisted his body and thrust his sword into the Winchester's heavy mainsail. This carried him down in a swift descent, the blade ripping a long split in the burning sailcloth as he went. 
        I saw him catch a rope and swing wide over the teeming deck, and then he dropped and was lost from my sight in the melee. By this time, the Dolphin had caught a brisk wind and the bo'sun smote me angrily on the back so that I nearly lost the spyglass overboard, and shouted at me to look alive and haul lines, damn-yer-eyes, haul lines. 
        We soon left the doomed Winchester and the victorious Black Pearl far behind, and every man aboard is thankful for our luck. Yet I think of the look in that young captain's eyes … marking our ship, marking me … and I cannot quite share their good spirits. 

May the 14th, 1704
        After spending a great deal of time in soul-searching, I have decided to take up this diary again. I nearly did not, Will, because I hoped that you might always remember your father as a good and honest man. 
        Not as a pirate.
        I am now a crewman aboard the Black Pearl. I have been such for nigh three weeks now, under some duress because I chose to join them and sign their Articles rather than let them shoot me. 
        It was perhaps not the most honorable choice a man could ever make. I do not expect absolution or forgiveness. I hope only for your understanding, Will, for it was my only thought that if I should die, I would lose all chance at seeing you and your dear mother ever again. 
        So it was that I chose life, thinking that in life there was hope, and when a pistol was thrust into my face and I was asked if I was a carpenter, and would I care to join their crew, I said 'aye.' This I did with a searing sense of anger and betrayal that I cannot write of even now. 
        They took aboard the Black Pearl myself and Daniel O'Malley, the Irish lad who was apprentice to our surgeon, and Jim Burrock because Jim begged leave to join the pirate crew. 
        We were allowed to bring our belongings, and were further laden down with goods from the Dolphin. As I had been in the habit of keeping this diary among my meager store of carpentry tools, I brought it, though I do wonder if it might have been best to leave it behind. 
        Thus far, we have been well-treated. Daniel is distraught, and I sometimes fear he may try something foolish and get himself killed … he is a comely lad and has drawn some unwelcome looks from a few of this scurvy band. Jim is already quite at home among the crew, even claiming to know some of them from taverns in Tortuga. 

May the 16th, 1704
        I will write now of the taking of the Dolphin while it remains fresh in my mind. Not, I suspect, that the memory will ever leave me. 
        Our fears of the pirates proved very well-founded indeed. The pirate captain – Jack Sparrow is his name, the selfsame dark young man I had seen sparring so acrobatically with the Winchester's officer high on the yardarm – had seen enough of the Dolphin to remember it, and guessed at her most likely course. 
        They set upon us in the moonless late of the night, their black sails serving them well in this endeavor and their sweeps, long oars cutting the water, serving them even better. The officer o' the watch did not notice the large ship, did not notice the longboats rowing silently toward us. 
        Something of a celebration was in order at the time. Captain Danvers had ordered each man to be given a pint of rum. Not grog, which is watered, but the straight stuff. And the mood was merry, though also wary under Danvers' eye … no one had forgotten the rash of floggings that had marked his ascension to the captaincy. No man dared make quite too merry.
        The pirates must have scaled the sides of the Dolphin, agile as monkeys and quiet as cats. Before any man of us knew what was about, they leapt among us with shattering crashes of pistol shots and fierce war-cries. One, a small and fiendishly laughing man, rolled a fuse-spitting ball packed with gunpowder into the stack of rum bottles, and the explosion sent flaming gouts spraying over the deck. 
        We were thrown into a confusion, Will. Many of my shipmates were befuddled by rum, and of those who were armed, no one thought to get off a shot until it was too late. This was perhaps just as well, as I have previously mentioned the ways of pirates with those who resist. 
        They brought us to bay smartly, we a cluster of frightened sailors as these savage monsters leaned close and leered and jeered with many a cloud of fetid stinking breath. They brandished knives and cutlasses in our faces. 
        One great brute of a man, black-skinned as a Moor, towered above the rest, and the lanterns struck bright spots of light from the silver studs he wore embedded in the skin around his eyes and over much of his exposed flesh. Another, thin and scrawny, wore a bandage tied slantwise around his head, and padding filled a freshly blinded eyesocket. A result, I suppose, of the fight with the Winchester. 
        When we were all disarmed and held helpless at swords' and pistol's point, the man leading this boarding party strode to the rail and fired a shot into the air. He was an older man than one usually meets at sea, gruff and coarse in appearance, with a greying beard. This, I would later learn, was Barbossa, the first mate of the Black Pearl. 
        Shortly thereafter, a final longboat arrived and the pirate captain came aboard with a grin and a swagger. Upon close inspection, I saw that he was indeed quite young, and knew that to have command of a ship at his age, he must be competent indeed. 
        Though the deck was steady and the sea calm, he strolled among us in a rolling and amiable stagger. Gold flashed in his smile, and cunning flashed in his dark eyes. He singled out Danvers and chided him, telling him that he would forever remember the day he had almost escaped Captain Jack Sparrow. 
        Then he turned to the men and, with as somber a look as his mischievous face seemed able to muster, asked in all seriousness whether Danvers was a fair and decent captain, whether he was kind or cruel to the men in his charge. 
        Feet shuffled and eyes averted as Danvers blustered. Then John Fallon spoke up, saying that Danvers did show a heavy hand with the cat o' nine tails, and as if his words had broken a dam, a torrent of like complaints poured forth. Some men shed their shirts to show still-healing welts. They averred that Danvers was both a bully and a coward, which to the mind of any sailing man is a despicable combination. 
        Jack Sparrow, with his brows lowered dangerously and the boozy goodwill entirely gone from his voice now, stated that any man so in love with the lash should have a taste of it himself. In a trice, the glowering Moor had stripped Danvers of his fine red coat and bound him to the mast. Barbossa walked among us with the cat swinging from his hand, inviting us in a sneering tone to step up, lads, step up and have some of our own back. 
        To our shock, Jim Burrock did so eagerly. When he had striped two strokes across Danvers' back – and Danvers shrieked like a banshee, then wept like a girl – he turned to Sparrow and Barbossa and asked to be taken on as a crewman. 
        Others shouted at him and called him a vile traitor, but Burrock only spat to show his disgust with us, and went to stand among the pirates. 
        When no one else would step forward to lash Danvers, Barbossa gave the Moor a nod and that black giant set about with such brutal efficiency that Danvers fainted three times and was revived by dashes of cold, salty water before Sparrow intervened, and said that enough was enough. 
        At this point, he regarded the rest of us. His pirates had been busy elsewhere on the ship, and men ran to and fro with casks, bolts of cloth, weapons, spices, food, the navigation instruments, and whatever else they could carry. Jack Sparrow ambled along the line of us and asked idly which of us was the ship's surgeon. Some of his men had been scuffed about in the last battle, he explained, and needed seeing-to. At this, the scrawny youth with the bandage nodded and rubbed fitfully at the spot where his eye had been. 
        It happened that our former surgeon had been one of those who jumped ship in St. Kitts, leaving poor young Daniel O'Malley to care for the rest of us. But too many men had already looked his way, and Sparrow stopped before him, a braid plaited with red and white beads swaying beside his cheek. 
        He was surprisingly mild in his questioning, his expression all the while as if he and young Daniel shared the most amusing of secrets. The boy was pitiably earnest as he told Sparrow that he was but an apprentice, an unschooled one at that, hardly a true man of medicine. 
        But that was good enough as far as Jack Sparrow minded. He took Daniel aside with the others. 
        And as he turned back, of a sudden and to my immense shock, my carpenter-master John Parsons cried out to me in a loud voice, "Beware, Will, beware, they will take you, too, they will take a carpenter!"
        Now, Will, a dabbler at hammer and nails and whittling I was, but I would no more call myself a full carpenter than the poor O'Malley boy might have called himself the Surgeon Royal. And I was astounded that Parsons should blurt forth such a thing, until I saw the crafty glint in his eye and knew that he meant the pirates to take me, thereby sparing himself. 
        Yet I was too stunned to speak. Henry Farrington did, in honest puzzlement, saying that he had thought Parsons to be the carpenter. To this, Parsons stamped quickly upon his foot. But by then, the deed was done, and a playful little smile capered about the lips of Jack Sparrow as he looked from one of us to the other. 
        Of me, he asked my name. I replied truthfully – William Turner. And he asked my place on the ship.
        Parsons shouted that I was the carpenter, curse them the stupid pirates, the carpenter, take him, take him away for pity's sake and leave the rest of us be. 
        I swear that I never saw Sparrow move. One instant he stood before me, as jovial and at his ease as a man going for a Sunday afternoon stroll. The next, his sword was leveled at Parsons with the point prodding the man's adam-apple, and his eyes had tightened into a narrow look of dislike. 
        His voice was deceptively soft. "I don't much care for liars on my ship, Mister Parsons," he said. "Thieves, aye, and murderers, and the odd rapist or two. We are pirates after all. But I have some standards, savvy? Now speak me honestly, or I'll have out your voicebox and see if it can do the talking for you."
        He gave a little poke with the sword for emphasis, enough to draw a bead of blood. Parsons quailed, and admitted that yes, he was the carpenter and I only his apprentice. 
        "Was that so hard, mate?" Jack Sparrow asked, and was all smiles again. He glanced my way. "Now, gather your tools and kit and all, William Turner. You're coming with us."
        My mouth opened, though God help me, Will, I had no notion as to what I might say. I had no desire to go with them, but neither did I have a desire to feel that sharp sword's tip tickling under my chin. 
        Parsons collapsed, bawling in relief, and this was his undoing. The sight of his grateful tears must filled the pirates with disgust and they set to kicking and pummeling him until his howls were in earnest pain. 
        "I can't stand a weaseling coward," Jack Sparrow confided to me. "A man who'd stab his own mates in the back would do the same to me, and we can't have that, can we?"
        "I suppose not," I said, as evenly as I could. 
        And so it was that when the Black Pearl's longboats made their way back to the ominous shadow of the ship, they went riding low in the water loaded down with goods from the Dolphin, as well as myself, young O'Malley, and Burrock. 

May the 18th, 1704
        I must confess that I am finding life aboard the Black Pearl to be quite different form that on the Dolphin … and in many ways, far more pleasant. 
        Even my limited experience tells me that this is an uncommonly fine vessel. She carries no cargo, only men and guns and provisions, and what loot has been plundered from her victims. This makes for ample space, and as the crew is smaller, we all have much more elbow room. 
        Also, there are three watches as opposed to the Dolphin's two, which means that we enjoy longer hours of sleep. I have a hammock that is solely my own, that I need not share with another – and in that, Will, I am exceedingly glad. 
        The matter of discipline differs as well. There is no flogging, as I believe I may have heretofore mentioned, but what punishments there are tend to be swift and decisive. Jack Sparrow, for all his apparent good nature, runs a strict ship. 
        His men are required to keep their weapons cleaned and ready for use at all times. If they disagree among themselves, they are forbidden to fight aboard ship but expected to take swords and pistols ashore at the next landfall and settle their argument in a duel. 
        Gambling is permitted, but to be caught cheating at it is a dire thing … if such a man is not killed outright, he is often scarred about the face so that all others will be warned of his propensities with cards or dice. The men are allowed a generous ration of real rum each day, though should a man repeatedly be so drunk as to become ineffective in battle, he shall be denied this ration. 
        It is curious how readily they accept new men into the crew. Of course, it would be folly for me to attempt any sort of rebellion, given that I am surrounded at any given time by a dozen or more hardy pirates. But in their minds, that I have signed their Articles makes me one of them, bound by their laws and their Code. 
        So it is that I am not seen as a prisoner or hostage, but am treated as a full member of the crew. I have been assigned duties along with the rest of them, I dine with them. And I find that, while some of them are devils just this side of Hell, most are in their way as loyal and fair-minded of men as I have ever known. 
        They know that I keep this diary. That I am a man of letters is considered rather impressive, for many of these pirates read and write only enough to make their marks on the Articles as agreed. I have taken some ribbing for it, they call me 'clerk' and 'headmaster' and the like. But I take more ribbing for my boots, which I steadfastly refuse to give up. 
        These are the same ones that were upon my feet when I left home so many years ago. I've had to have them repaired in a port or three, but they have held up well despite it all. 
        So many years, indeed … it is nearly beyond belief, Will. You must be so grown now, so tall. You were but a tot of only almost four years when I left. Your mother always said that you resembled me, in the eyes and the features of the face. 
        I wonder if she was right, and that if I saw you, I would recognize a younger image of myself. Or has the time changed you, and given you more the look of your mother? I am sure she is seeing to your education. It was always our hope that you should be more than a humble fisherman.

May the 23rd, 1704
        Took a quick little brig yesterday. More of a sloop, Jack says, and it was a shame that she had to be scuttled. The crew's own fault for resisting. 
        So they say, but the blood and smoke and stink of battle still chokes me. Their screams still ring in my ears. 
        She was called the Alejandra, and was bound for Santiago from Cartagena. One might have thought that a small ship like that would not have been carrying enough cargo to make a fight worth their lives, but once we had taken her, we saw differently. 
        The Alejandra had been carrying the news that a mine had been discovered up in the hills, and a chest of pure silver. Her captain had hoped that by running swift with no escort, he might be able to elude capture and bring this treasure safely to the governor in Santiago, to thence be taken to Spain. 
        It was with the utmost joy that Jack launched our attack. I was in his longboat without fully knowing how I had come to be there; he had coaxed me against all better judgment when I sooner would have stayed behind. 
        I asked him why it was that he, the captain, should risk himself in a boarding party. I recalled the Winchester, and he laughed when I told him that I had been the man with the spyglass. 
        "Barbossa led the attack on your ship, right enough," he said. "But I can't let him have all the fun, now, can I?"
        He seems, oddly, to have taken a liking to me. And odder still, I find that I like him as well. He has a certain daring charm, this pirate, and he has not yet asked anything of his men that he is not willing to do himself. I have often found myself wondering that a man like Barbossa – older, rougher, and with a narrow look to him – should be willing to serve as first mate to a man like Jack. 
        Still and all, no one can deny that Jack's plans are often brilliant, and cleverly executed. He seems the sort of pirate that one does hear of in the tales. I had begun to think that those were only legend, as are the dashing highwaymen of England. Yet put Jack Sparrow atop a great black horse instead of a great black ship, give him a mask and a cape instead of a hat and coat, and he would be as equally at home. 
        As I was pressed into the boarding party, after the Black Pearl's guns had so holed the side of the Alejandra that she resembled a Swiss cheese, I was persuaded to arm myself to the teeth. I had four pistols stuck around my belt, a cutlass, and a knife. And, knowing that my hitherto unknown but uncanny marksmanship would be of more use to me than my indifferent skill with a blade, I took up two more pistols and thrust them through the straps on my boots. 
        This drew roaring laughter. It was a deadly-serious business we were embarked upon; the survivors on the listing deck of the Alejandra were peppering the water with shots all around us and if they managed to get their deck-guns working we would likely be blasted to pieces. But even as we rowed, a balding yellow-eyed man named Pintel called to the others to "take a look at old Bootstrap, here!"
        Their mirth aside, I found those last two pistols to be the dividing line between my own life and death. And perhaps Jack Sparrow's as well. He was interrogating the Alejandra's captain, a difficult matter as Jack's command of Spanish was not much better than my own, and if the Spaniard spoke English he was hiding it well. 
        Jack had bade me stand nearby and 'keep a weather eye out,' which I did as the others savagely cut down the remaining crew and amused themselves by taking shots at the ones who floundered desperately in the water. 
        It was then that a man burst from hiding, some Spanish giant with tattoos covering his chest. How a man of that size – he rivaled Simbakka, our Moor – could have concealed himself on a ship so small remains a mystery to me. 
        He charged at Jack, a cutlass in each hand. The swinging curved blades made me think of farmers scything their fields. Jack whirled. He was startled by the shout, and startled moreso when he beheld the giant bearing down on him, but a cat could not have smarter reflexes than Jack Sparrow. He somersaulted over backwards and came up with his sword drawn. 
        By then, I had snatched the pistols from my bootstraps. I fired on the giant, praying that my powder was dry and that the gun would not misfire. It boomed obligingly in my hand and spat its deadly ball between the giant's eyes. 
        The shot killed him, but he had been running full-tilt down the sloped deck of the sinking ship, and his body became a loose tumble of heavy flesh and thick limbs. One madly waving cutlass would have bisected me had I not jumped back. As it was, it scored a line through my shirt and the skin of my belly. 
        While I had been thus engaged, the Spanish captain had seized Jack in a strong grip and they were fighting for possession of Jack's sword. I saw, which Jack did not, that the captain was also creeping a hand to the small of his back, where I spied the hilt of a dagger. He freed this, and was about to plunge it into Jack, when I fired my second shot. 
        The ball tore into the captain's side and knocked him off Jack, who was on his feet quicker than quick. He finished it with a jab to the Spaniard's heart. 
        "Nicely done, William Turner," he said to me. 
        We returned to the Black Pearl with our plunder. I will say this for the Spanish – they are fancy dressers, second perhaps only to the French. The pirates have adorned themselves well in their mismatched finery.

May the 29th, 1704
        They have taken to calling me Bootstrap, or Bootstrap Bill. 
        It began with Pintel, who had witnessed my final actions aboard the Alejandra. Ragetti, he of the glass eye, apes him like a speaking shadow and took it up. Before two days had gone by, they were all doing it. All but Jack, except on occasions when he seemed particularly amused. 
        I am, I cannot deny, now a fully accepted member of the crew. Would that I could say the same for poor Daniel O'Malley, my former shipmate from the Dolphin. He did his best, did young Daniel, brought aboard as he was to see to the men of the Black Pearl that had been injured in the battle with the Winchester. 
        I, having assisted Mister Parsons the carpenter in a few amputations – sawing bones is more a job for carpenters than for surgeons, as it requires considerable strength especially should the amputation be taking place above the knee where the thigh bone is very thick – helped young Daniel to the best of my abilities. But some of the men were far beyond his meager skill. 
        Although it is small of me, I cannot help being glad that one of them was Burrock, who had so readily turned from the Dolphin. He had lost most of an arm near the shoulder, and though we got it off him and closed the stump, he had lost too much blood to survive.
        All of this, Jack accepted with equanimity. Such losses are a known risk of the pirate trade. 
        They do look after their dead and maimed far better than the navies, I have found. A dead man's nearest known kin will receive any shares owed him at the time of his death, with the additional sum of a hundred guineas. A man who loses the use of a limb or an eye will be awarded fifty guineas, and be welcome to keep his place aboard the ship if he is willing and able to do so. It is very regular to find men missing a leg or an arm serving as a ship's cook. 
        But the battle with the Alejandra brought more injuries, one of them severe. This unfortunate, known as Bald Tom for reasons perhaps obvious, had been riddled with splinters and nails. One such nail had buried itself deep in him. 
        Young Daniel did his very best to dig it out but he had not the surgeon's knowledge or touch for such delicate work, and Bald Tom died three days later. That he would have died anyway had the nail not come out did not matter to Bald Tom's brother, who blamed Daniel for the death. 
He beat the lad rather severely, and this added to the injuries the poor youth had sustained in trying vainly to fend off the attentions of two pirates whose tastes ran more toward slim young men than women, nearly did him in. 
        Jack was livid when he heard of the beating and other offenses. It was the first time I had seen him well and truly show his temper. Those who had done the violent buggery, he ordered keelhauled. 
        This is a terrible punishment, Will, in which a man is bound by ropes and submerged, then dragged along the underside of the ship – the keel – so that his body is scraped raw by the rough shells of the barnacles and if said man cannot hold his breath, he will drown. 
        The blood in the water, too, is a summons to sharks. They are without question the most dreadful of beasts. One of them caught the second keelhauled man and had his foot clean off before any of us knew what had happened. 
        As for the man who had killed poor Daniel, he dared to strike out at Jack, and Jack shot him and had his body thrown to the sharks. They had by then flocked around the ship eager as hens to a farm girl's seed-scattering hand. 
        And Daniel? Jack promised to relieve him of his duties when we reach Kingdon, and provide him with money enough to either seek passage home to Ireland, or begin a new life. 

June the 1st, 1704
        As I recall, the Dolphin had been bound for Kingdon. I asked the harbor master whether she had ever appeared, and he told me that he knew of no such ship having put into Kingdon this half-year past, even when I put silver into his hand. 
        Captain Danvers, I believe, must have lost his nerve. Or befallen some other misfortune.
        Kingdon is large and clean. The streets and buildings are well-kept, and the people are of all classes and go their way without fear. But, for a hefty enough bribe, the blackest of pirates will be welcomed here so long as they keep to a relatively good behavior. 
        It is here that I again pause, Will, wondering what you might someday make of this diary. 
        Not only did I agree to become a pirate to save myself, but I have found that I've quite a knack for it. With some exceptions, I like my crewmates better than those of the Dolphin. The quarters are better, the food is better, the conditions are better, and once Jack portioned out the contents of that chest of Cartagena silver, I can say with assurance that the pay is vastly better. 
        But silver runs like water through the hands of these men. Even the best-intentioned pirate, thinking to save his money to someday retire to an island plantation or return to his homeland, succumbs to a sort of frenzy when he finally sets foot ashore. 
        We are here for six days, while minor repairs are done to the Black Pearl and her men celebrate their freedom after the long weeks at sea. Jack posted a rotation of watch to keep an eye on the ship – he cares for the Black Pearl with a devotion that I have not seen in any other captain or sailor of my acquaintance – and it is during my turn at the watch that I write this. 
        I can hear the noise of the city from here. Music and laughter, shouts, the occasional shot into the air or the ruckus of a fistfight. Women stroll the docks, calling out invitations – I want you and your mother to know, however, that I turn a blind eye to their charms … though the others mock me for this. 
        Jack even went so far as to ask me once, in all seriousness, if I were a eunuch. I replied that no, I was married. To which he snorted and said, "The one's as bad as the other, son."

June the 5th, 1704
        Still in Kingdon, and it is truly amazing how a fortune can be reduced to pennies in so short a span of days. 
        I speak not of myself, for with but a few exceptional forays into the marketplace – I was in dire need of new clothing, and yielded to the temptation poised by a brace of brass-trimmed pistols of my very own – I have spent little of my shares of the Cartagena silver. 
        No, I speak of my shipmates. They are men of enormous appetite, and firm in their belief that they may as well enjoy their earnings while they can. It is a hard and sad fact that a pirate's life is often short. We have cruised past many a spit of land where the crow-picked corpses of buccaneers creak at the ends of their nooses. 
        The law is harsh. In some places, a pirate may be let off with a warning, but even then said warning is branded into his flesh. Jack showed me his pirate brand, which was situated on his arm just near a blue tattoo of a wingspread sparrow, his namesake. 
        But here in Kingdon, a pirate is generally treated as any other man. And a man with good silver in his pockets can live well and heartily. My shipmates have gorged themselves on suckling pigs, roast chickens, real bread that does not split the teeth as hardtack does, sweets from the abundant sugar cane, and whatever else they fancy. 
        Barbossa in particular has a weakness for apples. It is a strange habit, and a hard one to fulfill in the Caribbean. Bananas, mango, and papaya seem far more the available fruit. But he lucked into a case of them, of a ripe green variety, and has been eating them thrice a day. I wonder at the state of his bowels, but would never dream of asking. The first mate and I are not on the friendliest of terms. He seems to resent my friendship with Jack, and for my part I think he is a foul-tempered whoreson who will likely come to a bad end. 
        No fewer than six of the men have been caught trying to slyly smuggle women aboard. Jack, who is by the way a great favorite of the ladies – if I may use that term – of Kingdon, gave the men a light scolding and dispatched each woman with a kiss on the cheek, a pat on the bottom, a "sorry, luv," and a guinea tucked down her blouse.
        Well, but for one of them … she evidently remembered Jack all too well from a previous visit, and most keenly recalled some promises he had pledged while in the throes of rum and lust. This chestnut-haired beauty upon seeing him went crimson and delivered Jack a furious slap that made his beaded plait fly out from his head like a flag. 
        This did not deter him long, I must add. I saw him later in the town, with one arm about a buxom curly-haired brunette and the other around a shy little grey-eyed blonde, and all of them seemed to be having the finest of times. Jack hailed me as his women giggled, and he bade me join them, but I once again politely declined. 
        We did not see him again until late the next morning, when he reeled aboard covered with love-bites that no doubt matched the contours of the brunette's lush red mouth. 

**

Port Royal, 1718

        Elizabeth covered her mouth but it did no good; she burst out laughing all the same. "Oh, that is our Jack!"
        "None other," Will said, and he sounded most relieved that she laughed, because he had evidently been struggling to hold his back. It was that same soft merriment, but his shoulders shook from it. 
        "How … how many times did you see him slapped?" she asked when she could speak again.
        "At least thrice." He paused. "You know, though … by the way my father's diary reads, it seems as if Jack was always …" Here, Will swayed in his seat and rolled his eyes and grinned in a drunken manner. 
        "It does," she agreed. "What of it?"
        "I had the impression from Mister Gibbs that it was the three days marooned on the island that left Jack in that state."
        "You also had the impression from Mister Gibbs that Jack escaped that island by roping sea turtles and riding his way to freedom, my darling," she said. 
        "True. Jack also, at least in my father's mind, seems more forthright than the man we know."
        "That was before he learned some hard lessons of betrayal," she said. "It certainly seems as though Barbossa has always been of the same stripe."
        Will flinched. "I am sorry for the language, Elizabeth."
        "You didn't write it," she said, kissing him. "And there's not been anything so awful, has there? Just a 'bastard' and a 'whoreson,' after all."
        "Elizabeth!"
        She laughed again at his scandalized tone. "My poor, dear Will."
        "And it wasn't only that," he said, riffling the pages with his callused thumb. "Some of the … events …"
        "Well, yes," she said, a faint blush tinting her cheeks. "Not quite proper reading for a governor's daughter."
        "I can put it away if you wish."
        "Will Turner, don't you dare!"
        They bent to the book again. 
        The following entries continued to describe the voyage of the Black Pearl through the various islands, while Jack gathered information and devised the most cunning plot that any of his men had ever heard of. He wanted nothing less than to ally with several other pirate captains, a dozen ships and more than a thousand hardened sailors, and attack the Spanish treasure fleet. 
        "The fleet?" Elizabeth murmured. "If we did not know for ourselves that Jack had survived, I'd say for certain he had gone in over his head."
        "Here," Will said, pointing to a page. His laughter was gone now, and his tone had turned grim. "Here is where it all begins."

**

From the Diary of William Turner

November the15th, 1706
        Our victory has not been what I should call an unqualified success. 
        Jack's plan for all its fellowship and grandeur was perhaps doomed in some ways to fail. That he kept them working as one for so long as he did is nothing short of a miracle. But in the end, pirates will be pirates, and I have seen that there are those among them whose hearts are black as any. 
        We did take the fleet. It was a coup unprecedented in pirate history, even in the annals of Black Bart or Henry Morgan. Never before have so many pirate ships sailed under one banner and one cause. 
        Our armada, as some of the lads took to calling it, came to a final number of eighty-seven. Imagine that if you can, Will … eighty-seven vessels, which ranged from small and quick sloops to monstrous 60-gunners. Each packed to the topsails with gold-hungry and blood-thirsty cutthroats. I did not ever hear the exact count, but a fair estimation would have three thousand of us. 
        Three thousand pirates. It beggars the mind. The brothels and taverns of Tortuga, and any of a hundred other towns must have been empty indeed. 
        Three thousand men, all of them armed with as much steel, shot, and black powder as they could carry. And all of them answering to their captains, all of whom answered to our own Jack. 
        He had promised every man an equal share of any taken treasure. The other pirate captains objected, but even they were too lured by the siren song of Spanish silver. 
        No pirate had ever before dared attack the entire treasure fleet head-on. From time to time, a ship or two might stray from the pack and be lost, or be taken by opportunists who lurked like sharks at the periphery. And no wonder, in truth, for the Spanish fleet we faced was made up of twenty merchantmen, guarded by eighteen majestic galleons. These latter bristled with cannons, swivel guns, and muskets. 
        The fleet left the mainland in late August, passed Hispaniola near the end of September, and was well out to sea bound for Spain on the 30th of October, when we made our move. 
        Jack's ruse was to have the Black Pearl seemingly in pitched battle with two other known pirate ships, the Lady Macbeth and the Sea Devil. Ingenious packets of powder had been rigged here and there about the decks, masts, and sails. These would detonate in a flash and a gout of smoke, to coincide with the blank-firing of empty cannons. 
        The Spaniards, seeing three of their greatest enemies thus engaged, were unable to resist the chance to sweep the sea clean all at once. Several of the galleons cut off from the fleet and made toward us. When they had come near, the signal was given and the guns of the three ships were turned in earnest on the galleons. At the same time, the other pirates swept in from all points of the compass, some under sail, some heaving at the oars of long dartlike Algerian ships. 
        The battle raged for three days and was the most horrific of all that I have seen. I hope that I shall never again witness its like. 
        Although they quickly realized themselves outnumbered and outgunned, the Spaniards rallied famously. Of our eighty-seven ships, fourteen were sent to the bottom and six others set afire. None escaped undamaged. 
        I do not know how many men all told died. I do know that a full score of the Black Pearl's men were either killed outright, or injured so severely that the kindest thing to be done for them was a pistol shot to the heart. I myself sustained a deep cut to the upper arm – a splinter fully the size of a sword, burst from the hull by an eighteen-pounder cannonball – and a burn to the hand when I became careless while wadding the cannon, and when we boarded the Guadalupe, I took a musket shot to the high upper and inner thigh. It came within two fingerwidths of ensuring that you would remain my only child, Will.
        The Black Pearl withstood a heavy battering. Her mainmast was shattered, her sails and rigging destroyed, her hull pierced many times both above and below the waterline. All of this left us unable to pursue when the merchantmen of the treasure fleet broke away and fled. 
        Because of this, our crew and captain lost out on most of the glory. And though 'twas all Jack's devising, I am already hearing the tale told to put the captain of the Lady Macbeth as having orchestrated this brilliant assault. 
        Jack is rather disheartened by this. He prides himself much on being a captain, an accomplishment for a man so young. Too often, he has been made to remind others of his proper title, sometimes aggrievedly. 
        But, wheresoever the credit is put, the attack was triumphant. Only three galleons and two merchantmen escaped. Two galleons were sunk and one erupted in a fireball when her powder magazine went up. The others, though sorely damaged for the most part, were intact enough to loot. 
        That was when the trouble began, but I am called to my watch and must attend.

November the 16th, 1706
        Lest I forget, I must note that none of my injuries were severe. We had obtained a new surgeon, a skilled man who had lost his position due to a weakness for drink. Though it is disconcerting to be tended by a man who reeks of strong whiskey, I must acknowledge that he knows his craft. 
        The cut on my arm, he stitched up. A salve took care of the burn to my hand. 'Twas only the musket-shot that was of true concern. I am ashamed to admit that I lost consciousness from the pain as the surgeon sought to dig out the ball, which had become lodged in bone near my groin. As he then cauterized the hole, I am all things considered glad to have been unconscious. 
        But I am recovering well. I was bedridden for seven days and only heard of the events following the battle at second-hand. I am now walking well, albeit with a slight limp, and have returned fully to my duties. 
        Pirates, as I said, will be pirates. No sooner had the fleet been taken than the arguments began. I think that more men killed each other over the treasure than the Spaniards had killed altogether. The captains sought to maintain order, but they were helpless against the frenzy of greed. 
        In the end, it became a riot. Ships scattered, each with as much plunder as her crew could carry. An enterprising few thought to vent their spleens by attacking the Black Pearl, as Jack was held muchly to task for the disastrous failure of his 'equal shares per man' idea. 
        We came away with a fraction of what might and should have been ours. And one unexpected item, which I feel will only bring further trouble upon us. 
        Her name is Delicia. Her father was commodore of the Guadalupe, and she is a dusky, comely lass of seventeen. Jack found her hiding in her cabin, and told me that as he pulled her from concealment, this little Spanish spitfire rocked him back on his heels with a roundhouse slap. 
        I pale to think of her fate had she fallen into the hands of another pirate. Even Barbossa would have been merciless with her. But not so, Jack Sparrow. He has no taste for such acts. Instead, he so charmed the girl – his face still reddened by her slap, no doubt – that she accepted his pledge of safe conduct and came aboard willingly as his hostage. 
        This nearly sparked a new riot, I must say. The men saw her as plunder rather than prisoner, and expected equal shares. Jack had to set his pistol to the center of one man's forehead to make certain he was understood. No harm is to befall Delicia, she is to remain untouched and unabused, and anyone thinking contrarily shall with all due haste answer to Jack. 
        He has promised her passage back to Hispaniola, where she has family. I have seen her, and can only hope that our crippled ship makes the voyage speedily. Her eyes alone, dark as plums and fringed in long lashes, would be enough to tempt a pious man into sin. 
        She has been primarily kept locked in Jack's cabin ever since, more for her own safety than to hold her captive. It is better for the crew as well. Bad enough to know she is aboard; the men mutter and grumble and cast narrow looks Jack's way. He has been sleeping in a hammock strung outside the cabin door and swears that he has not laid a finger on her … but even I, friend of his though I am, find that a trifle hard to believe. 
        It is obvious in her daily walks about the deck for air that she is quite enamoured of our daring captain, whose exploits aboard the Guadalupe are what I am coming to believe are elemental of Jack Sparrow. These walks concern me. Whenever she appears, the men neglect their duties to stare after her, and then the mutterings and grumblings take on new menace. 
        Too, she brought something aboard with her, something that resembled a small box or coffer wrapped in cloth. Barbossa, who holds forth the loudest and longest, believes that it contains jewels, which Jack must have either told her she could keep, or means to keep for himself. 
        Equal shares, he tells us again and again, pinning each man with a gaze like nails. Equal shares in all things, lads … and so many of them agree with him … 
        I wish that I could speak of this to Jack, but Barbossa keeps a hawk's eye on me. 

November the 19th, 1706
        We have rid ourselves of Delicia. Not a moment too soon, I daresay. The temper of the ship had become most dark and violent. I was to the point of fearing for Jack Sparrow's life. One grin too many when the girl was mentioned, and it may well have been the end of him. 
        But she was put ashore near Santo Domingo. Jack himself, and those of his most trusted men – among which I was pleased and surprised to find myself numbered – conveyed her in a longboat under cover of darkness. She was still some miles from the town, for as much as the Black Pearl needs repair, we dared not sail boldly into a Spanish port. Oh, no. Since word of the strike on the fleet has spread, every Spanish ship in these waters is running with all sails, hot to spill pirate blood. 
        The girl bade Jack a tearful farewell, kissed him soundly, and stood watching with her shawl around her lovely shoulders as we rowed out to the Black Pearl. I saw that she did not have with her the mysterious item.
        Barbossa was aware of this, too. We had no sooner set foot on the deck than Barbossa confronted Jack. He threw Jack's words back at him. Equal shares, and perhaps they could see fit to exclude the girl from that, but it was only fair that Jack confess what it was she'd had in that box. 
        I saw with dismay that Barbossa seemed to have put his time to good use while we were away. The men stood with him, solid and resolute as a wall. Jack's jokes fell on deaf ears. At last, he told them that on the morrow, he would reveal the contents of the box. He said he had been saving it for a surprise. 

November the 20th, 1706
        This morning, the crew assembled. There was an ugly mood in the air. During the night, I had overheard many a low conversation, and by sunrise even most of those who had gone with us in the longboat were staunchly sided with Barbossa. 
        If Jack noticed, he paid it no mind. He only brought forth the object, still wrapped in its cloth, and presented it to us. 
        The girl had been carrying nothing less than the key to a fortune. A chest of pure gold coins hidden on an island known as Isla de Muerta.  <