Author's note: This is an attempt at novelizing CotBP and and therefore may not interest you at all! But if you wouldn't mind finding your favorite part of the movie and telling me if I wrote it right, I'd really appreciate it!

I'm simply hoping for perspectives on the movie other than mine. This is a just a framework to be improved by anyone who thinks a hard core novelization of the movie would be cool. I'm VERY open to input and would love to see this story become the work of multiple people. Way too optimistic? Crazy? TOTALLY! But crazy is fun!! And a novelization created by multiple people will rival anything a professional writer could come up with!

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or things from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

April 16, 1748

15 miles off the southern coast of Jamaica

This was a battle Captain Medrod could not win.

He'd overcome a mutiny, fought off two pirate ships, and some of the storms he had weathered were worse than any manmade assault. But he could not overcome a legend.

With the arrival of the fabled Black Pearl, wind frothed up from nowhere. The fog that had been so commonplace became suffocating. The water itself seemed to attack Medrod's paunchy Seeker, keeping the merchant ship reeling and staggering in a creamy skirt of foam. Her unprepared crew was equally disoriented and fell easy prey to the Pearl's monsters, barely human creatures that swung out of the bruised mist, howling their bloodlust.

Medrod himself had engaged in furious combat with a lean weasel of a pirate, a creature with burning eyes and inhuman reflexes. Medrod's loyal first mate, Dobbs, had shot the thing twice before being cut down. Medrod had seen the bullets drive into the pirate's side and when the monster barely staggered, shock had stripped Medrod of hope and sword. He'd been stabbed twice in the abdomen. Ice snakes slithering into his middle, he now lay on his own quarterdeck, the agonized twisting and vibrating of his beloved Seeker spreading through his frame.

Medrod still didn't believe what had happened, but he didn't care. As lovingly as a mother, Death was wrapping him in silent, cold cotton, soothing, hypnotizing, dominating. In an odd way, he was glad he and Seeker would die together.

He took one last look at the Seeker's remaining mast, her shred of sail, then closed his eyes.

He smelled violets, his mother's scent. It was his wife Janie's scent too…it was what had entranced him the first time he saw her...his baby daughter's grip on his awed finger, a soft band of incredible strength. The laughter of his best school friend–what was his name? But the river was rushing fast and he careened with it, helpless as any leaf. Janie's fingers in his hair; a faceless man in blue handing him a sword; the black procession following a father's casket; a yellow weevil wriggling out of a porous biscuit; a sailor's tan face grotesque with rebellion–

"Sir! Sir!"

Faintly past the ringing in his ears, he heard a high voice. Ah yes, the cabin boy. He was slight and poorly dressed, but he could read, and when his spoke, his London accent was not that of a beggar's…not that he often displayed it; he was a vessel of grief and desperation firmly stoppered with muteness.

"Sir, what do I do?" the voice was perhaps ten feet away.

Medrod dragged his eyes open and was surprised to see the boy's blurry face only inches from his own. Black smears were the boy's eyes. Medrod remembered their color, Mexican chocolate and fine brandy...his Janie would just melt.

The boy's sobbed breaths brushed Medrod's cheeks. "What do I do?"

Medrod's tongue was huge and heavy. "Jump."

"Sir?"

He knew he would never form another word; couldn't the boy just let him die? His eyelids fell.

"Sir? Sir! Sir!"

"Here's a treat!" this was an ugly voice. "A little worm wot squeaks! Come'ere worm, I'll make you–"

A foot slammed into Medrod's side and the ugly voice cursed as it fell over Medrod's chest. The impact sent such a terrific bolt pain down Medrod's body, he literally felt the living world snap away from him.

"The little rat! He went over the side!"

An oily voice. "Leave 'im t'drown, boys; there be no medallion here. Let's light this lady up."

A gleeful howl. "Aye, aye, Captain!"

The voices were far away now. As Captain Medrod turned his back on them, he gave one last order to his cabin boy.

Live, Turner.

Live.