At first, Elizabeth thought she stood on the deck of the Pearl. The dark wood planks rolled beneath her feet -- feet bound in dainty slippers, hid beneath the flowing skirt of a dark, heavy dress. But the wood was somehow wrong. It had a golden grain, which glowed where the sun struck. The deck was clean and ordered, all the ropes and rigging wrapped and coiled in their places. The long evening shadows stretched like bars across the broad deck -- too broad a deck for the Pearl. White sails blazed gold and vermilion, reflecting the dying burn of the sky while, in the crows' nest, a young sailor played sweetly, sadly, on a trim tin whistle. One lone man clothed in a loose white shirt and navy breeches stood at the rail, his hands clasped behind his back, his legs planted surely and firmly on the shifting deck as he stared out over the sea. The sun shone in his short brown hair, soft and fine, tousled like a boy's. Elizabeth traced the weary lines in his back and shoulders, and a gentle, haunting familiarity whispered at the edges of her mind.
The young sailor in the crows' nest finished his melody with a long, lingering note, which died away on the wind from the sea. He put his whistle in a leather pouch at his side and swung lightly down from the rigging to the deck. He strolled over to the railing with an easy, swinging step and laid his dark hand on the other's shoulder.
"Ye look afar off into de bright night like ye look into de dark of a dead man's soul."
The young sailor's words, spoken soft and low, hung in the air like a strange and mystic chant, rising and falling with the wash of the sea against the sides of the ship. He waited, his head tilted, watching the other man with black, bright eyes.
The other man's head bowed, slowly, slowly down, and it seemed to Elizabeth as though the wind breathed a hollow sigh that floated across the deck and faded into silence.
The young sailor moved his dark hand from the man's shoulder to touch the his cheek. The man raised his head and half turned, with a small, crooked smile. Then he turned back to the sea and said in a low voice,
"Not dead. Not yet."
The sun, throwing out one last, parting flare of brilliant light, sank into the sea and left the earth blind.
Elizabeth stumbled back, struck by the man's voice as though by lightning, or flashing steel, and, in an agony of desperation and gunshot, she screamed out, "James!" -- but water filled her mouth and choked her, writhing arms caught her legs and dragged her down, a blade pierced her heart and broke her, and she drowned to the gentle chiming of a silver locket lost at the bottom of the sea.