T'was a dark mood I was in, that much I remember. Were all of us. Jack being Jack in the way none of us were understanding at the time had ordered the ship upriver and it was a ways to the swamps so the crew set forth.

All of us had a distinct notion time wasn't on our side with this one. We no longer had the Navy on us, but the Navy wouldn't have made Jack nervous, not if ten fleets were at our back. Something worse was coming for us, and Jack wouldn't tell us why.

To be honest, I was more than a bit miffed. Jack always at least was square with us, and if this was the way he'd been acting on the Pearl a decade before, I was beginning to see why he'd gotten the boot. Preserve and forgive me for having thought it, but as I said earlier . . . not in the best of moods.

I'd gone down to the cargo hold, doing inventory on supplies. Dark as hell down there and my light wouldn't go. And as I tried again and again to light the wet wick of the lantern, some form of shuddering spirit was suddenly clinging to me in the pitch blackness there. The very hairs on my neck rose as I turned to face it, felt the clammy hands on my arm. This ship had been a slave-ship before it was burnt black with damnation; perhaps Jack hadn't been able to save everyone before conditions caught up with them? Or worse, a drowned sailor?

Something brushed across my lips then, and it wasn't the mouth of a wench, God help me. Not unless wenches grew whiskers in all the time I was on this cursed journey. But it seized my own lips all the same, softly then roughly, invading the space with its own wet muscle. Panting and warm - this was no spirit from the deep. I shoved, tried to, but my rather passionate opponent didn't let up, not til I brought me heel down on his soft shoe.

He yelped then, a familiar noise and backed off. "Pinters, what th'ell?" came the wounded inquiry. I squinted, a useless gesture, then it all registered.

"Buggering hell," I spat, literally. I wiped my face off, scowling at empty air for all the good it did in the darkness. I feel it fair to remind that I was still in the foulest mood that ever was.

"You're not Pintel," came the answer, full of dread.

"Even in the blasted dark could I not be mistaken for that short bandy-legged sycophant," I said severely. Actually I said more of a less flattering nature, but it bears not repeating. And I regretted it immediately because a knife was at my throat and wood was digging into my back.

"Don't you be talkin' about him that way," the knife itself said, it bore no use for the owner to say as such. I put my hands up, nice-like.

"Easy there, lad, didn't mean it. Not a bit." Course I did at the time, but a knife at your main arteries can make for pretty lies. I stopped trying to spit Ragetti's saliva out of my mouth too.

The knife shook a little in an already unstable hand. Which frankly is just as dangerous as a firm hand, if you catch my drift. And right when he almost had me, right when he could've gotten me to do a quarter-jig and a bow if he fancied it, the lad's voice turned pleading. "And I jus' made a mistake, as you said. So need to be tellin' the whole crew, eh?"

I frowned, again at nothing. Why the hell he thought I'd be tellin' anyone is what I wanted to know, but I didn't say that. Ragetti didn't care for my silence and poked me with his blade a bit. "Answer me, ya fancy drivelswigger!" he said between his teeth.

He wasn't threatening anymore and I could've twisted the lad's wrist and dislodged the knife in a heartbeat of broken bones. If you ever happen to clap eyes on the thin build of said lad, you'll know that's not bragging. A waste of bones and flesh he was, and he'd been cursed for ten years by Aztec gold. The effects of that particular legend I'll trust you know.

"Why don't you ease up lad. I won't be tellin' a soul," I entreated him. Coaxing didn't make him drop the weapon though. He was agitated and afraid, and unpredictable as thus, so I went back in my head until I could remember something useful about him. And so I pretended to lose all patience and yelled at him a great deal, saying Jack would have him off the ship and floundering about in the vast blue without a paddle to float on if I wound up dead, because it'd be either him suspect or his mate, and maybe Jack would be rid of two former mutineeers just as soon as one.

That had the desired effect of freeing me from the threat of a wobbly knife, but Ragetti followed it to the floor, shivering like the poor mad thing he was. Perhaps I'd yelled at him a bit too forcefully.

That seemed to seal my fate, because who'd come down with a working lantern at that exact point but his mate, and when Pintel saw me standing over Ragetti in the state he was in, his face split with a snarl and he reached at once for his pistol. I was a cooked goose for sure, and whether Jack would avenge me mattered little at that point.

My salvation came instead from Ragetti who scrambled up, putting himself between me and him, and began to babble something about the briny deep and no paddles and God being against murder and all that. Pintel seized his flailing arms and shook him, somewhat roughly in my presence. His voice overrode Ragetti's in a harsh whisper until the lad's own terrified chattering all but ceased, save for what he muttered in a frenzy under his breath. Pintel quite literally pushed him out of the store-room, but not before fixing me with a glare what could melt all the stained glass in a holy chapel.

That I suppose I had coming.

I returned above to the sunlight, pleased to see it again. As I told before, I'd entreated Ragetti in all manner of promises that I wouldn't tell the crew of what occurred and was eager to keep my word and put the whole thing past me.

It was Ragetti what was the poor accomplice to this plan, for the nervous thing would do anything it took to avoid me and wouldn't have met my eye if it killed him not to. Even Jack came a little out of his bothered state to notice them acting queer, and for Jack, that was saying a lot.

This went on for days, and I was gettin' tired of Jack's odd looks at me as much as I was tired of Pintel's glowers and muttered threats. I didn't like going into dark places unless they were up on deck in plain sight of all, and I didn't go down unless I had a lantern lit in my hand. Ragetti's knife at my throat had left a sharp nick deeper than shaving could and his hand had been steady enough those first few seconds for me to not underestimate him. Pintel's merit at throat-cutting was no question at all.

T'wasn't until our other Jack, that buggering flea-circus the Aztec curse had not forgotten, managed to take Ragetti's eye again that forced our paths to cross. The unnatural creature apparently knew of Ragetti's sudden aversion to me and thought it would be grand to stuff the eye down the back of me collar as he bounced onto my shoulder and off again before I could swat.

I fished it out again, just as Ragetti, breathless, bounded up to me. He stopped and looked down, sheepishly holding out his hand. Pintel was stomping up to us not far behind, sensing a problem that wasn't there and I decided I'd have to break my promise to his mate if I wanted a greater chance for survival on the Pearl.

Stirring up all my irritability, until my face matched Pintel's in shade and hue, I seized Ragetti's wrist and plopped his wooden orb into it. I let his hand drop and looked square at Pintel. "Now listen," I said, hands held out. Drat and blast, it was a peaceful gesture of habit and not the effect I wanted, but there was nothing for it now. I continued. "I ain't got it in for your friend," I started to explain. "There was a simple misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding, eh?" Pintel shot back, sneering. "That why I found you messin' about wit Rags below? How nice would yer misunderstandin' have been had I not interrupted sir?"

Oh lord have mercy, he thought I'd been going to . . . I looked at Rags, who flushed miserably and shook his head, first at Pintel, then me as if to proclaim his innocence and virtue in the matter, of which he certainly had none. I glowered at him, which probably looked even less good in Pintel's eye.

"Out with it," the man snarled. "I ain't got Ragetti to enlighten me yet, and so I'll have it from your mouth plain and simple, and you'll spin me no yarns." And here now Pintel had got into his head that he was bullying me into explaining. That got my goat, right enough.

I glowered again at Ragetti who shook his head again and Pintel swatted him. "Stop that! You had your chance." He fixed me with another glare and so, easily forgetting I'd ever made such a promise not to, I told him. Plain and simple like he ordered.

"He snogged me."

Pintel opened his mouth and whatever response he'd planned fell right out and hit the deck like a dead fish. He blinked, twice. "Wot?"

"I said, he bloody snogged me. In the dark. My light wasn't working and next thing I know, yer bonny lad--"

"Watch it," Pintel snarled, hand on his pistol.

"Your friend was fastened to me tighter than a bloody ship's nail and pegging me full in the mouth," I snapped, not even caring who heard. And here, caught up in my anger, I jabbed Ragetti's shoulder, hard. "And after, when he realized his error, this mother's fool made me swear at knifepoint not to recount it to you or any living soul." Pintel flared at my action, but then seemed to deflate all at once. He looked at Ragetti who was covering his face, mortified.

I admit I had no compassion for either of them just then, so I went on. "Of course I obliged, but the unspoken agreement was that both of us would put it behind in the past, and no-one's honor be compromised. Yet to the very end, your man couldn't even find the gumption to be forthright and --"

Ragetti dropped his hands, finding the courage to look up to me. "M'sorry," he interrupted, quietly. My mouth shut then, all of its own accord. I admit I hadn't been expecting that and lost some of the hot wind in my sails as a result.

He now couldn't seem to look at Pintel.

"That's all it was?" Pintel asked, incredulously, looking at me and then Ragetti. The lad's face was still a bonfire of embarrassment, but he tried to explain himself without looking at any of us.

"Thought you'd be mad if you found out, Pint. Thought he'd tell the whole crew and then we'd be sunk. 'E's right though. Messed up. Couldn't be honest and I couldn't lie either. An I got you all upset for nothin'. M'sorry." He put his eye back in, silently and fidgeted with it, leaving me and Pintel to look at one another for a long moment.

"That's what it was then? A kiss? A snog?" Pintel was flaring up again, sounding both relieved and furious, this time at his lad. Though Ragetti seemed resigned to it now. I felt pity finally rear its ugly head somewhere and blast me, got involved.

"No need to go off on the lad, there's no harm done now that it's all out, is there?"

This only made Pintel angrier at Ragetti. "You daft bugger! There anything between your ears but air?! I said I'd meet you in the store-room after dinner, not after we swabbed! What was in yer head?!" he hissed. "What if it had been Jack hisself what came down without a lantern, eh? Where would we be then?!"

Ragetti shrugged, eye fixed firmly on the wooden deck.

"You wouldn't have had a thing to worry about," I said, without thinking. Disputes always had made me overly nervous. "Except 'o course what you may have walked in on then." I buttoned my lip when Pintel and Ragetti stared at me. Another promise broken, blast it.

"Ah. That is." I floundered aimlessly, and then gave it up with a sigh. "Bugger all."

Ragetti suddenly burst into uneven giggles, tried to cover his face and then giggled harder. Pintel glowered, ready to yell at him to shut up for it was no amusing matter, but the corners of his mouth turned up and made it come out in a shout of laughter instead.

Before we knew it, all three of us were owners of sore ribs and legs that could barely hold us upright, howling at the whole ridiculous situation that a kiss in the pitch dark had brought forth. Jack had come as no surprise to them, they later admitted; it was just hearing me say it what set them off. They told nobody of course, but anyone who couldn't figure it out didn't deserve to.

The only thing I never did tell those two rascals was the same exact rule applied to them.

END