Prologue
Again it was dark.
Again it was cold.
Again he sat here, motionless. Only the trinkets in his hair were glittering in the twilight. From outside, the moon threw his wan light into the prison cell.
Port Royal's dungeon. He felt almost homlike here - abstained from the fact, that he was spending his last hours in this bloody hole!
His beaded hair jingled, when he suddenly turned his head. Through the barred window he stared up to the moon, which looked back at him like a huge golden eye. The last moon he was allowed to see. He of all people, Captain Jack Sparrow, was going to be executed in the next morning. This night would be long ... and by far too short.
His hand was flitting to his head, touching the little coin on the red bandana.
The best pirate of the caribbean would end up on the scrapheap as all the other hangdogs ...
He'd seen it often. He wasn't counting it anymore. Every month reams of outlaws fell victim to the hangman. The malodorous dead bodies were stacked on carts by the executioner's assistant, who removed them without the slightest dignity.
When he was ten years old, Captain Teague showed him the corpses that were flaunted near the port. They were put up in the bay to warn off the pirates, but Teague didn't give a damn on that!
The only trump of the East Indies was corruption, he said. The Pirate Code was older and stronger than their law. And as long as the brethren court would exist, the loyalty between all kind of outlaws would be warranted.
Since the old sailor had saved him from drowning, he gained Jack's confidence. By and by he became fatherlike for him. It was Teague, from whom he learned pilfering and cheating. It was Teague who taught him fighting with a baton and how to handle a sword. Later the captain hired an italian fenching master, in order to make his style perfect. And now, as he WAS a perfect pirate, he would finish his life like the perfect loser ...
Jack felt himself wretched. He was downright devastated!
„The worst pirate he has ever seen ..." Embittered he muttered Commodore Norrington's words to himself.
The dark-haired man leaned back against the bars he was kept behind. The coin on his kerchief was banging against one of the rods.
Jack listened into the dark. A gentle melody was sounding in the air. A melody he had already heard ... a long time ago ...
The seas be ours and by the powers ...
„Where we will, we'll roam", Jack spoke the lyrics under his breath.
He recognized it.
And he remembered.
This song was resonanced by all pieces of eight, whenever a pirate was in need - or the piracy itself ...
