Hey ho, back again! I really want to thank Rommie-CmdrMitth for giving me great descriptions of the everglades. I owe this chapter to you!

The crew had been following Jack's erratic footsteps through the marsh for hours upon hours, swatting mosquitos and occasionally peeling off leeches. Per Ragetti, leeches were "good fer th'blood." The eye-patched, greasy haired pirate opted to leave them on until they grew fat with his blood and dropped off naturally.

"Don' care what's good for me blood," Ethel muttered, peeling one off of her calf. "Things are right disgusting." The air was thick with insects and humidity, and it felt as though they were walking through a wall of water. Though she had torn a good part of the hem of her dress off in order to free her legs, the heat was still oppressive and Ethel was sweating profusely. She shoved wet strands of hair off her forehead, muttering and cursing as they traipsed along. So preoccupied was she that she did not even come close to noticing the root that stuck up from the ground. Ethel tripped over it.

Barbossa had removed his hat and was wiping his brow with a kerchief when he heard the sound of Ethel spouting profanities followed by a gun shot. He turned around just in time to see one of his men drop dead as Ethel kicked the corpse and spat on it.

"Damn it, girl, what in the devil have ye done?" he roared at her.

"The bugger tripped me!" Ethel screeched back.

"We need all the crew we can get, ye hollow-headed wretch!"

"What'd you expect me to do? Eh?"

"Now, then, you two," Jack suddenly stepped between the two of them. Ethel roared something indecipherable and hit him across the jaw before spinning on her heel and storming off.

"I ain't wasting me time poking around a bloody swamp, with a group of good fer nothing louts, looking fer a goddamn fountain of bloody youth that don't even EXIST!" she called over her shoulder, but once again she was so distracted that she failed to notice a rotted log in her path, and once again, she tripped over it, falling flat on her face in the mud. She lay in the muck for a moment, blowing bubbles before sitting up and wiping off her face. "What in the. . ." she trailed off and her jaw dropped. In front of her was a tiny shack that looked like it was collapsing upon its own weight. The yard was overgrown with marsh plants and swamp weeds that rustled with various everglade creatures, and it was surrounded by a fence made of planks of gray, rotting wood. It had appeared out of nowhere. She stood up and approached it with trepidation. "Hello?" she called out as she walked into the yard. Ethel jumped as a fern rustled nearby, then rolled her eyes when a lizard scuttled out. She took another wary step forward, and a hand grabbed her shoulder. Ethel screamed.

"Ye finished?" came Barbossa's voice. Ethel whirled around and saw that he was followed by Jack, Pintel, and Ragetti. She scratched her nose and looked down.

"Aye," she muttered, embarrassed. "Sorry 'bout Thompson, too," she mumbled. "S' the heat." Barbossa's lip curled, out of either annoyance or forgiveness.

"It be one more dead," he said, patting her shoulder, "and one less mouth te feed."

"And on the subject of mouths to feed," Jack interjected, "or, bodies to rest, for that matter, we have just spent two hours searching for your lovely errant daughter, Barbossa, and I am hungry and tired, and as chart-man, I recommend finding shelter for the night."

Ethel looked at him strangely. Two hours? She thought, I was gone but two minutes. Was he exaggerating? But now that she looked around at her surroundings, she noticed that the sun was almost set and a thick fog was rolling in. "What about the shack?" she suggested.

"What shack?" Jack asked, and now it was his turn to look at her strangely. Ethel turned back to the shack, but it was gone.

"It was. . .I saw. . ." she looked around. Was she losing her mind? "It was here!" Then the fog parted, and the rotting wood fence was visible again. Bloody everglade fog, she cursed to herself, and raised an eyebrow at Jack. "That shack." Jack cleared his throat.

"Of course," he said. Ethel looked to Barbossa and he nodded.

"For once, Sparrow, ye've a point," he said. "There be no use in searching for the Fountain in the dark."

"Glad you agree!" Jack said as they walked into the deteriorating cabin.