Chapter 2: 1741 - Hallucinations

The door to the captain's quarters aboard the "Black Pearl" slammed shut, and a visibly exhausted and obviously annoyed Jack Sparrow hurled himself into his berth to curl up in it - along with a bottle of rum, and slightly in a huff.

He wanted nothing more to do with what was going on on deck. Not to mention everything that was not going on on deck. And even less of all that was going on outside his ship.

It was maddening!

Nothing he did - nor anything he did not - had proved helpful.

Neither in trying to find a way out of this white desert he was trapped in, nor in all the attempts to find his beloved Caith somewhere in this nothingness.

It felt as if powerful, otherworldly forces were preventing him from finding out any more about this strange place than he was supposed to know.

In his lonely desperation he had spent days, if not weeks, poring over his charts, consulting his magical compass, and searching old, yellowing books for answers - but it did not seem as if they contained any of the answers to his most pressing questions.

He knew the sea was only a stone's throw and a few dunes away, and he also knew all this would be easier to bear if he could get there, but the way to it was out of reach to him.

Instead, he began to wonder if everything he had done and sacrificed was really worth the sacrifice.

Hadn't his noble plan been doomed from the very beginning?

Even before Elizabeth Swann had decided to make the decision for him that he had already made anyway?

To stay aboard his ship...

Of course, his friends and part of his crew who survived the Kraken's attack were safe, but the heart of Davy Jones was now most likely in the hands of the man who should never have laid hands on it...

A disturbing thought!

'But why do you even care,' he thought to himself while staring at the ceiling of his berth: 'There is nothing more you can do now to stop Beckett, Mercer and Jones. So why worry about something you can't prevent anyway...?'

Lost in thought, he ran his fingers over the locket he wore around his neck and carefully opened it.

He put the rum bottle on the floor next to his berth, took the two braided strands of hair out of the locket and looked for a long time at the two miniatures that were hidden in the piece of jewellery.

After all these years he still couldn't remember who had made the portraits of him and Caith or where the treasure that was so precious to him had come from so suddenly, which he had found one day on the bedside table, in his bedroom, in the cottage on Patrick's Island. Neither he nor Caith had ever owned anything quite like it and yet he had not hesitated for a moment to put it on when he found it, because it reminded him never to give up - and that he still had a score to settle: With Ian Mercer and Lord Cutler Beckett...

He couldn't remember falling asleep, but when he opened his eyes again, it was already the middle of the night. In his hand he still held the locket and the strands of hair, and also the bottle of rum were still in place - and yet something seemed different that night.

What it was he couldn't say, but the stillness and silence around him seemed even more unbearable this time than they already were.

Not that he hadn't had similar nights since he ended up in this godforsaken place...

And he had endured them all.

Somehow...

Kind of...

Sometimes he'd spend them singing all those pirate ballads Elizabeth had taught him that night they had spent together when they were marooned on Rumrunner's Island.

Sometimes he'd spend them huddled in a corner of his cabin, waiting for the sun to rise.

Sometimes he'd spend them telling himself stories to at least hear something louder than his heartbeat.

Those were the nights where even the babble and caw of Cotton's parrot would have been welcome...

Those were the nights in which he longed to be able to talk, laugh or even argue with someone...

Those were the nights eventually followed by the hallucinations...

The worst thing was that sometimes he no longer knew if what he was seeing were really hallucinations. But what else should the crew be on deck, he had to deal with day in and day out?

There was nobody here but him, right?

And yet this assemblage of incompetent sailors seemed bent on driving him insane - all the more so as they all looked like spitting images of himself!

Their constant arguments, their constant nagging, the countless excuses they used to try to hide their mistakes from him!

Who did they think he was?

Someone to whisper and scoff at behind his back?

That was something he couldn't and wouldn't tolerate. By no means! After all, he was the captain of this vessel, so he could expect at least a modicum of respect, couldn't he...

"Tonight seems made to drive me insane for good, doesn't it?" His whispered words seemed to go unheard in his cabin: "The scent of the open sea hangs in the air, it smells of salt and seawater, I can hear the wind in the sails - but there is nothing! I imagine I could hear seagulls screeching and see dolphins jumping in their wake! But every time I look over the rail or through my spyglass, there's nothing but white sand! And then those figures out there! Or are they in here...?" He buried his face in his palms and closed his eyes: "I hear and see things that don't exist. I talk to things that don't exist! Is that the purpose of this place? If so, congratulations, it works!"

The cynical undertone in his voice was unmistakable, but since no one was there to listen, there was no reason to hide it.

Unless...

"Don't do that, Jack Sparrow! Please, don't do that!"

To make matters worse, his ship began to whisper to him once again...

With the voice of his beloved Caith!

But, no! It wasn't his ship, it was his Caith, wasn't it...?

"Ah, love! Here you are! Maybe you can give me some advice!"

"You know everything you need to know, Jack, you just have to believe in your ability to do it!"

"Aha! And how is that supposed to work? You may not have noticed, but I'm somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no idea where that nowhere is. Out there on deck a crew is driving me crazy I'm most likely just imagining. But can I be sure that I'm just imagining them? Day after day I try to find an answer to it and with every new day it gets worse! I tried to shoot myself! I tried to stab myself! I even tried to hang myself - which didn't work because the rope broke! Well, anyone else would say I'm crazy already! And maybe I am! After all, I'm talking to my ship, eh? So tell me what you would call this, love?"

"Well, if I could and if I was one of those girls you met in Tortuga, I'd slap you too right now, Captain Sparrow! Maybe that would be of help!"

"Said my ship!"

"You know that's not true!"

"Of course I do, love! Do you think I would talk to my ship if it would be elsewise? It's just I don't know where else to look! Ever since I found out we were cheated of each other, I've been trying to find you. Even the prospect of ending up in this desolate place again hasn't stopped me from trying." He paused, hesitated briefly, then added: "You know, Caith, my mind tells me to give up looking for you. It even tells me to give up on you! But how could I as long as I still have the tiniest glimmer of hope of finding you someday?" He sighed: "I wasted ten years settling scores with Barbossa, forgetting that there was something far more important I should have done."

"Who says it was the right time to stand up to Beckett? You were alone then. Now you have friends who care about you..."

"How I would like to believe that! But who tells me you're not just an illusion, too, eh? A ghost who wants to rob me of the last remains of my sanity?"

"There's only one way I want to drive you insane, Jack Sparrow," the soft voice whispered in his ear: "And you know exactly what I mean!"

"Oh, yes! I know that all too well, love..."

"Then trust in it to become possible again...! Trust in yourself and in everything you are: Clever, courageous, witty, brave and resourceful..."

"You have caused us to lose speed and therefore time. Precious time, which cannot be recovered once lost. Do you understand?" Jack once again found himself in the midst of a discussion with his imaginary crew, but this time he wasn't willing to endure it much longer than necessary: "It will have to be redone. All of it. All of it! And let this serve as a lesson to the lot of you! I have no sympathy for any of you and no more patience to pretend otherwise! Gentlemen, I wash my hands of this weirdness."

That said, he grabbed one of the hawsers hanging listlessly on the outer wall of the "Pearl", swung himself over the rail, and landed roughly on the hard-baked ground. He blinked a few times, tried to fathom if the position of the sun would tell him anything about the time and finally remarked, in a mixture of discouragement and frustration: "No wind!"

How should he set sail without wind...?

He sighed and looked around, not really expecting to find anything of note - until he noticed the strange, perfectly formed white stones that lay scattered around his ship in a wide range.

Not that they were really anything new, but actually he was really conscious of them for the first time. There was something weird about those things, just what?

Jack had no idea, but even if he didn't really feel comfortable with them, he turned around to get to the bottom of the matter. He bent down to pick one of those perfectly shaped things up to examine it more closely, and came to the conclusion that it was what he thought it to be: "Rock!"

Its surface seemed as hard baked as the sand. At the same time, it was strangely porous. But that apparently seemed to be the whole mystery surrounding these stones.

With a shrug and without giving it a second thought, Jack finally threw the rock away. Far away! As far as he was able to...

But just when he was about to return to the "Pearl" it seemed to him as if something or someone was watching him - and indeed:

The stone was back...

"Now we're being followed by rocks," he told himself: "Never had that one before."

Maybe the thing could be driven away?

"Shoo!"

Nothing happened!

Heaving a sigh, he picked the unusually clingy stone up once more and beheld it again intently. Strange was indeed no proper term for the thing he now held in his hand but whatever the reason, at some point he tried to see if it tasted like anything. It did, and it was horrible - and after it shook him vigorously a few times thanks to its terrible aftertaste, he threw the stone away once more.

Maybe it helped if from now on he ignored that clingy thing and finally turned back to his "Pearl": After all, there had to be a way to get her over the dunes and as if she had read his mind, a hawser unfurled from her bow right in front of his nose.

He stared at it for a moment, "Rope!", before harnessing himself to the "Pearl" to pull her forward.

The sun burned down on him mercilessly, while all his efforts to move his ship ebbed away to no avail, and, eventually, he gave up.

There was no sense to it!

He wouldn't be able to move his ship an inch!

And in a mixture of desperation, realisation and exhaustion, he finally collapsed beside his beloved vessel...

Jack's exhaustion and despair hadn't gone unnoticed, though, and eventually a clicking and clacking followed by a loud rumble brought him around.

He was reluctant to open his eyes, believing that only a new nightmare would be waiting for him, but finally, driven by curiosity, he did.

He sat up, still dazed and lulled in the unrefreshing sleep of exhaustion he'd fallen into, and stared at the almost unbelievable picture that unfolded before his eyes.

At first he didn't want to believe what he was seeing and attributed everything that was going on around him to his tiredness and this damned place, but then he saw the thousands and thousands of snow-white crabs that passed by him in an endless stream - and what they were moving toward the dunes!

The "Black Pearl" seemed to be gliding along a stream of small white bodies like on a bizarre river.

And she moved fast...

To where the ocean lapped the shore lying behind the dunes...

Jack watched her go for a moment: Confused, fascinated, speechless!

Until he realised that something was missing aboard his ship: Her captain!

And in no time at all he scrambled to his feet, admired for another moment the little creatures that had succeeded where he had failed - and finally began to run to catch up with his ship...