Chapter the Fourth: Stranded

Jack spent the night lying on the shore, watching the stars. The sand was refreshingly cool against his back, and a soft Caribbean breeze caressed his face. It was so ... peaceful. It was just the worry that he was going to die that spoiled the whole thing.

He drifted off to sleep and when he woke, it was blisteringly hot. He climbed painfully to his feet, his stomach growling in empty protest, and shoved his hat on his head. "Well," he said, surveying the long, hot stretch of beach, and then the jungle that extended out in front of him, "It looks like I'm stuck here for awhile."
He turned to look out at the sea, as if the Black Pearl would appear, proving his grave words wrong. "If I don't see a sail on that horizon in the next few days, I'll..." he threatened, and ran out of steam. "Die," he finished miserably, after a moment.

"Unless I can find coconuts or something."

Being stranded on an island wasn't anything new to Captain Jack Sparrow. He'd been in the same situation twice before, except the island he had been stranded on had been a good deal smaller.

He sang idly to himself as he paraded up and down the beach, trying to decide what to do. He spotted what looked like a coconut tree but without the coconuts. He learned that trying to climb this faux-coconut tree resulted in a very sore behind as he fell, rather ungracefully, onto it.

Jack lay in the sweltering sand for a few moments, cursing the Spaniards, the Black Pearl, the world, and everything else he could think of. This grew boring after a few moments, and he got up, sweaty. He contemplated eating his hat.

Jack wondered what he had done to deserve this. Granted, he had terrorized, looted, plundered and pillaged pretty much all of the Caribbean and the waters surrounding it, but surely that didn't warrant all this unnecessary discomfort on his part?

"Hmm...maybe it's kaftan," Captain Sparrow said to himself. "Bad kaftan. Or...carpet. Aye, bad carpet. Got meself a bit of bad carpet."

He strolled down the beach, or more accurately staggered - it was almost psychically impossible for Captain Jack Sparrow to walk in a straight line. He zigzagged up and down the sun-bleached sand, aimlessly navigating the island's perimeter. When the sun hung directly overhead in the sky and the rumbling in his belly grew too strong to ignore, he ventured into the moist, sticky jungle.

It was dark and humid amongst the assortment of tropical trees and foliage. Jack looked around hopefully for a coconut tree or, if he was lucky, a banana tree. He was pretty sure bananas came on trees, anyway. He wasn't entirely sure - someone had told him once that they grew out of the ground, like potatoes...

Did potatoes even grow out of the ground? Jack frowned at this train of thought and dismissed it. He poked around in the furry ground with his boot for any bananas, finding only a small snake that hissed at him and slid up a tree.

He stepped on something that went "squish" in a very organic way and kept on walking, not wanting to see what it was.

Jack sang to himself for a while, but the sound fell flat and wet on the moist surroundings, so he stopped. He trudged along, occasionally stopping to search his surroundings for something edible. He found a bush with berries on it and tried one, but it tasted awful.

Eventually he gave up and decided to head back to the beach. The only problem was, he didn't know where the beach *was*. He turned in a semi-circle and pulled out his compass, but it wasn't much help as he wasn't on land.

Jack decided to choose the most reliable method of navigating: Guessing.

He chose a random direction and trampled off noisily, upsetting a few jungle-dwelling organisms in the process.

Half an hour of trundling through the jungle followed, and Jack stopped, deciding this direction wasn't the right one. "I...am lost," he exclaimed aloud. "Me, Captain Jack Sparrow...lost. It's..." He shook his head, lost for words. Or perhaps just generally lost. Or both. "Lost," he repeated.

He growled and slumped against what he thought was a tree but turned out to be a huge brown snake. He let out a very feminine squeak as the snake spat at him and disappeared into the treetops. "Stupid...snakes," he muttered. "Maybe I should catch one and eat it." He paused to consider this. Snakes were supposed to be poisonous, but maybe that was just the fangs...

Two hours later, Jack had caught himself a snake and found his way back to the beach. He had set up a little camp - makeshift lean-to consisting of sticks and the rather large Spanish uniform-coat he had stolen and his jacket tied together, and a small fire some ways from it. Currently, he was roasting a bit of snake on a stick over the fire.

Once the meat had been sufficiently blackened, Jack tasted it tenderly. To his surprise, it was quite good - but that might have just been because he hadn't eaten in what felt like ages. He cooked the rest of the snake and wolfed it down, and then sat back, marvelling at the fact he had just eaten a snake.

It wasn't really that much of an ordeal, considering he had consumed snails, frog's legs, caviar and even cockroaches and chocolate-coated locusts before.

But that was usually on some stint to a foreign country. *This* was the Caribbean. He was supposed to be drinking rum and eating apples, not lying on a sweltering beach eating charred snake.

"Yo ho, yo ho, it's a pirate's life for me," muttered Captain Sparrow bitterly. He threw sand on the fire to put it out and crawled under the lean-to, sighing at the relief of shade against his face. It was still uncomfortably hot, but he didn't fancy venturing back into that humid jungle again.

Time passed, and it grew cooler as the sun coasted the horizon, dipping towards the east. Jack fell into an uneasy period of dozing and waking, unsure most of the time of where he was. He would wake, for a few moments wondering where exactly he was, and then remembering and drifting back off to sleep. This cycle repeated perhaps a dozen times, before the day turned into uneasy night and the moon came out. Jack slid out from under the lean-to and stood, stretching his arms. He rekindled the fire and sat near it as the temperature dropped and dropped, and soon he untied his jacket from the lean-to and put it on.

He wondered how long he had been here. A day, wasn't it? A night and a day. It already felt like forever. Jack was getting bored - surviving was so terribly dull. If only he had some *rum*. Or maybe some decent company.

Jack smirked, thinking of a time when he had been stranded on an island with both. But that had been short-lived. He hoped *he* wouldn't be short-lived...

He wondered if he ought to go fetch himself another snake, but the jungle was too dark and Jack could bet that more unsavoury creatures aside from snakes would lurk there at night. Instead, he waded into the sea and busied himself with catching fish with his sword.

It took an hour or two and several stabbings of his feet but he finally managed to spear himself a fish. It was small, but enough to keep him going for a night. He cooked it over the fire and ate it thoughtfully, staring out at the sea. Why hadn't the Black Pearl come for him yet? Or maybe they had, and they'd sailed past the island, not seeing him.

Jack cringed at the thought. He pondered making a signal but decided he felt too lazy to race up and down the coast trying to find some decent driftwood, and he could hedge a bet there wasn't any wood that was flammable in the jungle.

So, for now he was stuck here. On this deserted island. With nothing but him, the snakes, the fish, the beach and the blasted jungle to keep him company.

Brilliant.

Captain Jack Sparrow sighed to himself as he flopped uselessly on the sand like a beached whale. He stared up at the moon, shining crescent and silver in the middle of the star-studded sky. The fire was warm near his feet. It was good, really, to get away from the rigours of being a pirate for a while...what wasn't good was dying in the process.

He closed his kohl-lined eyes and tilted his hat over his head, blocking out the weak moonlight. There wasn't much to do now but sleep...sleep and survive.

Jack sang softly to himself. His voice sounded parched and dry, like a piece of paper that had been crumpled up. He knew he ought to find some fresh water soon; he couldn't live on fish and snakes forever. The idea of venturing again into that accursed jungle wasn't too appealing, however.

He heard a soft sound from behind him, like running footsteps in the sand. He stopped singing to listen, but no other sound came. Jack pulled his hat off and sat up slowly, squinting in the dim circle of firelight.

A tall brown figure stood there, just outside the ring of light thrown by the campfire. At first Jack thought it was Anamaria, but as he looked closer, he saw the woman - for it was a woman - wore something akin to a rough-woven tunic, and was holding a spear...
A spear that was pointed at *him* in a very threatening way.