"White sails?" yelled the author after reading one of the reviews. "What does she mean, 'white sails.' They were white at the end of the movie! Here, I'll show you!" She got up and put the Pirates DVD in the computer and began skipping through chapters.

The author's friend bothered to look up from his comic book and walked over to the computer screen.

"Here!" she set it on normal play as Jack Sparrow swam towards the Pearl at the end. "Right there, you can clearly see that the sails are w…o crap."

"HA HA!" yelled the author's friend. "You committed an inconsistency! Little Ms. 'people in the pirate era didn't have middle names and the concertina wasn't invented for another hundred years' just got proved wrong! Ha Ha!"

The author promptly slapped him.

On board the Black Pearl (Which had BLACK sails, sorry), once the men were relatively sure they weren't being followed by the Royal Navy, the procession started. All the men watched as Sparrow stood on the stern of the ship in front of the wheel. He had in his hands the small chest taken from the Governor's mansion. In this chest lay the answer to the secrets of the world, a path to riches beyond dreams and anything anyone would ever want. This was the chest of Opulentiala, one of the greatest treasures of the world and its content would lead its user to the greatest prize in history.

"Well!" yelled Anamaria from the bow. "Open it!"

"I can't," said Sparrow, "I'm afraid I don't have the keys."

"Pick the lock," yelled Anmaria.

"I tried that."

"You could always blast it open with a pistol sir," suggested Gibbs.

"Er, yes, I tried that ten minutes ago. It didn't leave a dent, I'm afraid."

"Well, how do you open the thing?" someone asked.

"Drop it from the foremast!" yelled a pirate.

"Hit it with a hammer!" yelled another.

"Aim a cannon at it!" yelled Anamaria.

"And to what point?" said Sparrow. "A cannon would just likely destroy the chest and its contents."

"But it would be open."

It was just then Gwen regained her senses, after having to listen to this whole spectacle. She yanked her arm away from Paully, who seemed to have forgotten what he was supposed to be doing.

"Odious Dog!" she yelled and raced up the stairs, past the puzzled men. They had quite forgotten about her. She faced Sparrow. "The Navy is coming! They'll come after you all and hang you!" she pointed at Sparrow.

"Not this again," Sparrow groaned, "I don't suppose you could find another subject to shout about, could you love?"

She responded to this by kicking him in the leg. "Ow," he murmured. Fortunately for him Gwen was as poor at kicking hard as she was at running fast.

"You'll burn in Hell for your crimes! You'll rue the day you came to St. James!"

"Listen luv, all we wanted was the Chest, and so what if we got a few extra trinkets, we'll never bother poor Portsmouth again. Happy?"

"You fired cannon at the city!"

"Aimed at the gallows and the garrison; no one who couldn't run was hurt."

"And all the people you killed! You murdering-"

"Killed people?" The Captain turned around and faced the crew, "Does anyone here remember killing anyone in Portsmouth?"

The crew was soundless, except for the midget, "I…killed a cat."

There was an uncomfortable silence as this news. The man continued: "It might have been dead already!"

"See!" Sparrow told Gwen, "there you have it, no one hurt except a dead cat. So it's all alright then!"

"No, it is not alright!" screamed Gwen. "Why? Why did you take me? I was no threat to you. Susan and the tomato boy have already alerted the soldiers; the Royal Navy knows about what you've done! Why did you take me along!"

Sparrow stopped his ramblings for a moment. How exactly do you tell a fourteen-year-old Catholic Schoolgirl who wants to see you hanged that you're her pirating father?

"'Cause I'm your Dad."

Apparently like that.

There are several worse ways Sparrow could have told Gwen he was her father. Four of them would not be allowed in a PG rating. Two ways could cause a lawsuit. And one would have had thousands of fangirls banded together in a lynch mob and tracked the author down to her house Minnesota and hanged her from the nearest tree. (Actually, the nearest tree is a pine, but there are several other trees in the backyard that are very hangable.)

"My-my father died before I was born," said Gwen, not willing to believe at all that this strangely clad, dirty, probably drunk (but not really, he always just acted that way) man was her father. She remembered what Sister Mary Vera had told her about the night she was born. This was impossible…or at least extremely unwelcome.

"Is that what Nelly said?" asked Sparrow, curious.

"Well, her exact words were 'He's died at sea, at least if he knew what was good for him', but I-sorry, could you repeat the statement?"

"No. It's bad enough as it is."

Now, in her years growing up, Gwen contemplated the idea that her mother may have been lying about her father being dead, or if she had been married to him at all, but this was not the result she had thought up. She never considered that the strange man who gave her the pendant could have been her father. We knew, of course, because I told you, and because this is a 'Long-lost-daughter-of-Jack-Sparrow' story. The trouble is getting her to believe it.

"You're lying! I want to go home!"

"I-" Jack turned his head, and saw that all the crew were staring at them, watching this performance diligently. These were the days before soap operas, but this was good enough.

"Back to work men!" he yelled at the crew. There was some grumbling, but they dispersed. They did not in fact return to work, but set about counting the loot they had stolen from the mansion, which was just as useful to Sparrow anyway.

"I am not lying, sorry luv. And I can't get you off the ship because it's the middle of the ocean," he waved his arms wildly, something we are used to, but was quite disturbing to Gwen. "So just sit down and wait, you're going to be here a while." He walked off, taking the chest with him to try and open it in the safety of his quarters.

Gwen was left standing there, on a pirate ship sailing God-Knows-Where.

"Oye," said a bald dwarf pirate (whose name happened to be Marty). Gwen turned and looked (down) at him. "Can you cook?" he asked.

"A little," Gwen replied.

"C'mon. I'll take you to the galley then. Make you of some use," he said, and he led the way down into the ship.

Gwen sighed, pursed her lips in a way that would make a Dursley proud, and then followed the small pirate down into the ship's galley. She was a prisoner, but she wasn't an idler.