By the time we finally boarded the Black Pearl the Interceptor was long gone. Barbossa set a man on the helm and told Bo'son to notify him when they were coming up on their quarry. Then he led Jack into his cabin. AKA: Jack's old cabin. Jack looked around with a small smile on his face as Barbossa's monkey leapt onto a perch hanging from the ceiling. Barbossa sat in a grand chair in front of a dining table. I noted a bowl of apples serving as a centrepiece on the table. I guess it wasput there for decoration.
The two captains began to talk, each one trying to get what he wanted from the other without giving their opponent what he wanted. I blocked out the conversation. Instead, I focused on the details of the room, the events happening outside the windows, and thinking about the ship-to-ship battle that was eventually going to commence.
My ears pricked when I heard Barbossa declare "So you expect to leave me on some beach with nothing but a name and your word it's the one I need and watch you sail away on my ship." I turned my attention back to the men as Barbossa chuckled slightly, as if the whole idea was preposterous.
"No," Jack replied. "I expect to leave you standing on some beach with absolutely no name at all, watching me sail away on my ship, and then I'll shout the name back to you." He walked around the edge of the table and leaned forward on it in front of the apple bowl. "Savvy?"
Barbossa didn't think that plan was very good at all. "But that still leaves me standing on some beach with naught but a name and your word it's the one I need." He didn't believe that Jack was going to give him the correct name. It was probably true that he wouldn't have.
Jack began helping himself to the apples, digging through the bowl to find the right one. "Of the two of us, I am the only one who hasn't committed mutiny," he reminded Barbossa. "Therefore, my word is the one we'll be trusting. Although," My assignment plopped into a chair, reclining back and propping his boots on the table top. "I suppose I should be thanking you because, in fact, if you hadn't betrayed me and left me to die, I would have an equal share in that curse, same as you." He crunched into an apple. "Funny ol' world, isn't it?" he said through his mouthful.
Barbossa half-smiled and nodded, watching Jack eat the fruit "like a vampire seeing blood" to quote one of the Masters.
Just as Jack offered a bite to Barbossa, Bo'son appeared. "Captain! We're coming up on the Interceptor," he announced.
The monkey screeched, leapt off his perch and scampered across the table, startling Jack. The primate lead the way out of the cabin and Barbossa followed it up the stairs to the helm. Jack and I went to the rail, the pirate grabbing a rope and leaning forward to see the ship we had commandeered was indeed on the horizon. It looked a long way off, but we were gaining fast. Jack and I ran up the stairs. Sparrow seeming to be knocking on desperation's door and struggling not to show it. Barbossa was studying the Interceptor through a spyglass when Jack stepped in front, blocking his view.
"I'm having a thought here, Barbossa," he said into the spyglass, waving and gesturing with the apple still in his hand. Barbossa lowered the spyglass and looked at Jack as if he were a total waste of time and space. "What say we run up a flag of truce, I scurry over to the Interceptor, and I negotiate the return of your medallion?" Jack suggested. "Eh? What say you to that?"
"Now you see, Jack, that's exactly that attitude that lost you the Pearl. People are easier to search when they're dead," Barbossa explained, as if he were talking to a rookie he didn't like. He snapped the spyglass closed. Jack looked a bit dumbfounded and out of ideas. "Lock him in the brig," Barbossa commanded. Bo'son grabbed Jack and began to pull and shove him away. Barbossa snatched the apple out of his hand. As I followed Bo'son and Jack, I looked over my shoulder to see Barbossa look at the food in his hand in disgust and hurl it through one of the holes in a tattered sail and into the sea.
Down in the brig Bo'son unlocked the door to a cell and pushed Jack roughly inside. I didn't even have time to enter the cell with Jack before the door was slammed shut. There was a small flood of sea water and I floated above the floor so my feet wouldn't get wet. I wondered why there was so much water down there anyways.
"Apparently, there's a leak," Jack commented as the cell was locked and Bo'son stormed away.
I wanted to get in the cell, so while Jack's back was turned I took a deep breath and materialized through the bars. It caused my scars from Will's sword to hurt, but I ignored the pain the best I could, although I knew it would make me think twice before pulling another stunt like that. Jack had found a small hole in the side of the ship and peered out of it. I knew he could see some of the Interceptor's cargo floating past as her crew attempted frantically, desperately to lighten the ship.
"So," Jack turned around and gave a small start when he found me standing unexpectedly right behind him. He eyed me for a moment before continuing. "So, Calypso, tell me what'll happen next. How do we get out of this?"
Knowing that I couldn't tell him everything, I replied "The Interceptor is going to clubhaul and attack the Pearl."
"Clubhaul? That's daft!" Jack exclaimed. "But brilliant. Who'll think of that?"
I smirked. "Believe it or not, Elizabeth." Jack smiled slightly, looking both surprised and impressed. He turned his attention back to the peep hole. We could hear the cannons being run out above us and I knew that the sweeps had been manned. That's one of the reasons why the Black Pearl was so fast; she had oar power as well as wind power and whatever supernatural forces that were also at work.
Steadily, we grew closer to the Interceptor. All the while, I was counting down the seconds untill the battle. Suddenly, the ship took a hard left, causing Jack and I to slam into the bars beside us.
"Ow!" I whispered to myself. Jack swiftly recovered and returned to his peep hole, just as the Black Pearl pulled up alongside the Interceptor. There were a few tense moments when all we could hear was the crash of the ocean, the groaning of the ships, and the shouting of the pirates. Then the thunder and roar of cannon fire joined the din, followed by the explosions of wood and the screams of doomed men.
With a frightening flash, I remembered just in time to shout "Get down!" Jack sprung to the floor, splashing in the shallow water and I cowered down in a corner as an explosion ripped a hole in the wall, considerably enlarging the peep hole.
"Stop blowing holes in my ship!" Jack shouted. I couldn't help but laugh a tiny bit. Jack shot me a dark look that shut me up quick. Then the pirate found a rum flask floating in the water. We both recognised it as belonging to Gibbs. He rose it up to drink from it, only to find it disappointedly empty. He did notice, however, that the peep hole-expanding cannon blast had also blown through the lock on our door. Jack got up and pushed the door open. As we made good our escape, I couldn't help but notice the cutlery embedded in the wood opposite our cell. It made me smirk.
Up on deck I knew it was utter pandemonium. We both heard the terrifying crash as the Interceptor's mast snapped near its base by the impact of two cannon balls chained together. (A well aimed shot from Pintel and Ragetti.) The mast fell like a tree onto the Pearl's top deck. We felt the impact and in my mind's eye I saw most of the Pearl's crew duck and run out of the way. There was an echoing, inhuman groan followed by near silence. Jack and I paused to look at each other. We both knew for sure that the Black Pearl had won this battle. Everyone else had to know it too.
Captain Sparrow and I took the steps two at a time. "You've got to get onto the Interceptor," I told him. "And try everything you can to get the medallion." Jack nodded and we finally emerged on deck. Jack leapt up onto the railing facing the doomed and wounded Interceptor. I jumped into the air and hovered beside him. Conveniently, a misguided pirate was swinging uncontrollably in our direction. Jack grabbed his rope when it reached him, causing the man to fall onto the deck. We looked down at him.
"Thanks very much," Jack said.
The fallen man had no reply.
Jack and I glided across the gap between the two waring ships easily, but Jack didn't appear sure of the landing. Instead of hitting the deck, he followed the arch of the swing and began to move backwards, knocking a pirate into the sea. Fortunately for Mr Gibbs, that pirate had only been seconds away from killing him. I hovered above the Interceptor's deck as Jack, powered by momentum, swung back over. This time, he landed on his feet.
"Jack!" Gibbs cried in surprise.
Jack produced his friend's rum flack from his belt and handed it to him. "Bloody empty!" Jack informed Gibbs. Then my assignment and I sprung off towards the last person Jack had seen with the medallion; Elizabeth.
She was about to be slashed by a member of Barbossa's crew when Jack caught the offending pirate's arm. "That's not very nice," he told him. Elizabeth took the opportunity to whack her attacker in the face with the butt of her gun. He fell backwards over the railing into the sea.
Jack grabbed Elizabeth's shoulders, bringing both of them down out of the range of the deadly gun fire. I squatted down with them. "Where is the medallion?" Jack demanded.
"Wretch!" Elizabeth shouted. She went to slap Jack but he caught her wrist.
"Why doesn't he do that to the other girls?" I wondered to myself.
Jack noticed the bandage around the lady's palm. He made a guess who had helped her tend her wound. "Ah! Where is dear William?"
Elizabeth's eyes widened and she looked over her shoulder to where the blacksmith had gone. "Will," she breathed. She ran over to the trapdoor that led below deck.
Meanwhile, Jack's eyes darted about, observing the action. My eyes were busy too, and I knew exactly what I was looking for. There! The monkey headed back to the Pearl clutching the stolen medallion in one hand. "Jack!" I cried, pointing at the cursed primate.
Jack spotted it right as it began to scamper across the fallen mast back to its owner. "Monkey!" Jack sprang up in hot pursuit. He too climbed onto the mast and scurried across on all fours, with me drifting more gracefully along behind him.
I noticed that the Pearl's crew was beginning to force the others over to their ship. That was the last of Jack's worries. Right as he reached the other side, the monkey leaped onto Barbossa's shoulder, handing him the medallion. I landed on the mast behind Jack, carefully keeping my balance as Jack withdrew the hand he had stretched out to snatch the monkey.
"Why thank ye, Jack," Barbossa said smoothly.
My assignment smiled, but it had no humour or joy in it. "You're welcome."
"Not you. We named the monkey Jack," Barbossa explained. Jack the monkey flashed a grin. Jack the human squinted up at them, unamused by the honour of being the monkey's namesake. "Gents! Our hope is restored!" Barbossa announced, holding up the medallion for all to see. The cursed pirates cheered. Jack smiled mockingly up at Barbossa, obviously not as excited about that fact as the others were. All I could do was let out a sigh and hope that Will would get out before the Interceptor exploded.
AN/ It was one of the writers of the screenplay, I'm not sure which one, on the writer's audio commentary on the DVD who said that Barbossa seeing someone eat was "like a vampire seeing blood." I liked that, so I put it in.
I would like to thank Flute Damioh for pointing out the errors in this chapter. I have since gone through the chapter and fixed all the errors I could find. If there are more, let me know.