It was bad enough when Jack insisted on a visit to Isla de Muerta for Barbossa's forgotten horde. They had left the cursed Aztec gold behind, of course, but Gibbs would have been just as happy to leave the rest. After all, who was to say that the curse couldn't leak out onto the "good" loot? But Jack wanted it for something, and when Captain Jack wanted something, Captain Jack got it. If he had to go alone in an escape boat and carry the treasure back bit by bit, he would do just that.
He had something up his sleeve, of that the crew was certain. His compass, squirreled away where no one could find it for months, had suddenly appeared in his hand. He seemed unusually excited about something, and Gibbs had privately vowed that they would never stop at Tortuga again. Every time they did, Jack went off on some fool errand or other and nearly got the lot of them killed. Granted, they usually came out of those scrapes richer men, but that was beside the point.
Barbossa's horde was locked in the hold. Surprisingly, no one had touched it after the initial move. Gibbs supposed the stories of the Aztec gold kept the usually-greedy sailors at bay. Or perhaps it was simply the promises of even greater riches when Jack finally found what he was looking for. Whatever the reason, it stayed right where it was left until they arrived at a certain island. Since it wasn't Isla de Muerta, Jack didn't risk mutiny when he ordered the treasure loaded into the long boats and taken ashore.
Gibbs had watched the process with apprehension; the island looked a bit too much like the cannibal's island for comfort. Still, Jack seemed perfectly comfortable, so he bit his tongue, drank some rum, and watched the ship. He listened to the dark mutterings when the sailors were ordered back and tried to remind everyone that Jack had never hornswaggled them before. He wondered along with everyone else when a handful of natives arrived to lead Jack and the gold somewhere out of view. He did not join in the renewed muttering when time passed with no sign of their captain, though he did begin to wonder if something was wrong. Finally, however, their patience was rewarded.
Marginally.
Jack finally came back, alone and with no great treasure to justify the loss. He tripped several times on the beach, which led to many half-hearted jokes about finding rum in a wilderness. Still, he rowed the escape boat back well enough, and it wasn't until he was floating next to the hull that anyone noticed anything particularly amiss.
Gibbs wiped his head with a handkerchief and took a swig from his flask. "Jack?" he ventured with a silent prayer to the nearest deity that he was wrong.
The strange woman in Jack's clothes flashed a roguish grin. "Bit of an unexpected side-effect, that was."
Those in the crew near enough to see and hear broke out into good-natured snickering. Word was passed back to everyone else, but the laughter was kept at a quiet minimum until Cotton's parrot announced, "Bilged on his own anchor!" It seemed to sum up the situation quite nicely, and their captain's eccentricities were temporarily forgiven in favor of mocking her plight.
Gibbs turned toward the interior of the ship to lean against the rail and wonder if he should be concerned or amused. It was bad luck to have a woman on board, after all. He shook his head and called, "Someone get Captain Jack back up here!"
A loud flurry of activity later, Jack strode across the deck to her cabin, compass in one hand and a small sack in the other, shouting orders to be under way again. She took the ribbing in remarkably good humor, and Gibbs decided that something was either very wrong or very right. Naturally, he followed.
"Jack…" he began once the door was safely closed behind him. "What happened to you?"
Any lingering hope he might have held that it was all some kind of trick was dashed when she raised a finger, swaying slightly, and said, "This." She upended the sack over the chart-strewn desk, and the largest uncut diamond either of them had ever seen rolled out. "Now, what do you think this is?"
After a moment to regain his voice, Gibbs replied, "Not worth what you spent." He leaned in for a closer look.
"That's the Eye of the Goddess," Jack explained. "It's said that any man who touches it will instantly become enlightened." Gibbs blinked and started to reach for it. "Of course, considering that it was a tribe of Amazons, it really should have been obvious what 'enlightened' meant."
Gibbs paused for that to register, then jerked his hand back as though the diamond had sprouted spikes and flames. He cleared his throat and sidled a bit farther away. "What are you going to do with it?"
An expression of long-suffering pain flashed across Jack's features. Apparently, she had not thought quite that far ahead. "Take it back to some temple like they expected me to, I suppose. And then we'll probably be back to get our treasure back."
"They expected you to pay them to do their work for them?" Gibbs asked slowly.
Jack shrugged and dropped her chair. "And here I thought they were getting the short end of the stick."
That didn't make much sense, so Gibbs decided to stop trying. He left Jack staring down at her randomly spinning compass needle and wondered if more rum would help.
A few leagues away, the native women laughed to each other and wondered how long it would take foolish Jack Sparrow to realize the Eye of the Goddess wasn't even a real diamond.