Barbossa is sitting on a high music stool, getting to grips with a guitar. He has begun this by caressing it and announcing, "A guitar is just like a woman- ye just need to play it properly for it to make good noises." He then attempts a chord. Some awful twanging ensues and the invisible audience snigger. Someone passes remarks about Barbossa's virility.

Jack Sparrow, who is hemming and hawing and doing voice exercises, does some complicated hand movement very close to Barbossa's face. Eventually Barbossa works out Jack would like to be handed the guitar, and he privately curses Jack for not just asking for it like a normal man.

Jack proceeds to play an improvised version of Cream's 'Sunshine of Your Love'. There is much applause and wolf-whistling and the occasional scream of a fangirl dying from terminal adoration. Eric Clapton runs onstage, kisses Jack passionately, and runs off. Jack passes the guitar back to Barbossa with an exaggerated wink, and promises, "Should sing like a birdie, mate." Barbossa wants to hate him, but finds his fingers have suddenly become possessed. Each one can play the guitar flawlessly, and each one appears to have the black spot marring a knuckle. Terrified, Barbossa fixes his eyes on Jack- his precious friend Jack, his darling son Jack, his lovely Jack, and whispers, "Eep." Jack, however, does not look round. He instead begins singing:

"This is the greatest and best song in world... Tribute."

Further applause, and the flat squeak of a copyright lawyer for Tenacious D being crushed underfoot by the fangirls who haven't already died a happy death.

"A long time ago," Jack continues, "me and me first mate Hector here," and Barbossa feels the blush climb up the rope of his spine at the unaccustomed use of his first name, "we was a-sailin' down a wet and wild sea. All of a sudden, there slimed a slimy seabeast, from the depths of the sea."

Davy Jones of course, thinks Barbossa, but his jaw seems to be clamped shut and he can't interrupt the all-powerful Jack. He desperately wants to recite Coleridge, 'Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / Upon the slimy sea,' just so the fangirls will think he's clever and wail with love for him, but Jack has more to say.

"AND HE SAID... 'Play the best song in the world... or I'll eat your souls-ah.'"

That was the worst Scottish accent I have ever heard, thinks Barbossa bitterly.

"Well, me and Hector," argh, "we looked at each other, AND WE EACH SAID... 'Aye, matey.'"

Bet we didn't, thinks Barbossa savagely. Because you never say something as simple as 'aye, matey' if you've got a chance for verbose soliloquy.

"And we played the first thing that came to our heads. It just so happened to be... the best song in the world! It was the best song in the world!"

Quelle surprise, thinks Barbossa. His fingers are dancing with demonic rapidity across the strings. He could swear the music is getting louder, and Jack's voice appears to be growing in volume too.

"Look into me eyes and it's easy to state, rum and men equals love, scurvy dogs equal hate. 'Twas the touch of fate..."

Har har, thinks Barbossa, and ho ho, and hee hee. Give me a break. No, seriously, give me a break because my hand is hurting. Are those black spots... growing?

"Twas a chance every hundred t'ousand years yer get, when the stars are glowin' and the planets are set, and the sea is wet."

Barbossa would give his Megalomaniac Buccaneer Captain Cackle away for a five minute break from his melodious possession, so that he can hit his head against a healthy brick wall.

"Needless to say," Jack goes on, "the beast was stunned! He wriggled his tentacillies... and the beast was done. He asked us, '(peculiar squidlike snort), Be ye the Navy?' And we said, 'Nay, we are but pi-RATES!"

And at this point Jack launches into some sort of quasi-operatic yodelling, before picking up where he left off.

"This is not... the greatest song in the world. Nay. This is just a tribute. Too drunk t'remember the greatest song in the world. Nay. This is a tribute... to the greatest song in the world, savvy? It was the greatest song in the world, savvy? 'Twas the best bloody sailin' song, the greatest song in the world, savvy?"

Suddenly Jack begins to talk oddness. "Ti Tuga digga tu Gi Friba fligugibu..." and other such randomness. Barbossa finds himself providing some sort of nonsensical bass beat to this awful lyric-butchering. "Bow. Bow. Bow," he mumbles. Oh well. At least he's stopped having to play the guitar. Unfortunately his relief is short lived, as suddenly Jack whispers with impressive venom, "Davy Jones!" and Barbossa is forced onto a virtuoso guitar solo.

Jack tosses some rum back from a bottle Barbossa could swear wasn't there when he was improvising. "And the peculiar thing is, me hearties, the song we sang on that fateful night, it didn't actually sound ANYTHING LIKE THIS SONG!"

Great, thinks Barbossa. Does that mean we're going to have to do another one of these once yer've sobered up? Incidentally, when have yer ever said 'me hearties'? Only pirates with serious personality problems say that sort of thing.

"This is just a tribute. You've gotta believe me! I wish you were there! 'Twas a matter of opinion! Ah! Fook! Good God! God fearin'! I bet you're surprised to find you can't catch me!"

Don't, thinks Barbossa warningly, don't do the famous line.

"Whoop-a-lally! I'm found! I'm a lucky bloody pirate and I won't lie around! Savvy?" He swings round to face Barbossa, and screeches, "Savvy?"

At this point, Barbossa finds his Jack's face is melting before his eyes. He also realises, too late, that during the course of the song, the black spots have been clambering up his body, congregating at the heart, so that it looks like a gunshot wound in his ribs. He faints...

...and wakes up.

Barbossa unglued his eyes. Something demented had apparently cemented them together whilst he was sleeping. This same savage creature had filled his mouth with sludgy fluff tasting like the monkey's urinal, and his head with some huge, thumping, omnipotent pain.

He was quietly worrying about the possibility that Jack might have been discovered on his island and found already when Pintel burst into the cabins.

"Damn yer scabby hide man," roared Barbossa, which did horrible things to his hangover head. He longed for a pale, buxom wench with soft hands and lavender soap to massage his temples. He especially wanted the lavender soap. Lavender soap, he decided blearily, was the least he could ask for. "What in the name of mother and mistress do yer want this early in the morning?"

Pintel looked agonised. "A strange pink mist's descended all over the ship, Cap'n," he said desperately, "and I can't find Ragetti!"

"Put your boyfriend on a leash," growled Barbossa. "I don't have time to sort out your relationship troubles. Do I look like a lovely smiley agony uncle?"

Indeed Barbossa was not a smiley man. But Pintel was nothing if not a complete idiot, and ferociously protective of his cycloptic bosom buddy. "But the pink mist, cap'n?" he insisted.

Barbossa half crawled, half fell out of bed. "I don't know what it be," he muttered, "but I have no doubt whatsoever ex-Captain Lovehaste has something to do with it. Fetch her to me, so I can have her skinned."

Pintel appeared to go monochrome. This was the effect of his skin paling beneath the black grime. "Er... she's gone missing too, cap'n. She was last seen about to get her eyebrows seen t-"

He addressed this last remark to a Barbossa-shaped space in the cabin, because the captain had shown an impressive turn of speed in charging deliriously for the door and out into a frosty, decidedly rose-tinted fog.