Andy

I woke up in the night and found Jack sitting on the bed beside me, facing the opposite wall and his bed. I reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't seem to notice or care. Then I realized why; he was asleep. "Jack!" I woke him with a whisper.

"But why is the rum gone?" He demanded before realizing his wake. He looked about hysterically a moment, and then caught my eye. "Oh." His tone was uninterested and dismissing. Then he asked "What are you doing here?" believing himself to be in bed with me oddly joining him.

"That's exactly what I was going to ask you."

He almost smiled. "Hmm." At that moment, it seemed to hit him. Jack turned from me and faced his bed again. "What am I doing here?" He wondered aloud.

I sighed. That was Jack for you! "I don't know."

"Oh. Well in that case…" He climbed down to the ground and got in his own bed. Then, pulling the covers up slightly, he covered his eyes with the brim of his hat as I began to become drowsy again. And as my eyes closed, Jack spoke up, breaking the silence. "Andy?"

"Hmm?"

"I remember what I was doin' up there."

"Continue."

I was next informed. "I need a gun."

That came to me somewhat as a surprise. "Excuse me?"

"I…I need a gun, Andy."

Great. "Whatever happened to that old pistol after you used your shot? Didn't you keep it? I can find some bullets for you to fill it with." I offered, turning in bed to look in the general direction of Jack.

There was a silence.

"You did keep it, didn't you?"

More silence, but only for a moment's time. "Well, uh, no."

Lovely. What was I supposed to do? I had only one pistol myself; and I needed it. "Jack, why didn't you mention this in Tortugas?"

"Umm…I was a little drunk at the time. Besides, why should I have bothered when you can get me one now?"

"How do you expect me to do that, swim back to Tortugas, get you a pistol, and then meet you at Isla De Muerta?"

"That'd be nice."

That'd be nice? "That'd take weeks! If I didn't get blown from the water by pirates, die of hunger, or of thirst or exhaustion!"

Jack considered. "Right, mate; that'd be bad."

"That'd—"I stopped.

My brother lifted his hat's edge to peer at me from under it. "What?"

I had an epiphany. "I have a thought."

"What d'ya think?" He became interested, sitting up to listen.

"I think it'd take five days for The Pearl to sink if I put a bullet hole in her hull."

Jack's response was an expected, protective one. "I think you'd better not be puttin' any hole in my ship!"

I continued. "I think that I could take the rowboat, and I think I could get to The Pearl before Cortez reaches the island. I might hold him at the tip of my blade and tell him to either surrender The Pearl—which he isn't likely to do—or have a hole in it made by my loaded pistol. I think he'll be smart enough to figure that a hole made by my bullet would bring down The Pearl in three to five days and that he could make it back to Tortugas and have it repaired before it sinks."

My brother caught my drift and added "I think that means Will won't have to repair my Pearl and that while Cortez is in Tortugas, we can set a trap or something for him here."

But that wouldn't do. "But I think we'd also have to return to Tortugas so we can get you a pistol."

It took a short while for Jack to register what I'd said, but he got it. "I think that'll work too…but what if Cortez gets the gold before going to Tortugas?"

"He won't. He's smart enough to know that if he did, The Pearl would just sink more while he was loading, and the weight of the gold would make The Pearl either go down faster or make her go slower, so he wouldn't reach Tortugas in time."

"Right." There was a second when all was quiet, but Jack broke it. "But why don't we just kill Cortez and take The Pearl instead?"

"If the British officers ever catch us, there'll just be one more reason to shoot or hang us…Then The Black Pearl will probably be destroyed or made an officer's ship, and all the things we've done for it will have been for nothing."

Jack kept his mouth shut and didn't respond immediately. He seemed to be searching for an alternate reasoning, since mine wasn't so very appealing to him—especially that part about The Pearl. "Oh, right—gotcha...Cortez lives."