Jack and I sprinted across a chasm, Jack on the rope bridge and myself in the air, as I considered it an easier means of travel. We moved down a path beside a large woven hut. Jack tried to leap over a short rocky wall, but he quickly stopped himself as he realised it wasn't a wall at all, but the lip of yet another huge gorge. The drop was enough to give even someone like me with the ability to fly vertigo, and it caused a pained expression to cross upon Jack's face.

"Well, we need to find someway to get you across," I muttered. Jack and I looked around for a solution to this problem and soon spotted several long bamboo poles resting beside the base of the wall. Jack picked one up and squinted down at it, tossing it up and down in his hand lightly and watching as it bent slight under its own weight.

"You thinking of pole vaulting?" I asked, eyebrows raised.

Jack grinned. "Yep."

I shrugged and smiled, trying to hide my nervousness at what was about to happen, even though I knew it would turn out all right in the end. "It's worth a shot. You should get some rope though. In there." I pointed to the hut helpfully.

Jack nodded, dropping the pole and making haste in ducking into the hut. I followed at a more leisurely pace, and saw that it was filled with things the cannibals had taken from past travellers they had captured; various metal tools that hung from the roof, some of them stained with blood, bulging burlap sacks, mounds upon mounds of clothing…it was astounding. The floor was littered with chests of plates, crockery and different sorts of linen. In a corner, Jack found a coil of long, thick rope, and slung it over his shoulder.

Just before we headed out, I stopped, sniffing the air warily. "You smell that?"

Jack inhaled deeply, and pulled a face. "Yeah…" he muttered in agreement, his eyes sweeping around the hut until he located the source of the smell. His feet took him over to a sack that was full of small metal tins. Carefully, he pulled one out and read the label on the lid: Paprika.

My lips turned upwards in a small smile. "Of course, the spice trade," I murmured. Jack turned over the tin and we saw the sign on the bottom. It was the EICo symbol. "Run by the East India Company." I sighed, and lost my smile. "Their influence is even felt in a wild place like this."

Jack grunted and took the tin out of the hut with him. I followed with another small sigh.

We didn't get very far, since we almost ran smack-dab into what seemed to be the entire native tribe. They were standing outside the hut, waiting for their chief.

"Oh, bugger," Jack muttered.

"You said it," I agreed, my eyes wide.

Jack dropped the coil of rope with an innocent smile and unscrewed the lid from the tin of paprika. He proceeded to sprinkle the spice under his armpits as if it were deodorant. I wrinkled my nose at the strong smell of it, and rolled my eyes at Jack's antics. Just when I thought he couldn't get any stranger…paprika deodorant? The cannibals just stared at Jack, and gave each other confused looks.

"A little seasoning, eh?" Jack suggested to the tribe, waving a hand as though wafting the aroma towards himself. He sniffed the air appreciatively.

There was nothing I could do as the Pelegostos grabbed Jack and set about using the rope he had gotten from the hut to tie him to one of the long, thick bamboo poles. The rope was wrapped around his wrists, then around his shoulders, body, and the pole before finishing around his ankles, securing them together and also to the pole. While he was being tied up, Jack shot me an accusatory look, silently demanding to know why I wasn't helping him.

"I can't help you right now. I'd just pass through them," I reminded him, regret in my voice. He simply scowled in return, which was understandable.

With their chief secure, the natives marched back to the bonfire area, Jack being carried on his pole between two strong male warriors. The drums started up again and the skeleton-painted dancer was doing his thing; a captivating display to watch, if not a little creepy. The two men carrying Jack placed his pole on two forked posts so that he hung over the large pile of wood. Jack and I both noticed that Jack's earlier request of "more wood" had been granted, unfortunately enough.

"Well done," Jack muttered with a sigh.

I received a sudden mental flash of two large, round bone cages filled with Jack's crew in a race up the side of a vertical gorge. I smiled at the vision, because I knew that things were progressing as they should, even if things seemed a little unfortunate for Jack at the moment.

Just then, a native decorated with a scull motif sprinted across a rope bridge towards us, his steps quick yet sure. He was carrying a flaming torch. I gulped and bit my lip nervously. He stopped in the clearing beside the wood pile and shouted something to the crowd. Immediately the assembled natives repeated the cry excitedly and the flaming torch was lowered towards the wood pile. There was nothing Jack could do but watch helplessly, though I was prepared to step in and save my assignment if things didn't go according to plan.

Fortunately, I was spared from intervening as a teenaged native boy ran up, shouting desperately and otherwise distracting the crowd from their future meal, if only for the moment. I didn't know what he said, but I got the gist: the other prisoners were escaping.

All eyes turned to Jack, and it clicked in his mind that they still needed his command.

"This is another opportune moment!" I hissed to him. He blinked.

"Well, go on, go get them!" Jack ordered the tribe. He shouted something else in their native language that I didn't understand, and once again they all repeated it. Every last one of them ran off with great enthusiasm to chase Will, Gibbs, and the other surviving members of Jack's crew. This was just fine with Jack and I, except for the fact that the man who had been holding the flaming torch had dropped it dangerously close to the stack of wood and the dried-grass trimmings.

The natives rushed off as Jack tried to call one back to move the torch. "No, no! Oi! No, no!" he shouted, but he was unheard. "Not good," Jack proclaimed, as we once again found ourselves alone.

In an effort to put out the fire, Jack began to blow on it, as futile as he probably knew the effort was. However, this had the opposite effect desired as the flames leapt to the dry grass, in response to the added oxygen, and started to spread to the wood beneath him. Panicked, Jack blew harder, which did nothing to improve things. I walked up to him and casually hit him on the back of the head.

"Stop blowing on it! You'll make it worse!" I scolded. I hated sounding like a kindergarten teacher scolding a naughty young child, but what choice did I have? "Listen to me! I can't untie you because you'll fall into the fire, and you're too heavy for me to lift," I explained. The fire grew, and the heat from it was becoming very strong. "You'll have to use your body weight to bounce the pole off these posts, and roll clear of it."

"You can't just… put it out?" Jack demanded sulkily.

I shoved my scarred palm into his face, and he winced at the sight of it. "No. I'm not getting burnt again if I don't have to. Now hurry up!"

Jack sighed, and soon began to bounce the pole up and down, eventually getting it off the forked posts when it bounced high enough that it managed to escape the prongs. He hit the ground on his side roughly, and quickly rolled clear of the fire. I flinched, imagining that that had to hurt, and rushed over to help him with the rope.

"Good job," I praised. Jack kicked his feet free with one swift movement, and I narrowly missed being hit in the face. "Oi! Watch it!" I exclaimed in aggravation. I helped him to his feet, the long pole still tied to his back forcing him to bend over. "There's no time for the rest of it right now!" I shouted. "We have to run. Come on!"

Jack and I raced back along the rope bridge towards the hutted area where we had been caught before, though it didn't seem to be an easy task for Jack, since he had to run in a hunched-over position. Along the way Jack managed to get his hands free. We paused for a moment on a short stone wall while Jack wrestled with the tight coils of rope around his chest.

"Jack, look," I said, knocking on the bamboo to get his attention. I pointed to a young native boy who was holding a knife and fork, all ready to chow down. The boy cocked his head at the bizarre image of Jack Sparrow. Jack, apparently hit by a sudden inspiration, hopped off the wall and crab-walked over to him in a somewhat humorous fashion; had the moment not been so dire, I might have laughed. He snatched the knife out of the boy's hands and began to use it on the ropes around his chest as the boy scampered off.

"Uh oh," I muttered. Jack looked up at the sound of my voice, and saw the two tribal women with large dishes of whole fruit standing barely ten feet away. They were obviously interrupted from their preparations of the upcoming feast. "Uh…Jack, do something!" I urgently told him.

The seemingly only thing that came to Jack's mind, instead of the brilliant plan I might have hoped for, was to scream and run at the women, using the pole as a sort of javelin. I groaned and shook my head as the women easily avoided the crazy pirate, and Jack crashed into a pile of coconuts just a moment later. Fortunately, one coconut was speared onto the tip of Jack's pole. Finally, he was struck with a bright idea: to use it to hurl it at the women. With a grin, Jack swiftly swung around and the coconut flew off the end, propelled by the force being thrust upon it. With surprising quickness and nimble fingers, one of the women caught it right before it hit her in the face, just she was splattered my coconut milk. Lowering the coconut slowly, the woman glared at Jack through the milky white substance that coated her dark face.

"Oh, for crying out loud…" I muttered as the women began throwing their fruit at Jack. I drifted up into the air above the fray; I wasn't too crazy about the idea of the fruit hitting me. Impatiently, I watched as more and more fruit became skewered onto the pole on either side of Jack. His attempts at dodging it only made things worse.

At last, when he seemed to have had enough, he shouted "Stop it!", and to his amazement, they did. Jack stood there awkwardly, the middle of a giant fruit kebab. He cast an unsure glance up to me. I shrugged.

"Pole vault?" I suggested.

Jack's eyes moved to the lip of the chasm. He decided to go for it. With a wild, rather broken yell, he ran for the edge, planted the top of the pole into the ground, and as the post began to bend inward against his weight, was suddenly launched into the air. I flew close to him, but not too close, least I get hit by his out of control, end over end flight. Amazingly, he landed on his feet on the other side of the gorge, though it wasn't exactly a steady landing. I waited behind him and to the side as he grinned to himself, possibly thinking what a fantastic story this would all make some day.

Unfortunately, things took another turn for the worse as the fruit skewered on the top part of the pole slid down, causing him to overbalance and fall backwards into the gorge. My eyes went wide and I zoomed down after him, mindful of the post… but even more mindful of Jack's safety. The walls of the chasm narrowed as he fell, and Jack's pole became wedged between them as it balanced and became horizontal, eventually catching, sliding, and jerking to a stop. However, the rope tying Jack around the pole wasn't strong enough to keep his weight tethered to it because of the force in which he was suddenly stopped. He fell, spinning like a toy as the rope unwound, though the pole stayed where it was. When the rope ended, Jack's body stopped falling, leaving him to dangle there upside down, hanging by the rope still tied to the pole and wrapped around his foot.

I drifted down to my dizzy assignment, concerned. "Erm…are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so…" Jack replied, his voice bleary and his eyes a little unfocused. As one, we heard a scraping sound and looked up as the pole slipped down the rock wall a fraction, coming loose from its wedged position. It wasn't going to hold for much longer.

"Bugger," Jack moaned.

The pole slipped yet again and fell. Jack shouted hoarsely as he plummeted, his arms and legs waving frenziedly in the air. I allowed myself to fall with him, though my descent was much more controlled, more like a diving hawk. Below us loomed a number of rope bridges. I winced in anticipation - this was going to hurt.

Jack crashed through them, one after the other, each managing to slow his fall by only a tiny fraction, but none being strong enough to stop him completely. The falling pole turned vertical with the weight of the fruit, and fell through the rope and plank bridges after him, the wooden boards shaving the fruit off it when it passed through them. The bridges did exactly what I hoped: when he landed on the leafy jungle bottom with a resounding thud, there was no serious injury done to him. Secretly, however, I also dipped into my magic supply to help slow Jack's as well - I didn't want him to die from this, after all.

I landed gently beside Jack as he lay groaning on the ground. The bamboo pole was still falling towards us, and I ducked away when it finally buried itself in the ground mere inches from Jack's face, quivering in its spot when it was stuck there. After that, it was almost easy to avoid the falling fruit. When it was finally over we both breathed a sigh of relief. I had to remind myself that this relief was to be short-lived and we had to scramble to get off this island.

"Jack, are you okay?" I asked him, concerned. I severed the rope connecting him to the pole, knowing the rest of it would have to wait until later. "Can you get up? Can you run?"

"I think so," Jack groaned as he sat up. Unlike what I thought might happen, he didn't seem too perturbed that I apparently hadn't helped him all that much in his fall—or else he was still too dizzy to remember exactly what happened, anyway. "But what's the hurry?"

"The natives are on their way. We have to get back to the Black Pearl. NOW!" I told Jack sharply. He didn't protest as I helped pull him to his feet, and we started to run just as we heard the first sounds of the angry cannibals crashing through the jungle behind us.