Jack lifted anchor as soon as he got back to the ship. He set sail back toward New Flimwell, and then left Cotton at the wheel, called for a bottle of rum, and disappeared into his cabin.

He had to find out what happened, and who had done it. A brutal attack like that, led by a woman, was incongruous from the start. A woman who was looking for something or someone—she had to be looking for either Elizabeth, or for Will's heart, or maybe even both.

And that wasn't his only problem. What was he going to do with Elizabeth? He didn't know how long her respectable aunt was willing to stay with her in a pirate town, but he knew that Elizabeth wouldn't want to stay there with his father indefinitely. Jack himself preferred to keep his visits to Teague brief; he didn't figure Elizabeth and her aunt would really want to set down roots in the home of the most intimidating pirate in the Cove.

It was a pity that she had married that whelp in the first place, but as long as she had, it was a pity that the whelp couldn't be with her. It was a rotten shame that she'd had to carry and bear her babe without any support from the father of said babe—or indeed, without even his knowledge. If it hadn't been for the late Mrs Thomas and for Jack's rapid actions, Will wouldn't have anyone to go home to in nine years.

If only there were some way he could contact Will. In light of recent events, he had one or two things to discuss with Elizabeth's husband. If there was only some way Will could be freed of the curse of the Dutchman, he could go home to his wife. Better yet, Jack could be freed of his self-imposed obligation to check in on the aforementioned wife, and of his growing compulsion to spend time bantering and flirting with her, and of his increasing—

"Stirrings, damn me," he muttered. Stirrings, possibly even feelings, for another man's wife, when both the man and the wife were his friends. No, this could not continue. He had to find some way to contact Will—for his own sake just as much as for Elizabeth's!

He called on his loyal first mate.

"Mr Gibbs! A moment, if you please."

"Aye, sir?"

"If a sailor in fine health and with a long life ahead of him, wished to confer verbally and in no other way with the captain of the Flying Dutchman and yet continue with the aforementioned long life and fine health, how do you fancy it might be managed?"

Gibbs thought a moment. "Sink a ship, maybe."

"Seems a bit—" Jack waved his hands expressively, "—drastic. Also difficult to accomplish without loss of life, which is, I believe, the only way to get his attention. And loss of life is often just as wasteful as needlessly sinking a ship. Think again, Gibbs."

Gibbs thought again. "Find someone who's dying, and tie a message to 'im."

Jack tsked. "Last resort only. It's tacky. Also, the message-on-a-corpse has already been done, by the Dutchman's current captain, in fact." Jack sighed, staring at the horizon. "Think on it further, Mr Gibbs."

"Aye, I'll do me best, Jack."

The cabin boy ascended the stairs to the top deck and gave Jack a sloppy salute. "Pardon me, Captain, sir, but Mr James wants to know what you'd like for supper."

"Tell Mr James to choose something himself. Tell Mr James to surprise me. I have absolute faith in Mr James' sense of the gustatorially appropriate, especially when it comes to fine piratical cuis—Ahhhhhh!" Jack yelped and leaped back as Barbossa's monkey jumped up into his face and screeched at him. It screeched again, and then darted away. Jack shuddered.

"Lad, catch me that monkey," he ordered. "Within the hour!"

"Aye, Captain!" the cabin boy saluted again, smartly this time, and scurried off.

"The boy's name is Simon, Jack," Gibbs remonstrated gently.

"Is it, now. Well, I'm concentrating more on the simian, at the moment," Jack growled. "I have to get it off my ship before it drives me mad!"

"—Er," Gibbs added under his breath.

Jack gave him a sharp look. "Just you concentrate on how I can get in touch with Will, Mr Gibbs, without someone dying or sinking a ship. Eh?"

"Aye, Captain."

Jack nodded sharply and went back to his cabin. Frowning and restless, he swept the charts aside and took a fresh square of parchment. He wrote a brief message, corked his inkwell again, and sat back drumming his fingers thoughtfully. Rum. He needed rum. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a nearly empty bottle, which he shook and eyed suspiciously when he heard how little was in it. He opened it and tipped it back to let the last few mouthfuls wash down his throat.

"Gone," he mourned. "Always gone."

He set down the bottle and eyed it, then looked at his parchment. "Message in a bottle?" he muttered, still drumming his fingers. "No, no connection with death. Wouldn't get his attention. Might get Calypso's, and that we do not want." Drum, drum, drum. "Well, it's a start, though."

He rolled up the parchment and stuffed it into the bottle (carefully swallowing the last few drops first, just to make sure the parchment stayed dry), and corked the bottle as tightly as he could. "Great. Now what?"

At that moment, the monkey—who had an uncanny ability to get in and out of locked rooms; it was one of the things that drove Jack insane about it—swooped in, grabbed Jack's paperweight, and lobbed it at his head.

"OW!" Jack yelled, clutching his head and glaring at the monkey. "That's it, you little demon!" he growled. "I've had it with you! You're going over!" He feinted left, then attacked right, and managed to catch the monkey. It screeched in his face, knocking over the rum bottle with the message in it.

Jack stared at it for a long moment. Slowly, he began to grin.

Two minutes later he emerged, monkey in one hand and rum bottle in the other, and went up to the upper deck where Gibbs was at the helm.

"I see you caught the monkey."

"I did indeed," Jack said with a large degree of satisfaction. "Which reminds me—Simon!" he bawled up toward the sails.

"Aye?" came the cabin boy's thin voice from up near the crow's nest.

"I caught the monkey! Come down!"

"Aye, sir!" came the boy's voice, sounding relieved.

Jack gave Gibbs a look as if to say there, see? I'm not so bad, and Gibbs smiled and nodded.

"I still haven't thought of anything yet, Captain," he said.

Jack airily waved away his concern. "No matter, Mr Gibbs. At the moment I require your assistance with something different."

"Of course, sir. What?"

"I'm launching a new seacraft. I don't have any champagne to break over its head—ah, hull, and wouldn't waste it like that even if I did, but perhaps we can drink to it later."

Gibbs blinked. "A new seacraft, Captain?"

Jack nodded, his hands busy tying some sort of cord around the monkey's neck and back. He pulled the knot tight and held up the monkey with the bottle tied to its back, inspecting his handiwork. "Aye. It's called the J.S.M Carrier Pigeon." With that, he drew back his arm and flung the monkey over the stern as hard as he could. The monkey let out a loud descant of a screech, culminating in a splash.

Jack smiled happily at Gibbs, nodded, and went back below.

Gibbs chuckled. "That's different, all right." Sending an undead monkey into the domain of Davy Jones probably would be a good way to get Will's attention, at that!