Chapter Eight: Aztec Gold

The edge of a black sail cuts into the foreground, accompanied by the roar of the wind and the snap of canvas.

Elizabeth stalks the cabin. Torika was sitting on the floor, thinking.

Torika: (thoughts) What could've got us here in the first place. Was it fate? Or was it planned?

Suddenly, Pintel and Ragetti enter, holding between them a black silk dress.

Pintel: (to Elizabeth) You'll be dining with the Captain, and he requests you wear this.

Elizabeth: Tell the captain that I am disinclined to acquiesce to his request.

Pintel: (happy) He said you'd say that! He also said if that be the case, you'll be dining with the crew, and you'll be naked.

Angry, Elizabeth holds out her hand. Ragetti's grin fades.

Pintel: (lowly) I still can't believe that witch is 'Bootstrap's granddaughter.

Torika: Who are you calling a 'witch', you poor excuse for a pirate.

Pintel: (very angry) Why I otta... Never mind. I'll let you go. This time.

Ragetti crouches at the door, squinting into the keyhole using his wooden eye.

Pintel: You're an idiot.

Suddenly, he jerks back as Elizabeth's hairpin pokes through.

Ragetti: Ow. Me eye!

Ragetti's eye bounces on the deck, rolls away.

Ragetti: Don't let it drown!

He scrambles after it but it is stopped by the toe of a boot. Ragetti looks up at the Bo'sun. Behind him are more pirates, bearing trays of food.

Bo'sun: If ye like, I'd be happy to nail it in place.

Ragetti: That's all right, sir. Thank you.

He presses down on the eye; it rockets out from beneath his boot; Ragetti chases it. The Bo'sun and pirates move past.

The Bo'sun supervises as the pirates set out trays of food, wine, table setting, etc. Barbossa enters. The Monkey scrambles off his shoulder to a perch. Barbossa appraises Elizabeth in the dress. Lovely. Torika also comes to the table, sitting alongside where Elizabeth would be sitting.

Barbossa: Maid or not, it suits you.

Elizabeth: Dare I ask the fate of its previous owner?

Barbossa: Now, none of that. Please. Dig in.

Elizabeth sits, cuts a tiny piece of meat, eats it daintily. Torika does the same since she is supposed to look like she's Elizabeth's daughter.

Barbossa: No need to stand on ceremony, and no call to impress anyone. You must be hungry.

They drop the pretense: they're starving, and begin to eat like they are.

Barbossa: So what ever happened to your husband?

Elizabeth: The last Time I ever saw him was a few years ago. From what I heard, he was lost at sea.

Barbossa: Must've.

They return to eating, Barbossa watches them intently.

Barbossa: (to Elizabeth) Try the wine.

Elizabeth does, a huge swig; tears off a hunk of bread.

Barbossa: And the apples. One of those next.

She starts to bite into the apple. But she stops when she is suddenly aware that Barbossa is staring at her. So is the Monkey.

Elizabeth: You eat it.

Barbossa: Would that I could.

Elizabeth: It's poisoned.

She shoves her plate away and takes the opportunity to palm her knife. Barbossa laughs.

Barbossa: Oh, there would be no sense to be killing you both, Miss Turner.

Torika: Then release us. You have your trinket. We are of no further value to you!

Barbossa dangles the medallion.

Barbossa: You don't know what this is. Do you?

Elizabeth: It's a pirate medallion.

Barbossa: This is Aztec gold. One of eight hundred eighty two identical pieces they delivered in a stone chest to Cortez himself. Blood money, paid to stem the slaughter he wreaked upon them with his armies. (beat) But the greed of Cortez was insatiable. Thousands more fell to blade and ball, their voices crying out for vengeance as their blood stained the Earth. And so the heathen gods placed upon the gold a terrible curse. Any mortal who removes but a single piece from that stone chest, shall be punished, for eternity.

Elizabeth is intrigued, but refuses to admit it, but Torika seemed spooked by the legend.

Elizabeth: I hardly believe in ghost stories any more, Captain Barbossa.

Barbossa: Aye! That's exactly what I thought when we were first told the tale! (dismissive) Buried on an Island of the Dead what can't be found 'cept by those who know where it 'tis.

Then he remembers...

Barbossa: Find it we did, and there be the chest, and inside be the coins. Each man to his share and we took 'em all. We spent 'em and traded 'em and frittered 'em away for drink and food and pleasurable company. But the more we gave 'em away, the more we came to realize: the drink would not satisfy, and the food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world would not slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner. Compelled by greed we were, but now we are consumed by it.

The monkey screeches; Barbossa consoles it.

Barbossa: There is one way to end our curse. All the scattered pieces of the Aztec gold must be restored, and the blood repaid. (beat) Ten years we searched, looting ship and port, sifting through our plunder for it all. Eight hundred and eighty-one of 'em we found, despairing of ever finding the last. And all the while you fancied it a trinket 'round that pretty neck or to stash beneath your pillow while you read your pirate fairy tales. (beat) But thanks to ye, we have the final piece. Once we've reunited it with its mates, we are free.

Elizabeth: And the blood to be repaid? What of it?

Barbossa: That's why there's no sense to be killing you two. Yet.

Torika and Elizabeth are horrified. With the toe of his boot, Barbossa flips an apple up off the floor, catches it, offers it.

Barbossa: Apple?

Elizabeth slowly reaches for the apple and then comes up out of her chair, trying to run around Barbossa. They struggle briefly, and then suddenly he shoves her away. Elizabeth's stolen knife is now buried in Barbossa's chest, but is completely unaffected. He opens his shirt to get a better look at the knife, pulls it out with little effort. There is blood on the blade, but none anywhere else.

Barbossa: I'm curious, after killing me, what is it you planned to do next?

They back away, whirl and barrel out the door to find, The pirate crew works at their stations coiling lines, navigating the ship, swabbing decks they sing a sea shanty as they work but where the moonlight falls across their bodies, they are naught but skeletons. They turn away, run, get caught in the turning capstan, where two skeleton pirate musicians (violin and squeezebox) ride the capstan as it turns. Torika goes into hiding for truly this is a nightmare. Elizabeth jumps away, falls into a cargo hold, bounces back up off a sail. She evades a pirate, hides beneath the steps to the aft deck ... Suddenly, the skeletal monkey drops in front of Torika and Elizabeth with a screech, clutching the medallion. They bolt, but Barbossa grabs her roughly by the shoulders and jerks her back around. They shut their eyes.

Barbossa: Look! (shakes them) LOOK!

They look. The pirate crew are silent, now, all of them motionless, all of the pirates staring straight at them.

Barbossa: The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are, not among the living, and so cannot die -- but neither are we dead! For too long I have been parched of thirst, and unable to quench it! Too long, I have been starving to death -- and haven't died! (raises his hand) I feel nothing ... Not the wind on my face, nor the spray of the sea ... (reaches toward Elizabeth) ... nor the warmth of a woman's flesh.

His reaching hand becomes skeleton in the moonlight. Elizabeth and Torika flinch away. He leans forward into the moonlight.

Barbossa: You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one.

He grabs a wine bottle from a case, uncorks it with his teeth, gives her a little toast, and then drinks. The wine runs through his jaw and rib cage, drenching his clothes. They both dart around him, back into the cabin, and shut the door. Barbossa hurls the bottle away.

Elizabeth and Torika huddle in a corner of the room, terrified.

The Interceptor cuts across the waves. Jack at the wheel; Will tightens a line, moves back astern.

Li goes about the deck and finds a scroll lying on the deck.

Li: Hana. (to himself) You little stowaways.

Will sharpens his sword with a whetstone.

Jack: For a man who's made an industry of avoiding boats, you're a quick study.

Will: I worked passage from England as a cabin boy. (an attempt at guile) After my mother passed, I came out here ... looking for my father.

Jack: Is that so?

Will: (drops his attempt at guile) My father. Bill Turner? At the jail -­it was only after you learned my name that you agreed to help. (smiles) Since that's what I wanted, I didn't press the matter. I'm not a simpleton, Jack. You knew my father.

Jack considers his reply ... settles on 'truth.'

Jack: I knew him. Probably one of the few who knew him as William Turner. Most everyone just called him Bill, or 'Bootstrap' Bill.

Will: 'Bootstrap?'

Jack: Good man. Good pirate. And clever. I never met anyone with as clever a mind and hands as him. When you were puzzling out that cell door, it was like seeing his twin.

Will: That's not true.

Jack: I swear, you look just like him.

Will: It's not true that my father was a pirate.

Jack: Figured you wouldn't want to hear it...

Will: He was a merchant seaman! A respectable man who obeyed the law.

Jack: (laughs) You think your father is the only man who ever lived the Glasgow life, telling folk at home one thing, and then going off to do another? There's quite a few who come out here, hoping to amass enough swag to ease the burdens of respectable life. And they're all 'merchant seamen.'

Will: My father did not think of my mother, his family, as a burden.

Jack: Sure, because he could always go pirating.

Will: My father was not a pirate!

Will's sword is out, leveled at Jack. Jack gives him a disbelieving look.

Jack: Put it away, son. It's not worth getting beat again.

Will: You didn't beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I'd kill you.

Jack: Then that's not much incentive for me to fight fair, is it?

He turns the wheel hard. The sail boom whips around and slams Will in the chest; Will is swept off the ship. Jack picks up Will's sword, pokes at Will with it. Will hand over hands to the end of the boom, out over the water.

Jack: As long as you're just hanging there, pay attention. On a pirate ship, every man has an equal vote. Every man has an equal say in the rules he has to live by. Should, do, don't, shall, shall not ... those are mere suggestions. The only rules that really matter are these: (ticks them off on his fingers) What a man can do. And what a man can't do. For instance: you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man ... or you can't. But pirate's in your blood, boy, so you're going to have to square with that some day. Now, me, I can let you drown ... (Will looks alarmed) But I can't bring this ship into Tortuga iby oncie. Savvy? So...

Jack swings the boom so Will is safe on the deck. Jack flips the sword, offering it to Will.

Can you sail under the command of a pirate ... or can you not?

Will grabs the sword from him.

Will: Tortuga?

Jack: Tortuga.

A dank, dirty port, where the tides have swept together the scum of the Caribbean. Pirates dunk a merchant for sport. Painted ladies display their wares. A Donkey bellows.

Jack: Sailing between islands is one thing, but I'll not risk the open sea without an able crew.

Jack and Will walk through the streets. Will studies the environment with a dubious expression.

Jack: Besides, no one should go their life without breathing deep the bouquet that is­- Tortuga! Savvy? What do you think?

A woman dumps a thunderpot from a second story window; Will sidesteps the, er, thunder.

Will: It'll linger.

Jack: I tell you, mate, if every town in the world was like this one, no man would ever feel unwanted.

A redhead in a scarlet dress chatting up two sailors spots Jack. She strides up to him in a bad mood.

Jack: Scarlett!

(get's slapped hard and she stalks off)

Jack: Not sure I deserve that one.

He turns back, just as a smiling light brunette wench plants herself in front of him. Jack smiles back.

Jack: Naru!

Naru: (pointing after Scarlett) Who was she?

Jack: What?

(gets slapped again, Naru walks off)

Jack: I may have deserved that.

Li: How many women are there in this town?

Jack: Point taken. The quicker we get our crew and away, the better. Fortunately for us, the finest sailors in the world be found in all of Tortuga.

A drunken man lays in the mud, having a friendly conversation with two pigs. He wears an old tattered Navy jacket. Water splashes across his face, revealing: this is old Joshamee Gibbs. He sputters and roars:

Gibbs: Curse you for breathing, you slack­hawed idiot! (recognizes Jack) Mother's love, Jack, you know better than to wake a man when he's sleeping. It's bad luck!

Jack: Well, fortunately, I know how to counter it. The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink, and the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking.

Gibbs: Aye, that'll about do it.

Jack helps Gibbs to his feet and then Gibbs is hit with a second wave of water. Li stands there with the bucket.

Gibbs: Blast it, I'm already awake!

Will: That was for the smell.

Gibbs starts to retort angrily, reconsiders, shrugs: 'Fair enough.'

Jack and Gibbs sit in the shadows, lit by a single candle. Will stands away from them, hand on sword, keeping a lookout. Two tankards are set down. Gibbs lifts it to take a swig. Li then enters the room that they're sitting.

Jack: Just the one.

Gibbs pauses. He takes a dainty sip.

Gibbs: Best make it last then. Now, what's the nature of this venture of yours?

Jack and Li lean forward. Gibbs leans forward.

Li: We're going after the Black Pearl.

Gibbs straightens up like he's been hit. Picks up his drink, --thinks better of it, puts it down. Jack has not moved.

Gibbs: What the boy say?

Jack: We're going after the Black Pearl. I know where it's going to be, and I'm going to take it.

Gibbs: Jack, it's a fool's errand. You know better than me the tales of the Black Pearl.

Jack: That's why I know what Barbossa is up to. All I need is a crew.

Gibbs: I've heard of Captain Barbossa he's not a man to suffer fools, nor strike a bargain with one.

Jack: Then it's a good thing we're not fools then, mate.

Gibbs: Prove me wrong. What makes you think Barbossa will give up his ship to you?

Jack: It's just a matter of leverage.

He jerks his head toward Will, who is still keeping an eye out and is in fact listening to their conversation. Li even turned his head toward Jack when he said 'leverage.'

Gibbs: The kid at the archway?

Jack: That is the child of Bootstrap Bill Turner. His only child. Savvy?

Gibbs' eyes widen over the edge of the tankard.

Gibbs: Is he, now? Maybe Barbossa will strike a bargain with a fool, at that ... Leverage, says you. I think I feel a change in the wind, says I. I'll find us a crew. There's bound to be a few sailors on this rock crazy as you.

Jack and Li lift their tankards in a toast.

Li: One can only hope.

Jack: Take what you can.

Gibbs: Give nothing back!

They drink, and slam down their tankards. Will whirls at the sound, sword out, kicks over a table, and searches for an opponent.

Gibbs: The kid's a bit of stick, eh?

Jack: You've no idea.

After knowing that the coast is clear, Kero comes flying out from behind one of the barrels of rum.

Kero: All clear.

And with that, Maddy, Tai, and Hana come out of their hiding places. It was late and they should be asleep.

Tai: We should be going to sleep. We came to help both Mr. Showron and Mr. Turner save Torika and Miss Swan.

Maddy: But if they find us, that pirate, Sparrow will throw us over board. Right, Hana?

Hana: Oh, Sparrow. You so dreamy.

(everyone else falls anime style)

A weather-beaten group of swabs stand in a ragged line up.

Gibbs: Feast your eyes, Cap'n. All of 'em faithful hands before the mast, every man worth his salt (most notably the sailor who was small in stature, Marty) and crazy, to boot.

Will and Li don't seem impressed.

Jack: You, sailor.

Gibbs: Cotton, sir.

Jack: Mr. Cotton. Do you have the courage and fortitude to follow orders and stay true in the face of danger and almost certain death? (looks at Will, waits for the answer; none comes) Mr. Cotton? Answer, man!

Gibbs: He's a mute, sir. Poor devil had his tongue cut out...

Cotton opens his mouth to show this. Jack grimaces.

Gibbs: So he trained the parrot to talk for him. No one's yet figured how.

Jack gets it. Tries again:

Jack: Mr. Cotton... 's Parrot. Same question.

Cotton's parrot: Wind in your sails! Wind in your sails!

Gibbs: Mostly, we figure that means 'yes.'

Jack: Of course it does. (raises his voice) I put it to all of you: we're venturing a rescue here, and if any man is unwilling to face the perils of Isle de Muerta and the Black Pearl (a quick, low aside) and for the purposes of this interrogatory, presume that all stories you've heard are true (loud again) then let him leave now!

He waits, watches. Some of the sailors exchange nervous glances, others look more determined than ever, but none leave, to Jack's relief and partial, amazement.

Jack: Still here. (turns to Will and Li) Satisfied?

Will: You've proved they're mad.

Sailor: What is the benefit for us?

Jack turns at the sound of the voice as pirates murmur agreement. Jack moves along, stops in front of a hunched sailor, eyes downcast, face shaded by a buckled tricorner hat. Jack leans to the side, trying to peer beneath the hat. The sailor looks up and it's AnaMaria. And she's angry.

Jack: AnaMaria?

Really angry. She smacks Jack with a hard right cross.

Li: I suppose you didn't deserve that one, either?

Jack: No, that one I deserved.

AnaMaria: You stole my boat!

Jack: Actually-

AnaMaria smacks him again, sending him sprawling.

Jack: Borrowed. Without permission. But with every intention of bringing it back to you.

AnaMaria: But you didn't! The Jolly Mon was my livelihood! How am I to catch fish with no boat to fish from?

Jack: You'll get another one!

AnaMaria: (a threat) I will.

Will: A better one.

Jack: A better one.

Li: (points toward the Interceptor) That one.

Jack: What one?

Li nods toward the ship. Jack snaps a wide-eyed look at Li.

Jack: That one?!

Li gives him a hard look in return ("Get with the program!"). Jack realizes it's a good plan.

Jack: Aye, that one! All of you! Sail under my command, and at voyage's end - the Interceptor will be yours! Elect your own captain, go out on account, and live the lives of free men. What say you?

The sailors respond: "Aye," "I'm in," etc., Including AnaMaria, satisfied with that; she nods.

Cotton's Parrot: Anchors Aweigh!

Gibbs: Just a mention, sir, a friendly remainder, as it were, but it's frightful bad luck to bring a woman aboard, sir.

Jack glances up at the sky, back to Gibbs.

Jack: It'll be far worse not to have her.

He moves away. Gibbs, Will, and Li exchange a puzzled look.

Li: I just want to warn you that there are a couple of stowaways on board.

Gibbs: Great, just when thing could get any worse.

(later that night)

A flash of lightning. Crack of thunder. Canvas is stretched taut. The ship rocks into a swell, climbs up the other side. The crew are excellent, practiced sailors, but it still takes everything they have to keep the ship afloat. AnaMaria is at the helm. Will looks forward, to where Jack, out near the prow, faces the storm head on. He glances down at his compass, nods.

Will: How can we sail to and island that nobody can find ... with a compass that doesn't work?

Gibbs: Aye, the compass doesn't point north. But we're not trying to find north, are we?

The ship tilts; AnaMaria fights the wheel.

AnaMaria: That fool will have us lose the sails, and the masts besides!

Gibbs nods, moves away. A roaring wind blowing back Jack's hair, eyes intent on their course. Gibbs climbs the tilted deck toward him.

Gibbs: We'd best drop canvas, sir!

Jack: She can hold a bit longer.

The wind picks even more, howling. Jack smiles.

Gibbs: (shouts) What's in your head as puts you in such a fine mood, Captain?

Jack: (shouts) We're catching up!

Jack checks his compass again, looks back to sea, enjoying himself. Gibbs stares at him like he's a crazy man.

Li: He really is crazy.

To be continued...