Chapter XIV - The Brethren of the Coast
 
 

    The boat was slightly crowded, seven men in it in all, and Jack was jostled back and forth a bit before finally settling down into a position across from the two cloaked figures, Mission and the unidentified stranger, whose face was obscured in darkness from his hood. Mission was an old, plump man, mostly hairless, having degenerated in recent years into what amounted to a heap of wrinkled flesh that sometimes possessed a pair of spectacles. He smiled nervously at Jack.
    "Bless me eyes," he quavered. "Now there's a face I had'na seen for too, too long. Same as always, eh, Jack? So the rumors were true after all..."
    "Don't get started," Jack warned. And then, in a kinder voice, "How are you holdin', old man?"
    "Barely," Mission chuckled. "By this ol' heart o' mine, I'll be dead afore mornin's out." He winked at Jack, as expressed by a flap of tuffed eyebrow twitching slightly, for no eyes could be seen. "I say that of meself every day, I said of meself for ten years, t'ain't happened yet."
    They had rowed out of the lake into the cave now, and Inigo, sitting in the bow with Granuaile, attached his lantern to a pole and held it out in front of the boat to see better by. For a time, the occupants of the boat fell silent in admiration of their surroundings; Libertalia may have been a fairly recent presence in the world but the Order and its meeting halls were ancient, and showed the timeless wealth of its members. The walls of the tunnel through which they now rowed was covered in twinkling gold dust, inlaid with silver and jeweled depictions of famous battles and pirates. The further along through the tunnel they went, the less the drawings showed definite figures and began to depict myths and legends, including, it seemed, an alternate version of the Biblical genesis that showed God being an oppressive monarchy and the forbidden apple being the promise of social and religious freedom.
    Jack was only marginally disappointed to see he hadn't made it onto the walls yet.
    "The wealth of this place," Mission sighed. "You could rebuilt Libertalia from the ground up with it..."
    "How did the fire start?" Jack asked.
    "Save it for the meeting, Jack," Kidd said. "We'll get all our answers then."
    "Captain Kidd is correct," said Hands. "Not much longer now, so take heart."
    Reluctantly conceding to this, Jack resumed to look at the wall carvings again, and was a bit irked to see a drawing curiously resembling Dread Pirate Roberts among them, until the hooded stranger shifted in his seat closer to him and nudged him in the upper arm.
    "Haben Sie irgendeinen Tabak für ein rauchendes Rohr?" he inquired, in a high, aristocratic, yet swaggering tone.
    "Ich spreche nicht Deutsches," Jack muttered, glancing at the man once in annoyance and then turning away. And then he stopped, some back part of his brain recognizing the familiarity of the voice, and snapped his head back, eyes wide.
    The cowled stranger, seeing this, chuckled and pulled back his hood. In the lantern light Jack made out the features of a high cheekboned, German nosed man with a graying beard and twisted moustache, with a tobacco pipe between his grinning teeth.
    "Munchausen!" Jack exclaimed, so loudly that his voice echoed throughout the tunnels. He nearly fell from his seat reaching out for the man, as if to touch him to ascertain he was real. "Damn me eyes if it isn't really you! Baron von Munchausen, you old bastard!"
    "Delighted to see you again, Sparrow," said Munchausen, removing the pipe from his mouth. His German accent was nearly undetectable in his English speech. "You seem to be keeping quite well."
    "They told me you were dead!" Jack said. At the front of the boat, Inigo sneezed, and looked over his shoulder, a bit bewildered.
    The Baron Munchausen laughed heartily. "So I was, old friend, so I was. Not the first time, and it won't be the last. It's an experience I don't hesitate strongly to recommend. You really ought to try it sometime."
    "Remarkable," said Captain Kidd, his attention drawn to the conversation. "It would seem Mister Hands and I remain the only men in this boat who have yet to find a means to cheat death!"
    They reached the end of the waterway, coming to beach on a sand deposit that preceeded a broad stone platform, flanked by two wooden torch stands that framed the door.
    The door was an impressive piece of work. The stories claimed it was stolen from right under the nose of a great emperor centuries ago. It was gilded with precious metal and stone, bordered with a heavy gold frame that bore at its arch a coat of arms, surrounded by the Latin words:

    Most notably the door had no handles, or even knockers. Strange as this was, that was the limit to it. There were no magical carvings that only became visible at the utterance of certain words, nor was there any sort of magical set of knobs that spoke only truth or lies, nor, surprisingly, a riddling sphinx. It was just a handleless door.
    "This isn't one of those 'open sesame' things, is it?" Inigo asked doubtfully.
    "You've never been to this hall, Captain Roberts?" Hands queried.
    "As a matter of fact--"
    "Yes he has," squeaked up Mission. "I remember-- When we held ol' Antonio Macaw's trial, twenty-two years ago, it was..."
    Inigo glanced quickly at Jack, who gave as slight a nod as possible. Inigo recovered quickly and put on a bright smile. "Of course. I remember now. Sorry, but the memory does go with time. Wouldn't you agree, Jack?"
    "Perhaps Mister Roberts would enlighten Lady O'Malley and myself," Kidd suggested cordially, gesturing to the door with one hand while the other leaned heavily on his cane. "Neither of us have ever come to this place, after all."
    "An excellent idea. Very well," Inigo said, trying to keep his voice steady. He clumsily passed his lantern to Jack, met his eyes, and lifted his eyebrows. He got an apologetic half-smile and a slight shake of the head.
    Not to be deterred, Inigo strut up to the door until he all but ran into it, and then stopped hold. He craned his head upward: there were no slide-lock mechanisms to be seen; downward: no conspicuous trapdoors; side to side: no slightly out of place bits of rock set into the wall, nothing fit to admit a hand, nothing shaped like a palm and five spread fingers to press into.
    Stupid, he thought bitterly. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...
    He hit his fist on the door. It swung inward.
    Behind him, the other pirates applauded politely. All except Granuaile, who said: "That's ludicrous. Anyone could break in that way."
    "Do you know, my lady," said Mission, scuttling forward behind Inigo, "it's never come up."
    The room the door Inigo opened led into a larger room, roughly circular and hewn out of rock by the processes of erosion long since receeded. The walls were bare, save for the far one, that was fitted with a large metal rack, on which were hung swords, pistols, and every other manner of weapon, and just beyond it was a door illuminated by torchlight.
    Hands unbuckled the sword from his belt and looked around expectantly for others to do the same. "I'm afraid this is only a very recently implemented precaution, so you may not have been aware of it." He hung the sword by the loop of its sheath from a hook on the rack. "Scuffles, as you know, have been known to break out during heated debates..."
    "Y'want us to drop our weapons?" Jack demanded, sounding affronted. "A pirate'd as soon run round in his knickers than give up his sword."
    "Sadly, this is the way of things. Please understand that it was really all rather necessary," said Captain Hands reproachfully. "It should be some consolation that all others will be the same way."
    Finding themselves left with little choice in the matter, the pirates removed their weapons: in all, six swords, four pistols, eighteen knives, and two flasks of iocaine powder.
    "You'll have to leave your cane too, Mister Kidd," Hands told the older man.
    "You'd leave a man without his only means to walk?" Kidd demanded, clutching to the cane like a lifeline.
    "I meant no offense," the young captain said hurriedly, "just that we have known men to hit each other with their walking sticks in a fit of anger--"
    "For God's sake, let it be," Granuaile said, exasperated. "We're delayed as it is."
    "Indeed you are right, madam," said Hands, with a bit of reluctance. "I admit I do get caught up in these safety measures too often."
    "You're such an about-turn from Blackbeard, it's amazin' he left his ship to you," Jack said with a hint of admiration, following the young man through the torch-lit corridor.
    "I confess it didn't quite turn about that way. After poor Blackbeard departed from this world, God bless his soul, there was much infighting among the crews of his various ships over who should take command. Finally, the top contenders had all killed each other off in the effort to emerge victorious that I, a third mate aboard the Adventure, became captain of the Queen Anne's Revenge and all the other ships in Blackbeard's domain. It is a most pitiful way in which to gain prestige."
    "Not at all," Jack said lightly.
    It was many twists and turns, down side passages and across small alley-like corridors, that they arrived at last to a doorway-- no door, simply a curtain, doing little to damper the noise of the conversing Brethren within, the sounds of which having echoed through the halls from the weapons hall. Mission, leading the group, crept crablike forward and pulled the curtain aside, and the pirates filed in in a single line: first Jack, then Inigo, Munchausen, Granuaile, Kidd, and Hands.
    The room beyond could not be described easily, at least using an 18th century vocabulary. It was larger than a football stadium, and rose up just as high as one, giving way to a great domed ceiling set with colored tiles depicting a man o' war with great golden sails, at full run wind in a choppy aquamarine sea with a red sun to its stern.
    A great pillared balcony was carved into the rock near the roof, lined with torches, and descending from them the multi-tiered rows of seats, lined with stone and wooden desks of mismatched design. Behind these sat man after man, of every size, shape and color, and sometimes accompanying him was his first mate or quartermaster. Most were aged men. Very few were in a state of death or undeath, although it didn't take much to spot them by the way their skin flaked off or was at least an unnatural shade of green. Some, a very small minority, weren't male. A slightly larger minority simply weren't human.
    Hundreds of them in all, too many to count. Their voices did not cease upon Jack and company's entrance into the hall, persisting to bounce against the walls, tumult and tremble and lose their distinction to become one staggeringly loud cacophany of voices, swirling around the center's raised platform like a vortex surrounding the eye of a storm.
    Only Hands and Mission, accustomed to the scene, and Munchausen, who needed a lot to be surprised, were unaffected by the magnitude of their surroundings. Even Kidd, normally not impressed by much of anything, looked around at the sea of faces in awe.
    Mission, barely more than a pink mound wrapped in a cloak, scurried in a cantering, swaying path toward the center platform, with Israel Hands encouraging the rest of the party to follow. As they approached, Jack and his companions felt hundreds of pairs of eyes being drawn to them, though the noise was by no means lessened.
    The former governor of Libertalia stood in front, before a podium deliberately crude in its design, with the others clustered around behind him. From there, on the raised rock step, the assembly seemed even larger, stretching out in every direction. Nearly all eyes were on them now, and finally, the discussion began to cease.
    "Good morning, gentlemen," said Mission, drawing his spectacles from the recesses of his cloak. "By all means, this is not a time for formalities, so we will forego them for the duration of this meeting. My apologies to those who are particularly stuck on procedure, but time, as they say, is of the essence.
    "Now... As many know it is customary for the Order of the Brethren to be addressed firstly by its senior member--"
    Jack looked up, alarmed.
    "--and though normally that responsibility would fall to me--"
    "nononono," Jack hissed.
    "--it is with measurable reluctance, but also great pride--"
    "wait!"
    "--that I present to you--"
    "stop!"
    "--Captain Jack Sparrow."
    It would have been better if they'd applauded. He could nearly tolerate applause. What he got instead was a fierce murmuring rising up through the crowd, as several hundred heads craned for a better view. Jack caught snippets of sentences like "so it's true, then" and "I'd never believe it if I hadn't seen it." He cringed.
    Mission stepped away from the podium, gesturing to it for Jack. Fighting against his own intense desire to run away and then his body's resolute refusal to move, Jack walked stiffly to the front and took Mission's place at the podium, hands on the edges. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, while around him the sounds of conversation grew louder, and said in a normal voice, "G'mornin'..."
    The utterance reverberated through the air in front of him and echoed against the far walls of the meeting hall. Arching his eyebrow at these unusual harmonics, he turned around and addressed Mission.
    "What the hell did you do to this thing?"
    "We-- had a local witch doctor place a bit of a spell on it..." Mission said, a bit flustered.
    Jack shifted slightly to address Inigo. "Let it never be said that I'm liberal with me magic."
    "Agreed."
    "Voice-carrying enchantments," Jack muttered, turning away from them back toward the podium. "Of all the ridiculous things..." He cleared his throat again. "G'mornin', Brethren. By now y'should be getting a grasp of the situation we're having on our hands, the thing me and my compatriots have sailed halfway round the world to warn you about. As the King of England declined an audience with us--" laughter interrupted him here "--we are only able to derive our conclusions based on the evidence as presented but however y'want to play it, the fact remains that the situation is grave, gentlemen.
    "As far as me allies and I have come to discern, the English government, and probably that of other nations as well, have set in motion heavy-handed attempts at the complete eradication of piracy both in these waters and abroad. They are doing this not by enacting their milit'ries, but pirates theirselves, given 'em attractive offers of amnesty an' immunity in exchange for one thing: that they seek out and hunt their brethren, under peaceful pretenses and false colors. Sailing from Jamaica in the Spanish Main, my cohorts an' I have come under siege by these hunters no less than five times--"
    "Six times," Kidd corrected.
    "--six times," Jack amended automatically, failing to consider what the extra attack had been, "and in each instance having discovered upon the departed captain's person, letters of royal import, decreeing these men legally an' officially the bloodhounds in His Majesty's service. It is at the hands of these hunters that the Order has been deprived of its high-esteemed members Tew, Rackman, Bikke, Tribal, and the Baron Munchausen, although as y'can see, the last one's proven very hard to stay dead." He gestured behind him where the German gentleman was peacefully smoking his pipe. "And according to Mission and the illustrious Mister Hands, reports such as these are coming in from all over the world, to the extent that the last of our safe havens in the China Seas have been completely sacked, and our few lingering haunts in the Caribbean won't be far behind. If these efforts of genocide continue unchecked, we are looking at the complete annihilation of our people. A holocaust.
    "This is not a favorable state of affairs. This is not something by which we can simply abide, gents, not when out there is the greatest city on God's earth burnin' to the ground no matter how many of your crew you set to saving it. It's not enough to sit idly by and hope it won't happen to you; it'll come, sooner or later, and if y'ask me neither's a good option. Neither is it good enough to appeal to the chief of state's better nature. We all know they don't have none; why do you think we avoid the establishment in the first? What we are left with is but one course of action. We have to fight back, and not stop until they accede or we're dead."
    The reaction was again not what he expected, but in a far worse way. Given the space to converse, the assembled pirates set to it with renewed vigor, but the words Jack caught were not on the preferred topic.
    Angrily, Jack said, "If the issue of me good health is that much more important to you people than your kith and kin's continued survival in this world, by all means, just get it over with right now and slit your goddamned coward throats. If, however, we're able to accept that some things currently take precedence over me personal life, can we please commit ourselves to that and get on with it?"
    "Tell us how you did it!" one man, whose table card named him as Captain Fei of the Thames, shouted out from somewhere in the crowd. Several people jeered in agreement.
    "That isn't the issue right now!" Jack snapped.
    "What's this 'bout your Black Pearl and the Queen Anne's Revenge bein' sister ships?" called Captain Harlock of the Arcadia. "Forged from the same black wood from near the start of time?"
    "Oh, for God's sake!"
    But only more people started speaking up.
    "Fountain of life, was it?"
    "Where's the map you made to El Dorado?"
    "Is it that yer birthday falls on February the twenty-nine?"
    "¿Puedo tener una dedicatoria por favor?"
    "You're a demon spawn, admit it!"
    "I have it on good authority you're my dad!"
    "You're all wrong! He's the Son of God come again to save us from the tyranny of England!"
    "Everyone knows he's an African prince!"
    "SHUT UP!" Jack bellowed, so loud that even without the sound spell on the podium he would have shaken the walls of the room. As it was, several tiles loosed themselves from the ceiling. "You insufferable little brats! When I was your age children listened to their elders!"
    "Jack," Inigo said, attempting to sound lighthearted, "when you were their age, the wheel was still in its infancy."
    "You keep out of this!"
    "Essu kervai'dek nonmanda torisun!" someone shouted, followed by laughter from around the speaker.
    Jack wheeled. "I know that's you, Lunaseer!"
    Captain Lunaseer of the Catilina grinned and gave perhaps the rudest hand gesture any of the assembled had ever seen, even some of the more travelled ones. "Kervaina blek'nep ouns akoren, das valwonta celes so?" he jeered.
    "All right, that's it," said Jack, at the start of removing his coat and stalking off away from the platform to confront the old rival, until Inigo and Hands both rushed forward and held him back, "you an' me, c'mon, right now!"
    Lunaseer stood up in the crowd and threw down his own coat, ignoring the pleas for reason on the part of his bespectacled first mate. "Beian suro, Sparrow!" he announced.
    "I'll scrap any time you say!"
    "Jack, no!" Inigo hissed.
    "You always do this," Jack told him furiously. "What is it with you and getting in other people's way? Well?" He noticed that Inigo wasn't staring back at him. His eyes were on something past Jack, and they grew wide.
    Jack spun around.
    High on the balcony supporting the torches, a hundred men clad all in black had risen up from the shadows, rifles at the ready. On the opposite balcony were a hundred more.
    The first reaction of many of the men in the stands was simply to freeze, bringing on an uncommon silence even the most hushed auditorium never obtains. And then, a roar of sound as the rows nearest to the balcony rose up in battle cries and war oaths, fists raised. The yells and screams as the rifles fired, the bayonets slashed, the bodies fell back onto the people below--
    "That's enough, gents, that's enough," came a calm, kindly voice, like an elderly telling his grandchildren to settle down. Jack, Inigo and the others looked around to see William Kidd at the podium, his cane resting on the table before him. Around them, the tumult of movement slowed, the pop-pop of guns ceased.
    "Bill?" Jack said, loosing himself from Inigo and Hands's grip. "What are you--?"
    "Stay where y'are, Jack," Kidd said nonchalantly, one hand fondling the brass handle of his cane. "Wouldn't want to have any unfortunate accidents." His free hand gestured to a cluster of pirates surrounding a pair of prone, bleeding forms. "Look, you've gone and killed Laguna and Mister Squall. What'd they ever do to you?" he asked pleasantly.
    "You bastard!"
    "Temper, Mister Sparrow. Wouldn't like you to get hurt." Kidd smiled at the crowd. "Unless you care to join your fallen comrades, gentlemen, do as I say right now and step down onto the ground level-- there's good lads. You're easier to spot when you're all in the same place. No, leave the bodies. They're dead; nothing you can do. And you people," he added, addressing Jack and company surrounding him, "spread out at even paces and don't make any sudden movements. Don't presume to be courageous and it'll go a lot better for all concerned."
    "Your men can't be that great of a shot, Kidd," Jack spat.
    "Do you want to take the chance?"
    Munchausen broke away from the line. "The Brethren of the Coast will never sur--"
    He had no chance to utter the final word.
    Kidd's arm swung, a long silvery blade, drawn from the casing of his cane, swinging with him, arcing through the air like white light and leaving a scarlet trail behind it as it slashed through the baron's chest. Granuaile, the steely, level-headed, fearless Granuaile, screamed.
    "Oh, there's no need for such melodrama, Grace," Kidd said cheerfully, as Munchausen's corpse flopped to the ground in a growing puddle of blood. Kidd chuckled. "Let's see Baron Munchausen resurrect himself from this one, aye?"
    "Kidd, oh, how could you," Granuaile whimpered, hand over her mouth. "He was a silly old man, no consequence at all..."
    "Cease with this insufferable fallacy of mourning, O'Malley," Kidd told her. "Now what are you waiting for? Get to work."
    Granuaile shook her head. "No..."
    "Come again, O'Malley? I don't think I quite heard you."
    "No, I won't do it."
    Kidd stepped up to her, no limp to his walk whatsoever. He was barely taller than her, but he appeared to loom over the Irishwoman in any case. "You've come this far only to turn coward now, lass?"
    "Gracie?" Jack cried, in shock.
    Kidd laughed, a very full, hearty laugh like he had just heard a good joke. He said, as Jack and Granuaile locked eyes, "You should know better than to trust an Irishman, Jack. They'll lie to your face while stabbing you in the back. Your dear old sweetheart has been playing you the fool all along; I'm astounded you could fall for such a transparent performance."
    "Jack," Granuaile said desperately, pushing past Kidd to reach her old comrade, clasping his hand. "It's true, I was sent for. Kidd and I were working in cooperation with each other, but--"
    The captain of the Black Pearl pulled his hand away and stepped back. "You..."
    "I couldn't bear it, Jack, I couldn't hate you anymore--"
    "This was all a set-up..."
    "I gave it up --truly-- I couldn't bring myself to go through with it--"
    "No, you..."
    "Please!" Granuaile begged, reaching out and placing her gloved hands against his cheeks. "Please, please believe me, I could never go through with it, not after all your kindness--"
    This time it was Kidd that interrupted her, ripping her away from Jack by the arm so roughly that she collided with Inigo, who had to steady her. Kidd waved the sword cane in front of Jack's nose. "How very touching, old lovebirds trying to make recompence before you die. Well, if Grace is so keen to fall back to her incurable romanticism, no matter. More money for me."
    "I thought you said you wanted to die bravely," Jack said, glaring at Kidd past the blood-stained blade.
    "I said I didn't want to die at someone else's sword," Kidd corrected, tilting his head proudly. "The age of piracy has come to a close, Jack. Times have changed. It's up to everyone to get what they can grab and run for higher ground. Well, I have grabbed the greatest prize, and my higher ground, as it were, is assured." He reached into the depths of his jacket and produced a folded piece of parchment, sealed with a red blob of wax unmistakably pressed with the royal seal. He threw this to the ground at Jack's feet. "Do you know what I will gain from an assembly of over four hundred of the world's most famous pirates? An excess of fifty thousand pounds, and that's if you're all dead. If I were to turn over even a small percentage of you alive, I would live as a king for the rest of my days-- in dignity." He smiled.
    "You never sailed under the hunter's flag."
    "Aye, well, even pirate hunters can break the rules," Kidd said, grinning nastily. "Even as we speak my men have commandeered Mister Hands's precious Q.A.R. and are laying waste to the other ships in the area. Including the Tirghráthóir-- I'd intended to apologize to you, O'Malley, assuming you'd understand the Queen Anne's superiority, but there hardly seems a need for that now. Do you know, with you on my list of captures, that's an extra two hundred and fifty pounds! Even more if we capture your crew... Well, those that survive, anyway. And you, Mister Hands, your reputation as Blackbeard's successor merits you a hundred and eighty pounds--" one of Kidd's riflemen nudged the young captain in the back with his gun "--our dear Dread Pirate Roberts would normally be worth over two hundred on his own, five hundred if I were to sell him back to Denmark, but unfortunately I'll be lucky to swing one-fifty. After all, he is just an imitation."
    Another of Kidd's men who had slinked up behind Inigo and Granuaile reached out and tore off Inigo's mask, causing curly brown hair to fly everywhere. Inigo looked around in terror as Mission exclaimed: "'Ere, you're not Roberts at all! I thought the accent was a bit funny!"
    Laughing, Kidd turned his attention to the old man, mostioning another one of his gunmen forward. "And the Lord Mission, well, who could resist the governor of the fallen Libertalia? Sadly, he's not worth much more alive than dead and since he would be such a hassle to transport--"
    "NO!" Hands screamed, just before the rifle shot cracked and the wizened old Mission crumpled to the ground beside the fallen Baron Munchausen. Israel Hands rushed forward, but only got a few feet before more of Kidd's gunmen stopped him in his tracks. "In God's name, why?!"
    "My dear captain," Kidd cooed. "You won't get far in life if you're so overbearingly sentimental. Mind you," he chuckled, "you're not to get very far in life now anyway."
    "Shoot me," Hands announced, struggling against his restrainers. "Snuff me out here and now because, by God, there is no way you'll ever take me alive!"
    "It's tempting, my boy, but... no." At the wave of a hand, Kidd's two riflemen pushed the young Captain Hands back near Jack Sparrow. One kept his gun trained on them, while the other backed up and was sent away to see to some of the other pirates on Kidd's word. "Frankly, I sense you're not the manner of person to be inclined to take his own life. You haven't the nerve for it."
    Around them, the black-clad assailants were binding the hands of their captured prey with ropes, tying one man to another like chain gang prisoners or slaves. It wasn't difficult work for two hundred gunmen to do on a bunch of old, world-weary pirates.
    "How does it feel, Jack?" Kidd asked, taking a hankerchief from his waistcoat pocket to wipe the blood from his sword. "I've been dying to ask you that since the moment I saw you in Fontaleza. Everyone knows that ol' Jack Sparrow's got the best luck in the world, and everything will always turn out for him. How does it feel that you've finally found something against which you can't possibly win?"
    "What, y'mean you?"
    "Time, Jack. You can escape society, rise up from poverty, overcome the drawbacks of your race, avoid the law, shed your responsibilities, best the other man, beat the odds, and cheat death, but the changes of time, Jack, come to us all."
    "You're good at spouting rhetoric," Inigo said contemptuously, "but if words are all you have then they mean nothing."
    Kidd turned to Inigo, looking at him appraisingly. "And by what means do you propose a man cheat his own fate, spic? What name do you truly go by anyway?"
    "For all that it should matter, I'm Dread Pirate Roberts, and you'll have no other name," Inigo said stoicly.
    "And my other question, what of that? Faith in God, perhaps, to save you from the inevitable? Think yourself of divine providence, exempt from the rules of man, forever in the glory of the Almighty to do as you please?"
    "Absolutely not."
    Jack, with utmost discretion, sidled closer to Hands. "Are you brave, Israel? It is Israel, isn't it?" he murmured, so softly the younger man could scarcely hear him.
    "My name is Israel, but my bravery is for others to judge."
    "How willing are you to allow them a chance to find out?"
    "I would follow you to the depths of Hell, Mister Sparrow."
    "Good man."
    "Believe in God, do you?" Kidd was asking Inigo, leaning close to him. He had to crane his head a bit to look the man in the eye.
    No change in his expression, Inigo replied, "No man more skeptic than one scorned, and no man more pious than one at death's door."
    The Scotsman was far from impressed. "And what the hell's that supposed to mean?"
    "It means I'm not answerable to the likes of you."
    "Do you mean to try my patience or are you just too stupid not to?"
    Inigo glanced over Kidd's shoulder to meet Jack's gaze. He broke off not even a split second after, because the look had explained everything. He fell into apparent deep thought. "I suppose I would have to say... Su madre era un hámster y sus olores del padre como las bayas del saúco."
    "What does--"
    Kidd had difficulty finishing his question. This difficulty was due to someone, namely Jack Sparrow, barrelling head first into his back, roping an arm around Kidd's sword as he tackled him, with the unfortunate side effect of the sword (and Kidd's arm) twisting into an uncomfortable new position that put a deep cut into Jack's right side. Behind him, Israel Hands dispatched the single rifleman by using the stolen gun as a blunt weapon.
    Shuddering with pain, Jack looked up and met Inigo's gaze.
    "RUN!"
 

End Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XIII