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CHAPTER TWELVE

Fight to the Death!

Will and Barbossa followed Elizabeth onto the Pearl.

“We’ll need the Black Pearl to head the attack,” she said.

“Will we,” Barbossa said, holding up Jack’s Piece of Eight.

Pintel brought Tia Dalma up on deck. She looked small and weak but a goddess was hidden inside her. Barbossa made a sign and the Chinese pirates moved toward Elizabeth and Will.

“We must help Jack,” Elizabeth said. “If he kills Davy Jones, then we can win this fight.”

“Sorry, King of the Pirates,” Barbossa said. “I don’t think Jack can win anything.”

He suddenly took Elizabeth’s Piece of Eight, and added it to the others in the bowl. When all nine pieces were together, he called, “Calypso! I am freeing you!”

Suddenly, the bowl was on fire. When it stopped burning, the goddess was standing on the deck.

“Calypso,” Will shouted. “Who helped the first Brethren Court to make you a prisoner? Who was your enemy?”

“Name him,” said Calypso in a loud, strong voice.

“Davy Jones,” Will said.

Calypso turned and looked angrily at the Dutchman. She began to grow, getting taller and taller. Barbossa stood in front of her.

“Calypso,” he called, “I have kept my promise. Please help me. Save me, my ship and my men. But destroy the others!”

The goddess didn’t look at him. “CRAZY MAN,” she shouted.

Suddenly, she fell. Thousands of crabs landed, in place of her body. They ran over the edge of the deck and into the water. The goddess of the ocean disappeared completely.

The pirates were silent.

Finally, Will said, “Has she gone?”

“She was our last hope,” said Barbossa, sadly.

“We can still fight,” Will said.

“Against hundreds of ships,” Gibbs said. “We can’t win.” Elizabeth looked up. “Jack can find the box and put a knife through Davy Jones’s heart,” she said. “We must fight with him. We’re part of a team. We must work together, or die alone.” She looked at the sailors around her. “Listen,” she called. “The Brethren want the Pearl to head the fight. Show the enemy that we are free men. Show them the fire from our guns. Show them that our hearts are brave!”

She suddenly pulled out her sword and pointed it toward the Endeavour.

All around the Black Pearl, pirates on other ships prepared to fight the East India Trading Company.

Beckett stood quietly on the Endeavour, drinking tea. He smiled. He wasn’t worried because he had the Dutchman.

On the deck of the Dutchman, as Mercer ordered the sailors to prepare the cannon, the wind was getting stronger.

“Calypso–” Davy Jones said quietly to himself.

Dark clouds circled high in the sky and heavy rain fell. As the other ships successfully sailed away from the rough waters, the Pearl and the Flying Dutchman were pulled toward them.

Mercer was at the wheel of the Dutchman.

“The waves won’t hurt us,” Jones shouted.

He took the wheel from Mercer and the Dutchman sailed into the roughest of the water. The Black Pearl followed.

Elizabeth and Will ran down the deck, ready to face the Dutchman. Both ships prepared their cannon.

“Fire,” ordered Barbossa.

“Fire,” ordered Davy Jones.

On the Dutchman, Davy Jones was watching Mercer. Suddenly, he jumped on the Company officer and pulled his terrible beard around his neck. A minute later, Mercer was dead. Jones took the key that unlocked the wooden box.

In the Dutchman’s prison, Jack Sparrow hit the door with a chair until it opened. He moved quietly to the captain’s room and found the box with Jones’s heart. He ran back to the stairs with it-and saw Davy Jones and his men.

Jones pulled out his sword. “Give me the box,” he ordered.

He and Jack started to fight.

The Dutchman and the Pearl were moving closer together.

Will watched Elizabeth fight bravely against the Dutchman’s sailors. “I don’t want to lose her,” he thought. “Not again.” Turning to her, he asked, “Will you marry me?”

“Now- This isn’t the best time,” Elizabeth shouted.

Laughing, Will said, “This is the only time! I love you!”

Elizabeth looked into his eyes. This was the man that she loved. She wanted him. “Barbossa,” she shouted. “Marry us!”

Barbossa was fighting on the deck above them. “I’m busy!”

“Barbossa, Now,” Will called.

Barbossa shouted, “As captain, I make you man and wife.” Another pirate attacked him. “You can kiss-kiss the-!”

Will kissed Elizabeth. It was a kiss full of love and promises.

At the same time, Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones continued to fight. Finally, Jack knocked Jones’s sword out of his hand.

“There’s nothing that you can do with that,” Jones said, pointing at the wooden box. “You need the key.”

“I already have the key,” Jack answered with a smile.

Jones’s eyes filled with fear. Was it possible? Then, he laughed. “No, you don’t,” he said, and showed Jack the key.

“Oh, that key,” Jack said.

He cut through Jones’s finger with his sword and the key dropped to the floor. Suddenly, the Pearl crashed into the Dutchman and the wooden box fell onto the deck. Jones lifted it. Jack took a gun from one of Jones’s men and fired. He hit Jones and the box crashed back onto the deck.

Quickly, Will Turner jumped over from the Pearl to the Dutchman to help Jack. Another cannonball hit the ship and Will was knocked to the ground. Looking up, he saw Bootstrap Bill.

Bootstrap began to attack Will with his sword.

“Stop,” cried Will. What was his father doing?

Elizabeth ran to the Dutchman-and her husband.

“I’ll kill you,” Jones shouted, moving toward her.

But Elizabeth was prepared. “That’s why I brought this,” she said, and lifted her sword. The two began to fight.

Will and his father were also fighting. Finally, Will jumped onto Bootstrap. “I won’t kill you,” he said. “I made you a promise.” He tied Bootstrap to the deck and ran to Elizabeth.

Jack Sparrow picked up the key to Jones’s box.

Jones hit Elizabeth across the face and smiled. But then he looked down and the smile disappeared. There was a sword in his chest! He looked over his shoulder, and saw Will Turner.

“Did you forget,” Jones asked. “I have no heart.”

He pushed Will away, then pulled the sword out of his chest. “Tell me, William Turner,” he asked. “Do you fear death?”

Then, suddenly, he shouted with pain.

“Do you,” Jack asked.

Everyone turned to see Captain Jack Sparrow. The wooden box was open and he was holding Jones’s heart in his hand. He tightened his fingers. Jones gave a cry and held his chest.

“You’re a hard man, Jack Sparrow,” Jones said. Then, he turned and pushed his sword through Will’s heart.

Screaming, Elizabeth ran to Will. Jack looked from the heart to his sword, then at Will in Elizabeth’s arms.

Elizabeth looked up at Jack. “Please,” she cried.

As Jones fell into his own Locker, his eyes turned to his now dead heart. The sword in it was Jack’s, but the hand on the sword was Will’s.

Elizabeth’s tears fell as she watched Will die.

Slowly, Jones’s pirates began to circle around Will’s lifeless body and Jack pulled her away. Bootstrap pulled out a knife and moved closer. One of the men held the wooden box in his arms.

“The Dutchman must have a captain,” Bootstrap said.

“And a living heart,” another pirate added.

Bootstrap fell on his knees in front of his son, pulled open the young man’s shirt, and lifted his knife—

Jack shot through a line on one of the sails. The freed sail filled with air and lifted him and Elizabeth off the deck. Below them, the Dutchman fell deeper and deeper into the ocean.

Jack and Elizabeth landed in the water near the Pearl. Gibbs pulled them out.

“We need you, Jack,” he said. “The Endeavour is very near.” Beckett’s ship was moving quickly toward them. Suddenly, the water began to move-and the Flying Dutchman came up again. She had new, white sails, and her men were clean and smart. Will Turner walked angrily onto the deck.

The two ships sailed up on both sides of the Endeavour. Beckett couldn’t escape. “I can’t destroy the pirates,” he said to himself, “and now they will destroy me.”

“Fire,” Will ordered.

“Fire,” shouted Barbossa and Elizabeth.

“Fire,” said Jack, more quietly.

Cannon fired. When the smoke cleared, the Endeavour was slowly going down into the blue Caribbean waters.

Beckett’s other ships turned away.

“They’re running,” Gibbs said. “They’re afraid because the Dutchman and the Pearl are working together.”

On the Dutchman, Captain William Turner looked sadly across at the Pearl.

“Give us your orders, sir,” said Bootstrap’s voice, behind him. “You can leave the Dutchman,” Will said. “You’re free.”

“I want to stay with you,” Bootstrap said.

“Fine. Take the ship’s wheel, Mr. Turner.”

Bootstrap saw the sadness in his son’s face. “One day on land, ten years on the ocean. It’s a high price to pay,” he said.

Will smiled. “But it will be a good day.”

A little later, the men on the Black Pearl helped Elizabeth into a small boat. She was sailing to land – and to Will.

Will was sitting on a rock, looking out at the ocean. Elizabeth came up behind him, and put her arms around him.

“The sun is going down,” Will said. “Soon I’ll be back on the Dutchman, taking souls to the land of the dead.” He gave her his heart in its wooden box. “Will you keep this safe?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth replied. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

“I love you, Elizabeth,” Will said, simply. “Always.”

“And I love you,” she answered.

“I don’t know what will happen to me and Will,” Elizabeth thought. “Or to the Brethren Court, Barbossa, and Jack. But now pirates are free to sail the oceans. And the new captain of the Flying Dutchman will keep the souls of the dead safe.”

Captain Jack Sparrow was on the island of Tortuga.

“You’ll like the Black Pearl,” he said to the two women that he was with. “My ship is big and shining and— gone?”

The Pearl was sailing away without him!

“It’s happened again,” he thought angrily. “How can a pirate earn his money honestly when people steal his ship all the time?” On the Pearl, Barbossa stood at the ship’s wheel, and opened Sao Feng’s old map. “There’s more than one way to live forever,” he thought. Then he stepped back, surprised. There was a hole in the middle of the map! “Jack Sparrow– again!”

In another part of the Caribbean, in a very small boat, Jack Sparrow looked at the missing piece of the map. Smiling, he pulled out his Compass. He was ready for his next adventure.

Ten years later, high above the ocean, a young boy was singing a pirate song. Elizabeth smiled as her son played. Then, she ran to him.

Suddenly, the boy stopped. The sun was going down. Elizabeth and her son stood and watched the golden sun. It fell lower and lower in the sky, and then there was a green light. Out on the ocean, they saw a much-loved shape.

“Will has returned,” Elizabeth said quietly. “He kept his promise.”