Pirates of the Caribbean: How Many Miles to Babylon?

Home by Another Way

Home by Another Way

"I wrote your name in my heart, and forever it will remain."
- Rumi

He was in a boat, sailing gently over seas as smooth as glass. Only a mariner of Barbossa's experience could have even detected the motion beneath him, much less understood its meaning. Barbossa was aware of the eerie vessel's movement through some means that transcended the senses, but he could not measure time at all. How long had he been journeying thus, he wondered.

As the Dark Shore receded and the world of the living drew closer, his memory played tricks on him: memories of his life, once forgotten, began to surface slowly, one piece at a time, but things that had been clear on the Dark Shore were becoming harder to recall.

He still remembered the familiar little phantom running towards him, and the feeling of being pulled back together; of becoming whole once more as she had bound him with the ribbon she called a spancel. The girl and the two fearsome ghosts had taken him from the Dark Shore, snatched him away before the terrible ferryman could drag him to hell.

But these recollections stirred up new and anxious questions. If body and soul were together again, why could he not force his muscles, his voice, or even his eyelids to obey him? Was he, somehow, still not part of the living world?

He was certain that the boat and the spirits that guided it were connected with the world below: each time they entered his thoughts, they brought faint echoes of the winds that had howled along the grey shore. The world below had claimed him, and he was now aboard a craft that belonged to that same world. Why would mariners such as these take him back to the living world and release him?

He reviewed what he remembered of his rescue, and recalled one significant detail: someone (the wraith he had seen on the Dark Shore?) had slipped a hand between his shoulder and the spancel. His flesh was immune to sensation, so he did not feel the slight weight of the girl's hands on his shoulders; but as he mused over his situation, he believed he had the answer.

She was a living person. She, and anything bound to her by the spancel, must return to the living world. If he were not bound to her, the two dark spirits could attack him, and he would never return to the world above. Now he understood the source of the comforting presence that had accompanied him on the voyage, staving off his fear and acting as a restraint on the shadowy others.

As the silent journey went on, he searched his mind for the name by which he had been known among the living. He recognised that, whoever he was, he had loved the sea, and it was home to him. He embraced this knowledge, and then was elated by a vital discovery.

T'was a pirate's life that I led, he told himself.

He could picture himself standing on a deck; he was leading an attack, his sword at the ready. He had a ring that bore the likeness of a roaring lion, and he wore a hat with plumes like a Cavalier's . . . and then he found his name.

I be Hector Barbossa, he thought exultantly, Pirate Lord of the Caspian Sea!

He cast about for other clues to his life, and suddenly one captured his attention and brought it into sharp focus.

I had a ship.

He tried to recall the ships he had captained, one after another. Then he called to mind his last command. What became of me ship? he wondered. What became of the Black Pearl? He pictured her tattered sails, pierced by the moonlight, and had another revelation.

Under a spell I was - nay, a curse! He remembered now; the curse that had taken away all sensation and condemned him to exist forever as a miserable, starving creature neither dead nor alive.