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The Black Pearl is Jack’s ship, forever and for always. His blood is in her boards, from countless battles and injuries and from the first day he got her, when he cut his hand on a splinter from her deck and bled over her prow and vowed to sea and sky and rum that she was his. There is a braid hanging from the top of her mast, where Jack bound it in the middle of a howling storm, and dared the elements to sink them both together, and she brought them through alive.
And though Jack lies with whores in Tortuga and sailors in Hong Kong and merchants’ wives in every port he visits, though he kisses anything which holds still long enough and ruts with anyone who gets him drunk enough, it is the Pearl that he loves, and when the night is long and the watch is silent and he stands on her swaying boards, the creaking of her rigging tells him plain as speech that she adores him too. He spills his seed on her polished decking and lets the ocean spray wash it away, and calls her his beautiful lady when he comes.
The Black Pearl is Jack’s ship, and he is her Captain, and though they may be parted now and again they will never abandon each other, for his blood and braids and seed are in her wood and rigging, and they are bound together, by sea and sky and rum and vows, and most of all by love.