I squinted into layers of shadows that shifted in the fiery glow from the windows. I could see nothing but could imagine anything, and in the dark mass that moved along close to the deck, I formed the shoulders and the battered head of the man I had left covered in cockroaches. I saw his arm stretch out, his fingers spread. Then he leapt from the deck. He hurtled toward me and crashed against my shoulder. I fended him off, feeling a hardness first and a softness below it, as though my hand had passed through a mass of beetles. And he tumbled back with a deathly shriek, only to swoop up again and batter at my face and arms. Then he shot past, crashing against the windows with a jarring bang of wood and glass. And I saw him there, silhouetted in the flames of the buccaneers’ fire. It was only a parrot, old and tattered, as bedraggled as a bunch of dead flowers. “I'm Davy Jones,” he said, and squawked. “Three fathoms down. Three fathoms more.” With his beak and his claws, he bashed at the window frame.
