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SEVEN YEARS LATER
The mighty British warship the Monarch sliced through the waves, its bow cannons booming, as it chased down a much smaller pirate ship. On the outside, the Monarch was a man-made wonder to behold. Inside, things weren’t quite as impressive. A troop of young soldiers tromped through filthy black bilge water on the bottom deck, clearing the sludge as fast as they could. The stench was as foul as the labor was brutal.
“Faster, you pathetic bilge rats!” Officer Maddox bellowed from his spot above the soldiers. He strutted along, peering down at the line of men, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed at them. “You’ll pump the bilge and fill the scuppers! We’re chasing down pirates!”
Few ships were as well equipped as the Monarch . With one hundred cannons aboard, no pirate ship stood a chance in a fight. The Ruddy Rose had chosen to flee, but the Monarch was in hot pursuit.
Henry Turner, now nineteen, was among the soldiers straining every muscle manning the bilge and scuppers to lend speed to the vessel. He had become used to hard work—and to difficult men like Maddox. As the officer turned his back to scold a new recruit, Henry ducked out ofline and peered out a window, raising a spyglass to his eye.
“Psst! Henry!” a fellow soldier whispered. “Get back here. You don’t want to be kicked off another ship!”
“It’s a Dutch barque ,” Henry said, ignoring the warning. “Probably stolen by the pirate Bonnet.”
“When are you going to give up, Henry?” his friend asked. “You’ll never find Jack Sparrow!”
“I’ll never give up.” Henry’s voice was emphatic. Over the years, he’d followed many false leads. Everyone had a story about the notorious pirate, but no one seemed to know where to find him. Henry had joined the British navy—whose main mission seemed to be pirate hunting—in hopes that they would help him track down Sparrow.
As the British ship pivoted in the water, Henry spotted a strange rock formation ahead. It was an odd sight—a huge archway in the middle of the wide expanse of the sea. Henry knew enough legends to recognize it instantly—and it wasn’t good.
“My God,” he whispered in dread.
The rogue pirate ship was heading right toward it, retreating from the Monarch ’s gunfire. Henry had to stop the Monarch from following it. Dashing for the stairs, he nearly crashed into Maddox.
“I’ve warned you about leaving your post, boy! Shall I show you the lash?” The officer planted his fists on his hips and glared at Henry menacingly.
“Sir, I have to speak to the captain.” Henry dodged around Maddox, adding, “Be right back!”
The officer blinked in astonishment. There was no “ be right back” under his command. But the lieutenant’s cries of “Turner!” were lost on Henry, who was already topside.
Sprinting along the deck, Henry pushed his way through the soldiers manning the guns and drawing in the sails to reach Captain Toms and Officer Cole, who stood at the ship’s wheel, watching triumphantly as the pirates lowered their flag in defeat.
“Chase her down,” Captain Toms ordered. “The British navy does not grant surrender to pirates.” As the Ruddy Rose approached the gate and began to sail through, the captain nodded toward it. “Follow her in.”
“No! Don’t do it!” Henry yelled. The officers turned to him in disbelief. Who dared challenge the captain’s will? Henry rushed to explain, gesturing to the nearby charts. “Sir, look at your charts. We’re between three distant points ofland with perfect symmetry to the center. Captain, you’re sailing into the Devil’s Triangle.”
The captain’s eyebrows shot up and he began to laugh. “You hear this, men? He believes an old sailor’s myth!”
Henry gritted his teeth, annoyed, as the closest soldiers jeered at him dismissively. “Captain, trust what I say. Ships that sail into the Triangle do not sail out. Change your course.”
“You dare to give me orders?” The captain’s face was stern, all traces oflaughter gone.
“I won’t let you kill us all.” Henry flung himself at the ship’s wheel and began to reverse direction.
Instantly, soldiers sprang upon him. Henry was no stranger to fighting; his fists and elbows jabbed out as he struggled to get free of their grasp. Had the men been without guns, he might have held them off. Instead, he found himself glaring at a dozen gun barrels, ready to fire. At that moment, Maddox ran up to join them, taking aim as well.
Henry held up his hands but stared defiantly as Captain Toms stalked toward him, his cheeks red with anger.
“This is treason!” Captain Toms declared, furiously tearing the sleeves off Henry’s coat to mark his sin. “Take him below. We are going in after that ship.”
Maddox was only too happy to lead Henry down to the cells himself. “Ifit was up to me,” he said, throwing the young man into a cell belowdecks, “I’d string you up from the highest yardarm.”
As Henry tumbled to the hard floor, a scrap of paper flew from his pocket. It slipped across the wooden planks to stop beside the occupant in the next cell—a grizzled man with a fountain of long white hair. Tattoos on his arms identified him as a pirate.
“Jack Sparrow?” the man said, pointing a bony finger at the face etched on the paper. “I believe he’s dead. Buried in an unmarked grave on the isle of Saint Martin.”
Henry sighed. If the Monarch was heading into the Triangle, they had more pressing things to worry about than the location of an elusive pirate.
Racing after the Ruddy Rose , the Monarch passed through a cloud of smoke from its own guns before sailing under the rock archway. A thick mist rose from the sea around them. Captain Toms raised his spyglass and scanned the ocean, looking for the pirate ship. But it was long gone.
The mist swallowed all sound, plunging the crew into an eerie silence compounded by a sudden darkness, as though the sun’s rays could not reach them anymore.
“Sir, there’s something in the water,” Officer Cole called, pointing below them.
Swirling in the dark sea was the white outline of a skeletal face with a bloodred rose emblazoned next to it—the flag of the pirate ship they’d been pursuing. But what had happened to the pirates? Where was their ship? Despite the crew’s training, a shiver of apprehension ran through them.
“Ship off the bow,” Captain Toms called. He’d spotted something large moving toward them through the mist. But as it got closer, the shape became clearer.
“That’s no ship, sir. It’s a shipwreck,” the first officer said, his voice hushed and worried.
In all his years of service to Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, the captain had never seen anything so strange. The ship that was sailing toward them could not possibly be sailing at all.
Its skin was torn off and its bone structure exposed—the wooden ribs ofits hull open to the elements. Yet not a drop of water penetrated it as it plowed toward them. This was the Silent Mary .
Despite the impossibility of the decimated ship staying afloat, it was charging them in a very aggressive manner. Already on edge, Captain Toms wasn’t going to take any risks, and gave the only order he could think of : “Fire!”
The full arsenal of the Monarch let loose into the darkness, gunfire blazing. Then there was nothing. The mysterious ship seemed to have disappeared as quickly as it had come.
“Sir,” said Maddox, “there is nothing out there.” But he had spoken too soon, for whatever had been out there was suddenly right in front of them—on board their ship.
“Aaaieeeee!” Screams from the top deck pierced the eerie quiet. Then they cut off abruptly and the only sound was that of footsteps approaching the main deck.
Someone—something—was coming for them.
Terrified beyond their worst nightmares, the crew pushed toward the walls, recoiling from some invisible menace. Blinded by sweat, they looked to the stairs, waiting to see their enemy.
Instead, a pair of hands shot straight through the wall and grabbed hold of a soldier. His gun and sword clattered to the floor and he was dead before he could utter a word. His fellow soldiers spun uselessly as dozens of arms reached through solid wood as ifit were made of pudding.
Disembodied limbs lifted the men, flinging them through the air or snapping their necks. The intruders materialized, looking like monsters from a nightmare. Swords clanged and lanterns were knocked over during the struggle, igniting the ship.
In minutes, a new ghastly crew had taken over. The decks were strewn with bodies and flames. Through the blaze strode the leader of the ghoulish killers, his boots unaffected by the fire.
Reflecting the flames, a chestful of medals glinted from the tattered Spanish navy uniform of Captain Armando Salazar. He casually stepped over soldiers as he headed toward the lone man still standing on the deck.
Captain Toms hid his fear as the dark, hulking form wielding a five-foot sword stopped in front of him. With no apparent effort, Captain Salazar lifted the man into the air.
Captain Toms abandoned his stoicism and his mouth dropped open in horror at the rotted visage before him. The flesh of his assailant’s face was crisscrossed by black lines, and the left side of his head was missing a large chunk.
“What are you?” Captain Toms asked.
“Death,” Salazar replied, thrusting his sword through Toms’s heart.
Dropping his victim to the floor, Captain Salazar spun to address his crew. “Return those pokers and remove your caps!” he barked.
“You heard the captain!” said Officer Lesaro, Salazar’s lieutenant. “Order to the front!”
As they snapped to attention, Salazar inspected his ghoulish men. They were not transparent, as ghosts are usually imagined. They were solid beings, their feet on the ground. But dozens of wounds festered on their faces, which were a ghastly gray and covered in black cracks and crevices. Their uniforms had been long rotted and nibbled by vermin, and gaping holes in their bodies allowed one to see straight through to the rails behind them. Once they removed their caps, their hair floated up as though they were underwater.
“By rule of the king, we have provided a fair and just punishment. This ship dared to cross our bow ... so she will rest at the bottom of the sea,” said Salazar, adjusting the collar of a soldier who was missing half his throat. “For years we have been condemned to the Triangle, waiting to escape the borders that confine us. I assure you, my very dead men, your loyalty will be rewarded with blood, as we will not rest until we have our revenge!”
Trapped in his cell belowdecks, Henry had seen the ghost ship approach through the porthole. He’d heard the terrors above, caught the flickering shadows of the fight on deck. And he’d tried to remain as still and silent as possible.
But in the cell next door, the old pirate stretched out his hand, catching drops of blood oozing from the slats above him. Henry could not stop him from screaming. Alerted, the ghosts began reaching through the prison walls. And then the old man screamed no more.
Creak, creak.
Captain Salazar advanced down the stairs and toward Henry’s cell. Then he stepped right through the bars. Henry backed up to the ship’s wall, his pulse racing.
Captain Salazar paused, the sheet of paper with Jack Sparrow’s portrait catching his eye.
“Do you know this pirate?” asked Salazar, spearing the parchment with his sword and raising it high.
Henry swallowed nervously. “Only in name,” he said.
Captain Salazar pinned him with his sharp eyes, alight with interest. “Are you looking for him?”
“Yes,” Henry croaked .
Captain Salazar felt his luck had finally turned. Jack Sparrow and the compass he’d stolen held the key to releasing Salazar and the Silent Mary from the cursed Triangle.
“No need to fear me, boy,” Captain Salazar drawled. “I always leave one man alive to tell the tale. Now, go find Sparrow for me—and relay this message from Captain Salazar: on the day I behold daylight again, I will come straight for him!”
A raw, throaty cheer rose from Salazar’s crew as dozens of questions swirled through Henry’s mind: How did Captain Salazar know Jack Sparrow? What had Jack done to anger him? How would Henry find Jack? With a vengeful bunch of ghosts on their tail, could they hope to find the Trident and free Henry’s father?
The captain leaned almost nose to nose with Henry. “I’d tell him myself,” he continued, “but dead men tell no tales.”