The drowned prowled near my hideout last night. Their bloated carcasses blundered through the thick brush, leaving wet trails behind them—and the reek of decay.

Someone must have truly angered Davy Jones for him to open his locker and let the dead wander the earth.

I’ve read that sailors once swore by Neptune’s name, and only a couple of centuries ago began whispering the name of Davy Jones—the sea-devil from Hell. No one knows where the legends of him began. But once I heard an old innkeeper tell a story passed down from one of his ancestor.

That man captained a Spanish carrack, and his ship was caught in a terrible storm. Sky traded places with sea, lightning flashed without cease, and the captain begged every sea spirit and demon he could name—anything to reach harbor alive.

Then a richly dressed stranger appeared in his cabin and offered a bargain: for three years the captain would sail the seas without misfortune, and exactly three years hence Davy Jones would come for him—to take him into service. The captain agreed.

The sea grew calm, the thunderclouds broke, a fair wind rose—and the stranger vanished as though he had never been there at all.

For the next three years fortune favored the captain. Neither storms, nor enemy guns, nor even sickness threatened him or his crew. He grew rich, he married… and then the debt came due.

He dreaded that day. He was content with his life and had no desire to serve the devil. But one evening at sunset, the same stranger knocked at the door of his new home. The captain let him in and laid out a lavish supper in thanks for the luck he’d been granted. One last taste of human food, he thought, before a long, long service. The devil agreed.

Dish followed dish, the winecups stayed full, and time seemed to stop at midnight… until a rooster crowed.

The devil sprang up, his features twisting with rage—he understood at once he’d been tricked. The captain’s cunning wife had been turning the clock back again and again, hoping that at dawn Davy Jones would be forced to depart and leave her husband in peace.

And so he did: the devil dissolved into the first light of morning.

The captain never went to sea again, and forbade his children to go near it. Yet his ship later sailed under a new master—and vanished with all hands. Davy Jones took them for his own.

The innkeeper ended the tale with this: that crew still roams the seas, restless, hunting their traitor captain. So don’t try to cheat Davy Jones. He always comes back to collect what he’s owed.

I sat awake in my shelter the whole night, listening to every rustle. And when the first rays touched the sky, I left my things beneath the tree marked with a red cloth and fled.

— from the diary of Alexander Exquemelin, traveler