James had not bathed in three months—not since before he resigned from the Navy after his court martial. Since then, he had been sailing from port to port as a merchant sailor, and spending what earnings he had in Tortuga, on rum. That was precisely where he met whom he considered to be the chief cause of his suffering—Captain Jack Sparrow. He had promptly tried to shoot him, but one of the man’s newly recruited crew members stopped him, and a brawl broke out. He probably would have been killed if it wasn’t for Elizabeth hitting him in the back of the head with a bottle. He wished she had not.
For now he found himself in the employ of the notorious pirate he had failed to recapture. They were headed to God knew where searching for God knew what, and he had truly only joined them because he feared for Elizabeth’s safety. He was a damned sap, after everything, and he hated himself for it. However, he had already lost everything, and thus was incapable of feeling any more ashamed than he already was.
Perhaps that was why, as he soaked in the bath of one of the two rooms that had been rented for the night (James had insisted that Elizabeth have her own, despite his unwillingness to share a room with Sparrow of all people), he did not immediately start when the pirate settled himself at the other end of the tub. There was only one bath to a room, and James wasn’t about to cut his own time short for his benefit. “Pass the soap.”