In the days that followed, Gibbs and Billy truly experienced what it meant to have their horizons broadened and their backs broken. Under Hugo's command, the repair of The Explorer moved from a dream to a grueling, meticulous reality, but the process was like nothing any shipyard in the Caribbean had ever witnessed.
On the first day of formal labor, Hugo didn't let a single man touch the hull with a tool. Instead, he directed them to drag the massive quantities of oak and cedar they had purchased from the Tortuga lumber yards into a series of long, stone-lined pits he'd had them dig. The pits were filled with seawater, but Hugo had intensified the brine, pouring in sacks of coarse salt until the water was thick and buoyant.
"Master Hugo, what in the name of the Saints are we doin'?" Billy asked, wiping sweat from his brow as he shoved a heavy beam into the brine. "Are we picklin' the hull for a winter feast? We're pirates, not grocers!"
"This is osmotic dehydration, Billy," Hugo replied, not looking up from a set of complex calculations he was etching into a slate. "The salt draws the sap and moisture out of the wood far faster than air-drying. It seasons the timber, hardens the fibers, and makes it a bitter meal for any worm or maggot that tries to call my ship home. Move to the next pile."
The pirates grumbled, bewildered by the "science" of it all, but they followed his lead. On the second day, the timber was hauled out of the brine and placed into a makeshift kiln, a long, covered trench where low, smoky fires were kept burning day and night. Hugo handed Gibbs an hourglass, its sand precisely calibrated.
"Not a minute more, not a minute less," Hugo warned. "If the wood is too dry, it turns brittle. If it's too wet, it'll warp the moment we hit a swell. We are stabilization the grain."
By the third day, the "baked" timber was brought to the central cauldron. There, it was coated in the "Heart-Oak Sealant," that black, pungent sludge Hugo had synthesized. The shipyard was choked with a thick, resinous smoke that made the men's eyes water and their throats burn.
"Scurvy's rot, Hugo! This stuff smells worse than a dead whale's gut!" Billy complained, his arms covered in the sticky black resin.
"Stop your whingeing, Billy," Gibbs barked, though he was coughing himself. He had noticed something the others hadn't. "Look at the planks we finished yesterday. I tried to notch one with my knife this morning. The blade skidded off like it was hittin' iron. This wood... it's different now."
After a week of preparation, the raw materials were ready. It was time for the "Structural Mechanics" Hugo had unlocked to be put to the test. He unrolled the primary blueprints for the hull plating and gathered the crew.
"Gibbs, you and your squad are on the ribs. The curvature must match the templates exactly, not a fraction of an inch of deviation. Billy, you're on the sanding and mortise-fitting. If the joint doesn't slide in like a hand into a silk glove, you do it again."
The pirates stared at the drawings, their eyes glazing over at the sight of the geometric notations.
"Master Hugo... these numbers... we usually just eyeball it, don't we?" a sailor asked tentatively. "Bit of hemp and tar fills the gaps, and 'good enough' is the pirate's way."
"Good enough is how ships end up as reefs," Hugo snapped, his gaze hardening. "We are building a masterpiece. If a plank is off by a hair, the hydrodynamics are ruined. You will measure twice, cut once, and you will do it with the precision of a clockmaker."
"You heard the Navigator!" Gibbs roared, acting as Hugo's enforcer. He held a square and a plumb line as if they were holy relics. "If I see a man slacking or 'eyeballing' a cut, I'll have him in the bilges until he forgets the color of the sun! To work!"
Under Gibbs's relentless supervision and Hugo's terrifyingly accurate eye, the shipyard became a place of agonizing precision. For the first few days, the yard was filled with the sounds of frustration, curses in five different languages and the sound of discarded wood hitting the mud.
"This ain't carpentry! It's torture!" Billy yelled after Hugo rejected a deck-beam for the third time.
But the complaints died the moment the first new section of the port-side hull was fitted.
The new plank, treated with salt, baked in the kiln, and sealed with resin, was brought to the hull. Two men held it in place while Billy prepared to hammer in the wooden pegs. But as the plank was pressed against the ribs, something happened that made the men freeze.
It didn't just fit. It locked.
The mortise-and-tenon joints, cut to Hugo's exact specifications, slid together with a soft, pneumatic thump. There was no gap. There was no wobble. The wood seemed to merge with the frame, the treated oak creating a seal so tight it looked as if it had grown there.
"By the powers..." Billy whispered, running a calloused hand over the seam. It was smoother than a polished tabletop. "She's... she's solid. No oakum, no wool... she's already watertight."
A hush fell over the shipyard. The pirates gathered around, touching the cold, black-stained wood. They had spent their lives on ships held together by luck and layers of foul-smelling pitch. They had never seen anything so clean, so deliberate, and so strong.
"Is this even carpentry?" one pirate muttered, looking at Hugo with a mix of fear and reverence. "It's like he's buildin' a ship out of a single piece of wood."
From that day on, the grumbling stopped. The pirates became obsessed. They started to take pride in the "millimeter," competing to see who could make the most perfect joint. They were no longer just laborers; they were being forged into Hugo's personal engineers. Hugo watched them, a quiet satisfaction in his chest. He was building more than a ship; he was building a crew that understood the value of absolute excellence.
A month passed in a blur of sawdust and resin. The Explorer was transforming. Her port side was a sleek, dark wall of reinforced oak, her lines looking more like a predatory fish than a merchant sloop.
Late one afternoon, as Hugo was overseeing the installation of a new, reinforced mast-step, designed to handle the incredible tension of the advanced rigging he had planned a familiar sight appeared on the horizon.
A single-masted sloop, her tattered sails still bearing the scars of the Atlantic, limped into the harbor of Tortuga.
It was the Sea Serpent.
Barbossa was back.
Hugo stood on the deck of The Explorer, his eyes narrowing as he watched the familiar ship drop anchor. The gold of the Santa Trinidad had likely been spent or stashed, and the "peaceful" days of reconstruction were over. He could see Barbossa standing on the quarterdeck, his spyglass already trained on the shipyard.
"The predator returns," Hugo whispered to himself, his hand resting on the smooth, new rail of his ship. "I hope you brought your appetite, Hector. Because the price of my services has just gone up."