He was wet, cold, and extremely tired. His clothes were plastered to his skin, his straw-colored hair was likewise affixed to the back of his neck--all except for the one lock that ran across his forehead, the one that was too short to ponytail with the rest. That one was doing its best to get into his eyes.   

The wind was warm, at any rate. He had lost touch of how long he'd been adrift long ago. The days all blurred into one another--time and again he'd rouse from a sleep like death and be uncertain whether an hour or a day had passed. Once this might have seemed disconcerting to him; now he no longer cared. Caring takes energy, and the thin young man floating on the waves had none to spare.   

Still, despite all this, he had not entirely given up hope, even though he was laboriously scribbling out his thoughts in his damp book as though those words would be the last anyone ever heard of him. No, even though he was alone, hungry, and desperately thirsty, he clung to one thought as to a lifeline--I must find her. I will not die until I see her again. This thought ran like a litany through his tired mind, deeper than his awareness reached, but it was enough, just barely enough, to keep that flicker of life in his body as he drifted on, writing by the light of the setting moon. He was not thinking about the morning, or the possibility that another might follow that, and another, and another, and still find him stranded and alone in the ocean--that would have killed him. He was just thinking about her.  

"Elaine.." He hoped, had to hope, that he'd find her. But he was so alone and so tired--for the first time it occurred to him that he might not make it. Was he cursed to starve out here on this ocean without seeing her face just one more time? Was he--  

cra-BOOOM!! Guybrush Threepwood jumped, lost his pencil, and nearly dropped the book as well. Cannon, he thought. That was a cannon shot. He jerked his head up sharply--and suddenly forgot about how miserable he was.  

Rising out of the nothingness was an island--a beautiful tropical island, streaming with water. It would have been visible from miles away, if he hadn't been so caught up in his reverie--and it was under attack. An old galleon, a pirate ship, tattered and torn but still mighty, was facing off against an old fort. One of them, fort or ship, had been the source of the shot which had awakened him. More cannonballs flew like deadly hail across the channel of water between them. He was drifting, unnoticed, into the center of their battle.  

Even tired as was, Guybrush still would have tried to turn his tiny craft aside rather than get caught between them, except for one minor fact. Defending the fort was...  

"Elaine?!"   

Perhaps we can excuse him for not paying too much attention to his surroundings, but Guybrush missed one more crucial piece of information--the Captain of the pirate ship was none other than the Zombie Pirate LeChuck himself. And this was unfortunate, because no one had more against Guybrush Threepwood than LeChuck.  

At present, however, he had other things on his mind.  

"Fiiiiire!!"  

The massive walls of the fort took yet another hit, just as they had been doing all day. But his quarry, Elaine Marley, still glared down at him defiantly, brandishing her torch. Her cannon were still firing bravely on his ship, and she herself remained unpersuaded by his attempts to talk her over to his side. But underneath her cool manner, he though he sensed growing desperation. She must be running low on cannonballs by now.  

"Sail with me, and I'll make ye Queen of the Dead" he coaxed.  

"I..I can't. I'm washing my hair tonight" BOOM. Pieces of his mast cascaded around him.   

"Blast be yer hair, woman! Can't you see that this salty old sea-corpse pines for your every gentle caress?" No answer. BOOM. Her walls took a battering.   

She moved lightly down the wall, touching off cannons as she went. "I don't think my father would approve of me dating the undead" she informed him. BOOM. "And you're probably too nice a zombie pirate for me anyway." BOOM. "Let's just be friends, instead."  

"Gaaarh!!" was LeChuck's only answer as more of his ship fell apart around him. Elaine came perilously close to losing her temper.  

"Let's face it, LeChuck! You're an evil, foul-smelling, vile, co-dependent villain, and that's just not what I'm looking for in a romantic relationship right now."  

LeChuck fell back, perplexed, before this torrent of womanspeak--unintelligible to men. His crew was similarly baffled. "Darn yer riddles, ye saucy female" he complained, defeated, "what d'ya mean?"  

She obliged him. "You're a bloodthirsty monster who's already kidnapped me once, tortured my friends, and taken from me the only man I ever loved--" here she paused, gaze turning inward--"Guybrush Threepwood."  

The astonished/contented/delirious sigh that emerged from somewhere near the water below went unheard by LeChuck, but not by one of his skeletal henchmen.  

"Ship ahoy!!" he cried, startling Elaine and LeChuck out of their battle of wills. LeChuck was the first to act.  

Guybrush heard an enraged "Threepwood!!" shouted over his head, then suddenly his tiny ship was shot out from under him. LeChuck had fired a cannon at him at point-blank range. The next thing he knew, he was on board LeChuck's ship, held firmly between two of his skeleton crew.  The fearsome zombie pirate himself advanced on him.  

"Guybrush Threepwood," LeChuck snarled, "I don't know how ye escaped from my Carnival of the Damned--but ye won't escape the taste of my blade!!" Down flashed his cutlass in a swift arc--  

--and a shot from the fort took it cleanly out of his hand. It quivered where it stuck in the center mast, and Elaine Marley calmly blew the smoke away from the muzzle of her blunderbuss. She tilted her head and gave LeChuck a very arch and challenging look.    

The zombie pirate, however, seemed more pleased than frightened.  "Oooh...the lass has spirit, eh."  

LeChuck dismissed Guybrush momentarily--his crewmen dumped him rather unceremoniously down into the hold. Revenge on his enemy could wait--now the victory was too close to risk. "Turn loose the longboats!" he cried, inititating the final phase of his plan. It was time to play his trump card. Guybrush was his. Elaine soon would be. "And prepare the flaming..voodoo..cannonball!!"   

Utterly confident, he indulged himself in a blood-curdling demonic laugh.