Chapter 487

The flashback resumes half a century back, with a 38-year-old Brook rousing the Rumbar Pirates each morning through song. A small whale takes to following their ship, charming the whole crew, and they name him as he tags along into danger. During a sea battle Laboon rescues crewmen who fall overboard, and later the pirates defend him from a giant Sea King. Brook learns the whale clings to him most of all, partly for his love of music and partly, the crew teases, for their matching head shapes.

Knowing the Grand Line is too brutal for a young whale, Yorki resolves to leave Laboon behind, ordering the crew to ignore him and ban all music until he separates. Laboon almost weeps at being shunned, then vanishes for a week before they reach the Twin Capes. There the lighthouse keeper Crocus, who guards the pirate graveyard at the foot of Reverse Mountain, welcomes Calico Yorki's crew, only for Laboon to turn up waiting in the water. After three months of repairs and song, the crew sails on, promising Laboon they will circle the world and return. Three years later in the Florian Triangle, only Brook's skeleton wanders the wrecked ship, recalling lost friends, his own transformation, and the day Yorki contracted an untreatable jungle disease. Refusing to doom the crew, Yorki took the infected and fled toward the Calm Belt, assumed to have died.

Iceburg continues auditioning a new secretary in the cover story. The Rumbar Pirates enter the Grand Line with Laboon trailing them, become acquainted with Crocus, and finally convince the whale to stay. Yorki's incurable illness drives him to attempt escape through the Calm Belt. The treasured tune the crew keeps requesting is at last named as Binks' Sake.