Luffy was still tied to his chair and since it wouldn't do to keep a man like Whitebeard waiting for them to untie him, Jinbe directly picked Luffy up, chair and all, then plopped him back down in front of the den den mushi.
"Old man," Luffy acknowledged, respectful but not deferential. "Where do you want to do this?"
Whitebeard chuckled. "Straight to the point, huh? Alright. There's a non-magnetic island close enough to your ship for mid-range den den mushi to reach you. Just about everyone passes it by without noticing, thanks to the unusual currents in these parts. If you think you're worthy of challenging me, it shouldn't be a problem to find it."
"Uh-huh. See you soon, then." Luffy hung up the receiver with his tongue. "Let's go! They have food!"
Luffy was giving them all his trademarked big stupid grin, like he'd just found a solution to world hunger and not just their own food predicament.
"Luffy," Nami began.
"Nami!" Luffy called back, seemingly oblivious to the slight edge in her tone.
"How exactly are we meant to find a non-magnetic island in the Grand Line, where that is the only way to find islands?" Nami somehow kept her cool.
"Huh? Well… you'll figure it out, right?" Luffy was completely unconcerned.
Nami let out a long suffering sigh and rubbed the space between her eyes. "Luffy…"
*sniff sniff sniiiiiifffff*
"Hm," Tia hummed. "I can smell the stink of land on the wind. There should be an island nearby."
Suddenly Nami wasn't so concerned with Luffy's impossible expectations. "Thank you, Tia, but I think I can manage."
Several of the boys discovered how magnificent Franky's craftsmanship was with the ship and were coincidentally very interested in all the little details they hadn't noticed before, like how evenly spaced the nail placement was.
Tia blinked at her, unphased and unimpressed. "The island is that way."
"You-!" Nami growled but cut herself off as her anger shifted to smugness. "Hmph, who cares if you can tell which way it is? Only I can navigate us there, regardless."
"If you say so," Tia smirked.
Nami took that as her own challenge and immediately started barking orders. She was going to get them to that island if it was the last thing she did!
She did actually remember exactly what kind of challenge it was that Luffy had made to Whitebeard back at Dressrosa until it was too late to lead them off course.
…
The island didn't so much 'come into view' as it jutted from the sea out of nowhere.
It wasn't actually the island that sprung from the water, though, but rather the sea that couldn't hold still.
"Luffy, we're going to smash into the rocks at this rate!" Nami called out a warning that could barely be heard amidst the howling hurricane and mountainous waves crashing against the cliffs.
"We'll make it!" Luffy insisted on pressing onwards.
"The island isn't magnetic, Luffy! This isn't just bad weather! It doesn't have the magnetic field to protect it from the whims of the Grand Line!" Nami argued.
"Onwards!" Luffy demanded. "If Whitebeard can handle it, so can we!"
It was times like these that made it easy to see how he'd come so far so quickly. His undaunted self assurance in the face of everything the world could throw at him meant he was destined for greatness or an early grave, possibly both.
Nami's misgivings were not shared by the rest of the crew regardless. In fact, even Usopp and Chopper were unusually silent about the clear danger they were in.
Seeing that, Nami had no choice but to resign herself to making the most of the situation she found herself in.
After a moment of thought, she had an idea that she didn't like one bit. Sadly, it was the best way she could think of to reduce the risk of getting smashed to bits or washed away.
"Alright…" Nami took a deep breath and started shouting commands, her crewmates following like a well oiled machine.
With her direction, it was less than a minute that they found themselves climbing up a particularly large swell.
"Hit it, Franky!" Nami shouted.
Franky did, indeed, shouting "SUPEEEER!!!" at the top of his lungs as he triggered a miniature coup de burst, sending them hurtling off the tippy top of the wave and right over the cliffs.
Only to find that the land on the other side was not quite as level as she'd anticipated. In fact, the cliffs apparently formed a ring around an inner lake, which itself had a n island at the center. Nami barely had the time to see Whitebeard's ship, the Moby Dick, moored on the other side of the lake, with an obvious opening in the cliffs behind it, revealing it to be a bay in actuality and also that they were were all idiots for not going around the island to look for a better place to drop anchor.
Then they began to fall, and there wasn't much room for self reflection.
…
Once all the pointless screaming stopped (because Franky's masterpiece was obviously going to be fine), Cherry had a good scan of the island.
She was pleasantly surprised to find that the island wasn't a barren rock, but actually had some plant and animal life. The fact that the hurricane was only a tiny fraction of its strength below the cliffs was a good clue as to why. The natural stone walls encircling the island were remarkably sturdy given that they didn't look that thick, maybe twenty meters at the top and twice that at water level.
It had to be said that a Grand Line hurricane was a different kind of beast than what would devastate an island in the four Blues, and the New World was particularly nasty in that regard.
All in all, this little ecosystem shouldn't exist, but it did and it was thriving.
She briefly wondered if maybe Whitebeard had created the island artificially before dismissing the idea. It didn't seem likely and he didn't seem the type.
Cherry could totally make an artificial island if she wanted to.
"Is everyone in one piece?" Chopper called out once he'd gotten himself in order.
"The One Piece?! Where?!" Luffy shouted from where she was wrapped up in the rigging.
"Um," Ben raised a hand. "I'm not hurt… I was just wondering who this Whitebeard guy is? And why Luffy is challenging him?"
"Whitebeard is widely considered the strongest man in the world, with the power to make the seas quake and wipe islands on the map, if he so wishes. Not that he's done so with inhabited islands… well, there was Marineford, I suppose, but Aokiji froze the tsunamis before they wiped it out." Jinbe's words apparently didn't set Ben's little heart at ease, because he looked even more worried.
"The old man is a good guy. Otherwise my brother Ace wouldn't follow him," Luffy did a markedly better job at reassuring the boy.
"Of course, he's really strong, so we might lose some crew members if we don't bring our 'A' game," Cherry warned, which only set off Ben's poor nerves all over again, earning her a swat on the arm from Robin.