Monster Mission

Now he didn’t worry any more. The terrible sadness he felt as he lay curled up in the hold of the Hurricane had not got stuck anywhere. It went right down through every single segment to the tip of his tail. He was just a long tube of wretchedness and despair and shame.

It had all happened in a moment. He had heard the boobrie squawk in terror and come up from the bottom of the lake to see if he could help, and a man had shot something into his throat—a red hot needle it felt like … and then he remembered nothing more till he woke in a kind of snake pit in this ghastly place.

‘I have failed my friends,’ he thought, ‘and I have failed myself.’ And he felt so sad that he wanted to die.

From the rusty tank in the corner where the mermaids sat, came the sound of sobbing. Oona was sobbing because men kept coming down below to peer and pry—men that were worse even than Lord Brasenott—and she was terribly afraid. But the noisiest and most terrible tears came from Loreen.

‘My baby!’ she kept hiccuping. ‘My little darling, where is he?’

When Sprott had overcome Art and broken open the door of the mermaid shed Walter had been asleep in his washing-up bowl and there had been no time for Loreen to grab him before she was thrown over Sprott’s shoulder and carried towards the boat.

‘Will someone find him?’ gulped Loreen. And old Ursula said of course they would—but the trouble was, no one knew what was happening on the Island and who was left.

Perhaps the most heart-rending sight in that ghastly place were the boobrie chicks, penned in a wire cage, their yellow beaks bruised and bloodstained … and lying down, with her great yellow legs in the air like an outsize chicken ready for the pot, their mother. Lowering the struggling giant bird through the trapdoor had been so difficult that they had given her another injection and now the chicks climbed over her, peeping in bewilderment, not understanding why their mother was so still.

But Sprott’s greatest prize was not in the hold. The kraken lay on the deck, tethered by ropes which bit so hard that he could not even turn his head, and every few minutes Sprott came up to look at him and rub his hands and gloat. He had no idea what it was that he had caught, only that it would make him very, very rich. For it could speak, this thing which they had caught when Des fell into its cave. It had said ‘Father’ once, when they nailed it down on to the deck, but now its eyes were closed and it spoke no more.

‘Hurry up down there,’ Sprott shouted to the crew who were fixing the starboard engine. They would have been gone long before but for the engine playing up. It was high time they got away across the Atlantic. He’d given orders to have the thing on the deck hosed down every ten minutes but it wasn’t eating. None of the creatures were eating … they needed to be in proper cages.

For a moment he wondered if the little boy was dead—the one who’d tried to stop them in the cave. Probably not—the skulls of children were tougher than you’d think. All the same he’d be glad to be gone.

‘I thought I told you to hurry,’ Sprott shouted once again.

But still the Hurricane lay unmoving on the grey sea—and on her deck, the little kraken, his heart broken, prepared for death.

Minette sat on the floor of the boxroom, her hands round her knees, and waited for Fabio to wake.

She had been there for several hours and she would not move however much the aunts complained.

‘You’re not helping him,’ said Etta. ‘He’ll come round when he’s ready.’

But she did not speak in her usual brisk voice, and Minette took no notice. All the aunts were like wraiths since the kraken had gone.

So Minette watched and waited by her friend. Outside, in the bathroom, she could hear the high, stupid voices of Betty’s children.

‘There’s something nasty in the washbasin. It smells fishy. You can’t clean your teeth,’ whined Boo-Boo.

‘It’s eaten my Tinkerbell toothpaste. I don’t like it here. I want to go home!’

‘I want to go home too. I want to go home now.’

Minette sighed. She could never get used to the awfulness of Boo-Boo and the Little One. What was in the washbasin was the merbaby, Walter. He was missing his mother, and chewed anything he could reach.

Fabio lay without moving on the bed; the bandage round his head stood out very white in the darkened room. What if he didn’t come round at all?

But that was stupid. He was breathing. He had concussion, that was all.

Minette shut her eyes, remembering. They’d been in the cave, telling the kraken a story … trying to stop him going too near the entrance. Then suddenly something had hurtled down from the opening in the cliff above them and landed in the water. A man they had never seen before, gasping and struggling for breath.

They hadn’t been frightened at first—not till he clambered out and stared at the kraken … stared and stared… Then he felt in his sodden clothes, and from an oilskin pouch he took out a whistle and blew three sharp shrill blasts.