Monster Mission

He felt hard done by. If the aunts had sold him the island as he wanted he wouldn’t have to drown them now, and the children too. It was their own fault really. There was no way he could get his money-making schemes under way with people blathering and giving the game away. He was going to say that he’d found the creatures wild at sea and rescued them.

‘Right, go and get them,’ he ordered Des. And then, furiously, I thought I told you to stop the thing making that blasted noise!’

Des looked at the kraken, still tethered to the deck.

‘I’ve tried, boss. I’ve kicked him and I’ve thumped him but you said I wasn’t to do him in.’

Evil people cannot bear the sound of the hum. They feel it as a threat to all they stand for, and the kraken had been humming now for many hours.

Boris meanwhile had opened the hatch.

‘Out,’ he said. ‘Up! Only the peoples.’

One by one they came out. Fabio, Minette, the aunts … Herbert.

On deck it was cold but marvellously fresh after the stuffiness of the hold. Gulls were flying above them; it all looked so normal—except for the look in Sprott’s eyes.

‘I don’t want to see them drown, I don’t want to,’ yelled Lambert, twisting in his father’s grasp.

The children moved closer together. It was going to happen, then—and almost straight away.

Boris and Des had fetched the weights they were going to tie to their victims’ ankles; not that there was much chance that they would be able to swim to safety. The Hurricane had been steaming steadily away from the Island.

The aunts had come to stand behind the children; Etta behind Minette, Coral behind Fabio as though by some miracle they could still protect them.

Fabio and Minette had linked hands. Everything inside them seemed to have turned to stone.

Don’t let me make a fuss, Fabio was praying. Don’t let me be like Lambert.

‘We’ll start with the fat one,’ ordered Sprott. ‘Take her to the rails and get the weights on.’

Des went over to Aunt Coral.

‘Move,’ he said, prodding her with the butt of his gun—and as he did so, Fabio went mad.

‘How dare you!’ he shouted and tried to attack the bodyguard with his fists.

Sprott thought this was very funny. ‘All right, you can go first then if you’re so full of beans,’ he said, and the two thugs pinned Fabio’s arms behind his back and started to carry him to the side.

They were trying to fix weights on to his thrashing legs when the skipper put his head out of the wheelhouse.

‘Better hurry,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the look of the sky.’

There was nothing to like the look of. Not the sea, not the sky, not the surface of the water, not the clouds. Some dreadful weather was on the way.

The waves darkened, the water boiled; the sun vanished behind a mushroom cloud.

The gulls flew up screeching.

And on the deck of the Hurricane—someone began to scream.

‘Hold on to me,’ Fabio had shouted to Minette, but they were torn apart at once by the mountainous icy waves.

Minette had thought of herself as a good swimmer but this was nothing to do with swimming—she was being hurled up, then sucked down, rolled over…

And the cold was beyond belief.

All round her were broken planks and debris from the Hurricane. The ship had split in two the instant the great kraken had rammed her. She saw the roof of the boobrie’s splintered cage bobbing close by; two of the chicks were clinging to the top of it—but where was the third?

A wave broke over her head and she went under again; the weight of the water pressed her down and down; her lungs were bursting. I’m going to die, she thought, as far as she could think at all.

Then with a last thrust of her legs she reached the surface. And as she did so, she saw someone quite close to her, swimming as masterfully and strongly as if he was in a millpond rather than the raging sea.

‘Wait, I’m coming,’ called Herbert, and she reached out for him, but then another wave took her and she went under yet again and was sure she was lost. Then she felt herself pulled up and up by her hair … and found that she was clinging on to Herbert’s back and able to breathe once more.

‘Hold on tight, but don’t choke me,’ called Herbert—and set off through the waves as calmly as he had done when he was still a seal.

‘Fabio?’ she managed to ask.

But Herbert had not seen Fabio.

They passed the stoorworm and saw something large gripped tightly in the coils of his tail. The worm’s ancestors had come from the sea and Herbert wasted no time on him. He would get Aunt Coral to safety if anybody could.

A mattress swam past them, then the galley table with the third boobrie chick clinging on by his yellow feet.

‘Keep still, Aunt Etta,’ came Queenie’s high-pitched voice above the sound of the waves. ‘You mustn’t wriggle.’

The twins were holding Aunt Etta up between them as she spluttered and kicked her feet.

Hanging on to Herbert’s back took all Minette’s strength, but she was still searching desperately for Fabio.

‘Please, Herbert, we must find him.’