Monster Mission

After he and Minette were torn apart, Fabio had sighted the lifeboat which had been thrown clear when the Hurricane sank. He managed to swim towards it… to get a hand on the gunnel… If the people inside it would help him he could pull himself up.

But the people inside it were Stanley Sprott and his crew.

Sprott looked over the side and saw the struggling boy. ‘Get rid of him,’ he said.

And as the small hand came up, Boris hit it with an oar and pushed the boy back into the water.

There was not much hope for Fabio after that. He was going down for the last time when Herbert found him.

‘Hold on to my shoulder,’ he ordered. ‘And don’t talk,’

Herbert was an amazing swimmer but he knew that to support two children all the long way back to the Island might be beyond his strength. Even a seal would not try to swim with two pups on his back.

Everyone was in difficulties. The raft on which the boobrie chicks balanced was sinking and above them the boobrie mother squawked in anguish, not knowing which of the two to pick up in her beak. The worm’s tail muscles had gone into cramp from holding up the waterlogged Aunt Coral…

Herbert measured the long way to the Island and set his teeth.

‘Come on, everybody, follow me,’ he called manfully.

One could only do one’s best.

The kraken had found his son. He cared for nothing else. He swam away from the shipwreck with the child on his back. Anger still coursed through his body. He was not the Healer of the Sea now. He was a father whose child had been hurt. Let everyone else beware for he and his son were on their way!

But after the first joy of being safe, the little kraken wriggled forward so that his mouth was right against his father’s ear, and began to talk very fast in Polar. He was explaining what had happened and how the people on the Island had tried to keep him safe.

And then he said the word which the great kraken had spoken when he first swam into the bay.

‘Children?’ said the little kraken. And again, looking back at the wreckage: ‘Children?’

But it was not really a question. It was an order. The little kraken was growing up.

And the great kraken sighed because he wanted above all to be away from the shrieks and the splintered wood of the wreckage and be in the quietness of the sea. But he heeded his son—and he turned and swam back to the wreck and to the struggling creatures trying to hold each other up in the water.

Then Minette and Fabio felt something below them … the strong living island of muscle that was the kraken’s back … and felt it rise and rise till everyone was safely gathered on it—the aunts and the creatures, the boobries in their cage … and they themselves, sliding off Herbert’s weary shoulders to feel firm ground beneath their feet.

It was an incredible, magic journey that they took after the panic and terror they had been through—floating secure and safe on the great creature’s back, until the Island was in sight, and there was no more danger and no more fear.

But the kraken had not saved everybody.

Stanley Sprott lay sprawled across the bottom of the battered, leaking lifeboat. Boris, only half conscious, was clinging to the gunnel. Des was hanging over the side, trying to be sick; he had been drinking seawater. Lambert was curled up like a baby between the skipper and the mate.

Casimir had drowned in the struggle to reach the lifeboat after the Hurricane was rammed.

They had been drifting for a long time. The sea was still strange; slate colour one minute; the colour of blood the next. No rescue ships were setting out in this awesome ocean.

In the lifeboat there was no more water and no more food. The men’s lips were blistered. Their swollen tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths. Befuddled as they were, they tried to make sense of what had happened.

Only they couldn’t. No one could make sense of it.

‘An island?’ muttered Sprott. He could see it, bigger than anyone could believe, moving towards them with the speed of a comet.

But how could it? How could an island move?

‘It wasn’t there,’ said Lambert suddenly. Weakened by hunger and thirst, those were the only words he could still say.

Sprott’s head was a jumble of pictures.

A mermaid holding up … an aunt. But had there really been mermaids? And a great bird the size of an elephant flapping over the wreckage …

No, it was ridiculous. It was impossible. He fingered the bruise on his forehead. He must have concussion.

‘Not… really there …’ murmured Lambert. He wouldn’t last much longer unless they were rescued soon.

I’m going mad, thought Sprott. I’ll have to be careful. We’ll all have to be careful or they’ll put us in a loony bin if we’re rescued. All that happened was that a storm came up and the Hurricane was wrecked. Everything else is nonsense.

‘Not… there …’ said Lambert faintly.

Sprott looked at his son. He had always despised Lambert but he was sorry now. Lambert was right. He had said all along that the … things … weren’t really there and they weren’t. How could they have been?