The first wave hit the canoe with a metallic slap! The canoe bucked and then lurched sideways as another wave hit. Fig tried to straighten the vessel, but the waves kept coming, faster now, bigger now.
Seconds later, water was everywhere—falling from the sky, spraying them in the face, filling up the canoe.
Milton had no idea what was going on, but he started trying to bail water with his explorer hat (was there anything that stunning accessory couldn’t do?). He had done two scoops when he spotted something emerging from the river depths. Wiping his sopping-wet T-shirt sleeve across his glasses, he squinted ahead.
A wriggling, jiggling purple tentacle was waving through the air in front of the canoe. The tentacle ended in a sucker that was spewing out a fountain of river water. As Milton watched, another tentacle came popping up. Then another and another and another and soon the river was frothing and bubbling with the movement of a whole lot of tentacles.
Like, a hundred tentacles.
“It’s the Push-Pull Centopus!” Milton screamed.
“Oh, really?” Fig yelled. “I hadn’t noticed!”
She was paddling as fast as she could, trying to direct the canoe toward the shore, but the waves were so powerful that the vessel was at their mercy. It was rocking and tipping, sloshingly full of river water.
Milton thought he might throw up (the riversickness had arrived, full force).
“What did the guide say to do?” Fig asked frantically. “It had to do with the bird—the singing one. Sea Hawk, help me remember!”
“We’re going to drown!” replied Milton, who was now crouched on the floor of the waterlogged canoe with his explorer hat over his eyes (yet another use—a blindfold in life-or-death situations!). “That centopus is going to suck us up and spew us out.”
In spite of his terror and his screaming and his lack of paddling, Milton actually was trying to come up with a plan. But all he could think of was what Sea Hawk shouted when his health bar reached critical levels.
“Shall Sea Hawk perish thus?” he cried.
It was then that the singing started.