“Ow!” Eddy winced as a bamboo cane snapped back over the Crew’s shoulder and landed a stinging blow on his cheek.

The clumps of tall grass that the Captain had seen through his telescope had turned out to be a lot clumpier than expected. The Codcakers were struggling painfully through a great wall of stems and stalks.

“It’s quiet, isn’t it?” said Eddy.

And it was. Strangely quiet. No birds twittered above their heads. No insects buzzed through the leaves.

“I hope you’re not going to say ‘too quiet’,” said the Penguin. “Because you can bet that the minute you do some huge hairy beast will come roaring out of the bushes.”

“It’s called the Island of Words,” said the Crew. “That doesn’t sound like a place where huge hairy beasts lurk. You know the saying – sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

“Huh!” said the Penguin. “That’s rubbish for a start. Take my cousin. Words nearly killed him.”

“I reckons I’m going to regret asking this, Pinwing,” said the Captain. “But how on earth did words nearly kill your cousin?”

“Someone dropped a dictionary on his head. Knocked him out cold.”

“I was right,” sighed the Captain. “Everybody halt. I needs a rest to get my breath.”

They stopped. The noise of four mouths gulping down the hot air filled Eddy’s ears.

But wait. Could he hear another sound, too? He struggled to make it out.

“Hush,” he said. “Everybody stop breathing.”

“Slight problem,” said the Penguin. “I get a medical condition if I stop breathing. It’s called being dead.”

“I mean, stop breathing for a minute,” said Eddy. “I think I can hear something.”

They held their breath, and listened. It was faint, it was indistinct, but somewhere up ahead there was a definite rustling.

“The lad’s right,” said the Captain. “I don’t know what’s making that sound, but it could be part of the challenge that Grungeybeard has set. So let’s be careful.” Slowly and cautiously, they pushed on. Just a little further ahead, the bamboo suddenly cleared. The Codcakers found themselves looking out over a wide, open space, as big as a football pitch. On its far side lay the end point of the pointy end of the island, a narrow, flat shoreline of brown pebbles. Above it towered a whopping great tree.

“The Poet Tree,” said the Captain. “Let’s get over there and see what’s what.”

The wide space in front of them was open, but it wasn’t empty. It was covered in books – thousands and thousands of them, lying on their backs, their pages fanned out in the sun.

The Captain led the way, tiptoeing carefully through the books to avoid stepping on them. The noise that Eddy had heard was louder now. It was the sound of the breeze wafting their pages up and down, a gentle swoosh multiplied a million times over.

“It sounds almost like they are breathing,” whispered Eddy.

“As if they were asleep,” added the Crew.

“By the way,” asked the Penguin, “WHY ARE WE WHISPERING?”

The Penguin’s loud voice had a sudden and dramatic effect. The books that lay near his feet started to shake and shiver, their pages flapping wildly.

“They’re taking off!” said Eddy. “Look – there – and there!”

Wherever he looked, books were quivering and wriggling and launching themselves into the air like a flock of clumsy birds. They swirled and flailed around the Codcakers, whacking into heads and shoulders.

One book hovered in front of Eddy’s eyes, open at its first chapter. And then there was a voice. A rather old-fashioned voice. A rather loud voice, speaking the words that Eddy could see printed on the page.

“One bright sunny morning, Gerald the Pixie threw open the shutters on his front window, and looked out over Daffodil Dell…”

And another voice in his right ear…

“Please, Daddy! Sybil has a pony of her own. And Ethel, too. And simply everybody in the Lower Fourth except me…”

And another right behind him…

“‘Mary, give everyone a big glass of squash,’ Victor exclaimed commandingly. ‘It’s a hot day and the Superior Six are going to need cool heads, because I bet there’s a great big mystery just around the corner.’”

In a moment, the handful of voices became a hundred, the hundred became a thousand, and the thousand became a great wave of noise that almost lifted Eddy off his feet. His head was spinning. He couldn’t think straight. He took a deep breath and shouted “QUIET!!!!” with all the force in his lungs. But he couldn’t even hear his own voice in the terrible din.

Then the pain began – as if a metal spike had been driven through each of his ears. And someone was drumming on the ends of the spikes with sledgehammers, banging them together inside his skull. His head felt like it was going to explode.

He had to make it stop. But the pain had driven all the ideas out of his brain. He didn’t know what to do. He peered through the storm of flying books to try to see his shipmates. Perhaps one of them had come up with a solution.

The Captain was on his hands and knees, scrabbling in the sandy soil, digging a hole to bury his own head. The Penguin was standing completely rigid, his eyes staring blankly into space. The Crew had emptied a great pile of things that might just come in handy out of her rucksack, and had managed to stuff most of herself inside it instead. They weren’t coming to the rescue.

Eddy’s bones were shaking. The pain in his head was the worst he had ever felt, and it was getting stronger by the minute. He felt sick and dizzy. He was going to pass out. And if that happened, he doubted that he would ever wake up again. He had to do something.

But what?