Charles the Seal sat in the sanctum replaying Marlin’s words in his head: “One last thing. Watch out for sharks.” Charles had wanted to scream back, “If there are sharks, why did you turn me into a seal?” but Marlin had swum away. Swimming with sharks was still the last thing he wanted to do. So he spent a whole day trying to find another way out of the cave. There was none.
Since Marlin believed Charles was going to die fighting a dragon, in his fizard mind, there was no need for Charles to worry about swimming through shark-infested waters. That didn’t make Charles feel any better about it.
Before facing the icy ocean, he practiced seal swimming in Marlin’s fish tank to get the feel for it, and the next morning, he took his chances and dove into the ocean with his backpack strapped to his flipper. Millie was stowed safely in the backpack’s airtight pocket.
As soon as he entered the water, he scanned for sharks. Fortunately he didn’t see any. He began swimming around, looking for an opening in the ice above, but couldn’t find one. Then he saw a creature swimming toward him. It was another seal! Charles barked, “Do you know the way out?”
But all it barked back was, “What are you doing? Swim!” It quickly swam by, and Charles turned to see that a school of blue sharks was swimming after it. Without a moment to think, Charles followed the seal, swimming as fast as he could. They soon met up with the rest of the seal’s pod. All of them began swimming for their lives, but Charles was the least experienced and was lagging behind.
The sharks were right upon Charles, already nipping at his seal tail. He was running out of energy, and the weight of his backpack was a burden. He cursed himself for not leaving it behind.
The sharks caught up with him. Two of them swam next to him, one on each side, and lunged forward, jaws-first, for their strikes. But right before they could chomp down on his seal flesh, something caught on Charles’s flipper and yanked him upward.
Charles rose quickly through the water and was pulled up through a circular hole in the ice. Silence the Yeti looked at Charles the Seal dangling on the end of his fishing hook and exclaimed, “Yummy! Breakfast!”
It was out of the frying pan into the fire.