Truth be told, what Milton wanted to do was run far, far away from the screaming. He 100 percent did not want to do what he did (and later would sort of marvel at himself for doing), which was take off running after Rafi.
The boys raced through the jungle, past the palms and ferns and mangroves that grew near the river. The vine wall was ahead of them, swaying gently in the breeze, but Gabe was nowhere in sight.
Then there was another yell, and Milton saw that right in front of the vine, the ground had collapsed.
Gabe was at the bottom of a hole.
Rafi swung his camera around to his back and hurried to kneel at the edge (much closer than Milton would deem safe). “Gabe!” he called. “Are you in there? Are you okay?”
“Hey hey,” came Gabe’s voice, high and shaky and muffley-echoey. “Think so. Hit my head.”
Milton crept a few feet closer until he could peer into the pit. It was deep, maybe ten feet or so, and there was a lot of dust, but he could see Gabe down there, sitting cross-legged on the sandy ground with quite a lot of blood coming from a cut on his forehead.
Milton did not like blood. He never had. If he saw even a little bit (like a paper-cut amount), he would feel queasy. The more blood there was, the queasier he got. He backed away from the hole.
“I have to get him out of there,” Rafi said, jumping to his feet. He grabbed a nearby palm frond only to toss it down right away (not strong enough). He snatched up a fallen mahogany-tree limb, then dropped that too (not long enough).
Milton tried to think of something useful to do—something useful that didn’t involve looking at Gabe’s gross, bloody head—while Rafi raced around frantically. There was silence from the hole.
Then there was a tiny, barely audible squeak.
“I say, are you quite all right in there, Gabe?” Milton called.
“Monster,” came a super, super soft whisper. “Big ol’ scary-lookin’ monster.”
Rafi cast an alarmed glance at Milton, and they both rushed to the edge again.
There was Gabe, huddled up against the far side of the hole. Now that the dust had settled, Milton could see that the hole extended out underground, so that it was really the end of a tunnel.
And in that tunnel, only about a room-length away from Gabe, was an absolutely enormous and completely bizarro creature.
The parts of the creature that were not covered in mud were pinkish and slime-shiny. It appeared to have no eyes, no legs, no real distinguishing features at all, except for a large snout. The snout was like an elephant’s trunk, except that it was the same slick pink as the rest of its body, and instead of having nostrils at the end, there were rows of gray, square, rocklike teeth.
Teeth that were mashing and crashing and grinding against one another.
The creature was waving its enormous honker in a manner that appeared very menacing from Milton’s point of view (he could only assume that Gabe felt the same way). It had to be—
“The EarthWorm Pachyderm!” Milton shouted.
“The what?” Rafi cried. “What’s that? And what’s it doing?”
At first, the only thing Milton could remember from the EarthWorm Pachyderm entry was that it ate dirt. That meant it wasn’t a carnivore. It was huge and weird, but it shouldn’t want to attack Gabe.
Then he remembered the Really-Sharp-Schnozzed Shrew entry that Rafi had sneered at down by the river.
“The pachyderm must think Gabe’s a Really-Sharp-Schnozzed Shrew,” Milton said slowly. “Both animals dig holes, and both are territorial. It’s challenging him. This is a nose-off!”
Rafi gaped at him, and Milton could see that he was remembering the words he’d read aloud too—especially the part that said each attempts to murder the other.
“We need to get Gabe out now,” Milton said. “That thing’s going to eat his nose off with its nose!”
Rafi darted back to the discarded palm frond. Milton (briefly) considered running away again. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t yell So long! and bolt no matter how scared (and grossed out) he was, not with Gabe in danger. If ever there was a time for him to show—to prove—that he was indeed Sea Hawk P. Greene, that time was now. And, in fact, Milton realized, Sea Hawk himself had been in a very similar situation once.
Sea Hawk had been traipsing through the jungle when the ground had given way beneath him, plunging him into the den of an extraordinarily fierce and unusually immense honey badger. It hadn’t been a super difficult adventure. Milton had simply made Sea Hawk duck, twist, and emit his signature bird-of-prey call while removing rope from his utility belt, tossing it around a boulder at the top of the hole, and then scrambling up to safety.
Gabe didn’t have a rope. Milton didn’t have a rope. But he did have—
“The vines!” he shouted.
He hurried over to the mahogany tree and started unwinding the first vine he came to as fast as he could. Rafi understood right away and came to help. When they had a pretty long strand free, they tossed it into the hole.
The end of the vine landed next to Gabe, and he grabbed on—
But his sudden movement made the EarthWorm Pachyderm advance! It wriggled toward Gabe, closer and closer, its nose swinging faster than ever.
“Don’t move, Gabe,” Rafi instructed.
Milton’s brilliant idea hadn’t been enough. His Sea Hawkian confidence began to wane. And Gabe had such a tiny little schnoz. He didn’t stand a chance!
“I wish Fig was here,” he groaned. “I don’t know if I can do this without her.”
In his hands, the Truth-Will-Out Vine twitched. Then it jerked upward, pulling Gabe toward the surface a few feet. Down in the hole, the EarthWorm Pachyderm paused.
“What’s happening?” Rafi cried. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Milton replied, shaking his head.
“Well, do nothing again, Dr. Bird Brain!” Rafi shouted.
Bird Brain. It was really such a stupid nickname. It wasn’t clever or even terribly mean. Even so, hearing it made Milton feel like he’d just gotten another smack from the great, invisible hand.
But something about those words—or maybe that smack—jarred an idea loose in his head.
Most people have been calling me Bird Brain lately, he’d told the vines the day he had found the field guide, the day they had rolled up like enormous balls of green yarn. The ins and outs of exactly what that meant weren’t clear in Milton’s mind, but he followed his (sensitive) gut and hollered, “I don’t like it when people call me Bird Brain! That’s not my name!”
The vine wound up a few more feet.
As the vines lifted Gabe, the EarthWorm Pachyderm snapped into action again, realizing its competitor was getting away. The blobby beast started squirming forward, and there was much honking and grunting and gnashing of teeth. Gabe was only about four feet away from the top now, but the EarthWorm Pachyderm was so big that it could still reach him with its snout. One smack, and Gabe, who was barely hanging on, would tumble right onto its slimy back.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry!” Rafi shouted. “I didn’t mean it. I’m just really freaked out. Let’s pull!”
At these words, the vine yanked itself upward again. Milton and Rafi pulled, and the vine continued to spin, like they were all somehow working together, boys and plant. They pulled and spun and pulled and spun.
Until finally Gabe came clambering out of the hole.
“Hey hey,” he said, collapsing into a bloody, dusty, grinning heap. “Didja see that monster down there? Yikes!”
Rafi didn’t waste any time. He scooped his brother up, jumped to his feet, and started toward the beach.
But then he paused and turned back around. “Thanks, Sea Hawk,” he said before hurrying away.
“You are most welcome,” Milton said to the boys’ retreating figures. Then he slumped to the ground (a safe distance from the cave-in).
It was some time before he was able to roll over and crawl back to the hole. The EarthWorm Pachyderm wasn’t there anymore. If this were Isle of Wild, this would be the time to observe this magnificent(ly grotesque) creature more fully and complete a field journal entry. So he watched and waited, even dropping in a few pieces of the meatball he’d packed in one of his zippered pockets for an afternoon snack. No elephant-worms were forthcoming, however, so finally, he headed back to the beach.
It was only when he reached Uncle Evan’s front porch that he realized Rafi still had the field guide.