As the sun rose the next morning, Petrel, Fin, Krill and the captain were tucked up in a rock cave, several feet above the high-tide mark. There was snow on the ground, and the pigeon’s feathers were fluffed out with the cold.
“I don’t like this,” said Krill for the hundredth time. “We should be going straight back to the Oyster, not wasting our time on someone else’s business. It’s ten days since we left the ship, d’you realize that?”
“And we still have not found any trace of the Song,” said the captain. “Or the Singer.”
“Cap’n, with all due respect, it’s getting harder and harder for me to worry about a song when my daughter’s trapped on the bridge, along with Dolph and who knows else! Maybe today’s the day Albie overruns ’em, and what are we doing? Going off to rescue a bunch of strangers!”
“Who might know the Song,” said the captain in his sweet, determined voice. He put his hand on the ground, and the pigeon clambered onto it. “I do not think she wants to go back to the Devouts. I am going to call her Scroll.”
With a sigh, Krill turned his frustration onto Petrel and Fin. “You should never have agreed to such a bargain, bratlings.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” said Petrel. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Krill, but we ain’t seen another ship all this time, and you know it.”
“She is right,” said Fin. “This is our only chance of getting back to the Oyster.”
“Hmph,” the Head Cook rumbled deep in his throat. “I wish we’d never come north. Our troubles started when we left the ice.” And he subsided into gloom.
Petrel gazed out at the water, thinking, He’s right. I don’t care about changing the world, not anymore. It’s too big and too nasty. I want to go back to the ice.
She felt a brief flicker of guilt over Fin’s mam. He believes she’s dead, she reminded herself. And maybe she is. No point staying in this horrible place for a dead woman.
And for the rest of the morning she comforted herself with dreams of heading south, back to the ice, and of penguins and bergs and the sweet flesh of toothyfish.
It was past noon and the snow had melted away at last, when Scroll suddenly grew restless, bobbing up and down on the captain’s wrist as if something was wrong.
Petrel shaded her eyes and stared at the horizon. “What’s that, Cap’n? Looks like the sun coming up, only nowhere near as big and bright.”
The captain was already on his feet. “It is a hot-air balloon with a basket underneath. And there is another one. Look, they are tethered to sailing ships!” He turned to Fin. “You did not tell us that the Devouts used hot-air balloons.”
Fin’s face was ashen. “But they do not! At least—they did not when I was with them. I have never seen such things before!”
“Those two men must have sent a pigeon for them,” said the captain. “We will have to conceal the front of the cave, or the people in the baskets will see us.”
“It’s not just us they’ll see,” growled Krill, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “That water’s a mite too clear for my liking. Petrel, send a message to Missus Slink, quick smart. Tell her about those balloon things and the Devout ships. The Claw mustn’t come in, not yet. Not in daylight.”
Petrel tapped out a warning on the telegraph device. But although she waited and waited, there was no reply.
“They said they would be traveling underwater,” said the captain. “They will not receive our message until they surface.”
“Then we’d best keep sending it,” said Krill, “and hope like blazes they get it in time.”
* * *
By the time the Claw came to the edge of the Great Puddle, the ocean floor was shelving upwards and there were reefs everywhere. Sharkey kept his eye on the dark green water outside the porthole and didn’t share his thoughts with anyone.
At the helm, Gilly said, “Sir, we’re coming up to the channel entrance.”
“How long?” asked Sharkey.
“Ten minutes, sir.”
“What’s our depth?”
“Eighty-five feet, sir. And we’ve got forty feet of water under the keel.”
“Steady as she goes.”
“Aye, sir.”
Sharkey glanced at the chronometer and raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. “We’ll make the entrance to the channel at 13.20 hours. All stations!”
The two rats scurried to the diving-plane wheels. Cuttle stood by the motors, feet braced on the metal decking. Rain sat on the berth above the batteries, her eyes closed, her mouth moving silently.
At exactly 13.20 hours, Sharkey said, “Helm, make your heading due west. Two degrees up bubble. Dead slow ahead.”
The voices came back to him in rapid fire.
“Due west. Aye, sir,” cried Gilly.
“Dead slow ahead. Aye, sir,” shouted Cuttle from the motors.
The rats stood on their hind legs and hauled at the diving-plane wheels. As the Claw swung around, her bow rose, and her running lights fell on the entrance to the channel.
It was like a gorge cut out of rock, and even narrower than Sharkey had expected. But other than trying to make it all the way across the Great Puddle in shallow water, and probably grounding themselves in the attempt, he could see no other way of getting close to the shore.
“Make your depth seventy-six feet,” he said.
“Seventy-six feet. Aye, sir.”
And when they reached seventy-six feet: “Ease your bubble.”
“Ease bubble. Aye, sir.”
As the Claw nosed forward between the rock walls, Rain began to sing, very quietly. The words whispered across the little cabin and curled around Sharkey’s head.
“Hobgoblins tiptoe through the night
And imp and ghost and evil wight—”
Sharkey had no idea what a hobgoblin was, but he knew all about tiptoeing. That’s what they were doing now, tiptoeing into dangerous waters.
“They do their best to give us fright,” sang Rain.
“And fill us with dismay.”
Outside the porthole, the sides of the channel were so close that seaweed and sponges wavered as they passed. The running lights touched clamshells and rocks and schools of fish. Sharkey saw a crab frantically kicking up sand to conceal itself, and bag-trout dashing into the weeds, as shy as oysters.
“But will we cower, will we hide?
Will we lock ourselves inside?”
As they approached the coast, the channel grew shallower, though nowhere near as shallow as the waters on either side of it. The skin on the back of Sharkey’s neck tightened every time he gave the order to go up a few feet. He didn’t want to go up. He wanted to hurry back to deep water and dive, down down down, so far that the Ghosts’d never find them.
He knew that Cuttle and Gilly wouldn’t say a word against him, if that’s what he decided. They’d just nod and keep on believing that he was a hero.
“Or will we hold ourselves with pride
And chase those ghouls away?”
Sharkey gritted his teeth and said, “Up five.”
“Up five. Aye, sir.”
At 15.40 hours, Sharkey took another look at the chart. If they kept following the channel, they’d end up too far north of the rendezvous. Which meant they had to leave its relative safety and go up into the really shallow water. The tide was on the rise, and sunfall wasn’t far away, but still he didn’t like it one bit.
Maybe we should wait till after sunfall. Except that’d make us late, and if anything slowed us down, we’d miss the tide.
He realized he was chewing his thumbnail and quickly glanced around to make sure no one had noticed. Rain was still singing. Gilly was tapping the gyroscope while Cuttle oiled the driveshaft. The rats were watching Sharkey with eyes that were too knowing for comfort.
He flushed and said, louder than he’d intended, “Take her up to twenty-five feet.”
The rats turned the diving-plane wheels, and the Claw began to rise.
“Fifty-five feet,” sang Gilly. “Fifty feet. Forty-five. Forty. Thirty-five. Thirty.”
Outside the porthole, the water went from deep green to pale blue. The sides of the channel gave way to a sandy bottom.
“Twenty-five—”
“Zero bubble,” cried Sharkey. “Keep your trim.”
The upward movement stopped. And there they were, easing into the sandy reaches of the Great Puddle, as quiet as a flounder, with no more than ten feet of water under them. And unknown dangers above.
* * *
The Devouts’ ships sailed up and down the coast all afternoon, with the balloons drifting high above them. Petrel and her friends crouched in the cave, hardly daring to move. The captain held Scroll in the palm of his hands, stroking her gently and occasionally whispering in her ear.
Late in the day, the wind turned. Now it blew offshore, and no matter how close to land the ships sailed, the balloons pulled out to sea.
It might have been funny if it weren’t for the Claw on its way, and the water in the bay so clear and shallow that there was nowhere to hide.
“Go away, stupid Devouts,” whispered Petrel. “Give up. Go away!”
Krill glowered at her. “How long since you sent that message, bratling? Send it again, and keep sending it.”
She did. She tapped out warning after warning on the telegraph, her fingers slipping in their haste.
But then Fin groaned. “Listen!”
“Someone is shouting,” said the captain. “I think it is the people in the baskets. They have seen something!”
And as Petrel watched in horror, the sailing ships turned away from the shore and headed out across the bay. Out across the clear shallow water, where there was nowhere to hide.