Not the last thing. You’re what’s left. And you’re still here. Stay bricky.

I forced a smile. It was the last I ever heard from Scratch as the fiddle slipped to the side of the chest and was waterlogged in the growing pool at the bottom of the boat.

Da, gone.

Mr. Darwin and my crewmates, gone.

Farthing, gone.

And now Scratch, gone too.

The breeze picked up, and the smoke thinned and was whipped away in swirls. The island was death, but when I surveyed the empty mass of water ahead of me, I shuddered with the fear of a boy who knows the sea all too well. A boy who knows the empty ocean has been deadly for thousands more men than any volcano eruption.

Or dragon.

I tried to recall Mr. Darwin’s Galapagos map. It showed a cluster of islands together; Narborough wasn’t far from Albemarle. But maps were always a lie. The islands were not easy to travel between, not for one desperate boy in a tiny boat. I lost myself in the effort of rowing and bailing until I was surrounded by nothing but water, the blotch of smoke on the horizon all I could see of the island I’d escaped. I almost wanted to row back now, just to have sight of land!

I strained at the oar, trying not to think at all, until darting lights appeared before my eyes and the tremble in my arms made it impossible to continue.

I flopped back, leaning on the chest to rest, clutching my twitching arm muscles. Nothing but water in any direction. The wind was brisk and the sea calm, and this gave me the tiniest reason to hope. There was good visibility and it was the kind of day that the Beagle would be at sail. Maybe they knew where I was yet had been unable to get to me, and now with the volcano erupting they would come. I knew in my deepest heart this hope was a lie, but I tried to listen to it all the same.

The sky was a deadly hot blue, adding blisters to my lava scalds. I should open the chest to find my shirt, wet it, and cover my head. Thirst was now my biggest enemy.

A shadow passed over me. I opened my eyes. A shadow swooping, low and close, a shadow with wing tips skimming the water.

She had escaped the lava. I couldn’t think how.

She was golden and glorious and petrifying. Thirst was not my biggest enemy.

This was a dragon mother, and she was searching for her eggs.

I cowered low in the base of the boat, water sloshing around me. The dragon had neither burned nor devoured me when she dropped me repeatedly into the sea on that first day. Her behavior was a warning. She was brooding her eggs, and visitors were not welcome. And now her eggs were in the chest by my head. She circled the boat.