He looked around him. None of the kids who had been near him before were near him now—he was faced with an entire new set of neighbors. In fact everyone was chatting; those who remembered their names were introducing themselves. This was more life than any of these kids had shown for years. Even the screamer, who had pouted ever since Allie forbid him to scream, was happily talking away. Still, while the tangle brought some much needed variety to their dangling existence, it hadn’t freed anyone. Nick had to think—there had to be more he could do. And then, among all the chatty voices he heard one kid ask:

“What time is it?”

Through the interwoven ropes, he saw the kid in pajamas who everyone called Hammerhead. An idea came to him, and it amazed Nick that no one in the chiming chamber had thought of this before, being so deep and docile in their upside-down ruts. But then, Nick himself hadn’t really been thinking outside the box until today, had he? There wasn’t much slack left in Nick’s rope, but he pulled his way through the clog of kids, and got them to shift positions, enabling him to inch forward until finally he was just a few feet away from Hammerhead, who smiled at him, showing his pointy teeth. “This is more fun than a feeding frenzy!”

“Uh … right. Hey, how’d you like to help me out?”

“Sure. What do you want me to do?”

It took Hammerhead less than five minutes to gnaw through Nick’s rope.

“There’s a problem in the chiming chamber,” a nervous crewman told the McGill.

The McGill sat forward in his throne. “What kind of problem?”

“Well … sir … they all seem to have gotten … tangled.”

“So untangle them.”

“Well … its not as easy as it sounds.”

Frustrated, the McGill came out on deck, and went over to the grate above the chiming chamber. He pulled it open, and looked down into the depths to see the situation for himself. His captives weren’t just tangled, they were talking. They sounded … happy. This was entirely unacceptable.

“Do we have something vile to pour on them?”

“I’ll go check,” said the crewman, and he ran off.

The McGill looked down at the tangled mob of kids again. “They look very uncomfortable,” he said. Certainly they were talking now, but in time, they’d grow tired of this new situation, and realize how much more unpleasant this tangle was than simply hanging upside down.

“Pour something on them, then let them be,” the McGill told the crewman when he returned. “They’ll be miserable again soon enough.”

As he walked off, for an instant the McGill thought he caught a whiff of chocolate somewhere on the open deck, but decided it must have just been his imagination.