‘Come on. Take one,’ said Stinky, grabbing the largest of the bags. We ran down towards the sea again.

The tide was suddenly much further out now, the walls of the drowned houses exposed and treacherous. This time, Soldier John didn’t attempt to guide the boat in at all, instead jamming an oar into the shallow sea bed beneath him and holding the boat there as an anchor. His passengers had to jump down into waist-high water before clambering up on to slippery walls and edging along them to the shore. The water around the boat was laced with bobbing seaweed, and Soldier John eyed it uneasily. There were dark objects visible here and there, which could be stones, or rubbish, or nothing. But they could also be something else.

‘I don’t think you should go back,’ said Dr Jones. ‘I think you should leave it until there’s more light, and until the tide is higher.’

‘No, I can get there and back before dark,’ he said.

‘But then you’d be leaving just one boatload of people on the Jellyfish for the rest of the night,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ll get them back in the dark,’ he said. ‘Find me some torches this time.’

Dr Jones nodded.

‘You can’t go back.’ A gravelly voice spoke loudly, and with finality, from behind us on the shore. Staring Crone was gazing out towards the Jellyfish. ‘You can’t go back,’ she repeated. ‘The Jellyfish won’t let you.’

We followed her eyes out to the creature in the sea. The Jellyfish was now perceptibly closer than it had been a few minutes ago, and its tentacles were waving wildly. You could see the ripples in the mesoglea, and the violence with which the creature was shaking the people still on board. They were a hunched group in the centre, and they were being prodded and stroked by the flailing tentacles with an urgency that couldn’t go on much longer. One of the larger tentacles – a great, snaking limb, taller than a tree – lifted lazily out of the water. It paused momentarily in the air, before effortlessly dropping down on to the roof of the Big House with a force that sent the people on board running. The wood from the Big House crumpled like sodden cardboard, as though the years of being exposed to water had left it soft and thin. Or as though nothing built by humans was a match for the monstrous Jellyfish.

Going back now would be suicide. But if we didn’t, Old Albert and the people on board would die.

Chapter 28

28

We stared out to sea in horror. The Jellyfish was definitely moving closer to shore, but slowly, and it was sitting lower down in the sea than normal.

‘What are we going to do?’ said Dr Jones.

‘We can’t leave them there,’ said Stinky.