The boat was floating painfully slowly now, and seemed to be barely making any progress at all. In the relative calm of the breeze, it was bobbing gently up and down on the little, flickering waves. It was only the darker mass of the shorter tentacles near us which gave any gauge of the boat’s movement at all. The colour of the water there was different from the rest of the sea: a deeper green. You could see that the boat was first one metre, and then two metres away from that terrible darkness.

The three on board the boat didn’t seem to share Kate’s optimism. Even from this distance I could tell that their faces looked white and sick with fear. The lines round Soldier John’s eyes and mouth seemed to stand out more sharply than they did normally, giving his face a tragic, worried expression that he didn’t have when you were close up. The low-level chatting from the Jellyfish people had also mostly stopped now; people had run out of things to say. They were all now staring straight ahead at the boat, some holding hands in silent prayer, and all with pursed, anxious lips or tensed, hunched shoulders.

For a few minutes, nobody spoke. None of us at all. James’s hands continued to move slowly over my head, and he was, perhaps, the only one not focusing just on the boat. But even he wasn’t saying anything.

And then it happened. Slowly, Soldier John stood up. He looked over the side for a couple of minutes, before reaching to the middle of the deck and grabbing a plank. Tentatively, he slid the plank into the water, leaving it there to trail in the water, as though just another piece of driftwood. And then he pulled on the plank, using it as an oar.

Nothing.

He pulled again. On the other side of the deck Dr Jones picked up her plank.

‘They really have done it,’ said Lana. ‘They’ve really done it!’

Beneath us, there came the rippling vibration.

The two started to pull, in unison, propelling the boat forward.

There was another vibration. Two of the longer tentacles lifted out of the water, their muscles tight and ready, but they merely swung around in the air for a couple of seconds, barely even agitated, before slithering back smoothly into the water.

The boat was nearing the submerged houses at the edge of the sea now, and the three passengers were guiding it in, using their planks to pull themselves in between the chimneys and roofs to either side. They were looking down carefully at the water, but we could no longer see whether there was anything to worry about down there.

They pulled to a stop, and Soldier John leapt out on to the shore. He turned towards us, and then all three raised their arms in triumph. They’d done it. We’d done it!

Chapter 25

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