I see something in the tunnel, something like trees – trees with giant leaves. There are two figures walking, stumbling, searching. The image begins to grow clearer…

But it doesn’t get the chance.

The tunnel of mist breaks apart as Sebastian Eels bursts through it, his chain mail gleaming as seawater pours off it, his helmet lights blazing. He grabs the egg with one hand and punches Violet in the face with the other. Violet falls back, dazed, and slides down the slope of the malamander’s nest.

She vanishes beneath the water.

And now Eels has the egg, his jubilant face bathed in its fiery red glow.

CAPTAIN KRAKEN

PART OF MY BRAIN – the part that is responsible for the squeak – goes into overdrive. But I ignore it.

Violet has just disappeared underwater.

And she hasn’t come back up!

I heave a desperate gulp of stinking air into my lungs, race down the mound of wrack and rot, and throw myself into the water.

It’s so abysmally cold and dark, I wonder for a moment if I’ve died without noticing. But then I bob back up, and roll over. I reach down as far as I can, frantically swooshing my hand from side to side in the depths, and I find something. I don’t have time to think what it is, I just pull and pull, and watch as Violet bursts up through the surface, her face covered in seaweed and hair.

She gasps and coughs, and I try to swim with her, back to the corridor and to safety. But our clothes are too heavy with water, and the cold has its hand on my heart. I manage to shrug out of my coat and pull Violet out of hers, but we make no progress doing this, and it’s all I can do to help Violet up onto the buckled bulkhead in the centre of the pool.

I feel my foot wedge into a tight space deep underwater as I do this, and my trousers snag. I try to get up beside Violet, but it’s no good.

I’m stuck.

All around, lit by the magical light of the malamander egg, seawater is spraying into the cavern as the tide continues to rise. We have just minutes to either get out of the wreck or learn to breathe underwater.

But my leg is stuck fast.

So this is probably the worst time for what happens next to happen. But it happens anyway. With a great burst of foaming water the malamander surges up through the surface of the pool.

The monster is enormous, bigger even than I realized when it was charging us in the corridor. The spines on its back bristle and vibrate, and webbed ridges jut from its arms.

In its claws it is holding the broken body of Boathook Man.