The old sailor isn’t dead – the curse must still be at work – but he has clearly lost the fight with the monster. His haggard face is white and awful above his yellow beard, and he lies helpless and foggy in its scaly arms.

Sebastian Eels, holding the egg, looks at the malamander. His face breaks into a sneer.

The monster, seeing the egg glowing in the man’s hands, gives out a great, shrieking roar and drops Boathook Man. It rises up in the water, throwing its arms wide as it prepares to lunge.

So Sebastian Eels shoots it.

Simple as that.

He drops to his knee, braces his gun and releases one carefully aimed harpoon with a th-TOUM! of compressed air.

The malamander quivers all over, its lunge suddenly ended before it began. The harpoon has buried itself deep between two of the monster’s scales, where – now we look closely – a slim opening in its armour can be seen.

Inside the opening, something is pulsing: the creature’s heart.

The malamander gives another roar, weaker this time, so Sebastian Eels shoots again.

Th-TOUM!

Another harpoon, in exactly the same place.

Th-TOUM, th-TOUM, th-TOUM! as three more find their mark.

Then there’s a hiss of empty air, as the auto-reloading gun runs out of harpoons. A look of alarm spreads over the face of Sebastian Eels. But then he relaxes as he sees the malamander give a violent shudder.

Its arms fall, and it twists onto its back. The five steel shafts of the harpoons are clustered together in the gap in the monster’s scales.

Straight through its heart.

With a gurgling sigh, the malamander twitches one last time, and then goes still. It slips beneath the water and its lamp-like eyes go dark.

It’s dead.

“Not such a fearsome beast, after all,” says Sebastian Eels, standing and replacing the harpoon gun in its holster. “Once you know where to hit it. What a shame you can’t be here, Peter, to see this.”

And he turns the fiery crystal egg in his hands.

There’s movement in the water, as something rises up beside the corpse of the monster.

It’s Boathook Man.

He looks awful, his twisted body half submerged, his skin raked over with great gashes and slashes. Staring open-mouthed at the body of the malamander, he turns to Eels. “The egg…”

He reaches his arms like a beggar. “Your promise…” he croaks. “Set … me free!”

“Ah, my old friend,” says Eels. “I did indeed promise to free you from your curse. And you deserve it, I suppose. Even though it was I who destroyed the monster.”

“Set … me … FREE!”