And with his words, mist swirls around the captain’s new hand, which elongates and crusts into a blue and red crab pincer. At this, the captain begins to struggle frantically. With a huge effort, he manages to cut through one of the tentacles using his new claw.

Eels, maybe sensing some danger to himself in this terrible game, whispers urgently to the egg in his hands. Light pours from it as the magic responds.

Captain Kraken’s body trembles and ripples, then collapses into a mass of squid and jellyfish and sea slime. Now the water is filled with a riot of new sea life, splashing fins and writhing tentacles. Something like an arm, with something like a giant crab claw at the end of it, reaches feebly towards Eels for a moment, but then loses its form, tumbling into the water as sea urchins and starfish.

The light from the egg dims again, and the thrashing in the water dies down. The bodies of both the malamander and Captain Kraken are gone, transformed into countless sea creatures that swim away into the rising sea.

“The power of life and death.” Sebastian Eels gazes in triumph at the magical object in his hands. “My every wish made true.”

“Is there a P-p-plan B?” I stammer to Violet, my teeth hammering together with the cold as I cling to the last of the bulkhead. “Now would be a g-g-good time for a Plan B.”

But Violet isn’t there.

I look around groggily, this way and that. Violet has gone!

But then I spot her.

She is swimming towards Sebastian Eels.

A STRANGE AND EERIE LIGHT

EELS DOESN’T NOTICE Violet coming, doesn’t see her swim round behind the malamander’s nest. He is still gazing in rapture at the egg in his hands, oblivious to the water that is spraying in through the hull of the ship as the tide continues to rise. There’s a slow boom as the first big wave hits the wreck. But then why would the man worry about that? Sebastian Eels has the awesome power of the malamander egg. He also has full scuba gear. I can’t see how anything can stop him now.

But there’s still Violet.

I watch as she struggles up the mound of seaweed, where Eels hasn’t yet seen her. But she must make a noise doing this, because his head jerks up, and he starts to spin round.

So Violet shoves him.

It’s a desperate shove, and it causes Violet to lose her footing, but Eels is caught unprepared, and he slips too. Violet grabs for the egg in his hand.

“No!” shouts Eels, raising the egg menacingly. But Violet somehow manages to break her slide down into the water, and – with her mother’s boots on – lands a kick in the man’s face.

Sebastian Eels falls, dazed, back into the pool, the egg falling from his fingers.

Violet snatches it up.