“Right-o, me old bucko,” I say. “I’ll get the wench to send us up some grog!” Then I yell down to Rose, “Avast ye, sister! Can ye tie a cask of Fanta to a rope?”

“No!” she shouts back, so to distract himself from his thirst Win tries out some spells instead.

“Boggle hiss!” he shouts, holding a small lump of badger poo in his hand and pointing his wand in my direction. “BOGGLE HISS!”

Apparently this is a swapping hex and he’s been trying to do it for ages. My uneaten piece of rocky road should swap place with his bit of poo, but luckily for me the spell doesn’t work. Each time Win says the words our hands shake, black stars burst from our palms, and then . . . nothing.

Win’s getting desperate. “BOGGLE HISS! BOGGLE HISS!” he yells, filling the crow’s nest with glittering black stars. Then, with a scream of frustration, he chucks the badger poo out of the nest.

I catch a few of the floating stars. They send a hot glow through my fingers before fizzing out. “At least it’s warming us up,” I say.

Suddenly Rose shouts up to us, “Oi, are you two on watch or just mucking around?”

“On watch!” I reply, grabbing the telescope. Only there’s very little to watch.

We’re close to the End now, but all I can see is mile after mile of snow-covered mountains. I look for penguins swimming in the sea or perched on rocks, but except for the howl of the wind and the crashing of waves, there’s no sign of life.

“Where’s Crowky got to?” I say, peering through the telescope. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t see the Raven, but there’s nowhere for a ship to hide out here.

“Arthur,” says Win, tugging on my sleeve. “Are you sure Rose knows what she’s doing?”

I lower the telescope and see that we’re sailing straight toward the mountains. If we don’t turn soon, we’ll smash into them. I lean over the crow’s nest. “Rose, turn the ship!”

“It’s fine,” she calls back. “I’m aiming for the gap!”

“The gap?” says Win. “What gap?”

We’re so close to the mountains now that I don’t need the telescope. I squint into the sunlight and see that there’s a narrow gap between two of the mountains, a passageway that’s fractionally larger than our ship.

Win spots it too. “Blimey . . . That’s going to be a tight squeeze.”

We’re going so fast that we couldn’t change direction now, even if we wanted to. “Hold on,” I yell as the mountains loom up on either side of us. “We’re going through!” I grab hold of the crow’s nest, and Win grabs hold of me.

“What shall I do?” he says. “Shut my eyes or open them?”