The rippling hump of water had been building up as it approached the boats. Subdued by Log-a-log’s authority, every creature in the boats sat silent and still. Paws gripped paddles tightly, mouths shut tight as vices, fur stood stiff on every back. With little warning the sunlit noontide surface of the immense lake had become a place of horror and dread. Every eye was fixed on the noiseless traveling swell. It was scarce more than three boat-lengths from them when there was a whoosh of water, and something long and scaly slapped the top of the lake. Both craft rose on the swell as the logboats rode the wave.

Mara moved then. Craning over the side, she looked down into the translucent blue-green depths and saw the thing as it passed underneath both vessels. It was enormous!

She had missed seeing the creature’s head, but she watched in fascinated terror as the length of its body slipped harmlessly by, a mere paw’s-length beneath the surface, round and thick as the trunk of a tree, dark green with slate-gray blotches. Trailing waterweeds clung to the heavily scaled mass of the leviathan; rippling sidefins powered it through the water as its length kept on passing . . . and passing. The pointed tailtip scraped the boat’s underside and then it was gone, far down into the fathomless depths of the silent lake.

The badger maid breathed a long sigh of relief and mopped the beads of sweat that stood out on her nose. “By the rocks of Salamandastron! What was that?”

Nordo unclenched his paws from the paddle with a visible effort. “What you just saw was a monster—Guosssom shrews call it the Deepcoiler, though nobeast has ever set eyes on it until now.”

Pikkle sat with his eyes wide as saucers and his ears rigid. “Well, let’s hope we jolly well live to tell about it. Oh, corks an’ catkins! I knew I should never have gone sailin’. At least when you’re on bally old dry land you can run away, but stuck out here on a floatin’ log, it’s a bit much, you chaps!”

“Deepcoiler was an old shrew tale,” Log-a-log explained to Mara and Pikkle somewhat apologetically, “a story to frighten naughty little ones who wanted to go paddling alone; though in the time of my forefathers there were stories of logboats and whole crews lost in mysterious circumstances out on this great lake. As for myself, I never believed in the thing, but now I have seen it with my own eyes, how can I doubt it? I am sorry that this peril has been brought upon you by me and my son.”