Floods 3 (9 page)

‘'Allo boys,' she said in French, ‘'Ow would you all like to come to a party with lots of pretty girls, silly loaves of bleached white bread a metre long and bowls of hot snails in garlic? There will be an accordion player and second-rate red wine.'
³⁴

The entire crew of the boat ran towards the Queen, who led them down a very dark alley where Vessel had removed all the manhole covers. In the darkness the Queen and Mordonna helped each sailor make a donation of one pint of blood for baby Valla's breakfasts. The sailors floundered around in the drains for several hours before they realised they weren't at a party. By the time they got back to the harbour, their ship, the
Maldemer
, had vanished.

‘At last long Snip-Snip got proper crow's nest,' Parsnip said with pride from his new nest at the top of the
Maldemer
's mast. ‘Snip-Snip watch out.'

No one on board had ever been on a boat before. Lake Tarnish is so toxic that any boats on it get eaten away within a few weeks.
³⁵

‘Ahoy land,' Parsnip shouted.

‘Thank you, Parsnip,' Vessel called back, ‘that's not surprising considering we haven't left the harbour yet.'

‘Ahoy harbour,' Parsnip replied.

‘Right,' said Vessel, ‘we need to find out how to work this thing. I saw a picture of a boat once. I think we're supposed to fix these huge bedsheets to that stick poking up out of the floor.'

‘Yes,' the Queen agreed, ‘and I think the pointy end should be at the front, not at the back like it is now.'

‘What's this thing?' said Nerlin.

‘I think it's called a compass,' said the Queen.

‘It can't be, there's nowhere to put the pencil to draw a circle with,' said Nerlin.

They hoisted the sails and, as they did, the boat turned itself round and began to sail south-east.

‘Which is, er, exactly the direction we want to go,' Vessel lied as he looked at the maps.

Now and then an island or another boat appeared on the horizon, but by pulling on the rudder thing they found hanging over the back of the boat, they managed to keep out of everyone's way.

When the spies reached the harbour, the first people they met were a group of French sailors who smelled as if they had been to a party down a drain.

Cliché asked the sailors if they knew where the spies could get a boat, but the sailors thought they were making fun of the fact they'd lost their own boat, and attacked them. The only good thing about this was that the last bit of the attack involved Cliché, Stain and Ooze being thrown into the harbour, which washed off all the coal dust they had been covered with.

Cliché couldn't swim and neither could Ooze, but as luck would have it the three of them managed to grab hold of a rope hanging down from an old junk.

Seeing this, the French sailors cut the mooring rope and the junk began to drift out of the harbour towards the open sea, with the three spies still
hanging on for dear life and the sailors making rude French hand signals and blowing raspberries.

As she watched the spies clamber up the rope and onto the deck, the Hearse Whisperer realised the junk was about as seaworthy as a paper bag full
of marbles. She changed herself into an albatross
³⁶
and flew slowly out to sea.

The junk had not been built for life on the open sea. It had been built to carry bags of very light feathers up and down a very calm river. So it wasn't long before it started leaking.

‘Is it supposed to do that?' said Cliché as the water came up round his ankles.

‘No, I think the water's supposed to be outside the boat,' said Stain.

‘Maybe this is an ancient Chinese submarine,' Ooze suggested.

‘If we don't grab those buckets and start bailing out, it'll soon be an ancient Chinese underwater shed,' said Cliché.

They took off all their clothes, tore them into strips and stuffed the strips between the planks. It slowed the water down, but there were too many
holes in the junk to stop it completely. All through the day and into the night they took it in turns to empty buckets over the side of the boat.

‘I can't lift my arms another inch,' said Ooze, collapsing on the deck. ‘If we don't find land soon, we've had it.'

‘Is there a map?' said Cliché. ‘Let's see if there is any land.'

‘Yes, there is a map,' said Stain. ‘It's jammed in the big gap in that plank there – and even if we looked at it, what good would it do? It's pitch black, we don't have any instruments, the stars are totally covered by clouds, it's beginning to rain and I want my mummy.'

‘Something will turn up,' said Cliché. ‘It always does.'

‘This time I think the things that are likely to turn up are our toes and a shark,' said Ooze, grabbing Stain. ‘I want your mummy too.'

‘So do I,' said Cliché, ‘and a pair of trousers.'

The boat sank lower and lower in the water as the dark night grew so dark that the three spies
couldn't see their fingers in front of their noses or even find where their noses were. They began to wail and groan in such a pathetic way that it even chased the sharks away.

But, as Cliché had predicted, something did turn up.

It was a bump.

The sinking junk hit something, not with a big crash, but more of a gentle thud that was just hard enough to make the whole boat fall to pieces. Each spy grabbed a plank and hung on. They tried to make their pink legs looks as unappetising as possible by turning blue, just in case the sharks came back.

Night fell and so did the wind, turning the sea to glass. The clouds went off to hassle Belgium and overhead a half moon and a million stars twinkled in an endless sky. Far out of sight of any land, the
Maldemer
sat motionless in the total silence, which was broken only by a whale coughing eighty-four kilometres away.
³⁷

At last the escapees felt safe. The only sign of life was an albatross circling far above them.

‘Ahoy moon,' Parsnip called.

There was a bump and the ship rocked in the water.

‘What was that?' said Nerlin.

‘What?' said Mordonna.

‘That bump. And I can hear voices.'

‘Probably just mermaids,' said the Queen. ‘You get a lot of them round here.'

She said this with such confidence that no one thought to ask her how she knew, seeing as how she had never been to sea in her whole life.

‘Is that what mermaids do?' Nerlin asked. ‘Cry like babies and say they want their mummies?'

‘I'm guessing they're probably not mermaids,' said Vessel. ‘Get a torch.'

‘We haven't got one,' said Mordonna. ‘I looked earlier.'

‘OK,' said Vessel. He threw some petrol over the side, followed by a match.

The cries of ‘I want my mummy' changed into ‘I want my mummy and some ointment' and ‘Ow, ow, my ear's on fire'.

‘Spies ahoy,' said Parsnip.

‘Oh, look, it's our three little spies,' said the Queen, ‘and they've got surfboards.'

‘No, no …' Cliché began.

‘Maybe we could whip up some waves for them to ride,' said the Queen. ‘I remember having to learn a big wave spell at school. Never could understand why, seeing we didn't have any sea,
but now I suppose it could be useful.'

‘No, please, no …'

‘No trouble,' said the Queen. ‘Glad to help. I just have to make sure I remember it right, because I think it was right next to the “turning a spy into a jellyfish” spell in the water spells book.'

‘No, I, we, err …' Stain stammered.

The fire had burnt off all his hair except for one tuft so now he looked like an overcooked coconut. The other two looked worse, like burnt coconuts that had been used in a coconut shy at a fun fair.

‘Now, don't tell me,' said Vessel. ‘There's something you want. That's why you banged our boat.'

‘Yes, we –'

Vessel held up his hand. ‘No, no, let me guess. Three cold naked spies hanging on to bits of wood, hundreds of miles from land in the middle of the night with a terrible storm approaching … what on earth could they want?' he said.

‘A cup of tea?' said Nerlin.

‘Surfboard wax?' said Mordonna.

‘Swimming trunks?' said the Queen.

‘A towel, that's what it'll be, I bet you,' said Vessel. ‘I bet they want a towel.'

‘Help,' Cliché bleated in a pathetic voice.

His fingers had gone numb holding onto his plank, and even the plank itself was disappearing as a giant marine woodworm ate it for breakfast.

Vessel threw a rope over the side and hauled the three naked, shivering spies on board. They were each given a sack to wear and then locked in the ship's hold with half a beetroot and a mug of water.

‘What are we going to do with them?' asked the Queen.

‘Find some remote island that barely supports life and leave them there,' said Vessel. ‘Unless you have a better idea.'

‘We could keep them as a blood supply for Valla,' Mordonna suggested. ‘Fresh food is much healthier for him.'

So each morning Cliché ‘donated' a cup of his blood for young Valla's breakfast. Six hours later
Stain ‘donated' a cup for Valla's lunch and in the evening Ooze did the same for the boy's dinner.

They spent a few weeks drifting about in the Pacific learning useful sailor-type things, like the fact that one bit of sea looks exactly like another bit of sea and one seagull looks exactly like another seagull, even the girl ones, and young boy wizards do not like seagull blood half as much as spy blood.

‘Ahoy ahoy,' shouted Parsnip, getting very excited. ‘Snowbits, mountain, place ahoy.'

‘Must be South America or Burma,' said Vessel, who had never done geography.

‘Ahoy, umm, Snip-Snip look in atlas.'

There was a fluttering of wings from the crow's nest, followed by a lot of sheets of paper blowing away and some swearing.

‘Ahoy Chile,' he reported.

‘Yes, we are all feeling a bit cold,' said Vessel.

‘Not cold skin, got big place Gataponia,' Parsnip explained, which made everything perfectly clear.

Gradually the coast of South America filled the whole horizon. Everyone's spirits began to lift. Weeks of eating the French sailors' food – silly loaves of bleached white bread a metre long and bowls of cold snails in garlic washed down with second-rate red wine – had made them all rather depressed. They were also just about to run out of toilet paper.

As they neared the coast, the sea grew rough. They were at the very bottom of South America, where the seas can be the most ferocious in the world. And they had arrived right in the middle of the rough and stormy season, which would have been hard to avoid since it went from the first of January until the end of December, apart from the odd calm week here and there.