The Trophy of Champions (30 page)

‘Isn't that a bit over the top, Pete?' Whisker ventured. ‘I mean, one of the passages might continue all the way through.'

‘And how would you know that?' Pete shot back. ‘The islands are uncharted so unless you've been there …'

‘No,' Whisker conceded. ‘I haven't been there. It's just that …' he lowered the rope he was holding and closed his eyes. ‘It's just that when I concentrate hard enough, I can picture the islands – right down to the very last detail. I can't explain it, but I'm convinced I've seen them before.
'

‘You have!' Ruby shouted, leaping off the rigging in excitement. ‘We all have. Don't you see? It's so obvious.'

‘Is it?' Horace shrugged.

‘Yes!' Ruby cried. ‘And we should have thought of it earlier – page six hundred and sixty.'

Without further explanation, she sprinted across the deck and disappeared into the navigation room.

Fred and Horace exchanged blank looks.

Ruby emerged a moment later, clutching the Book of Knowledge in her arms.

‘Of course!' Whisker gasped, suddenly remembering where he'd seen the islands. ‘There's a map near the outrigger page. We saw it on the desert island.'

Ruby raced up the stairs to the helm, with Whisker and Horace hot on her heels. She balanced the book on the wooden balustrade and opened to a page two-thirds of the way through. The bright afternoon sun began to work its magic. As the sun-reactive ink grew clear, Whisker noticed the number
715
on the bottom of the page. The rest of the paper was blank apart from one line of text:

‘Hardly motivational,' Horace muttered, as Ruby began flipping the pages back to 660. ‘I'll take blind victory any day.'

Anso's map of the Crumbling Rock Islands (subtitled
A Bird's Eye View
) was nothing short of spectacular. Where other maps of the region showed two shapeless blobs for the northern and southern groups of islands, this map revealed every curve, cliff and crag.

It only took Whisker a moment to find what he was looking for.

‘There!' he exclaimed, pointing to a passage weaving its way through the northern islands. ‘
Fishtail Passage.
It begins at the tail of Mermaid Island, a short distance from our current location, then passes under the Rock Arch, continuing all the way to the Central Channel –'

‘– Saving us at least half-an-hour of sailing,' Horace chimed in.

‘Now hang on a minute,' Ruby said, tapping the map with her fingernail. ‘I'm all for discussing our options, but we don't even know what the wind will be like in there.'

Whisker shook his head, refusing to be swayed. He knew how much was at stake, and there was no way he was letting anyone derail his plan.

‘Calm or cyclonic,' he said, ‘we have no other choice.'

‘Says who?' Ruby huffed. ‘As far as I can see, there's a whole ocean of choices out there. And most of them don't lead to shipwrecks –'

‘That's enough, both of you,' Pete snapped, cutting Ruby short. ‘I love a good argument as much as the next quartermaster, but this isn't getting us anywhere. Fishtail Passage will appear on our starboard side at any moment, so you'd better get those sails into position.'

Ruby folded her arms defiantly. ‘So that's it? You're simply going to steer us into the islands without a proper plan of action, and we're expected to obey.'

‘No,' Pete replied, stepping away from the wheel. ‘I'm not going to steer you anywhere. Whisker is.'

‘What?' Ruby gasped.

‘You heard me,' Pete snorted, hobbling towards the stairs. ‘I'm handing full navigational control to our headstrong apprentice. He needs to pass his sailing test sooner or later, and I for one don't want to be held responsible for crashing into a cliff when the Captain wakes up.'

Oh great,
Whisker thought, grabbing the freely-spinning wheel.
I'm the saviour and the scapegoat at the same time.

Ruby stood her ground, ready to mount a challenge, but Pete simply took her by the arm and sniffled, ‘Give me a paw down the stairs, will you?'

Reluctantly, Ruby descended to the deck with Pete, leaving Horace clutching the Book of Knowledge and Whisker attempting to sail into the narrow mouth of the passage.

‘I'd offer to navigate,' Horace said, placing the book gently on the ground, ‘but I get my lefts and rights mixed up when I'm stressed.'

‘You're stressed?' Whisker exclaimed, his tail coiling around the base of the wheel. ‘What about me? I'm the one about to collide with a cliff …'

Before long, the open ocean had disappeared and the Pie Rats were surrounded by high walls of rock. Not a shred of vegetation grew on their jagged faces and, with nothing to distinguish one cliff from the next, Whisker realised how easy it would be to get lost in the maze of passages without a map. The occasional rock plummeted from the weather-beaten heights, splashing into the swirling water below. Reminded of the rock-throwing Tasmanian devils on the Island of Kings, Whisker steered the
Apple Pie
into the very centre of the passage.

The wind dropped considerably as the ship rounded a blind bend and the passage divided into two. The light breeze was ideal for smooth sailing, but not for catch-up racing.

Taking the northern branch of the passage, Whisker headed in the direction of the Rock Arch. The gaping archway was still out of sight behind a rocky outcrop, but he had a fair idea of what to expect.

The arch had been formed by the ocean. Over time the crashing waves and swirling seas had carved out a hollow at the base of the cliff, large enough to sail through. Whisker's only hope was that the arch could accommodate the mainmast, the tallest part of the ship.

As the
Apple Pie
sailed around the outcrop and the approaching waters began to appear, Whisker heard a deep groan from the front of the ship. He looked down to see Fred dangling over the bowsprit, surveying the path ahead.

A stream of equally alarming responses spread down the deck as the other crew members witnessed what Fred had seen.

Finally, as the rear of the ship cleared the outcrop, Whisker saw the horror that awaited him. Directly ahead, where the Rock Arch once stood, lay a collapsed pile of rubble. Huge shards of stone rose from the indigo water, like monstrous knife blades, blocking the entire passage.

Anso's shortcut had just become a dead-end.

Wrong Turns

Mortified at what he was witnessing, Whisker stared at the collapsed arch and let out a pathetic whimper. He waited for the inevitable taunt of ‘I told you so' from one of his crewmates, but all he got was a sympathetic ‘There's always next time,' from Horace.

Whisker knew there wasn't going to be a next time – not for the Pie Rats – not for his family. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to turn the ship around just yet. Paws firmly planted on the ship's wheel, he remained locked on a collision course with the ruined arch. As long as he kept moving forward, he wasn't truly giving up.

He looked down at Ruby, peering over the starboard side bulwark and he wondered why she wasn't hurling insults at him. He knew he deserved it, whatever she had to say. He'd been a liar, a choker and a sore loser – and that was before the Sea Race. Since then, his actions had only served to push her away further. Two weeks ago they were hanging off a precipice together. Now, there was a precipice between them.

As if sensing she was being watched, Ruby turned from the ocean and looked at him with one of her impossible-to-read expressions.

‘If we've all finished moping,' she said flatly, ‘I think I've found us a way out of here.'

‘Yeah,' Horace murmured. ‘It's called the way in.'

Ruby rolled her eye and pointed to a line of sea foam on the surface of the water.

‘That foam was on our port side a moment ago,' she stated, ‘and now it's on our starboard side. We haven't changed course, which means something is carrying it along.'

‘Not the wind,' Horace pronounced. ‘It's blowing in the wrong direction.'

Beginning to understand, Whisker released his tight grip on the wheel and felt the polished surface of the wood slide freely through his fingers. A tiny spark of hope flickered inside him.

‘There's a current,' he said. ‘Directly beneath us. I can feel it pulling on the rudder.'

‘And it's moving across the passage,' Pete observed, his pink eyes fixed on the foam. ‘The water must have found another way through the rocks after the arch collapsed.'

‘So where's it headed now?' Horace asked.

‘Wrong Turn Passage, I'm guessing,' Ruby replied dryly. ‘The only other route through these islands.'

‘Sounds delightful,' Horace gulped.

Whisker glanced down at the map, hoping Ruby's prediction was right.

‘The tail of Mermaid Island barely touches the cliff near the Rock Arch,' he pointed out. ‘That could be the weak spot.'

‘There's only one way to find out,' Ruby said, scrambling up the rigging. ‘All eyes on that cliff!'

Heeding Ruby's command, Fred swept his powerful eye in a wide arc across the cliff face then locked on a shadowy section of rock covered with dried seaweed.

‘There,' he grunted, pointing to the spot with his oversized paw.

It took Whisker a moment to realise what Fred had discovered, but as the
Apple Pie
moved closer towards the collapsed arch he saw a narrow crevice between the two islands. Barely the width of the
Apple Pie,
the gap extended upwards to the very top of the cliffs and downwards into the ocean. Water gushed through the centre of the crevice like rainwater in a drainpipe, splashing into the afternoon sunlight on the opposite side.

Whisker swung the
Apple Pie
a full ninety degrees, facing it directly into the short passage. He knew that a thorough safety assessment was in order, but the time for caution was gone.

‘Hold on!' he shouted as the current took hold. ‘We're going in.'

The sickening screech of wood grating against stone reverberated around the surrounding cliffs as the hull scraped through the tight gap.

Whisker held his breath, hoping the
Apple Pie
wasn't about to get stuck in the crevice like a cork in an Apple Fizz bottle. In seconds, the ship was sliding out the other side.

Assessing the damage to be no more than ‘superficial paint scrapes,' Whisker wasted no time in orchestrating his next audacious move. ‘Ready the Eagle,' he commanded.

‘Don't be a dodo,' Pete shot back. ‘You can't use a kite sail in here.'

‘It won't be in here,' Whisker retorted. ‘The sail will be flying up there.' He pointed high into the vivid blue sky. ‘We all know these passages are too sheltered to generate any decent wind gusts, but if we can harness the power of an overhead wind, we might still have a chance.'

Pete screwed up his nose. ‘Alright, bring out the bird. But if we all suffer horrible deaths on the rocks, I'm holding you personally responsible.'