essential, for modesty and the prevention of inconvenient bouncing, which was why fashioning impromptu clothes out of anything to hand was a lesser-known werewolf skill.
Angua stopped. Of course, to the unpractised eye all Klatchians looked alike, but then to a werewolf all humans looked alike: they looked appetizing. She'd learned to discern.
“Are you Prince Khufarah?”
“I am. And you are…?”
The door was kicked open. Angua leapt towards the window and flung aside the bar restraining the shutters. Water funnelled into the cabin, drenching her, but she managed to scramble up and out.
“Just passing through?” the Prince murmured.
71-hour Ahmed strode to the window and looked out. Green-blue waves edged with fire fought outside as the ship heaved. No one could stay afloat in a sea like that.
He turned and looked along the hull to where Angua was clinging to a trailing line.
She saw him wink at her. Then he turned away and she heard him say, “She must have drowned. Back to your posts!”
Presently, up on the deck, a hatch closed.
The sun rose in a cloudless sky.
A watcher, if such had been out here, would have noticed a slight difference in the way the swells were moving on this tiny patch of sea.
They might even have wondered about the piece of bent piping which turned with a faint squeaking noise.
Had they been able to place an ear to it, they would have heard the following:
“—idea while I was dozing off. Piece of pipe, two angled mirrors — the solution to all our steering and air problems!”
“Fascinating. A Seeing-Things-Pipe-You-Can-Breathe-Down.”
“My goodness, how did you know it was called that, my lord?”
“A lucky guess.”
“'ere, someone's re-designed my pedalling seat, it's
“Ah, yes, corporal, I took some measurements while you were asleep and rebuilt it for a better anatomical configu—”
“You took measurements?”
“Oh, yes, I—”
“What, of my… saddlery regions?”
“Oh, please don't be concerned, anatomy is something of a passion with me—”
“Is it? Is it? Well, you can stop being passionate about mine for a start—”
“Here, I can see an island of some sort!”
The pipe squeaked around.
“Ah, Leshp. And I see people. To your pedals, gentlemen. Let us explore the ocean's bottom…”
“I expect we shall, with
“Shut up, Nobby.”
The pipe slid down into the waves. There was a little flurry of bubbles and a damp argument about whose job it should have been to put the cork in, and then the patch of sea that had been empty was, somehow, a little bit emptier still.
There weren't any fish.
At a time like this Solid Jackson would have even been prepared to eat Curious Squid.
But the sea was empty. And it smelled wrong. It fizzed gently. Solid could see little bubbles breaking on the surface, which burst with a smell of sulphur and rotting eggs. He guessed that the rise of the land must have stirred up a lot of mud. It was bad enough at the bottom of a pond, all those frogs and bugs and things, and this was the sea.
He tried hard to reverse that train of thought, but it kept on rising from the depths like a… like a…
Why were there no fish? Oh, there'd been the storm last night, but generally you got better fishing in these parts after a storm because it… stirred… up…
The raft rocked.
He was beginning to think it might be a good idea to go home, but that'd mean leaving the land to the Klatchians, and that'd happen over his dead body.
The treacherous internal voice said: Funnily enough, they never found Mr Hong's body. Not most of the important bits, anyway.
“I think, think, I think we'll be getting back now,” he said to his son.
“Oh, Dad,” said Les. “Another dinner of limpets and seaweed?”
“Nothing wrong with seaweed,” said Jackson. “It's full of nourishing… seaweed. 's got iron in it. Good for you, iron.”
“Why don't we boil an anchor, then?”
“None of your lip, son.”
“The Klatchians have got bread,” said Les. “They brought flour with them. And they've got firewood.” This was a sore point with Jackson. Efforts to make seaweed combust had not been successful.
“Yeah, but you wouldn't like their bread,” said Jackson. “It's all flat and got no proper crust—”
A breeze blew the scent of baking over the water. It carried a hint of spices.
“They're baking bread! On
“Well, they say it's
Jackson grabbed the piece of broken plank he used as an oar and began to scull furiously towards the shore. The fact that this only made the raft go round in circles added to his fury.
“They bloody move in right next to us and all we get is the stink of foreign food—”
“Why's your mouth watering, Dad?”
“And how come they've got wood, may I ask?”
“I think the current takes the driftwood to their side of the island, Dad—”
“See? They're stealing our driftwood! Our damn driftwood! Hah! Well, we'll—”
“But I thought we agreed that the bit over
Jackson had finally remembered how to propel a raft with one oar.
“That wasn't an agreement,” he said, creating foam as the oar thrashed back and forth, “that was just an… an arrangement. It's not as if they
The raft hit something which made a metallic sound. But they were still a hundred yards from the rocks.
Something else, long and bent at the end, rose up with a creaking noise. It twisted around until it pointed at Jackson.
“Excuse me,” it said, in a tinny yet polite voice, “but this is Leshp, isn't it?”
Jackson made a sound in his throat.
“Only,” the thing went on, “the water's a little cloudy and I thought we might have been going the wrong way for the last twenty minutes.”
“Leshp!” squeaked Jackson, in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.
“Ah, good. Thank you so much. Good day to you.”
The appendage sank slowly into the sea again. The last sounds from it, erupting on the surface in a cloud of bubbles, were, “…don't forget to put the cork in—
The bubbles stopped.
After a while Les said, “Dad, what was—?”
“It wasn't anything!” snapped his father. “That sort of thing doesn't happen!”
The raft shot forward. You could have waterski'd behind it.
Another important thing about the Boat, thought Sergeant Colon gloomily as they slipped back into a blue
