The Castle in the Sea: Quest of the Sunfish 2

by Mardi McConnochie

  ‘You don’t think you killed them already, do you?’ Pod asked.

  ‘I couldn’t have,’ Essie said, appalled.

  ‘I’d better go and see,’ Pod said.

  He clambered down the ladder and stepped into the dinghy ever so cautiously. It rocked under his weight, but the men didn’t move. Pod reached for the nearest gun and eased it out of the pirate’s inert hand, then passed it up to Essie. She took it unwillingly. The second rifle was buried somewhere underneath the two prone bodies. He felt around under them, afraid that at any moment one of them might wake up and grab him. He winkled out the second gun, and it followed the first one up onto the deck of the Sunfish.

  ‘Better check that they’re okay,’ Essie said.

  Pod made a face at her, but he gingerly put a hand on first one neck, then the other, looking for a pulse. ‘They’re still breathing,’ he said.

  ‘So now what do we do with them?’ Essie asked.

  Pod looked around him at the empty ocean, looking for inspiration. There was no one else in sight, and the distant shore seemed deserted.

  ‘I reckon we just point them towards land,’ he said. He started the dinghy’s engine again, leaving it on its lowest purr, pointed the prow towards the shore, and let it go, jumping back aboard the Sunfish as the dinghy puttered away.

  ‘I hope they don’t have too many friends,’ Essie said.

  ‘Let’s get out of here before we have to find out,’ Pod said.

  ‘We have to get the boat unstuck first,’ Essie said. ‘Let’s go and see what’s happened.’

  Breathe

  A second internal inspection did not reveal any signs of water coming in, so Pod and Essie felt reasonably confident the hull was intact. That meant something underneath the boat must have been snagged. And someone would have to go down there and have a look.

  Normally this would have been a job for Will. He loved to dive, using just a mask and flippers. He never used a snorkel—he didn’t even own one.

  ‘I wish Will was here,’ Essie said.

  ‘But he’s not,’ Pod said.

  ‘It can’t wait until he gets back.’

  ‘No.’

  Essie looked at Pod, knowing full well he couldn’t swim. She could, although she didn’t really fancy diving down into underwater wreckage. The thought of getting tangled down there gave her the horrors. But she couldn’t see any alternative.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said.

  They were lucky that they were in the Sea of Brundisi, which was much further south than Norlind. An underwater inspection off the coast of Norlind would have been impossible. Here, it would be cold, but it wouldn’t actually kill you in minutes.

  Essie strapped on the flippers and mask, then it was a bracing drop into the cold water, and her whole skin seemed to contract in shock. She hung there on the surface, not at all sure that she could do this, but then she reminded herself that everyone was counting on her. She took a couple of deep breaths, filled her lungs, and plunged.

  Down she went, down under the boat. It didn’t take long to see what had happened. Below them was a hunk of slanting, twisted concrete and metal, warped beyond recognition. Large spars stuck up here and there out of the concrete, and one of these had become entangled with their steering. The good news was they were not badly stuck on the spar, and the metal was old and rusty. A more serious problem was the steering itself. It looked to Essie—although she could not spend long examining it, as she felt like her lungs were already about to burst—as if the steering had been buckled and damaged. She suspected they would not be going anywhere until one of them could do something to repair it.

  She swam for the surface, stars popping in front of her eyes. It took her a few moments to get enough breath back before she could speak.

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Pod.

  ‘I think it’s the steering that’s caught,’ she said. ‘It should be pretty easy to get us free, but the bigger problem is going to be fixing it.’

  ‘There’s no easy way to get the steering out of the assembly and fix it while we’re out at sea,’ Pod said. ‘We’d need to get the boat into dry dock. But I don’t know where we can do that round here. Can we get by without repairs?’

  ‘I’m no expert,’ Essie said, ‘but it doesn’t look good.’

  They both sat for a moment, wondering what to do next.

  ‘You say it shouldn’t be too hard to get us free,’ Pod said. ‘Let’s do that first and then worry about the steering. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Essie said, although she didn’t feel hopeful.

  Pod turned to Graham, who had been watching all this with polite interest. ‘Graham, you’re our lookout,’ he said. ‘If you see any signs of more guys in dinghies coming from the shore, you let me know, okay?’

  Graham rarked affirmatively and flew off to the top of the mast to keep watch.

  ‘Do you think you can do this?’ Pod asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Essie said. ‘I’ll try.’ She looked down into the water, anxiety tugging at her. ‘Only thing is, I don’t know how long I can hold my breath for. It might take me a few goes before I can actually get us free.’

  Pod looked down at the water too, considering the problem.

  ‘My first job,’ he said, ‘they sent us down into flooded places to find stuff. We took a hose down, breathed through that.’

  ‘Do we have a hose?’ Essie asked.

  ‘There’s the one we use for filling the water tanks,’ Pod said. ‘And I can rig up the bilge pump to pump air instead.’

  ‘Okay,’ Essie said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Aware that at any moment more pirates could come after them from the shore of Brundisi, which now seemed painfully close by, the two of them set to work. While Pod attached the hose to the pump, Essie put together a toolkit of everything she might need and put it into a plastic bag rigged with a flotation device so it wouldn’t sink under its own weight.

  ‘Okay,’ Pod said. ‘Are you sure you can do this?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ Essie said.

  ‘Of course,’ Pod said, frowning. ‘If you don’t want to go down there—’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll be fine,’ Essie said.

  And she went back into the water before she could change her mind.

  She paused on the surface, practising breathing through the hose. They’d added a strap to it so she could keep it near her face and breathe through it hands-free. Air bubbled through it continuously; the stream of bubbles was quite distracting, so she decided to push it to one side of her face and just grab it for a breath whenever she needed it.

  ‘Okay,’ she shouted, ‘I’m going down!’

  She descended. The underwater landscape was more than a little creepy, with dark shapes and hollows everywhere filled with algae and weeds. There could be anything lurking down there in those vast, post-industrial hidey-holes. She tried not to think about sharks.

  The first thing to do was disentangle the steering from the spar. Essie had already decided to do this the low-tech way: she grabbed a hammer from the bag of tools and began to smash it. The spar had been in the water for forty years; it could not survive that kind of punishment for long. After no more than a minute or two of smashing (and several bubbly breaths grabbed from the hose), the top of the spar broke off and the Sunfish floated free.

  Essie swam for the surface, pleased with herself. ‘We’re off!’ she shouted.

  ‘Great!’ Pod said, helping her back on board. ‘Let’s see if we can steer.’

  He started the engine and tried to turn the boat out towards open water once again. But the steering was clearly jammed; the boat wouldn’t steer to the left or right.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Pod said. ‘If we can’t turn, we can’t get out of the debris field.’

  ‘I’m going to have to try and unjam it, aren’t I?’ Essie said.

  Pod gave her an uncomfortable look. She knew the situation; Pod couldn’t swim, but mor
e than that, he was afraid of the water. She couldn’t possibly expect him to go down there. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Hopefully it won’t be too tricky.’

  Essie prepared herself again and went down for a second time. The underwater landscape had changed, and she realised belatedly that they were drifting. Probably, she thought, they should have anchored while she made repairs. She thought about going back up and telling Pod, but decided not to bother. It would only be wasting time, and if the pirates came back unexpectedly it would be better if they could get away quickly.

  She took a breath from the bubbling hose and studied the rudder. The light under the boat was green and dim and she wished she had a torch, but as she peered at it she thought she could see what the problem was. Essie had never looked at a rudder up close and had no idea what it was supposed to look like, but she could see two things: a chunk of the metal spar remained wedged between the rudder and the assembly; and the rudder itself had twisted a little on its axis. If she could get the piece of metal out, that might fix the problem, although the twist might present further problems. But first things first. She would try and get the metal out.

  She whanged it with her trusty hammer, and managed to break some of the projecting piece off, but a chunk of it was left behind and she quickly realised she couldn’t do any more whacking without risking damaging the rudder. She opened the bag and tried to slide the hammer back inside, but somehow missed the opening. The hammer dropped straight down into the murky green depths. Essie, panicked, dived down after it, forgetting about the hose that was attached to her mask strap. She knew how precious tools were—she couldn’t lose the hammer! She kicked down, reaching for it. Her hand closed around it—and the stream of bubbles at her ear ceased.

  Up on deck, Pod heard the pop as the hose came free from the pump. His heart pounding, he tried to grab for it but the hose had already whisked over the side and down into the sea. He leaned over the water as far as he dared, but of course he could see nothing in the dark water below.

  ‘Essie!’ he shouted, although he knew it was pointless.

  Bubbles were rolling up from the deep. He watched them in horror, not knowing what to do. Should he dive in after her? What was going on down there? He remembered the day his best friend had been sent down searching for salvage in an old factory; he’d had a better breathing tube than this one, but the pump had malfunctioned and his friend had drowned down there, lost in the dark. They’d brought the body up so it wouldn’t attract predators. He still dreamed of being caught in dark places underwater, unable to breathe. Had he sent Essie down to meet the same fate?

  Just as he thought this, Essie burst suddenly onto the surface, gasping, a hammer clutched in her hand, the hose dangling.

  ‘What happened?’ he called, his relief immense.

  ‘Dropped the hammer,’ Essie said. ‘I forgot about the hose.’

  She clambered up on deck and shivered, trying to warm up, while Pod worked to reattach the hose. Graham flew down beside them.

  ‘Engine broken?’ he asked.

  ‘The engine’s fine, but we need to fix the steering.’

  ‘Why send her?’ Graham asked. ‘Pod good fixer.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Essie said.

  ‘I can’t go down there,’ Pod said. ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Don’t swim. Just fix.’

  Pod looked at Graham angrily. ‘If it’s so easy, maybe you should do it.’

  ‘We’ve all got jobs to do,’ Essie said. ‘Wasn’t yours looking out for pirates?’

  Graham nipped her toe and flew off to the top of the mast again.

  ‘I’ve got this,’ Essie said. ‘Are we ready?’

  ‘We’re ready,’ Pod said.

  Back in the water she went, down and down into the murky green depths. The boat floated above her and a gentle swell kept things rolling and moving. Luckily they were in a relatively clear patch now, but she realised that yet again she had come down without remembering to tell Pod to anchor them in one place. She returned to the rudder and pulled some pliers out of the bag with exaggerated care (she did not want to risk dropping anything else). With one hand she braced herself against the Sunfish’s hull, and with the other she tried to get a good grip on the metal with the pliers and winkle the metal free. She tugged and teased, treading water with her legs to try and stay in one spot while the bubbles streamed about her, occasionally getting in her face as she worked. She felt the metal give, and she was ready to rejoice, but then she realised that the metal had separated, and some of it was still in there. She tried to get a grip on the remaining piece with the pliers.

  A big wave rolled through. The boat moved, Essie moved, the debris stayed where it was, and suddenly Essie felt an agonising pain. She had washed into more debris and a projecting metal spike had stabbed right into her thigh. For a moment she thought she was actually impaled, but then she skidded free with a painful scrape. In her panic she swallowed water and raced for the surface, coughing and spluttering, afraid for her life.

  Pod was there at once, looking down at her. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘There was a wave,’ she sputtered. ‘I crashed into something—’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  Essie filled her lungs with soothing air, trying to still her racing heart. ‘My leg,’ she said. ‘Something stabbed me.’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  She put her mask under the water to look at the wound. Blood was blooming around her. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

  Pod put out a hand and quickly hauled her back up.

  ‘I don’t think it’s that bad,’ she gabbled, her heart still racing, ‘I should go back down. I’ve almost fixed it, at least I think I have, one more try ought to do it—ow!’

  Pod was wiping the blood away, trying to see the extent of the injury. Her thigh had been scraped raw, and although the graze was quite large, it was not particularly bad. But there was one long, deep wound that looked nasty, and it was bleeding profusely.

  ‘You can’t go back down there,’ Pod said. ‘Not with that.’

  ‘It’s not that bad—’ Essie began.

  ‘Blood in the water brings sharks,’ Pod said. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  He was scowling. Essie thought he was angry at her, but then he started working at the knots that held the rope around her waist.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Essie asked.

  ‘I have to go down there and finish the job.’

  ‘Pod—no—’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘I can go—’

  ‘No, you can’t. Give me the mask.’

  Essie could see there was no point arguing with him. She took off the mask. ‘There’s just a little bit of metal stuck between the rudder and the assembly. You might need the pliers to get it out or you might be able to just force it out with something narrow like a screwdriver.’

  Pod nodded, although she wasn’t sure he was really listening.

  ‘If you can’t handle it down there, just come up, come straight back up, and we’ll work out another plan. Will and Annalie will probably be back soon and they can help us. It’s all going to be okay.’

  ‘We can’t wait,’ Pod said. ‘I have to do this.’

  He sat on the metal step that projected from the stern for a moment or two, steeling himself, and then he went over the side.

  Pod underwater

  Pod could count on one hand the number of times he’d been in the water since he was sold on from that first terrible job. There was the time he and Essie had jumped off the Blue Water Princess, and the time he and Will escaped from angry islanders back in the Moon Islands. Before that, there was the time his crazy pirate captain had thrown him off the ship to drown. All of them had been terrifying experiences. But none of them felt quite the same as this one.

  He floated on the surface, up to his neck in seawater, the horrible depths below him, the air hose hissing at his ear.

  ‘Just put your head under and practise breathing first,’ Ess
ie said. ‘It takes a bit of getting used to, but you can do it.’

  But Pod knew exactly how to do it. He’d done it before, as a child. He’d had no choice. The memories came back now—all of them. Not just how to breathe through a bubbling hose. But how it felt to have that water pressing down upon you. How it felt to be creeping through the drowned ruins of someone else’s world. The fear and the anger he sometimes felt at how badly the people before them had messed things up, so that people had to live like this.

  But none of this was helping him. He tried to ram it all down into a place where he didn’t have to feel it or think about it, and reminded himself that he just had to do the next thing. Put one foot in front of the other. Take this step, then the next step. That’s how you go on.

  He went down under, really under. The water bubbled at his ear and he gulped a breath. Down the sloping hull, down to the rudder, a rope paying out behind him, tethering him to the surface. He peered at the rudder and saw at once what needed to be done. He took the pliers out, positioned himself carefully, then worked the last piece of metal gently back and forth, back and forth, until at last it slipped free, as easy as anything. He ran his hands over the rudder and its axis, wondering how bad the damage was. Essie was right, the rudder was twisted. But would it prevent them from steering? He couldn’t tell. He fished out the hammer from the bag and gave the rudder a knock to see if he could straighten it out. It didn’t seem to make a lot of difference, but as soon as he’d done it, he thought better of it. The metal had already been twisted and strained. He didn’t want to risk weakening it even further and having it snap right off under pressure.

  He put the hammer back in its bag. He had done as much as he could do. The job was done. He could return to the surface.

  He grabbed the rope and hauled himself up, hand over hand, back up the curve of the boat and into the sunlight.

  Essie stuck her head over anxiously. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘It’s done. I fixed it.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Didn’t take much.’

  She put out a hand to him and helped him out of the water. Pod sat on the metal shelf, his feet still dangling. ‘I’m dizzy,’ he said.