Now that she knew the reason Miarr sounded so odd, Lucy relaxed a little.
"Mr. Miarr?"
"Yes, Lucy Gringe?" There was a smile in Miarr's voice as he spoke.
"Why are we so far down? It's creepy."
"I wish to follow the Light without being seen. These marauders are bad people."
"I know," said Lucy. "But couldn't we go just a little nearer to the surface? They wouldn't notice us, surely."
"It is safer here," crackled Miarr.
Lucy gazed out, watching the beam of light from the Red Tube cut through the indigo water, illuminating forests of seaweed waving like tentacles, waiting to drag people into their clutches. Lucy shuddered. She had had enough of tentacles to last her a very long time. Suddenly something with a big, triangular, spotty head and two huge white eyes shot out of the weeds, swam up to the window and head-butted it hard. The Red Tube shook.
Lucy screamed.
"What is that?" Wolf Boy gasped.
"It is a cowfish," said Miarr. "They taste horrible."
The cowfish's googly eyes peered in wistfully.
"Oh, it's revolting." Lucy shuddered. "I bet tons of them live in that weed."
But it was the sight of real tentacles - thick, white ones with big pink suckers - emerging from the forest of weeds and curling toward the Red Tube that finally did it for Lucy.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" she screamed.
"Up!" Miarr's voice crackled, and they shot above the tentacles and the weeds into brighter waters. The Red Tube continued on its way, its pilot skillfully shadowing the Marauder, keeping his course some twenty feet below his Light.
He reasoned - correctly - that none of the crew would be looking too closely into the brilliance that followed them.
Surrounded now by clear green water and more familiar-looking fish, Lucy and Wolf Boy settled back into their seats and began to enjoy the sensation of flying below the water, as Wolf Boy put it, dodging between jagged-topped rocks that stretched toward the sun, stopping just below the surface. Miarr offered them a ration box containing - to Lucy's delight - a bag of chocolate raisins among the packets of dried fish and bottles of stale water. The chocolate raisins tasted somewhat fishy, but Lucy didn't care - chocolate was chocolate. She changed her mind, however, when she realized that the raisins were tiny fish heads.
Above the water, not so far away, Beetle was having little success with the familiar-looking fish. He and Jenna were sitting on a large rocky plateau by some very deep water - so deep that the usual pale green of the sea was a rich, dark blue. They sat watching the sea lapping against the rocks, peering down, seeing the seaweed on the rocks moving dreamily with the currents below. Every now and then they caught sight of fish swimming languidly in the depths, haughtily ignoring Beetle's offering. There were obviously a lot nicer things to eat down there than hook-buried-in-fish-head sandwich, Jenna said.
Beetle was disappointed. After his successes from his fishing rock, he had begun to see himself as an expert fisherman, but he now realized there was probably more to it than he thought. He wound in the fishing line.
"Perhaps we should get back to Sep and see how Spit Fyre is," he said. Jenna was quick to agree. She did not find fishing the most fascinating of occupations.
They walked across the rocky plateau, dropped down onto a stone-covered beach and picked their way across the shingle to the next outcrop of rocks. The tide was falling, revealing a long line of rocks, which stretched out to sea in a gentle curve, as though a giant had carelessly thrown down a string of massive black pearls. The line ended with a tall pillar-like rock that Jenna recognized as the one she had seen from their beach and had called the Pinnacle.
"Look, Beetle," she said. "Those rocks are like stepping stones. We could run along them all the way to the Pinnacle. Maybe we could even climb it and wave to Sep. That would be fun."
It wasn't exactly Beetle's idea of fun, but he didn't mind - if Jenna wanted to do it then he was happy to do it too. Jenna clambered down onto the first rock.
"This is great!" She laughed. "Come on, Beetle. See you there!"
Beetle watched Jenna set off, leaping from rock to rock, her bare feet landing surely on the slippery, seaweed-covered rocks. Less sure of himself, he started after her, stepping from rock to rock more carefully. By the time he reached the foot of the Pinnacle, Jenna was already at the top.
"Come on up, Beetle," she said. "It's really easy. Look, there are steps." There were indeed footholds cut into the rock - and a huge, rusty iron ring hammered into its side. Beetle climbed up the footholds and joined Jenna on the top. She was right, he thought, it was fun. Not quite as much fun as a double-whiz turn in the Ice Tunnels, but it came a very close second. He loved sitting way above the water, feeling the cool breeze in his hair, listening to the cry of the gulls and the swish-swash of the gentle waves below - and he especially loved sitting there with Jenna.
"Look," said Jenna, "there's our bay, but I can't see Sep anywhere."
"He's probably with Spit Fyre," said Beetle.
"Mm, I hope Spit Fyre's okay," said Jenna. "He did smell a bit disgusting this morning, didn't he? I mean, more disgusting than usual."
"Yeah," said Beetle. "But I didn't say anything. You know how touchy Sep gets about stuff like that."
"I know. It is lovely here, isn't it? When Spit Fyre is better we must bring Sep up here. It's amazing." Jenna gazed about, taking it all in. She was surprised at how narrow the island was. There was no more than a rock-strewn spit of land separating what she thought of as their bay from the coast on the other side of the island. She looked up at the one and only hill, which rose behind them. It too was strewn with rocks and was topped with a small grove of twisted, wind-stunted trees.
"Yeah, it is pretty special," said Beetle. They sat for a while, listening to the occasional cry of gulls and watching the sparkling sea, until suddenly Beetle said,
"There's a boat!"
Jenna jumped up. "Where?"
Beetle carefully got to his feet for a better look. There was not a lot of room on top of the Pinnacle. He shaded his eyes from the sun, which seemed extra bright when he looked at the boat.
"Over there," he said, pointing to a small fishing boat with red sails that had just come into view at the northern tip of the island.
"It's so bright," said Jenna, screwing up her eyes. "I can hardly look at it."
"Don't look at it," said Beetle suddenly. "It's too bright. I think...oh, how weird...I think they're towing a great big lamp!"
In the gentle breezes of the early afternoon, the Marauder was making slow progress toward her destination. Skipper Fry had sailed north of the island for a safer approach that avoided some notorious rocks, but the wind had dropped and it had taken much longer than he had expected. But now their destination was in sight.
"Jakey!" he yelled. "Keep a lookout. We're gettin' near the Lurkers!" The Lurkers were a string of jagged rocks scattered around the Pinnacle and lying just below the surface of the water.
Jakey was lying on the bowsprit, his feet dangling, peering down into the clear green sea. He was as far as he could get from the weird Light bobbing along behind them, and as far away as possible from his father and the Crowes, who felt even more menacing hidden behind their dark eyeglasses. No one had bothered to give Jakey any glasses, so he had spent the whole trip looking away from the Light with his eyes half-closed. He stared into the water, amazed at how clear it was, how he could see all the way to the seabed. There was not much to see, just flat sand, the occasional school of darting fish and - oh, what was that? Jakey let out a shout.
"Port or starboard?" yelled the skipper, assuming Jakey had seen a rock.
"Neither - oh, it's huge!"
"Where, you idiot - where is it? " Skipper Fry fought to keep the panic from his voice.
Jakey watched a long, dark red shape come up from the depths. He had never ever seen a fish of that size - or that shape. The shape traveled smoothly under the boat toward the Light, and Jakey looked away. "It's gone!" he yelled. "I think it were a whale!"
"Idiot boy!" shouted Skipper Fry. "There's no whales 'round here."
Suddenly a yell came from Thin Crowe.
"What?" Skipper Fry, so near to his goal, was twitchy.