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Fear lent her strength, and Leaf s She leaned over Arthur and screamed, ‘What do we do now?’

She didn’t sound like she was enjoying this adventure

‘Hold on!’ Arthur shouted, looking past her at the towering, office-block-high wall of water that was falling towards them If it broke over the bed, they would be smashed down and pushed deep into the sea, never to surface

The crest of the wave curled high above theht of the sky Arthur and Leaf stared up, not breathing, eyes fixed on the curving water

The wave didn’t break The bed rode up the face of the wave like a fisherman’s float As it neared the top, it tipped up almost vertically and started to roll over, until Arthur and Leaf threw their weight against the curl

They were just in time The bed didn’t roll It levelled out as they made it to the crest of the second wave They balanced there for a few seconds, then the bed started its doard slide once h in front of another giant, blue-black, white-topped cliff ofwater

But the third as different

There was a ship surfing down it A hundred-and-sixty-foot-long, three-reen

‘A ship!’ yelled Leaf, hope in her voice That hope rapidly fled as the bed continued to run down into the trough at alar speed, and the ship surfed down the opposite side even faster still

‘It’s going to hit us! We have to jump!’

‘No!’ shouted Arthur If they left their makeshift raft he felt sure they’d drown ‘Wait!’

A few seconds later, waiting seemed like a very bad decision The ship didn’t waver in its course, a great wooden ht over them and the crew probably wouldn’t even notice

Arthur shut his eyes when it got within the last twenty yards The last thing he saas the ship’s bow plunging down into the sea, then rising up again in a great spray of froth and spray, the bowsprit like a spear rising from the water

Arthur opened his eyes when he didn’t feel the shocking ih at the last instant to h between the waves Both had lost speed, so that the bed would be right next to the ship for a matter of seconds It was an act of tremendous seamanship by the captain and crew, particularly in thespray, Arthur sao looped ropes like lassoes come down One loop fell over Leaf The other, clearly aimed for Arthur, fell over the left bedpost instead He scraot it clear, both ropes went taut Leaf went up like a rocket, up towards the ship

The other rope tipped the bed over

Arthur lost his grip and tumbled into the sea He went down several feet, his breath knocked out of hih the veil of water and spray, he saw Leaf and the bed spinning up to the ship’s rail high above The bed went up several yards, then the rope came free and it fell back down

He kicked as best he could with one iet back to the surface and the ship But by the tiot a half-breath of spray-soaked air, the vessel was already at least fifty yards away, surfing diagonally up the wave ahead,faster than the swell New sails unfurled and billowed out as he watched, accelerating its passage

The bed was much closer, perhaps only ten yards away It was his only chance now Arthur started to swi, an asth in on him He would only be able to swiy into getting back to the bed, as it started its rise up the front of the folloave

He just h the bars at the end of the bed Arthur frantically pulled hi it wouldn’t co strength, he ain wedge his aretting ot worse That meant that wherever he was, it wasn’t the House This sea was somewhere in the Secondary Real to die here, Arthur thought, his mind nu to go easily He freed his right hand and pressed it against his chest Perhaps there was some shred of remnant power from the First Key in his hand, or even of the Second Key

‘Breathe,’ whispered Arthur ‘Free up Let me breathe’

At the sah his body Over and over, inside his head, he told himself to be cal power in his hand or his efforts to stay calm, Arthur found that while he still couldn’t breathe properly, it didn’t get any worse He started to take stock of his situation

I’ht It floats Even wet blankets will helpup Maybe he’d got a bit used to these enoret anyat the top than the first few It still scared hiht about what else he ohich weren’t ht be disintegrating already, and he could feel a dull throbbing ache deep in the bone His Immaterial Boots kept his feet war else they could be used for Other than that, he had -- The Atlas! And the Mariner’s whalebone disc!

Arthur’s hand flashed to his pyjamas pocket and then to thefor the whalebone disc The Atlas was still in his pocket The Captain’s medallion, as he’d come to think of it, was still around his neck

But what use were they?

Arthur wedged his good leg through the bars and curled up as o with his hands and got out the Atlas, keeping it close to his chest to et washed away But as he’d half-expected, it wouldn’t open He slowly put it back in his pocket

The Captain’s whalebone disc, on the other hand, ht work Tom Shelvocke was the Mariner after all, son of the Old One and the Architect (by adoption), a man who had sailed thousands of seas on many different worlds He’d told Suzy Turquoise Blue to warn Arthur to keep it by hiht summon help or even communicate with the Captain

Arthur pulled the disc out from under his pyjama top and looked at the constellation of stars on one side, and then at the Viking ship on the other They both looked like siht there had to be soic contained in them Because it seemed more likely to be of immediate help, Arthur concentrated on the ship side, and tried to will a e to the Captain