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He hoped that was a good thing to visualise At the back of hisworry that Leaf hadn’t been actually rescued but had gone from one trouble to another What would the Denizens do to her? They would have been after him, not her He hoped that since Lady Wednesday had sent hiht be at least kind of friendly But et hiht take out her bad feelings on Leaf
If Leaf survived that line of lightning, Arthur thought guiltily Surely that ship would have had soled under his feet and sank a bitArthur of his immediate problem
‘A ship!’ he called out ‘I need a ship! Or a boat! A better raft! Anything!’
His voice sounded alone and empty, lost a of the sea under, through, and around the mattress
‘Land would do,’ said Arthur He said this directly to the Captain’s disc, but once again it didn’t appear to do anything It was just a carving of a boat on a piece of whalebone
No land caot warmer, and then positively hot Even the seawater now constantly washing over Arthur didn’t cool him down It was tepid and very salty, as he found when he tasted so very thirsty, and had started to re of thirst at sea Or going crazy fro the to drink their blood
Arthur shook his head several tio crazy, thinking of stuff like that Particularly since he knew he couldn’t die of thirst in the House He o crazy
Better to think of sonal, or catch a fish If there were any fish in this strange sea within the House Of course, if there were fish, therehim off the bed It hardly qualified as a raft anyain to try and clear away the negative thoughts
Stop thinking about sharks! he told hi in the water not far away A dark, ely under the surface
Arthur yelped and tried to stand up against the headboard, hopping as his iht under a fold of sheet This violent action changed the balance of the bed, and one corner went down several feet, releasing a huge air bubble
This doard progress halted for a few seconds as air bubbles continued to pop to the surface, then the bed sank like the Titanic, one end briefly sticking straight up before it subsided beneath the waves Arthur let go of it just in tih backstroke for a few yards to make sure he wouldn’t be sucked down, then trod water with one leg and his ar, as he frantically looked around for the dark shadow again
There it was, only a few yards away! Arthur braced hiid His head sank under the water as he stopped led to swiain
The dark shape didn’t attack It didn’t even move Arthur stared at it and saw that it wasn’t a shark He swareen ball about six feet in diaular surface rather likequite deep, so that only a curve fourteen inches or so high rode above the sea
Arthur splashed over to it On closer inspection, it was clearly a buoy or soreen weeds Arthur reached out to touch it A huge strand of green weeds caht red surface beneath
Arthur touched that It felt slightly sticky, and so guet off Arthur crossly wiped his hands but that only sers, and his head dipped under His broken leg wasn’t weighed down that much by the cast, but he couldn’t bend his knee and he couldn’t tread water well enough just with one leg to really try and clean his hands, since he had tomotions as well
Arthur started to clear the weeds aith one hand While doing that, he noticed that the buoy didn’t er waves came past, it swept Arthur five or six yards away and he had to swim back The buoy didn’tArthur duck-dived down and, sure enough, a barnacle-encrusted chain led down froh the sunlit water and into the dark depths
He resuot a lot more of the sticky stuff on his hands It was tar, or soh it didn’t sht It ht even be able to cliher in the water Arthur had hoped he ht find some handles on it, or projections he could hold on to, because he was getting very tired But there weren’t any The only part of the buoy that was of any interest was a sht near the top Arthur could only just reach it
The ring was about the size of the top joint of Arthur’s little finger, far too save it a pull, hoping that it er to create a handhold
It ca sound, followed ih shower of sparks and a loud ticking noise as if a large and noisy clock had started up deep within the ball
Arthur started frantically backstroking away fro faster than his brain, which had rapidly processed the fact that this floating ball was so to explode
A few seconds later, with Arthur only ten yards away, the buoy did explode But it was not the lethal blast Arthur feared There was a bright flash, and a rush of air above Arthur’s head, but no deadly rain of fragments
Smoke poured out of the ball, dark black smoke that coiled up into the air in a very orderly fashion, quite unlike any smoke Arthur had seen before It started to whip about like a snake, dancing all over the place Eventually its ‘head’ connected with its ‘tail’ to for that hovered ten feet above the buoy, which was still intact, though its upper half had broken open intoslowly closed in on itself to become an inky cloud that spun about for a ht jet-black seabirds that shrieked ‘Thief!’ above Arthur’s head before they each flew off in a different direction, covering the eight points of the compass rose
Arthur was too tired to worry about what the seabirds were doing, or who theyAll he cared about was the fact that now the top half of the buoy was open, he could pull hih energy to drag himself over and into the buoy It was full of water, but he could sit in it quite comfortably and rest That was all he wanted to do for a while Rest
But after only twentyto his still-backwards but otherwise reliable and waterproof watch, Arthur found that he had rested enough Though there was still no visible sun, it felt like one was beating down on hi sunburned and that his tongue had started to swell froed to keep a sheet froown off and made that into a makeshift turban, but it didn’t really help
At that point, Arthur started to hope that whoever the birds were supposed to alert would show up Even if they thought he was a thief That i to steal here, which didn’t see ball with the top he inside it except Arthur
Another baking, uncoain, probably because the painkillers he’d had in the hospital earing off The high-tech cast didn’t seem to be operational anymore and Arthur could see distinct holes in it now
Arthur picked at one of the holes and gri apart He was definitely sunburned as well, the backs of his hands turning pink, as if trying toto Arthur’s watch it was nine o’clock at night, but there was no change in the light Without being able to see any sun, he couldn’t tell whether night was approaching He wasn’t even sure there would be a night There was in the Lower House, but that didn’t ht not be any relief from the constant heat