The Great Galloon and the Pirate Queen (9 page)

‘Aye, Cap'n,' said Ms Huntley. ‘I studied the maps too, such as they are. We must rescue Isabella before he takes her into the Darts.'

Getting the Galloon going from a standing start was quite an operation. Before Stanley and the rest of the crew had shuffled out of the Brunt's little room, the huge stoker had already grabbed his shovel and heatproof mask and headed off to begin firing up the great furnace, which would boil the water in the mighty reservoir, which would pump steam and hot air into the great balloon itself, and all the minor outlying balloons. This gave the Galloon its lift, but for forward motion it relied largely on the winds themselves – so the Captain and Ms Huntley had made immediately for the Captain's cabin, where they would study charts and take readings from the lookouts stationed around the Galloon, which would tell them where the favourable winds were likely to be.

Stanley and Rasmussen did not have official roles in the procedure, but they were very good at making themselves useful. Rasmussen went off to watch the main anchors being hauled up, where she often kept morale high by doing a new and innovative dance on the main capstan, much to Abel's annoyance. Stanley made his way to the bows of the Galloon, from where he hoped to get a good view of the Darts, whatever they turned out to be, and perhaps see if he could make head or tail of these drums. He liked to be able to see where the Galloon was going. From the Brunt's room, which had been unknown to most of the crew until Stanley and Rasmussen had stumbled across it a few months before, he squeezed through the crowd, most of whom were heading to the new, automatic lifting platform, which would transport them up the main deck. But Stanley went the other way – to a panel in the wall that looked suspiciously similar to all the others around it. There he tapped three times with his foot, and once with his horn. Then he twisted a brass hook that looked like it was there to hold a lantern. The panel slowly scraped and heaved itself upwards, revealing a shaft like a dumb waiter – but one that had air rushing through it like water rushing through a pipe. Stanley carefully leaned into the tunnel he had uncovered, and fiddled with a small lever on the back wall.

‘Not the library … not the hospital wing …' he said to himself, thoughtfully. ‘Here it is – Claude's head.'

He pushed the lever towards the panel with the words ‘Claude's Head' and felt the rush of air change slightly. He knew that further up the channel, wooden doors were closing and others opening, so that he would be wooshed along the system of tubes to his chosen destination – Claude, the great winged tiger, a wooden figure that clung to the front of the Galloon, his wings outstretched along her sides. He had used the tubes before – indeed he and Rasmussen had recently spent a fun few weeks getting about this way, thereby infuriating and confusing anyone who didn't know the tunnels existed. The trick was to make yourself fit exactly inside the wooden tube, like a cork in a bottle. Then the pressure would build up behind you, and you would squirt along the tube, to be popped out at your destination, slightly befuddled and feeling like a rat emerging from a drainpipe, but none the worse for wear. He gingerly stepped through the gap in the panels and felt the wind whistling past him. He braced himself against each wall of the tunnel, and tried to fill as much of the space as possible. As the pressure built up behind him, so did the excitement. He took a deep breath, making sure he blocked the tunnel completely – and then he was off.

‘Woooooooooooooo!' he cried.

As the walls streamed past him, he felt the occasional burst of air from a side tunnel that would set him off along a different path. The air was warm – he knew from talking to the Brunt that it came ultimately from the very furnaces that kept the Galloon afloat – and he could almost relax as he shot along. He whooshed past a tiny notice on the wall that read ‘Claude's Head – 40 feet'. He braced himself, and almost before he was ready, he felt himself shot out of the tube like a torpedo, and found himself flying right over Claude's stripy wooden head.

‘Erm …' said Stanley, who was not given to panic. He had that feeling you get when you realise that, although things have always turned out fine in the past, there may be one time when they don't and that this may be that time. Claude's head was big, but not that big – he was over it fairly quickly, still travelling surprisingly fast. He grabbed at one of Claude's great wooden ears as they passed, but couldn't get a finger to it. Then he was looking down at Claude's great tiger face from above. His eyebrows were like ledges in a cliff face. His nose stuck out like a huge wooden tiger's nose. Behind him, Stanley was aware of the unimaginable bulk of the Galloon bearing down on him – but it wasn't bearing down quick enough to save him. He was now out in the wide blue sky beyond Claude – he felt momentarily like a dolphin playing around the bow wave of a seagoing ship.

Below him, the river rushed not too far away – the Galloon was, by its standards, fairly low, as it hung motionless in the air a few hundred feet from the waterfall. Stanley had a moment to wonder whether he could swim, having never had the urge to find out. Then, as he lost forward momentum, he was tumbling through the humid air.

‘Could anybody lend a hand …?' he said quietly, hoping that by some chance the gyrocopter, or even Fishbane the Seagle, might be within earshot.

They were not, it seemed. He fell head over heels over head over heels over head, seeing the green of the forest and the dark shape of the Galloon scooting past his vision in turn. It was almost fun, but with no Rasmussen to share it with, and the certainty of his imminent demise, he couldn't quite throw himself into it.

‘Ah well …' he said to himself, sagely, squeezing his eyes shut. ‘It's what I would have wanted.'

He just had time to wonder about that, and to wonder whether he could talk his way out of being eaten by a crocodile, when a mighty fist, the size of a mattress, grabbed him round the waist. The fist was solid as oak – which, indeed, is what it was made of – and all the wind blew itself out of him as his downward progress was halted abruptly.

‘Hooooooooooooffffff!' he said involuntarily. He opened his eyes to find that he couldn't see. He was inside the fist – enormous wooden claws the size of canoes were closed around him – and it took him a moment to realise what had happened.

‘Claude!' he breathed.

It was a legend onboard the Galloon that, in times of great danger, Claude would spring to life to save the ship. Stanley had never seen any evidence of this before now – he had stood on Claude's head many times with Rasmussen, and knew it to be made of the same wood as the rest of the Galloon – but now it seemed that it was indeed true. He felt the fist moving, as if he were being lifted up again. Now light flooded through cracks between Claude's huge claws, and he could see the sky, grey and looming, beyond them. The claw opened out like a flower, and Stanley felt the warm air rush in on him again. He was sitting on Claude's outstretched hand, as the enormous tiger held him up for inspection. Claude was still clinging to the Galloon with his other arm, and his wings were still stretched along the vessel's sides. But he was now facing Stanley, and from this angle Stanley could see that the eyes were not dead wooden things carved out of a tree, but bright, thoughtful windows into a living creature's mind. They were sharp and penetrating. It was like being stared at by a lighthouse. Had they always been this way? Stanley didn't know – he had never seen the Galloon from this angle before. In fact, he was willing to bet no-one had, as even the Captain had seemed unsure as to whether the legends about Claude were true or not. Despite feeling more exposed, and more exhilarated, than he had ever felt before, Stanley had a moment of gloating that he, as an incomer to the Galloon, knew something that Rasmussen, who had lived all her life onboard, did not.

‘Hello, Claude!' he said. ‘Sorry about standing on your head all those times!'

Claude held him closer. He opened his great mouth, and teeth like obelisks parted. Was it a smile? Or was the beast about to speak? Stanley held his breath again, and as if from nowhere, words formed in his mind.

THE GREAT GALLOON NEEDS YOU, SMALL BLUE

Stanley whipped around, as if this could be a trick being played on him by someone else up here on Claude's outstretched hand. He turned back.

‘Me?' he said. But no more words came. In fact, Claude's attention seemed to be elsewhere. He was looking past Stanley, in the direction the Galloon was travelling in. Stanley turned again, and saw that he was staring at the Lethal Force waterfall, visible intermittently through the clouds of spray. He saw the FishTank, a little silver eel wriggling and yanking itself up the mossy rockface, behind the flow of water.

‘Could you help us catch the FishTank? Rescue the Captain's bride?' asked Stanley, aware that it was perhaps slightly cheeky to ask a favour of a gigantic wooden tiger within moments of finding that he was actually alive.

RESCUE? NO

‘Oh,' said Stanley, who was disappointed but not surprised. ‘Why have you not spoken before now, if you don't mind me asking?'

BEFORE NOW, THE GALLOON'S DOOM WAS NOT IMMINENT

‘Oh,' said Stanley again, who could think of a few times when it had felt imminent enough. ‘So, now …?'

IT IS IMMINENT

‘And just so I'm sure, imminent means …?'

THE GREAT GALLOON'S DAYS ARE NUMBERED

‘Oh,' said Stanley for the third time. There didn't seem much else to say.

TO ONE

‘To what?' asked Stanley

THEY ARE NUMBERED – TO ONE

‘Oh,' said Stanley, aware that perhaps it wasn't enough. ‘One day, eh? Tsk.'

Cloudier Peele tried hard to be an effete poet. She aspired to a life of art and contemplation. She drank tea made of almost anything other than tea – hyssop and wolfwort, cloudjuice and tinklebane – all of which seemed to taste like leaves boiled in water. She wore floaty, impractically long dresses, and wished she were better at swooning. And yet she seemed to often find herself engaging in derring-do. She had even been known to swash a buckle or two. In her time she had flown her little balloon across icy wastes, into volcanoes, and on all sorts of life or death missions into the unknown. And now she was doing it again. Perhaps it was time for a rethink.

Because of the massive size of the Galloon, it was quite hard for anyone on deck to get a clear view of anything that was directly below them. So sometimes the Captain called on Cloudier to take him out in the weather balloon, for him to better see the lie of the land. And now, as they waited at the top of the waterfall for the FishTank to clamber up, he had called on her again. But this time was different – this time her mother was coming too.

‘We've got ropes, compass, the barometer, altimeter, fire extinguishers, inflatable life raft, vacuum flask of iced tea, and all the charts I could find,' said her mother, clambering over the rail and into the little basket.

‘What kind of tea?' asked Cloudier.