Davelron tugged them through the doors of the shed like entrance to the lower deck and pushed them to the hull, dragging them back up again once he'd followed them. "Mechanical Wizard, we need your help!" Emilia screamed, but the Mechanical Wizard had to accept the Trident Holder as a higher authority, and so didn't do anything.
Davelron pushed them into a back room and locked their ankles with chains. Then he stared at them, his eyebrows raised, and said, "I'll go and undo whatever terror you've caused to my ship, and then I'm going to deal with you. You better have an excuse planned for me." He stormed out, smashing the door into the frame, which made the entire ship quiver.
In the darkness, only illuminated by a seeping of light beneath the door, Emilia said, "And I thought it was going swimmingly."
"We need to escape." Marcus said, to the darkness.
"Yeah, I don't like the idea of him dealing with us."
"No!" Marcus exclaimed. "We need to escape so we can take this letter to Uncle Demetrius."
Emilia nodded in the darkness, a completely unnecessary gesture, and began thinking. "Have you still got those pips from earlier?"
Earlier that day, they'd found some strange peaches- or apples or something- with the largest, and hardest, pips Marcus had ever seen in them. They'd hastily eaten them and kept the pips, in the hope of finding a market where they could buy some more. "Yeah. They're in my bag."
"Get them out." Emilia said.
"Ok." Marcus replied, routing through the satchel and pulling out a handful of pips.
"That door was wooden, and those pips are really hard. No doubt that a couple of them will break down the door."
"No." Marcus said. "We wouldn't be able to get out of these chains, and it would cause to much noise. I've got a better idea." Without further ado, he took the pip and stuffed it onto the lock of the chain. With his other foot, he stamped down on it twice, smashing the lock with the hard pip. The chain broke away and Marcus got up, giving another pip to Emilia so she could do the same. A couple of seconds passed and then she broke away form the lock, using only one stamp. She went to join Marcus, who was attempting to open the door. "It locked shut!"
"We could just barge through it." Emilia replied, preparing to do so.
"It'd make too much noise." Marcus replied. "We'd be giving ourselves away!"
Emilia thought. "If we both leant on the door when we got the next wave, it may collapse."
"But you saw the seas today. It could be hours till the next wave."
"Ok, ok." Emilia said. She quickly went back to the source of her chain and, with a kick, broke it from the wall. It was rusty from years of damp wooden, and came off surprisingly well. She took it and threaded it through the broken chain on the other. Then she pulled the extended chain over to the cell door and tightened the lock around the door handle. "Now we can kick it down, and it won't make to much noise."
"Good thinking." Marcus replied.
She smiled, another pointless gesture, and kicked the door down. It hung backwards on the chain and Marcus pulled the door back slowly, lying it down. Then, without having made hardly any noise, they walked into the main hull. The stairs they'd just come down were waiting wearily on the other side of the central hull. There was an abandoned doorway, inside which were four bunk beds, with a fifth hammock hanging in the centre. Five beds for the five crew members. But besides Davelron there was no-one aboard. Where had the others gone?
The room between the cell and the bedroom housed a small library, a drink stained table, some kitchen furniture, a sofa and a gramophone. There was another door to the side of the cell door, which Marcus, tentatively, crept to investigate. It led into an armoury, stacked with harpoons, tridents, nets, swords and spears. Anybody would expected it to have been the armoury of a colosseum.
"Emilia." Marcus whispered. "Come have a look at this!"
"Blazing Hell Torrent!" First Mate Octavius Davelron exclaimed, pulling on a long blue jacket. He picked up his trident and pushed it into the centre of the large wheel, crying, "Mechanical Wizard, all hands at deck."
There was a ticketing of paper and a ding, but Davelron didn't read the paper, which actually read, "I don't have 'hands'. In the original blue prints, these are labelled as operating utensils."
Davelron twisted the trident, which now acted as part of the wheel and spun the ship around. Then he pressed down on the pedal, pulled back a large lever and then pulled the lock down on the wheel. He grabbed a large sack from the floor and then pulled a couple of lumps of coal from it, throwing it into the stove connected to the large fans. Davelron leapt from the raised deck, the vessel thundering towards slightly east of where it'd been docked, and headed behind the shed, stopping at the collection of cannons. He loaded three balls into the strongest, three barrelled cannon, and aimed it, taking a match to light the fuse. In a repetitive firing, three cannon balls exploded through the air towards the burning ruins of Port Vincent.
Emilia, now wearing a harness with the spears and sword strapped to it, rushed towards the doorway with a sword in hand. Marcus followed her, but noticed a porthole. He ran over to it and stared through at the sea outside. It was beginning to turn violent, with lapping waves and bouncing rain drops. Something slithered past the window, angry and fast. Marcus recoiled in horror, just as the boat shook with the explosion of cannons above. "Marcus, are you alright?" Emilia asked, running over.
"There's something out there in the sea." Marcus replied, his spear outstretched.
"Probably our possessions. I imagine he threw them overboard soon after he caught us."
"No, like a creature. Like a gigantic snake thing."
"I thought you were meant to be good at describing things."
"Emilia, there is a gigantic monster out there."
"Maybe a different adjective may be a good idea."
"Emilia!" Marcus screamed.
"Keep it down." She replied. "You'll alert Davelron. Now come on, we need to get aboard and escape, on a life boat or something."
"What about the snake thing?"
"Back to your old habits."
"Emilia! What do we do about the snake thing?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now come on!" She cried. They raced up the steps, their weapons at arms length, and rushed onto the deck. Davelron was firing cannon balls at Port Vincent, which was an explosion of flames, despite the pouring rain. "Stop firing at our home!" They cried.
Davelron spun around. "I'm not firing at your home! I'm firing at the Spectre warships. What are you doing out of your cell?"
"We're here to warn you about the gigantic snake thing circling the ship!" Marcus cried.
"That is an awful description." Davelron replied. But his words were drowned away by the roaring of a gigantic serpent, as it rose from the depths of the ocean and howled over the ship.
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