Dan and the Caverns of Bone by Thomas Taylor Page B

standing in the only way out!’
    I look back at the figure of Death. He lifts his scythe.
    Then he comes for us.
    I give the nearest of the two boats a kick. It hits the water, and the rope in my hand almost cuts my fingers off as I brace myself against the pull of the water.
    â€˜Er, this is the bit where you get in!’ I shout, when I see they are all just staring at me in astonishment. Luci recovers first and jumps into the boat, making it rock like crazy.
    â€˜This is insane!’ squeaks Brian.
    â€˜No,’ I correct him, ‘
that’s
insane,’ and I nod my head in the direction of the deathly figure sweeping down on us. Death lets out a bellow of echoing, inhuman rage, and strikes the wall of the passage inhis passing, slicing through ancient bone and raising a torrent of sparks.
    â€˜Okay!’ says Brian.
    He jumps.
    Then the ghosts are there too, waiting above the boat to follow as we are whooshed away into the unknown. But there’s a problem. If I step forward to jump, the water will just pull the boat away at the same speed. And I don’t need Jojo’s ghost to remind me what could happen to yours truly if I land in this rushing black water.
    â€˜Daniel! Jump!’ Si waves his wig at me, and the others call similar words.
    The extra weight is pulling the rope through my hands now, but the sound of another scything cut reminds me that I’ll be dead in a second or two anyway, so what have I got to lose? I look up and see that Death is upon me – his weapon is raised, he begins his swing…
    With an echoing cry of ‘Crapsticks!’, I jump.
    There’s a sensation of speed and sharpness and a CLANG as metal strikes the arch of the tunnel. I get a face full of brick fragments and I can’t see. I reach out and feel the edge of the boat, and grab it, just as my body hits the water. I fall back, shocked by theicy cold, but arms grab my clothes and somehow I don’t slip under.
    And so, like this – with me mostly not in the boat at all – we are taken by the current and swallowed whole by the clamouring darkness of the tunnel.

16

Lifeboat Or Deathboat?

    For a while everything is so mad that I don’t know what’s going on. The cold makes it hard to think straight, so I don’t even try, I just hold on as the boat buffets and spins in the current. But eventually, with the world in my head still turning, I risk opening one eye and find that everything else has stopped,that we’re out onto the calmer waters of some vast, subterranean lake.
    And someone is pulling at me.
    â€˜Get in, Dan. It’s wet in the water.’
    I look up and see Brian’s ferrety silhouette against the combined ghost glow of Simon and Jojo right behind him. And I can’t argue with his powers of observation – it
is
wet in the water. I reach into the boat and haul myself in, Bri tugging at me with the power of a very small Jack Russell. Luci is sitting at the front with a long-bladed paddle, propelling us gently. The torch is propped beside her.
    â€˜Gngnk…’ I manage to say from the freezing pool I’ve made at the bottom of the boat. ‘W-w-where are we?’
    â€˜I do not know, I ’ave never been here,’ Luci says, straining to see ahead. ‘But the only thing that matters is we ’ave escaped Death.’ Then she turns and gives me a look that would stop a charging rhino and make it blush. ‘Thanks to you.’
    I sit up and shake the hair. A small white fish falls out and lands in my lap. It looks up at me with bulbous, unseeing eyes before springing into the air and plopping over the side.
    â€˜C…cool.’ I pick up the coat from where Luci has dropped it, and slip it on. ‘S…Si, any great ideas in that leaky head of yours?’
    â€˜For regaining the surface, you mean?’ Si puffs ectoplasm from his bullet hole. ‘To escape the hellish confines of this nightmare deep? To