Floods 3 by Colin Thompson Page A

sailors thought they were making fun of the fact they’d lost their own boat, and attacked them. The only good thing about this was that the last bit of the attack involved Cliché, Stain and Ooze being thrown into the harbour, which washed off all the coal dust they had been covered with.
    Cliché couldn’t swim and neither could Ooze, but as luck would have it the three of them managed to grab hold of a rope hanging down from an old junk.
    Seeing this, the French sailors cut the mooring rope and the junk began to drift out of the harbour towards the open sea, with the three spies stillhanging on for dear life and the sailors making rude French hand signals and blowing raspberries.

    As she watched the spies clamber up the rope and onto the deck, the Hearse Whisperer realised the junk was about as seaworthy as a paper bag fullof marbles. She changed herself into an albatross 36 and flew slowly out to sea.
    The junk had not been built for life on the open sea. It had been built to carry bags of very light feathers up and down a very calm river. So it wasn’t long before it started leaking.
    â€˜Is it supposed to do that?’ said Cliché as the water came up round his ankles.
    â€˜No, I think the water’s supposed to be outside the boat,’ said Stain.
    â€˜Maybe this is an ancient Chinese submarine,’ Ooze suggested.
    â€˜If we don’t grab those buckets and start bailing out, it’ll soon be an ancient Chinese underwater shed,’ said Cliché.
    They took off all their clothes, tore them into strips and stuffed the strips between the planks. It slowed the water down, but there were too manyholes in the junk to stop it completely. All through the day and into the night they took it in turns to empty buckets over the side of the boat.
    â€˜I can’t lift my arms another inch,’ said Ooze, collapsing on the deck. ‘If we don’t find land soon, we’ve had it.’
    â€˜Is there a map?’ said Cliché. ‘Let’s see if there is any land.’
    â€˜Yes, there is a map,’ said Stain. ‘It’s jammed in the big gap in that plank there – and even if we looked at it, what good would it do? It’s pitch black, we don’t have any instruments, the stars are totally covered by clouds, it’s beginning to rain and I want my mummy.’
    â€˜Something will turn up,’ said Cliché. ‘It always does.’
    â€˜This time I think the things that are likely to turn up are our toes and a shark,’ said Ooze, grabbing Stain. ‘I want your mummy too.’
    â€˜So do I,’ said Cliché, ‘and a pair of trousers.’
    The boat sank lower and lower in the water as the dark night grew so dark that the three spiescouldn’t see their fingers in front of their noses or even find where their noses were. They began to wail and groan in such a pathetic way that it even chased the sharks away.
    But, as Cliché had predicted, something did turn up.
    It was a bump.
    The sinking junk hit something, not with a big crash, but more of a gentle thud that was just hard enough to make the whole boat fall to pieces. Each spy grabbed a plank and hung on. They tried to make their pink legs looks as unappetising as possible by turning blue, just in case the sharks came back.

    Night fell and so did the wind, turning the sea to glass. The clouds went off to hassle Belgium and overhead a half moon and a million stars twinkled in an endless sky. Far out of sight of any land, the Maldemer sat motionless in the total silence, which was broken only by a whale coughing eighty-four kilometres away. 37
    At last the escapees felt safe. The only sign of life was an albatross circling far above them.
    â€˜Ahoy moon,’ Parsnip called.
    There was a bump and the ship rocked in the water.
    â€˜What was that?’ said Nerlin.
    â€˜What?’ said Mordonna.
    â€˜That bump. And I can hear voices.’
    â€˜Probably