We had traveled so far that I could no longer see Yellowport behind us. Just water stretching in all directions. Connor blew an ivory horn, the sound traveled across the open-water. We got a hair-raising response. I assumed to be Nessie’s roar, sounding like the screams of a dying elk but with a lower pitch.
“Erm de herpuuns!” Connor ordered.
Beneath the surface, a large shadow came moving towards Connor’s ship.
“Take aim!” Grimmington had turned the airship so the port-side faced the shadow.
The shadow broke through the water, a long neck rose meters above the surface, towering over Connor’s ship.
“Feier!” “Fire!” Connor and Grimmington yelled at the same time.
Connor’s men fired harpoon guns at Nessie. They impaled her neck, she shrieked.
“Weeve en!” Connor demanded. His men spun the harpoon winches, tugging at Nessie’s throat. She turned the same way a worm does when being tread on a hook.
When Nessie had been pulled close to the boat, she chomped down on it. One of Connor’s men disappeared in Nessie’s mouth. Another one lost his leg: “AAAARGH!!”
His screams of pain were muffled by the ear-ringing gunfire up in the airship.
“These bullets are no match for its thick skin!” Emily said in frustration.
“Why don’t we use some of this dynamite we have laying around?” I had noticed a barrel of explosives among the supplies we brought with us.
“And risk blowing up Connor’s ship? I don’t think so.”
“If only there was a way to detonate it from the inside..” Grimmington stroked his beard and looked at me.
“Let’s not push our luck here, okay?” Mike walked in front of me.
“It’s up to the girl to decide, is it not?” Grimmington moved Mike to the side. “Would you be interested in saving all those men by simply shoving some dynamite down Nessie’s throat?”
Nessie took another bite of the ship, a man threw himself out of harm’s way. Killing Nessie was our ticket to saving Maria, we needed these people.
“Will I die?” I asked.
“Not if you do it right. And besides, if you die, you die a hero. It’s a win-win,” Grimmington assured me. God had been good to me before, I wanted to see how far I could go.
“This is a stupid idea, Christoph,” Emily put her hand on his shoulder.
“Do you promise to rescue my sister even if I don’t make it?” I looked Grimmington in the eyes.
“Yes, of course!” he turned his head to open the barrel of explosives.
“Leah, don’t feel you have to, you’re risking your life for some people we met less than an hour ago,” Mike looked concerned.
“They’ll help getting my sister.. That’s worth risking my life for,” I took the sack of dynamite from Grimmington.
I leaned my VRC against the ship railing once again, only this time I had the Schofield.
“CEASE FIRE” “CEESE FEIER!” Grimmington ordered and Connor repeated.
All that could be heard was the waves from Nessie splashing against the ship. I reached the bottom of the rope ladder. Grimmington had brought the airship right above Nessie. She saw me and leapt out of the water. Her jaws engulfed me, the ladder broke off. Down I fell.
I really thought that’d be the end of it, realizing how dumb the plan had been. Hadn’t taken single moment to think it through. I had felt light headed but invincible, almost superhuman. Now on the other hand, things were just spinning. The fall was interrupted by a rip in fabric. I took the matchbox out of the bag of dynamite, and lit one of the matches. One of the harpoons had caught me, my dress had a tear on its left shoulder. Lucky.
I lit the dynamite fuse before the match ran out, then dropped the whole sack. It fell down Nessie’s throat. The harpoons acted as a makeshift ladder as I began climbing in the opposite direction. Soon my arms burned, and my legs were on the verge of cramping. The spinning was so intense, I passed out.
