"How fast now?" Petra called up to James.
"Sixty-five!" he answered. "No faster! The lead is just pulling the bow too far down into the water, dragging us! We're never going to make it!"
"Reparo!" Barstow hollered, kicking his heels in the air as he leaned over the railing. "Reparo, you great useless hunk of rusty iron! Damn and drat!"
James gripped the pole so hard that his knuckles were white in the sunlight. He craned backwards and saw crewmen clinging from odd angles on the masts, watching breathlessly, their eyes wide and waiting. The Scarlet Mist and the Three-Eyed Isis tracked the Gwyndemere on both sides, frighteningly close, hemming them in. James could hear the shouts and whoops of the pirates from their rocking decks.
"REPARO!" Barstow shouted, his voice straining.
"It's no use!" James called out, watching as the Poseidon's Peril filled his vision. The pirates on the deck had begun to scatter as the Gwyndemere bore down on them. Henrietta dove under the waves, preparing to swim under the other ship's long hull.
Below, Petra drew a deep breath. To James, she seemed eerily calm. She closed her eyes.
Deep beneath the deck, a dull clatter and a metallic clang sounded. The Gwyndemere lurched violently and rose onto the waves, buoyed up suddenly and virtually leaping out of the water. The steering pole loosened in James' grip, no longer bearing the full weight of Henrietta as she pulled the ship.
"Aha!" Barstow cried in disbelief. "The chain's repaired! Go! Go!"
James boggled, still looking up at the Poseidon's Peril. The Gwyndemere was rushing toward it, doomed to ram it in mere seconds.
"James!" Petra called. "How fast?"
James tore his eyes from the looming ship. "Eighty-five… just a little more…!"
"On my mark, mates!" Barstow bellowed, raising both hands.
"Eighty-eight!" cried.
"Pesceopteryx!" Petra shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth again.
James repeated the incantation as loudly and accurately as he could, jerking the steering pole upright. Simultaneously, Barstow hollered an order to his mates in the ship's rigging. The response was immediate and shocking. Henrietta lunged forward, so quickly and powerfully that her entire body angled up out of the water, trailed by a sparkling wreath of seawater. Two leathery shapes unfurled from her back and snapped open like parachutes, spraying fine mist. Henrietta, it seemed, had wings. She pumped them in one enormous, muscular stroke and shot up into the air, her long body streaming lithely over the deck of the Poseidon's Peril, covering it with her shadow. Pirates scattered, and some even leapt from the deck, dropping their cutlasses as they plummeted into the heaving ocean below.
On the Gwyndemere, every sail unfurled at once, suddenly and powerfully, creating a deep reverberating thump of captured wind. The complicated riggings unfolded and flexed, acting almost like wings, and the great ship heaved out of the ocean, following in Henrietta's path. James held his breath, but the rest of the crew hollered and whooped, their voices rising in the sudden, rushing silence.
The Gwyndemere soared over the Poseidon's Peril, so low that her wet hull crushed the other ship's deckhouse, smashing it to matchsticks. She plowed over the Poseidon's main mast, breaking it like a twig and forcing the unfortunate pirate ship to roll over in the water.
James clung to the steering pole, his hair streaming behind him and his eyes wide with a mixture of wonder and terror. Henrietta moved through the air ahead of the ship like a massive, scaly banner, her body flexing and sparkling greenly, her great membranous wings swooping easily, drawing streamers of water across the sky. Finally, gently, she angled downwards, furled her great wings, and dove to meet her long shadow on the waves. She made very little splash as she plunged into the depths. Behind her, however, the Gwyndemere landed like a whale, pounding the surface and sending up an explosion of dense white water, drenching James. A moment later, the crashing waters fell away and the ship cruised on sedately, her sails flapping in the ocean breeze.
"A job well done, James!" Barstow bellowed happily. "I told you we'd be in for a wee tussle, didn't I? Why, I'm tempted to recruit you to a life on the high seas, I am! Not everyone can air-pilot an Atlantean razorback their first time out! I was sure we were going to end up riding the Poseidon home piggyback!"
James flushed, his heart still thundering with adrenaline. "Well, I don't think they got away quite as undamaged as we seem to have," he called sheepishly.
Barstow angled toward the wrought iron stairs, patting Dodongo cheerfully on his enormous head. "Ah, they'll be fine," he replied, climbing up and trading seats with James. "It isn't the first time the Poseidon's been turned turtle in the water. They'll have themselves a grand adventure of it, bashing their way through the hull into the sunlight, then repairing everything and turning her back over. Gives 'em something constructive to do for the rest of the day."
James felt himself grinning helplessly as he climbed down. Feeling slightly drunk on adrenaline, he angled over toward Dodongo and plopped down onto the edge of the cargo hold doors, resting his arm on the great ape's nose. He replayed the last few minutes in his head, not quite believing everything that had happened. Curiously, the thing that amazed him most was how Barstow had managed to repair the harness chain at the last possible moment. It had looked perfectly hopeless and James understood why: it would have been virtually impossible to see the broken harness chain under the waves, where it was being dragged by Henrietta. Furthermore, doing magic through water, as Merlin had implied earlier, was extremely tricky. So how had Barstow managed it?
James' eyes widened as he remembered something. Moments before the chain had magically reattached to the ship, Petra had been standing on the prow, her eyes closed, as if in deep concentration. The last time James had seen anything like that had been…
"On the train," he muttered to himself. "On the Hogwarts Express with Merlin, when he'd made the tree grow beneath it, holding it up. But how could Petra…?"
He frowned to himself. Next to him, Dodongo stirred, pursing his lips and nodding James' arm off his nose.
James got up and looked around the deck, curious to ask Petra about what he had seen, but she was nowhere in sight. James found that he wasn't particularly surprised.
4. THE DREAM STORY
The crew of the Gwyndemere left the sails up now that the journey was fully underway. The wind filled them and helped propel the ship swiftly across the face of the ocean. For her own part, Henrietta drove through the water like a gigantic corkscrew, never slowing, her scales sparkling wherever her serpentine humps broke the surface, her serrated back slicing the waves neatly in two.