As they neared the surface, Ms. Octavia stopped and peered at the side of the ship. She looked at Alex and motioned him to come closer. When he did, she drew her tentacle across the ship’s side, underlining the faded letters she found there.
Ka o aru o. 5.
Scavengers
It seemed like a strange name for a ship, but when Alex really thought about it, he admitted he wasn’t an expert on ship names. After all, he’d only known one vessel with a name, and that was Mr. Today’s boat, named after his daughter, Claire. And there were a lot of spaces in the name, which made Alex wonder if some of the letters had been washed away. They would probably never know the answer.
He and Ms. Octavia broke the surface, giving Alex a chance to catch his breath and check the weather before taking a closer look inside the vessel. On shore, Henry and Crow carried a long red plank between them, heading toward Florence. The rain and wind continued on all around the island, and clouds were thick above them, but the sun was still visible beyond the strange storm’s perimeter. Looking out to sea, Alex could tell where the rain field ended, about half a mile offshore, and it seemed to be consistent all the way around—at least from what Alex could see. When he was ready, Alex and Ms. Octavia headed underwater once more.
This time they swept across the deck, both holding highlighters, looking for anything useful. Alex spotted a fine-looking rope, perfectly coiled around a stairway railing. And the sides of the ship were in good shape. Not wooden like the pirate ship, but made of some hard material. If only they could cut a portion out of each side and attach it to the pirate ship like a bandage over the split . . . but there was no way to cut through material like this.
Alex followed Ms. Octavia, swimming down the stairwell to see what was belowdecks. Moving cautiously, they swam back and forth, taking in everything. Tools, equipment, rigging, giant trunks that were padlocked and bolted to the floor. Alex wondered if they’d be able to pry them open, and if so, what they’d find inside. There were doors with the windows broken out and vast rooms filled with strange machinery.
They went down another level to find even more strange equipment: Telescopes and giant instrument panels, all sitting politely in place, as if the ship weren’t resting at a forty-five-degree angle under water.
When Alex began to run out of air, he motioned to Ms. Octavia, and the two weaved back through the ship. Along the way, Alex unwound the coil of rope and pulled it with him through the water, and Ms. Octavia enfolded several arms around a large wooden box of tools and carried it upward, showing her tremendous strength.
They rose to the surface with their goods and struggled through the water to drag them along to shore. The water was much rougher near the surface, making the journey tougher than Alex expected. By the time he reached the shore, he was spent. He heaved the coil of rope onto the land next to a small pile of other useful items that had been retrieved from other wreckage. He went back to get the waterlogged toolbox from Ms. Octavia, helped her drag it ashore, and dropped it to the ground with a thud. Water trickled out of it through cracks in its sides.
Fox and Kitten, who weren’t able to collect much, instead hopped around the recovered items, observing and commenting on them. Every now and then a gust of wind bowled Fox over and sent him across the rocks like a misplaced tumbleweed. The storm was getting worse.
Alex, still breathing hard, approached Florence and Copper. “There’s a ton of stuff on the ship Ms. Octavia and I found. Machinery and strange-looking equipment—I don’t know what any of it is, but it might be worth you taking a look. Almost everything is too heavy for us to carry. The ship is in really great shape—except for the rip in the side that caused it to sink.”
“That’s very encouraging,” Florence said. She stood near the split in the pirate ship’s side, and Alex could tell she had managed to align one half to the other, which must have taken every bit of strength she had. “We’re going to need a lot of help putting this thing back together. This will be an interesting patch job, and it won’t be easy to ensure it’ll be waterproof.” She shifted her bow and looked down at Alex. “Do you have any magical components left or did we lose them all in the wreck?”
“I have what’s on me,” Alex said, patting his pockets.
“Do you have any preserve spell components?”
“A couple. I’ll ask around. Do you think that would help?”
“Marcus used that spell on Simber. So my thought is that if it keeps the water from seeping into the cat, it’ll keep the sea from seeping into our ship. So yes, I think it would help tremendously once we’ve got this thing put back together.”
Copper approached. She could no longer squeeze inside the ship through the split now that Florence had pushed it closed and propped up the bow and stern with rocks to hold the ship in place. “Can you let me in?” she asked. “I want to check the stability of the structure to make sure it’s not compromised. No use fixing a ship that’ll split apart on a rough sea with all aboard. We’ll need to be certain we shore up the beams properly.”
“We’d be in deep trouble without you, Copper,” Florence said. She hoisted Copper into one half of the pirate ship so she could assess the condition from belowdecks, where Florence couldn’t go.
Alex nodded. “We can try to make some new preserve components too. And we could sure use a saw or something that would cut metal things,” he said, shoving the toolbox with his foot, “like this padlock.”