"Oh--you--don't say--it--is!" chattered Ato, who was lying on his stomach bouncing up and down like a ball at each frightful lunge of the monstrous fish. "Well, it's spiked us--is that a horn or a ship's mast? Oh woe, oh! What'n salt'll we do now?" Samuel had not the heart to answer, for he had all he could do to hang on to the wheel as the ship, like a wounded animal, reared and plunged, thrashing the sea to a fury of foam and spray. Nikobo, diving precipitously off her raft, began to squeal in high and low hippopotamy, making brave but ineffective lunges at the lashing giant beneath the ship. "Su--suppose it su--submerges?" wailed Ato, who had managed at last to seize a rope from the end of which he banged and slammed continuously up and down against the deck. "Oh, my stars! Oh, my spars! Oh, my beams and--" Tandy never heard Ato's last anguished cry, for at that moment a savage shake of the Narwhal's head sent him flying into the sea. Coming up coughing and choking, Tandy instinctively began to swim and for the first time became aware of the creeping vine he still had clutched tightly in one hand. And in that instant and in that whirl of danger, disaster and destruction, the little boy suddenly grew calm and purposeful. This vine--well, why would this powerful vine from Patrippany Island not work as well under water as on land? The chances were that it would. Swimming boldly back to the ship, Tandy took a quick dive, hurling the vine pot and all in the general direction of the Narwhal. No sooner had the vine touched the water than it began to open, creep and grow and, spraying out a hundred strong tentacles, it seized and bound the plunging monster in a secure and inescapable cradle of leafy wood. Gasping and sputtering, but with his heart pounding with joy to think he had really saved Samuel's beautiful ship, Tandy rose to the surface. Nikobo, letting off shrill blasts of anger and fright, came paddling anxiously toward him. But giving the hippopotamus a reassuring wave, Tandy seized the end of a rope ladder and pulled himself up to the deck. Samuel, though battered and bruised, still clung to the wheel, and Ato, almost pounded to a jelly, had rolled into the scuppers where Roger was fanning him vigorously with a butter paddle. The Read Bird, having wings, could have left the ship at any time, but had clung bravely to his post, preferring to go down with the ship and his shipmates. Now all three of them stared in dazed silence at Tandy as he climbed back over the rail, for in the terrible confusion and excitement no one had seen him go overboard. "Tandy! Tandy! Where've you been?" With outstretched arms Samuel Salt rushed groggily forward. "Shiver my liver! Why's everything so quiet? Could it be that you single-handed have destroyed that ship-shaking menace?" "I don't think he's destroyed, Master Salt," answered Tandy, limping happily to meet the Captain, "but he's caught fast as a lobster in a lobster pot and can't move at all."