Coming athwart the Treader, it paused, one eye on the ship and one eye swinging towards him. It then snatched one of its huge white tentacles up out of the ocean and swept it across, tearing away the rear mast as easily as brushing cobwebs, then flicked the tangle of mast spar and rigging into the sea.

‘Oh you bugger!’ said Ambel, and pulled the trigger.

His gun boomed, kicking out a cloud of smoke, and its load of stones pocked the creature’s lower body around one eye. It blinked, reached back with a smaller tentacle to rub at the base of that eye-stalk, then abruptly surged towards Ambel. The Captain turned and ran back into the forest of peartrunk trees. Behind him the whelk ploughed up the sand. He heard a sound as of some massive cork pulling out of a bottle, and glanced back to see a whole tree uprooted, then crashing down by the tideline. This did not bode well for the plan either. Finally he reached the spot he had designated and turned to face the monster.

The whelk’s shell stood as high as the highest branches and, while scraping by, knocked showers of leeches down from them. He noticed how its stalked eyes now extended out sideways from its main mass as if triangulating on him. Its flesh skirt spread for many metres ahead of it, and extending from that its main two tentacles were nearly in reach of Ambel. Yet it hesitated.

‘Come on! What are you waiting for!’ the Captain bellowed.

The monster began to ease forward again, and Ambel began to move back. Then Drum stepped into view from the right, hefting a leech harpoon. He let out a growling shout and hurled the weapon, hard. The point of it struck the whelk’s main body, but only penetrated deep enough for the barbs to engage. Behind Drum, Roach took up the rope and hauled it taut, while behind him two juniors wrapped the end of it twice around a peartrunk tree. The creature slapped its tentacle down, aiming for Drum, but clipped the rope instead. With a wrenching sound the tree tilted, and one of the juniors still clutching the rope was jerked hard against the trunk. He bounced once and landed limply on the ground.

‘Over here!’ shouted Anne from the other side and, firing her carbine, began to cut smoking lines across the monster’s flesh. It swung towards her, further loosening the tree. Another crewman ran forward eagerly, swinging his machete at a nearby tentacle. The blade just bounced off it, and while the man stared with puzzlement at his weapon, the same tentacle shot up and hit him with a sound like a sledgehammer hitting a peach. He left the ground and disappeared into foliage, five metres up.

‘Ready, lads,’ said Ambel, taking up the harpoon at his feet. Pacing forwards, he threw this second weapon with all his might. It struck a soft spot just below shell, and penetrated deep. Behind the Captain, Silister and Davy-bronte took up the harpoon rope and wrapped it around a rocky outcrop. Ambel began running to the left, spying Drum heading to the right. The other Captain snatched up another harpoon.

‘We need to get in closer!’ Ambel shouted to him. ‘We can’t afford to have any of these come loose!’

On the other side of the creature from Drum, Boris carted his dismounted deck cannon out of cover. As he fired it, the recoil flung him over onto his back. Striking the whelk’s shell, its projectiles exploded glittering shards all over Drum, who was now charging in with his harpoon held level. Peck, pumping cartridge after cartridge into his shotgun, covered Boris as he struggled to his feet and recovered the cannon. Drum struck, driving the harpoon half a metre in below the whelk’s eye, then with a bellow and another massive shove, thrust it in a full metre. The whelk’s bubbling squeal was painful to hear.

Another harpoon from Ambel, this time straight through the end of a major tentacle. A group of five hauling on the rope, trying to draw the limb down and immobilize it. Someone screaming on the other side, the ragged remains of a human thumping down onto the earth. Yet another harpoon from Drum, but snapped off before its rope could be secured. A peartrunk tree, ripped out of the ground, slammed down on two fleeing Hoopers. More harpoons. More ropes. Someone suspended high, crunched up like paper, discarded. Another Hooper dragged in to disappear underneath the fleshy skirt. Now came Ambel’s tenth harpoon. He ran in while crew opposite him fired on the creature, again distracting it. He swore when one badly aimed shot thumped into his stomach, then drove the harpoon down hard into the base of a large tentacle, rested his full weight on it, and shoved again. The weapon went right through into the ground.

Ambel looked up to see one dinner-plate eye observing him from only a metre away, just as the tentacle twisted, smacking the harpoon haft hard against his shoulder. He felt his collarbone break, staggered back, then turned to run. He caught sight of Crewman Pillow struggling to tie off this latest rope, then a tentacle wrapped around Ambel’s waist, jerked him to a halt, and lifted him off the ground.

The whelk now reared, exposing its serrated beak and, on the ground below, what was left of a crewman it had grabbed earlier. The Hoopers kept firing on it from all sides as it drew Ambel in, champing that beak in anticipation. Some shots penetrated, most just bounced off. Black lines crisscrossed the tentacle holding Ambel, along with the glowing pockmarks of pulse-gun fire. Drum charged forwards with another harpoon, aiming for the same limb. He hurled it just as another tentacle swept his feet from under him, missed his target, but the harpoon struck and penetrated shell. Ambel heard a hissing, and smelt something rank.

‘Fire at the shell!’ he shouted. ‘Fire at the shell!’

Anne was the first to transfer her aim, perhaps realizing Ambel’s intent. And that was all it took, as her shots ignited the methane now hissing from the shell. There came a drawn-out roaring explosion, the shell splitting to spew out a sheet of flame that ignited the surrounding foliage. As the whelk screamed, Ambel found himself hurtling through the air above.

‘Oh shit and buggeration,’ he managed, before coiling himself into a ball as he crashed back down.

It was some hours later that Silister and Davy-bronte found him, and helped him back to join the others. He stood and observed the whelk, its shell still smoking, pinned tight by thirty harpoons securely roped down. One of its eyes was missing. The other blinked at him.

‘Gulliver,’ he muttered, pointing a shaky finger, but later found that his fellow Lilliputians had not done too well. Two of them were dead—sprine was administered to them because their head injuries were so bad that little remained inside their skulls. Seven others would be severely immobilized until their backbones healed; one was missing his legs, which were somewhere inside the whelk; and not one of them had come through this without broken bones.

‘It could have been worse,’ he said, finally.

He understood why Drum nearly ruptured himself with laughter.