"So," chatted Hiccup, "while we're waiting for this poison to take effect, why don't you tell me how it works?"
"Well," crowed the Strangulator, "you will lose control of your tentaclesss ass they sssstart to sssstiffen. ..."
"I can feel a sort of tingling in my feet, like pins and needles," admitted Hiccup.
The Strangulator's own tentacles were leaping about wildly, as stiff as boards.
"The poissson turnsss sssome victimsss green Before they die ...," hissed the Strangulator gleefully.
"Is it just me, " said Hiccup, "or is there a sort of greenish tinge to my left arm?"
There wasn't. It was as white and freckled as ever.
But a strange green cloud was building within the Strangulator's transparent body, gradually obscuring the unfortunate dragons he was digesting.
"... and then as the poissson reaches the head" 204 continued the Strangulator, "the nervoussss ssyssstem sssssimply explodesss. ..."
He looked at Hiccup hopefully. Nothing seemed to be happening.
"That'sss funny," said the Strangulator.
"It doesn't sssseem to be working. ..."
"Maybe some people take longer," said Hiccup reassuringly. "You're looking a little peaked yourself, maybe you should lie down."
The Strangulator looked down at itself. The green cloud had now blown into every crook and cranny of its body, and was finally approaching its tiny brain....
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
screeched the Strangulator.
The nervous system of the Strangulator simply exploded.
All of its electric circuits lit up like lightbulbs. It thrashed around like a mad thing, knocking out great chunks of rock from the sides of the cave and sending treasure flying through the air in all directions.
Fishlegs hid himself underneath an overhanging 205 rock in order not to be hit by the whirling coils. Toothless crawled into a crevice in the ceiling. For about a minute and a half the Strangulator threw itself wildly off the walls of the cavern, screeching a strange primeval agonized shriek. Then all of its tentacles stood out straight and stiff and it fell to the ground.
The Strangulator jerked a few more times in agony. Its tail with the dangerous tip lashed ferociously for a moment or two. And then all was silence in the Great Cavern. Huge clouds of dust gradually dispersed.
Fishlegs crawled out of his hiding place.
He scrambled over slimy rockfalls, slimy treasure and even slimier coils of Strangulator, looking for Hiccup.
Hiccup was dazed but alive. He'd had a tidal wave of a ride, thrown this way and that way until his teeth rattled. But the great coils of the tentacle wrapped around his body had cushioned him from any hurt.
He beamed at Fishlegs and Toothless.
"That was one STUPID Monster," he said.
"How did you DO it? How did you DO it?" asked Fishlegs again and again in amazement 206 as he and Toothless unwound the tentacle from Hiccup's body.
For answer, Hiccup lifted up his shirt, and there, wrapped around his chest, was the very tip of the tentacle ... and in the gelatinous transparent flesh of it was a giant needle puncture mark, with the green poison clearly visible coursing underneath the skin.
What Hiccup had done was to pull his shirt OYER the end of the tentacle while Toothless was distracting the Creature. The Strangulator had so lost sensory contact with the ends of its tentacles that it did not realize that it was in fact injecting ITSELF under the white material of Hiccup's shirt.
"That particular plan," said Fishlegs at last, "required a Fiendish Amount of LUCK."
"It WAS lucky," admitted Hiccup happily, "but we're ALIVE, aren't we?"
Fishlegs grinned back at him and Toothless did three back somersaults in the air and a congratulatory cock-a-doodle-doo.
"And that swordfighting. Where did THAT come from? You've always been grim at swordfighting."
"Swapped hands," mumbled Hiccup, beaming but a bit embarrassed.
207 " A left-handed genius who single-handedly defeated Alvin the Treacherous AND a Monstrous Strangulator," gloated Fishlegs. "This is going to look so GOOD when we tell everybody back home. I just can't WAIT to see the look on Snotlout's face when he sets eyes on this treasure.
It makes that poxy little box he dug up on the Isle of the Skullions look pretty measly. " "Yeeees," said Hiccup slowly. "But we ARE still trapped in an inaccessible underground cavern, aren't we? We have to GET OUT OF HERE first."
Fishlegs's face fell. "So we do," he admitted. "But the Creature must have some way from this cavern up to the caves in the Wild Dragon Cliff. ...
I mean, look at those dragons in his digestive system, he must have been feeding off the Dragon Nursery for years. All we have to do is go through these Caliban Caves and --" "N-n-no," said Toothless firmly. "T-t-toothless knows. Toothless grow up here. Other C-c-creatures in there much bigger and b-b-badder than that one....."
"Okay then," said Hiccup. "We go back the way we came. Let's hope that door still opens."
The door did still open.
208 As they were opening it, Hiccup noticed a piece of paper nailed on their side of it.
It was a letter.
[Image: Men.] It was written in the same scrawly handwriting as Grimbeard's riddle, and it was addressed to the "TRUE HEIR OF GRIMBEARD THE GHASTLY."
Hiccup took the letter off the nail and read it.
"Maybe Grimbeard the Ghastly wasn't so bad after all...," said Hiccup slowly.
"There you are," said Fishlegs, who was reading 209 over Hiccup's shoulder. "He said it was YOUR treasure, to do as you liked with."
Hiccup sighed. He thought of the greedy look in Stoick's eyes when he held the Stormblade. He thought of Baggybum and Stoick arguing over the treasure chest.
"Yes," said Hiccup, "and I DO know what to do with it."
He picked up a piece of charcoal from the cavern floor, wrote some words on the bottom of the letter, and pinned it back on the door.
"STILL ... NOT ... READY...."read Fishlegs.
Fishlegs hurried after Hiccup, who was now looking at the cavern's exit hole to the sea, thinking hard.
"What do you mean, still not ready?" demanded Fishlegs.
"I mean," said Hiccup, "that the treasure is staying right here. That this is our SECRET and we tell NOBODY. If we get out of here alive, we just say we washed up on the shore a couple of beaches down, no mention of the existence of this cavern, nothing."
"You CANNOT BE SERIOUS," said Fishlegs. "We could be HEROES here, and besides, if we don't tell everybody what happened, they'll all go on thinking that Snotlout is the True Heir to the Hairy Hooligans."
210 211 212 Hiccup looked miserable. "I guess that's right," he said. "But then if I really am the True Heir, I have to do what I think is the right thing for the Tribe, don't I? And this is definitely the right thing. That treasure is Bad Trouble."
[Image: An animal.] Hiccup would not change his mind.
"Let's just concentrate on getting back home," he said.
It took Hiccup two or three hours of hard thinking to work out how to use one dragon to get himself and Fishlegs up through hundreds of feet of water and back to the surface without drowning.
The solution is quite simple, if you ever find yourself in a similarly tricky situation.
213 A dragon's breath, even when it exhales, is composed almost entirely of pure oxygen. It is this that makes it so very flammable. All they needed to do was to rise to the surface (slowly so as not to get the bends) with Toothless swimming beside them and occasionally blowing into their noses when they ran out of breath.
A dragon never runs out of breath because just below its horns it has a fully working set of gills. As soon as it enters the sea it can shut off its lungs and get its oxygen from the water rather than the air.
Hiccup and Fishlegs resurfaced after about ten minutes. There was plenty of debris floating around, because they were not far from where the Lucky Thirteen had made its final journey to the bottom of the ocean. The boys each got hold of one end of an oar, and steered their way around the corner to where there was a beach to land on.
Fishlegs tried to persuade Hiccup to change his mind all the way home.
At last he said in exasperation, "You're NEVER going to be a Hero with this attitude. How can you be with no one to cheer, no one to clap?"
"Okay then," Hiccup sighed. "I'll never be a Hero. All I know is that I'm supposed to be the 214 Future Leader of this Tribe and I want there to be a Tribe left to lead.
And that seems more important to me than being a Hero."
They staggered through the heather towards the Hooligan Village, which was strangely silent and deserted. No smoke curled from the rooftops, no children quarreled in the streets, no dragons were fighting in the thatch.
"Please, please, good god Woden," prayed Hiccup, "PLEASE let everybody be alive."
Everybody was alive.
Miraculously, no one had drowned during the sinking of the Lucky Thirteen.
The Hooligans sailed the heavily overloaded Hammerhead back to Berk, with the Outcasts tied up as their prisoners.
With typical generosity, they set the Outcasts free.
I fear the Outcasts were not as grateful as they should have been, and this would not be the last the Hooligans would see of these vicious people. For the moment, however, they returned to the Outcast Lands humiliated, unarmed and with a hunger for revenge.
The Hooligans were not in much better shape themselves. They were a hardy race, and drowning was 215 an occupational hazard, but the loss of the only son of the Chief was a big blow, whether he was the Heir or not.
Stoick sat for an hour at the edge of the sea. As soon as Snotlout's treasure had disappeared beneath the waves it had lost its magic for him. He kept on seeing in his mind's eye his son, Hiccup, standing on the deck of the Lucky Thirteen, saying, "I AM THE HEIR TO STOICK THE VAST."
He tore out his golden earrings, and threw them into the ocean. And then he went home and sat in front of his shrine to Woden.
So this was why, when Fishlegs, Hiccup and Toothless came stumbling and limping into the Hooligan Village, everyone had locked themselves indoors, the shutters were shut up, doors were closed, fires were unlit.
It was only a chance that the wooden window had blown open in Gobber the Belch's home. He went to close it, and happened to spot the bedraggled friends lurching along.... And then he let out a great bellow of, "They're ALIVE!!!"
The shout went from house to house like watch fires lighting from hill to hill, and the Hairy Hooligans rushed out of their front doors like a crowd 205 216 of jubilant sea elephants, and they swooped on the three companions and lifted them onto their muscly shoulders with great happy shouts of, "They're ALIVE! They're ALIVE! THEY'RE ALIVE! THEY'RE ALIVE!"
Snotlout was already furious to find that people had been more concerned about mourning Hiccup and Fishlegs than congratulating HIM on being the Hero of the Hour on the Isle of the Skullions.
Imagine how cross he was to run out of his house in curiosity at the commotion, to find himself barged out of the way by Gobber the Belch and Nobber Nobrains, and practically trampled into the ground by a clapping mob carrying Hiccup shoulder-high through the Village.
Hiccup, who was quite clearly, yet again, NOT dead, NOT drowned, NOT safely out of the way.
The happy Hooligans reached the door of their Chieftain's house and banged on it, crying, "Open up, open up, they're alive, they're alive!"
Stoick the Vast lifted his great hairy head as if he was dreaming, staggered to the door, and there, on the doorstep, was HIS SON, Hiccup.
Stoick the Vast, Terror of the Seas, Most 217 High Ruler of the Hairy Hooligans, O Hear His Name and Tremble, Ugh, Ugh, picked up his son and hugged him, while the crowd cheered and cheered. And that was how Toothless found and lost a marvelous treasure all in the space of an afternoon ...
... And how Hiccup finally got himself a sword and learnt how to use it...
... And how Fishlegs discovered that you don't always have to be a Hero to get a Hero's Welcome.
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