Lady Hyacinth Grimm vs the Nautilus

Chapter 11: Beethoven's Fifth

"Lorsque les rythmes de marimba commence à jouer

Danse avec moi, me faire balancer.

Comme un océan paresseux serre le rivage

Tenez-moi de conclure, me balancer plus..."

The bridge crew held their breaths as the enormous tentacle hesitated, swayed, undulated, and finally grasped the Widowmaker. It pulled the submersible closer and wrapped several tentacles around it. Captain Chilton began praying aloud. Just when everyone was certain the giant octopus was going to crush and swallow the submarine, it started swimming, dragging the Widowmaker along.

"Cease that at once, Abomination!" Captain Chilton ordered, so Bom-bom stopped singing. The octopus peered inside the Widowmaker and the captain found himself staring back into an orange eye larger than he was. "Uh..."

The slit pupil contorted into a 'W'. Captain Chilton kept a stiff upper lip and not piss his pants. The octopus tapped on the Widowmaker's viewport like a toddler trying to figure out why its wind-up toy stopped working just before getting frustrated and snapping it in two.

"Abomination," Captain Chilton said.

"Yes, captain?"

"Please continue singing."

"Of course, captain," the Abomination agreed and continued in English:

"Like a flower bending in the breeze

Bend with me, sway with ease.

When we dance you have a way with me

Stay with me, sway with me..."

The octopus turned its eyes away and started swimming again. The captain gasped in relief and leaned against the bulkhead until his shaky knees would support him again. Bom-bom continued to sing love ballads to their cephalopod captor.

The mood on the Widowmaker was mixed. On the one hand, they weren't all dead. Everyone (except Minion B, who had a deathwish) was exceedingly grateful for that fact, particularly considering the fate of the other submersible. On the other hand, they had been sent to capture a giant octopus and were not best pleased that the giant octopus had returned the favor.

"Remain calm," Captain Chilton told the Widowmaker's crew later that afternoon. "We need only wait until the monster sleeps; then we will escape." Except apparently the giant octopus was the type of monster that cuddled its toys in it sleep. Much of the crew lay awake, listening to the hollow booming of suckers attaching to and detaching from the hull. Hyacinth, as the only individual who still believed they controlled the octopus, slept like a baby. Specifically a colicky baby with gas, but a baby nonetheless.

"This is unacceptable," Captain Chilton to the Widowmaker's crew after his sleepless night. "We are being taken at speed to God only knows where, but no longer. We are going to escape this monster. Engine room, give me full speed on my mark."

In the engine room, Tabitha's sons shoveled coal into the furnace. In the galley, the cook screwed watertight lids onto all of the pots with boiling water in them and fled. On the bridge, the navigator finished plotting a course that would take them back to England as quickly as possible.

"Mark!" the captain said.

The engines rumbled to life. The turbines spun. The submersible stayed cradled securely in the octopus's tentacles; if anything, the octopus swam faster.