Into the Drink!

“Net yeti,” said Bettina.

“Yes, dear, it was a nice yeti,” Mirabelle said.

“Net yeti,” Bettina repeated pointing up.

Gerhardt looked up. In the dim light he saw the dark square of the open trapdoor, through which he had ascended many hours, or possibly days ago.

“The balloon net,” he said. “She means the balloon net.”

Annabelle squealed, grabbed her sister and tossed her in the air. Bettina giggled and Annabelle laughed with her. Adolphus was already adapting Gerhardt’s harness for use up top.

“I’ll go up and see about attaching balloons to the edge of the net,” he said, “it should only take a few. If we can lower it alongside the door we may be able to shove the yeti in.” He clambered up to the roof, calling down, “We still may not have time to save him, but the net’s more like to save us than these dashed harnesses.” This was a generous admission for him to make, as the harnesses had been his idea.

Wrangling the balloons from under the net to over the net turned out to be more than one twelve-year-old boy could handle, and they were soon all on the roof of the little ship that had borne them so far from home.

Forming a human chain, with Adolphus holding onto Mirabelle and Annabelle holding on to Gerhardt, they untied a balloon, dragged it and pushed it and otherwise flailed all over the sloping, wet roof to get it to the edge of the net. Then they tied it off there, grabbed the net and pulled it under and around the balloon.

Bettina stayed below, keeping an eye on the yeti. The ship bobbed in the water, shuddered and jerked as her siblings worked above, and lurched whenever Gerhardt succeeded in freeing another balloon. He and the twins had attempted a rough calculation to determine how many balloons it would take to lift all of them and float them above the level of the river but below the ceiling of the cave, but since they had no idea what the yeti weighed it was just a guess.

They tied the balloons evenly around the net, placing the second balloon opposite the first and the third between the first two. The launch was wedged along the wall of the cave, and they had worked on the driest sides first, where the spray wasn’t so bad. Now they were working on the fourth balloon, right over the door where the river met the side of the ship full on, and the cold water assaulted Gerhardt and Mirabelle in waves.

She was draped over the balloon using all of her weight to force it down so that her brother could tie it to the edge of the net. They heard the bump just before they felt it. The ship jumped against the cave wall with a hideous scraping sound and Gerhardt flew from Annabelle’s grasp, disappearing over the edge to the yawning black and rushing river. Annabelle screamed, and was left holding his shoe.

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This story began with On Grandmothers. The previous episode is Drowning and the next is Boat!