15 Hiccup Sets Off to Find the Jewel

15. HICCUP SETS OFF TO FIND THE JEWEL Everyone was looking at Hiccup expectantly. OK, now this really was a tricky situation. He looked down at the map, hoping it would help, but he had looked at that map so many times in the last six months, and it had never been helpful. The red herring Grimbeard had painted on the top somehow looked like it was laughing at him. His visor fell down with a clang that sounded horribly like a death knell. He edged The Hopeful Puffin 2 out very slightly on to the endless red sands. Hundreds of Warriors on their sand-yachts followed. An outsider watching this would have seen it as ridiculous. Hiccup on his sand-yacht, The Hopeful Puffin 2, making its erratic way forward, followed by all these soldiers of the Wilderwest on their sand- yachts, all with their arrows pointing at Hiccup. 'Find it!' shrieked the witch. 'Now!' Hiccup moved the yacht forward a little. And stopped. Two hundred yachts followed a little.

And stopped. 'You're going to have to give me a little room,' Hiccup called out. 'To give my Jewel-finding-senses some space to develop.' 'Give the nasty toad a little room!' yelled the witch. 'But not too much room! Just a tiny bit of room! A little bit more! No, not that much!' As if things weren't complicated enough, the basket on Hiccup's yacht was very, very heavy. So heavy that it might have been filled with rocks and amber already.

And Hiccup suspected he knew why. Those innocent blue eyes… When Hiccup was a tiny bit ahead so no one would hear, he pulled up his visor (not without difficulty, the beastly thing still had a tendency to jam), and whispered softly out of the corner of his mouth, 'What are you doing in there, Camicazi? I told you to escape! And how did you know this was my sand- yacht?' 'You wrote The Hopeful Puffin 2 on the back of it,' explained the basket, adding hastily, 'and I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard of this Cami-whatsit.' 'Camicazi, I know perfectly well it's you in there,' hissed Hiccup. 'Why didn't you escape with the rest of your escape team?' 'I've trained the team well,' Camicazi whispered back. 'They can take the Eggingarde kid to the Wanderers without me. If you think I'm going to Half-Turn My Back on you again, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, you've got another think coming. From now on, I'm never letting you out of my sight. What's going on? It was very shrieky out there.' 'It's a long story,' said Hiccup. 'I have to find the

Jewel in three hours, or the witch will kill everybody.' 'But I'm not sure the Jewel is out here,' said Camicazi, in the basket. 'Try telling the witch that,' said Hiccup. 'So, do we attack?' said the basket after a while. 'I've got two drawn swords in here and a dagger between my teeth.' 'That may not be enough,' admitted Hiccup, looking at the hundreds of following sand-yachts, the thicket of swords, the rocket-launchers, the Warriors with their killer eyes all trained on him, the Northbows stretched to breaking-point. 'What's the plan, then?' asked Camicazi. Hiccup sighed. The truth was, at that particular moment he was all out of Plans. The enormous wilderness of the sands-withno-Jewel-in-them stretching in front of him, and the army of heavily armed people bristling with the worst in weaponry that the human mind could dream up, all edging threateningly up behind him, were slightly sapping his creativity. He had that feeling of dread, again, sitting in his stomach like cold porridge. 'I'm not sure,' muttered Hiccup. 'Knowing that

dreadful trickster of a Grimbeard there is probably no Jewel for at least six miles in any direction. It's probably at the other end of the beastly Archipelago.' 'So you admit it!' said Camicazi delightedly. 'Steady… don't let the tricksy little rat out of your sight,' whispered the witch Excellinor from behind Hiccup and the sand-yacht. 'Keep your arrows steady now. 'Have you found it yet, you disgusting little shrimp?' And then something truly extraordinary happened. You have to see it through the witch's eyes, and the eyes of the hundreds and hundreds of slaves and Warriors of the Wilderwest gathered there on the sands. To them, it must have seemed like some sort of miracle. Some kind of supernatural magic. There they were in their thousands, bristling with armour and with all their swords pointing at Hiccup, the guards with their sand-yachts with super-huge sails that could easily outrun Hiccup's battered old sand-yacht (particularly because he was weighed down by Camicazi, but of course, they didn't know that).

There was no way that Hiccup could possibly slip through their fingers… Absolutely no possible way. But then one second he was in front of them, oaring his sand-yacht on its raggedy, slightly erratic progress, wobbling heavily to the left. And the next, there was a rush of wind above their heads, a sort of blurring of the air as if a sudden very specific mist had come down… And then there was a short, sharp cry and the next moment it was as if Hiccup, sand-yacht, basket and all, were swallowed up in one gulping swoop by the very air above them… It was unbelievable. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. The crowd with their weapons and their axes and their swords looked at the spot where he was last seen with goggling eyes and jaws agape, and huge gasps of wondering, disbelieving, gob-smacked amazement. 'He's gone,' said Gumboil slowly. 'He's completely vanished…' 'NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!' shrieked the witch. 'No! No! No! No! No!' as Gumboil hastily oared the witch's sand-yacht to the absolute spot where last he was. 'It's not possible! It's just not possible!'