11 The Escape from the American Dream

11. THE ESCAPE FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM 2 The full moon shone down on the great boat steaming through the icebergs. The crew of the American Dream 2 feasted well that night, on a stew which, unbeknownst to them, was heavily laced with dragon-nip. Hiccup had crept in to the Cooking Tent, and poured it into the bubbling cauldron of dinner. For a while the Hysterical crew ignored their spooky surroundings, and sang out loud songs to the moon above, banging their dinner plates on the deck, and Norbert the Nutjob fiddled madly on his Viking violin, and the Hysterics did wild jigs, and the Polar- serpents sat on their icebergs, quiet statues, only their eyes following the mayhem. And then, one by one, the dragon-nip's heavy fumes overcame the Hysterics. Sleep overtook them so quickly that they dropped as they stood, in the middle of whatever they happened to be doing at the time, and fell to the deck in grotesque attitudes of slumber. Norbert lay snoring, the violin still tucked under his chin. Goggle-eyes the Gory was clasped fondly to the breast of Verociously Violent, who was under the

sleepy delusion that he was three years old again, and this was his mother. Red Ronald was pedalling the wheels of the Keep-the-Boat-from-Sinking-and-Scare-Away-the-Big-Sea-Creatures Machine slower and slower until he stopped entirely and drooped snoring over the handlebars. And the Ship's Cook collapsed face down in his snail and jellyfish pie. (He would still be picking bits of snail shell and egg out of his nostrils three days later.) Hiccup, Camicazi and Fishlegs waited till everybody on the deck was completely still–and then they waited five minutes more, just to make sure. Then slowly, quietly, they slipped down the rigging of the mast. Hiccup was carrying the sleeping Toothless in his breast pocket, and Camicazi had the slumbering Stormfly draped around her shoulders like a scarf. They tip-toed across the deck of the American Dream 2, carefully, carefully picking their way through the sleeping, snoring Warriors lying strewn on the boards, the sweet yellow-brown smoke from the cauldron billowing across the ship and making their eyes water. Cautiously, gently, Hiccup took the ticking- thing from around Norbert's wrist, and tied it back again to his own.

Quietly, softly, Camicazi removed the large bunch of keys from Norbert's waistband with her quick, light little fingers, and she opened the lock of the Hatch that led down to the hold where they were holding the Wanderers. It took all three of them to lift up the Hatch, which they did with a whining C-CC-CREAK! And then they threw down a rope and the keys to the Wanderers below, Hiccup whispering as loud as he dared to tell them to unlock their chains and climb up, one by one. The first two out were Bearcub and his Grandmother. Bearcub was in a state of high excitement, and danced round his Grandmother squeaking, 'I TOLD you! I TOLD you he would rescue us! You see! You see! Not ALL Vikings are wicked, and we're not DOOMED after all!' Bearcub's Grandmother was torn between her delight at being rescued, and her annoyance that her prophecy of DOOM wasn't being fulfilled. 'Mff,' she sniffed. 'We're not rescued YET. If just one of those Vikings wakes up, we're all as dead as dinosaurs… DOOMED, the lot of us… a one-way ticket to the happy hunting grounds…' 'Can you work out how to get back to your home

from here?' asked Hiccup, consulting the ticking-thing anxiously. 'And take us back to Berk when you've got there?' The scary white wilderness all around them seemed an unlikely sort of home to Hiccup, but there was a happy glint in Bearcub's Grandmother's wild eyes, although she tried to hide it. She breathed in the air, as cold as needles, and peered through the mists as if looking at something very familiar. She nodded. 'A Wanderer is never lost,' she said. 'We don't need that silly little bauble of yours to take us home. I could have showed that ridiculous Viking with the axe the way to America, if he'd had the intelligence to ask me…' Hiccup tried to organise launching the landing-boats in a QUIET sort of way, which was impossible, and Hiccup hopped from foot to foot in anxiety as the Hysterical Warriors mumbled in their sleep with every crash of the oars. They were heavily armed, with swords, and wicked axes, and every sort of dagger, and Bearcub's Grandmother did have a point: Hiccup had no doubt that if awoken, they would deal out death with a vengeance. But it seemed that luck was with the escapers. The seven landing-boats plopped into the water without any of the Hysterics opening their eyes.

The Wanderers filled the boats, and the first boat began to row through the mists, Bearcub's Grandmother standing up straight and tall at the front, pointing the way with one outstretched arm. The last landing-boat had filled up, apart from Hiccup, Fishlegs and Camicazi. Fishlegs was watching Hiccup, as Hiccup got ready to climb down over the rim of the American Dream 2 and into the last landing-boat. There were flat icebergs very close to the left and right of them. Camicazi had taken over from the snoring Red Ronald, and was steering the American Dream 2, making sure the ship was moving forward in a straight line so that it didn't bump into the icebergs. She had tied the slumbering Stormfly to her chest, and the little dragon suddenly stirred violently in her sleep, jogging Camicazi's arm on the steering wheel… the American Dream 2 swerved suddenly and violently to the left… …just as Hiccup was dangling over the edge on a rope, preparing to let himself drop into the little boat filled with Wanderers below. 'Wooooahhhhh!' gasped Hiccup, as the rope swung him forward, leaving the landing-boat behind. 'Watch where you're going, Camicazi!'

But Stormfly seemed to be having some sort of nightmare, and was squirming around wildly, so that Camicazi was struggling to see over her wriggling tail as it flapped in Camicazi's face. In those vital seconds, the American Dream 2 careered erratically forward, glancing off an iceberg to the left, before Stormfly settled down and Camicazi got the boat under control again. In the meantime, when the boat hit the iceberg, Hiccup had lost his grip on the rope he was dangling from, and plunged downward…