19 Keep Kicking, It’s a Long Swim Home

19. KEEP KICKING, IT'S A LONG SWIM HOME What happened to Hiccup? As I said, he jumped off the mast in a not-very-perfect swallow dive. Toothless dived after him, folding back his wings. It was a long way down, and by the time Hiccup reached the breath-stoppingly cold sea, he was moving at quite a speed. Momentum took Hiccup quite a way downward, and as he resurfaced, he hit his head on a cauldron, which was slowly sinking down to the bottom. Hiccup spat out water, gasping and confused, not sure where he was, or who he was or what was going on. Blood was pouring into his eyes, and he fainted. Toothless let out a scream of alarm to Camicazi and Fishlegs, and dived down to pull his Master up so that his face was out of the water. Camicazi immediately set out in her sprawling crawl to try and help, but she was some distance from where Hiccup had landed, so she was never going to be able to reach him in time. Fishlegs, on the other hand, was very close. As Hiccup disappeared under the water for the second time, Fishlegs let go of the table, and splashed haphazardly across to his friend.

He hauled Hiccup up, still unconscious, and heaved him a couple of metres or so to the relative safety of the floating table. 'Oh for Thor's sake, oh for Thor's sake… is he all right?' asked Camicazi as she reached them. Hiccup was sprawled floppily on his back, still breathing but with his eyes closed, and one arm trailing into the water. 'I don't know…' replied Fishlegs anxiously. 'He's still alive, but he's been knocked out. I think he hit his head on something under the water.' 'We need to get him out, fast,' cried Camicazi. 'and get him warm.' The storm had passed as suddenly as it arrived, and was already moving on to the land called America, leaving chaos in its wake. It was as if an angry god had turned the ship upside-down, shaken out its contents, and tossed the boat to the depths. All around them, the surviving Hysterics were striking out for the American shore, swimming around the myriad of objects floating in the waters. Saucepans, chairs, tables, hammocks, chessboards, stools, fishing equipment, pairs of trousers: Norbert had been very ambitious about the amount of STUFF that he was taking to America.

And they were all now strewn about the waves, and would be washed up for many years on those white beaches, and I wonder what the native American peoples made of them when they found them. Camicazi tried to pull the table towards the land, but Fishlegs was wondering what the little figures walking about on the beaches would make of THEM when they swam up the shore. It is one thing to turn up in a new country in all the pomp and circumstance of a great big boat, heavily armed, and laden down with good things to eat and trade. It is quite a different thing, as poor refugees throughout history will tell you, to turn up practically naked, unarmed, defenceless and with nothing in your hands. As strangers from an alien nation, would they be greeted with interest and mercy? Or would they be greeted with fear, and a hail of arrows? 'No!' cried Fishlegs, pulling in the other direction. 'No! I think we should swim over there!' And he pointed out to sea. 'Are you out of your tiny little mind?' asked Camicazi. 'The Archipelago is thousands and thousands of miles away across the Great West Ocean. You think we're going to SWIM to it????'

'No, of course not,' gasped Fishlegs, accidentally swallowing a big gulp of sea-water. 'But I think I can see the outline of a boat on the horizon… I just have this really strong feeling it wouldn't be a good idea for us to land on that beach…' The faint noise of shouting coming from the beach in question seemed to underline that feeling.

'Oh I don't know,' shivered Camicazi, faint with weariness and cold. 'OK, let's swim out a little further, we can always change our minds,' she agreed. So they began to swim away from the beach.

'But you can't live in the ocean! Humans haven't got gills!' Stormfly pointed out. Toothless fanned Hiccup's face with his wings, to try and get him to wake up. 'We n-n-need you M-m-master! These h-h-humans don't know what they're doing!' The thing is, after a while, as they swam out further and further, it became clear that they couldn't necessarily change their minds. They were so weak with cold and exhaustion that they weren't swimming fast at all, particularly because between the two of them they had to push the table along the water and over the waves. And there must have been a strong, unseen current beneath them, for they were moving out to sea at a very rapid rate. And the sails that Fishlegs thought he had seen seemed to vanish in the sea-mist as they swam towards them,