The Sea of Monsters(41)

Clarisse came up the stairs right after me. I tried not to look at her.

She grabbed a pair of binoculars from a zombie officer and peered toward the horizon. “At last. Captain, full steam ahead!”

I looked in the same direction as she was, but I couldn’t see much. The sky was overcast.

The air was hazy and humid, like steam from an iron. If I squinted real hard, I could just make out a couple of dark fuzzy splotches in the distance.

My nautical senses told me we were somewhere off the coast of northern Florida, so we’d come a long way overnight, farther than any mortal ship should’ve been able to travel.

The engine groaned as we increased speed.

Tyson muttered nervously, “Too much strain on the pistons. Not meant for deep water.”

I wasn’t sure how he knew that, but it made me nervous.

After a few more minutes, the dark splotches ahead of us came into focus. To the north, a huge mass of rock rose out of the sea—an island with cliffs at least a hundred feet tall. About half a mile south of that, the other patch of darkness was a storm brewing. The sky and sea boiled together in a roaring mass.

“Hurricane?” Annabeth asked.

“No,” Clarisse said. “Charybdis.”

Annabeth paled. “Are you crazy?”

“Only way into the Sea of Monsters. Straight between Charybdis and her sister Scylla.”

Clarisse pointed to the top of the cliffs, and I got the feeling something lived up there that I did not want to meet.

“What do you mean the only way?” I asked. “The sea is wide open! Just sail around them.”

Clarisse rolled her eyes. “Don’t you know anything? If I tried to sail around them, they would just appear in my path again. If you want to get into the Sea of Monsters, you have to sail through them.”

“What about the Clashing Rocks?” Annabeth said. “That’s another gateway. Jason used it.”

“I can’t blow apart rocks with my cannons,” Clarisse said. “Monsters, on the other hand …”

“You are crazy,” Annabeth decided.

“Watch and learn, Wise Girl.” Clarisse turned to the captain. “Set course for Charybdis!”

“Aye, m’lady.”

The engine groaned, the iron plating rattled, and the ship began to pick up speed.

“Clarisse,” I said, “Charybdis sucks up the sea. Isn’t that the story?”

“And spits it back out again, yeah.”

“What about Scylla?”

“She lives in a cave, up on those cliffs. If we get too close, her snaky heads will come down and start plucking sailors off the ship.”

“Choose Scylla then,” I said. “Everybody goes below deck and we chug right past.”

“No!” Clarisse insisted. “If Scylla doesn’t get her easy meat, she might pick up the whole ship. Besides, she’s too high to make a good target. My cannons can’t shoot straight up. Charybdis just sits there at the center of her whirlwind. We’re going to steam straight toward her, train our guns on her, and blow her to Tartarus!”

She said it with such relish I almost wanted to believe her.

The engine hummed. The boilers were heating up so much I could feel the deck getting warm beneath my feet. The smokestacks billowed. The red Ares flag whipped in the wind.

As we got closer to the monsters, the sound of Charybdis got louder and louder—a horrible wet roar like the galaxy’s biggest toilet being flushed. Every time Charybdis inhaled, the ship shuddered and lurched forward. Every time she exhaled, we rose in the water and were buffeted by ten-foot waves.

I tried to time the whirlpool. As near as I could figure, it took Charybdis about three minutes to suck up and destroy everything within a half-mile radius. To avoid her, we would have to skirt right next to Scylla’s cliffs. And as bad as Scylla might be, those cliffs were looking awfully good to me.

Undead sailors calmly went about their business on the spar deck. I guess they’d fought a losing cause before, so this didn’t bother them. Or maybe they didn’t care about getting destroyed because they were already deceased. Neither thought made me feel any better.

Annabeth stood next to me, gripping the rail. “You still have your thermos full of wind?”

I nodded. “But it’s too dangerous to use with a whirlpool like that. More wind might just make things worse.”

“What about controlling the water?” she asked. “You’re Poseidon’s son. You’ve done it before.”

She was right. I closed my eyes and tried to calm the sea, but I couldn’t concentrate.

Charybdis was too loud and powerful. The waves wouldn’t respond.

“I—I can’t,” I said miserably.

“We need a backup plan,” Annabeth said. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Annabeth is right,” Tyson said. “Engine’s no good.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Pressure. Pistons need fixing.”

Before he could explain, the cosmic toilet flushed with a mighty roaaar! The ship lurched forward and I was thrown to the deck. We were in the whirlpool.

“Full reverse!” Clarisse screamed above the noise. The sea churned around us, waves crashing over the deck. The iron plating was now so hot it steamed. “Get us within firing range! Make ready starboard cannons!”