The Worst Witch All at Sea (17 page)

it, despite the broomstick being completely waterlogged. Very jerkily it rose above the waves pulling Mildred out of the sea, water cascading from her clothes.

‘Stop!’ Mildred shouted rather suddenly as she realized that they were now ten feet in the air and rising. It had been difficult to tell how far they had risen because the moon had disappeared completely behind a sinister-looking black cloud, and the night was suddenly very dark.

Mildred could hardly believe that she had got into quite such a dreadful situation. Hanging by both arms from a broomstick is extremely difficult, even when your clothes are not twice as heavy with water. Mildred realized that there was only a limited amount of time that she could hold on, so she had only one hope and that was to find the boat and literally drop into it.

From her vantage point in mid-air she frantically peered all around into the pitch dark and tried to see where it was.

To her great surprise, the broomstick

suddenly gave a little twitch and set off in a most determined manner, as if it really knew where it was going. In fact, it
did
know where it was going. Magic broomsticks are very curious things. If they are owned by one person for a very long time (and Miss Hardbroom had kept this particular one for twenty-five years), they develop a strange kind of intuition about their owners. In the same way that a dog will stand at the front door and wag its tail when its master is getting off a bus at the end of the street, a broomstick can sometimes sense that its owner is nearby, and if the owner is in trouble, the sense is even more acute.

The broomstick flew on grimly until it stopped, just as suddenly, and hovered. Mildred felt desperate.

‘Go on, broom!’ she said. ‘You were doing really well.’

But the broomstick didn’t budge. Mildred’s arms and fingers were almost numb with cold and pain from hanging on. She began to cry as she imagined the horror of being alone, unable to swim in the darkest of dark nights. It really was all her worst fears come true. Slowly her fingers loosened their grip; she let go completely and fell through the black night air towards the waiting sea.

nstead of plunging into the soft, cold waves that she was expecting, Mildred landed with a jarring half on something very hard, and half on something firm, but soft. She felt around and realized, partly from the rocking motion and partly from the feel of the planks, that it was a boat. She couldn’t believe her luck when a loud miaowing began a few yards to her left.

‘It’s Tabby!’ she gasped, feeling completely hysterical with relief. Fortunately, she remembered the broomstick, although now it had found its owner, it would have hovered patiently above the boat till someone came to the rescue.

‘Down, broom!’ called Mildred. ‘Down here and rest!’

As it landed neatly next to her, Mildred flung her arms around it and gave it a hug.

‘You brilliant, wonderful,
magic
broom!’ she said. ‘Thanks a million, billion, trillion!’ But the broomstick just stayed stiffly in her arms, like any old broom you might have found in a backyard somewhere, and when she let it go it clattered to the deck, waiting for its next command. They’re curious things, broomsticks.

Mildred got up to feel her way to the cabin and tripped over the soft thing she had half landed on. She put out her arms to try to ascertain what it was, and was appalled when her fingers closed around a cold, bony hand. Mildred leapt back in horror,

wondering if perhaps she was having some awful nightmare that might go away if only she could wake up.

With marvellous timing, the moon reappeared from the scudding clouds for a brief moment and revealed various things to the petrified young witch. The first was the astonishing sight of Miss Hardbroom, apparently fast asleep on the floor of the boat. The second was dear old Tabby, still trying to scrabble his way out of the impossibly small opening in the window, and the third was the terrifying sight of Cat’s Head Rock, looming like a gigantic sea monster only a few feet away.

The moon hung like a spotlight, as if some helpful person had decided to give Mildred a few clues, then, just as suddenly, the clouds closed over and it was dark again, though not as utterly dark as before. The clouds were not quite so dense this time and Mildred could still see the rock, as well as Miss Hardbroom stretched out at her feet.

Mildred groped her way to the prow of the boat and hauled in the long rope that had been untied and left trailing in the sea. There was only one thing to do. In the few seconds that the moon had floodlit the scene, Mildred had noticed that the rock was full of jagged promontories and crevices. If she could somehow wedge the boat into a crevice and tie it to a projecting piece of rock, they could stay there until daylight. Perhaps by then Miss Hardbroom might be awake and full of bright ideas.

However, right now the wind was getting stronger by the minute and the waves higher, so Mildred had to think fast. In fact, it was amazing how sensibly she behaved on this occasion, bearing in mind how ghastly everything seemed and how scatterbrained she was most of the time.

‘Come on, broom,’ she said. ‘The rescue isn’t over yet.’

She tied the rope as securely as possible on to the back of the broomstick, then held the broomstick up as high as possible.

‘Off you go, broom!’ she commanded. ‘Straight above the rock! Now! Fast as you can!’

The broom shot away like a missile, towing the boat along behind it with surprising ease.

‘Stop now!’ called Mildred desperately, a little too late, as the boat slammed into the rock, wedging itself perfectly into a boat-shaped crevice.

She was thrown several feet down the boat, head first into the cabin door, where she very nearly joined Miss Hardbroom unconscious on the floor.

Mildred staggered to her feet and hauled the broomstick back into the

boat. She untied the rope and retied it several times around a large barnacled