The ship sped forward, tugged into the rushing current, and the tunnel yawned before them, as dark and featureless as a well. Then, with sickening speed, the Gertrude plummeted inside.
James’ stomach lurched slowly, inexorably, up toward his throat and he felt himself lighten in his shoes as the tunnel angled downward, drawing the rushing lake water into a roaring rapid, dragging the ship dizzyingly into its force. Hagrid kept his hands fisted on the ship’s wheel, but now he seemed only to be hanging on for dear life, struggling to keep the ship steady and facing forward against the titanic momentum of the tunnel river. The only light was the lantern that swung from a post on the bow, now tilted backward and swinging, casting wild shadows in the pool of its dancing light. Dimly, spray erupted on either side of the Gertrude as its prow dug into the current.
Droplets blew back and blattered the window like driving rain, blurring the view beyond, drumming loud enough to make speech nearly impossible.
James wondered how long the journey would take. London was quite some distance away. And yet he had some idea that this was not, strictly speaking, a journey of mere miles. He sensed forces in play, compressing time and space into something teasingly plastic. The Gertrude rocked precipitously to starboard, riding the current as the river curved right. The hull shuddered and jounced, and James had the terrible suspicion that it was scraping the tunnel wall, grinding wood against stone. A few moments later, this happened again, but to the left, with the ship rocking hard to port and hanging there, compressing beneath the power of its own inertia.
“How much farther, Hagrid?” Rose called, her voice a shrill ribbon against the shuddering roar and blat of spray on glass.
“We’re a-getting’ close,” Hagrid boomed back, leaning to consult a large brass dial. James saw an ornate arrow on the dial shimmying close to a heading printed in white letters: LONDON, THAMES.
“We’ll surface just around the Isle of Dogs, south of Canary Wharf!”
James was grateful to know that the rollicking journey was nearly over. He wondered briefly how Norberta would handle the voyage back.
She would surely be terrified and cramped, lying low in the hold below decks.
Then, James’ eyebrows shot up as he realized what Hagrid had just said.
“What do you mean,” he shouted to the half-giant, “that we’ll surface?”
Hagrid struggled with the wheel, his ham-sized fists bunched on the protruding handles. “Like the Durmstangs back during the Triwizard Tournament!” he bellowed. “We burst up to the surface!
Don’ ask me how it works. I jus’ know it does!”
The tunnel suddenly slanted upwards at a steep angle, forcing James’ knees to buckle. The river ahead compressed and narrowed, beginning to roar up over the bow in clapping waves, closing over it.
The lantern snuffed out, leaving nothing but perfect blackness, violent motion, and deafening noise.
“But Hagrid!” James cried, struggling to be heard over the din, “The Thames is frozen right now! First time in a decade! The surface will be as hard as stone!”
It was too late to do anything about it. James didn’t even know if anyone heard him. He felt small hands grasp onto his trouser-leg and realized that it was Heddlebun groping in the dark for something to batten onto.
When the bow struck, it hit with such force that every window shattered. Hagrid rammed against the wheel hard enough to splinter and snap it in two. James, Rose, Ralph, and Zane flung forward, stumbling headlong against the console and its array of dials and instruments. Shattered glass and freezing water sprayed in every direction, filling the air and peppering James’ hair and face.
Blue light bloomed over the ship as it arrowed up, and then, as its momentum exhausted, fell slowly forward, tilting down, down, as if it were falling right over the edge of the world. Finally, with a thudding slam, it smashed flat onto a heaving expanse, rocking, groaning deep in its hull, and crunching against some brittle, ragged obstruction.
James flung pebbles of glass and ice from his hair and grappled upright against the console. Cold air blew in through the broken window, carrying a freight of fluffy snowflakes and the unmistakable city smells of rotting rubbish, factory exhaust, and dead fish. Huge chunks of ice slid back and forth on the Gertrude’s bow as the ship rocked, slowly coming to rest. Beyond this, James recognized the hulking shapes of warehouses and dark freighters looming in the fog. The Thames was indeed frozen over, forming a pale blue highway marbled with white, except for the scarred black hole that the Gertrude had smashed through.
“Holy hinkypunks,” Zane breathed, steadying himself next to James. “I bet that was even better than the Aquapolis bubble tube you told me about.” He considered this, and then shrugged. “Or worse, depending on your perspective.”
“Worse,” Ralph moaned, clutching his head. “Definitely worse.”
“Everyone all right, then?” Hagrid said, climbing clumsily to his feet and brushing broken ice from his shoulders. “Rosie? You OK?”
“I think we’re going to have to realign the rudder,” Rose said breathlessly, shaking the hair out of her face. “If, that is, it’s still there.
James glanced down in weary annoyance. “We’re here. You can let go of my leg now.”
Heddlebun turned her enormous eyes up to him in surprise, as if she’d forgotten where she was. Then, sheepishly, she released her death-grip on his shin and backed away, her ears drooping.
“Well then,” Hagrid sighed briskly, clapping his hands together.
“I guess we won’t have t’ remember where we parked, now, will we?”
The damage to the Gertrude was much more visible from the ice of the Thames as they descended via Hagrid’s folding gangplank. Rose stalked fretfully along the jagged edge of the frozen hole, ignoring the precarious cracks and fissures, muttering to herself. Inside the hole, now surrounded by gently heaving chunks and shards of pulverized ice, the ship looked as if it had been squeezed in a giant fist. Sprung planks and splintered decking were evident from stem to stern, and the once sleek length of the hull now seemed to have a distinct and troubling angle to it, causing the bow and stern to point slightly up out of the water, while the mid-ship waterwheel and boathouse rode much lower in the waves than was exactly comfortable to James’ eye.
“What were the odds, eh?” Hagrid said with a shrug. “This river freezes over, what, every few decades? And it just had t’ ‘appen this year, o’ course.” He seemed to view it as a mere humorous aside, rather than a potentially debilitating stroke of fate.
“We lost the bow mast,” Rose called, her voice thin with distance as she rounded the front of the ship. “And the bowsprit and masthead.