to join in the laughter so he didn’t look like a bad sport.
‘Hiccup,’ said Stoick at last, wiping the tears
from his eyes. ‘I have a present for you…’
Stoick led Hiccup over to the back of The Blue
Whale and there, being dragged behind by a rope, was
the familiar sight of a small, fat boat with a slightly
wonky mast and a drunken wobble to the left…
‘The Hopeful Puffin!’ exclaimed Hiccup joyfully.
‘Gobber dived down into the Harbour and
brought her up for you,’ beamed Stoick.
‘I mended a couple of holes for you,’ boomed
Gobber, slapping Hiccup on the back. ‘We’ll make a
Viking of you yet.’
‘Maybe you and your dragon, Juiceless, and
Fisheggs and Cami-whatsit here could lead us back to
Berk in triumphal procession?’ said Stoick. ‘After all,
it’s not every day that the noble Tribes of Bog-Burglar
229
and Hooligan have their Heirs returned to them…’
As darkness fell all around them, the islands of
the Archipelago turned from green to grey and then to
black, and the Viking Warriors lit the flares that hung
along the sides of the gently rocking ships.
The Electricsquirms flickered into life and
danced across the ocean like little fiery sparks, trailing
tails of sparkling, dusty light behind them.
The sea was as flat as glass, and the reflection of
the full moon in the water made a flickering path of
moonbeams, leading all the way up to the distant
silhouette of the Isle of Berk on the horizon.
Hiccup and Toothless and Fishlegs and Camicazi
climbed on board The Hopeful Puffin, who seemed
none the worse for having been down to the bottom
of the ocean and come back up again.
And if a stranger could have observed that night-
time procession they would have thought it odd
indeed to see the progress of the Viking warships that
For were not the Vikings supposed to be the
Masters of the Seas, the greatest pirates and
navigators the world has ever known?
And now here were these two great, snaking,
230
flaming lines of Hooligan and Bog-Burglar ships,
zigzagging wildly this way and that, turning round in
circles and doubling back on themselves, laughing and
apologising and cursing in the darkness.
They were all following the lead of one tiny boat
at the front, The Hopeful Puffin, as she twirled and
span and revolved in her own peculiar way across the
path of the moon towards Berk.
EPILOGUE BY HICCUP
HORRENDOUS HADDOCK
THE THIRD, THE LAST OF
THE GREAT VIKING HEROES
Here I am, back where I started; this all happened
such a long, long time ago.
But now I come to think of it, if I look around
the desk where I am writing now I can see things all
around me that remind me of that time.
The hook of Alvin the Treacherous hangs on my
wall like a golden question mark. By the door rests the
shield given to me by the Fat Consul.
I have taken that shield into battle with me all
my life, much to the amusement of my friends, for
instead of being circular like Viking shields it is square
in the Roman fashion.
But then I have always been somewhat of a
square peg in a round hole.
Even the quill with which I am writing now is
made out of a Roman golden eagle’s feather that I
found in my cell at Fort Sinister.
232
I look at these things and I remember, and what
balloon rose out of the jabber and hullabaloo of the
prison of Fort Sinister and into the clear blue sky like
a perfectly round bubble of happiness, or a balloon of
thought.
I remember the quiet stillness of that moment,
floating free of all care and worry, suspended magically
in the endless nothingness of the air below and above
us.
I remember my child-self looking down over the
rim of the basket and seeing my entire world laid out
beneath me like a map in a made-up story. For the
first time I saw that the place where I lived and
struggled and worried was part of an Archipelago of
staggering beauty: hundreds of tiny green islands set in
a shimmering blue sea.
And suddenly I realised with such clearness what
pinpricks we were on this ocean universe. What
swaggering insects! What posturing amoebas!
But size isn’t everything, as I am always telling
Snotlout. However small we are, we should always
fight for what we believe to be right. And I don’t
mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of
233
our swords. That has always been the problem with us
Vikings. I mean the power of our brains and our
thoughts and our dreams.
And as small and quiet and unimportant as our
fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together
like the numberless armies of Ziggerastica, and break
out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we
might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world
of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that
blue afternoon of my childhood.
Once, my hand held the sword ‘Endeavour’ so
strongly. Now that same hand is as brown and wrinkly
as an old salt kipper as it writes these words slowly
splodges where once it ran so smoothly. Sometimes I
forget what I was doing last Tuesday, let alone sixty-
five years ago.
But the winds will still blow when I am no longer
here. The storms will still rage, and the forces of
Empire and oppression, be they
Roman or otherwise, will still
be waiting at the corners of the
ocean.
The fight goes on for the
Heroes of the Future.
The Sting in the Tale
Surely, surely, that must be the end of Alvin the
Treacherous, last seen dropping from a height into
a heaving mass of Sharkworms? And surely, surely
there must be a happy ending at last for all our
Viking warriors large and small?
But as with many happy endings, there is a sting in
the tale. In this case, unknown to everybody, in the
confusion when the balloon fell out of the sky, one of
our Heroes was stung with a single drop of poison from
the terrible tail of the Venomous Vorpent.
And, as everybody knows, the sting of the Venomous
Vorpent is absolutely always fatal…
Which of our Heroes was
unlucky enough to be stung?
Look out for the next volume of Hiccup’s memoirs,
How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse
www.cressidacowell.co.uk
This is Cressida, age 9, writing on the island.