The Great Galloon and the Pirate Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the mast, and his feet seemed to stick. The canvas stretched and rebounded like the trampoline she had envisaged, but the Captain’s feet stayed attached to it. Once it had settled, he lifted a foot and Cloudier heard a tearing sound. Then he began to walk away from her, repeating the noise with every step. The balloon, was, despite its size, a kind of fat sausage shape, which meant that to walk where the Captain was walking should have been like walking up a hill. He should have got only so far, then slipped down to the bottom again, like a towel in a tumble dryer. But he didn’t. Cloudier could hear him whooping. He picked up speed.
    â€˜Do it, Cloudier! Fall off the mast!’ came the Captain’s enormous voice, dulled by the vast space.
    â€˜Okay!’ said Cloudier, who knew better than to question the Captain where this kind of thing was concerned.
    She stood up on the little metal rung, and fell backwards as she had seen him do. She flipped over in the air – something here inside the balloon seemed to make it easier to do such things – and landed on her boots. The canvas beneath her bowed outwards, and she laughed at what that must have looked like from the outside. Then she began to walk as he had done. Something about the canvas made her feet stick just enough to stop her from slipping, but not enough to make it hard to walk. She looked ahead, across the inner surface of the balloon, to where the Captain was now just a small figure disappearing into the network of struts. Another shape, a four-legged flitting shadow, ran past between Cloudier and the Captain, and disappeared behind some trailing vines.
    Cloudier felt elated, and even here made an effort to suppress it, for the look of the thing. She slouched along for a couple of steps, her long dress dragging on the floor, before breaking into a run. She could now see the floor was slightly spiky, like the burrs that stick to clothes when you walk through the woods. It began to curve upwards after a short while, but it was, bizarrely, no harder to run. As she reached the first of the internal spurs, she looked back and saw that she had travelled partway round the curve of the balloon, though she still felt like she was standing on the ground. Ahead of her the Captain was now singing in a loud basso profundo.
    â€˜Let’s go fly a balloon, up to the bally moon,
    Let’s go fly a balloon, and catch my broooothhheeerr!’
    Cloudier smiled, and ran faster to catch him.
    â€˜What are these … animals trotting about?’ she asked him, as she pulled alongside.
    â€˜Ah! The Bloondeers? A gift from the Sultan of Swoop, many years ago, when the Galloon was new. They usually live inside a gigantic flower called the Gasblossom. But the Galloon suits them well, they’ve thriven. Throve. Thrived?’ said the Captain. He seemed as jolly as Cloudier had ever seen him, though she was sure it wouldn’t last.
    â€˜They take no looking after. They eat this stuff, the Liken. Grows like billy-o, helps make the gas that keeps the place afloat. It’s not just hot air, you know – this is a delicately balanced ecosystem.’
    â€˜Wow,’ said Cloudier. ‘I had no idea.’
    â€˜No. Only your mother and I know about them, really.’
    â€˜And Isabella?’ said Cloudier.
    â€˜No,’ said the Captain as they walked. ‘I never got round to telling her all about the Galloon …’
    â€˜I’m sorry!’ said Cloudier, and her chalk-coloured cheeks reddened slightly.
    â€˜Tish! I’ve thought of a few things I didn’t talk to Isabella about. Odd, really.’
    He clapped his hands, as was his way when he wanted to change the subject. Nearby, a couple of Bloondeers scampered away.
    They walked for a good while longer, and talked about many things. Cloudier was astonished, as she had been once or twice before, to find that the Captain was actually quite talkative, when