Activity

Ahab gave the girl a bit of a boost as she clambered into the hole after Mr. Monkey, who apparently had gotten hold of his inherited climbing skills. Gnat was nowhere to be seen, but that was of no consequence considering he could hardly be seen anyway. Ahab was just glad the girl had permitted his assistance without much trouble and a way out was now available: the castle was speeding itself up. The walls were moving faster. The shelves were gaining ground, and they were losing it.

Ahab was about to reach for the edge of the hole when he heard a grinding noice (other than the moving walls) and turned to see Miss Hoity-toity laboriously pushing a shelving unit underneath the cavity in the ceiling. He crossed his arms and didn’t offer to help, seeing she would instantly growl at him to get out of the way anyhow. He would’ve helped, though, because he wanted to get out of there as soon as humanly possible.

He looked at the wall where the shelving had been out of curiosity, but it was just a plain, ordinary wall — unlike everything else so far. He watched as Miss Supercilious started to climb the book-shelves. He heard a snippet of conversation from the girl and the monkey above.

“–Miss Mur…I stuffed a whole pack of gum in the barrel of her gun!”

Ahab had not been paying much attention to whatever they had been saying earlier, but now he was. The “gun” must be the stick Miss Fancy-pants wielded with such authority, and whatever “gum” was, it mustn’t be very good. So something not very good must have been done to her “gun,” for now Miss Uppity exclaimed, “Wait, what? You did what?”

And she promptly unslung the weapon from her shoulder to inspect it. Ahab nearly snorted, for it was a very dumb move. The shelf started to wobble unsteadily and commenced to tip over. Ahab probably would have let it crash to the floor had he not been in a desperate hurry — the walls were now inching along even faster.

He put a shoulder to the unit and grunted, “get up already! You weigh more than you look.”

Miss Snob gave him a withering stare before grasping the jagged edge of the hole and pulling herself over. Ahab gave the others no time to think about doing something — covering the hole, firing weapons, etc. — to leave him behind, and propelled himself off the tumbling shelf toward the ceiling, where he was able to get his elbows on the edge of the hole.

He kicked his legs a few times, since there was nothing under them and he had forgotten, then scrambled to get into the room. The others let him up, and he got to his feet as soon as he could. But they were not watching him: they were watching the room below.

Ahab leaned over and peered down. The shelving units were now basically running as fast as they could (which was not exactly very fast, but much speedier than aforementioned). When they met each other, they crashed together like rogue waves and sprayed books like foam with a loud, woody BANG! that seemed to echo in the room.

All couldn’t help but to think what might have happened had they been sandwiched between them.