“We will be making an emergency landing on the lake, as we have run out of juice, that is to say gas, in other words, vegetable oil,” said Capt. Cookie. “No need to panic.”
The cabin crew got everyone to sit down and fasten their seatbelts.
Capt. Cookie brought his aircraft gently down to the surface of the lake, with a faint splash. Out of the window, Ron saw that they were surrounded for miles around by water lillies. It was a beautiful place. There was a ping! sound indicating it was all right to undo the seatbelts, and all the passengers jumped out into the cool, serene water, and, momentarily forgetting the reason they were there, started frolicking innocently amongst the water lillies. But not for long. Suddenly there was a lot of splashing as they all jumped back aboard the airship.
“Alligators!” they squawked.
Luckily there were no casualties, but as they all huddled together in the cabin, they realised they were well-and-truly stuck, and the chances of being rescued seemed pretty slim, or as the walrus put it, “We are going to be late!”
Then it suddenly fell dark, and the waterlilly flowers opened wide and a million frogs started croaking. It was funny at first, but it went on all night long, and the humour was all squeezed out of it by about midnight.
In the morning, Capt. Cookie decided to send out a party in the airship’s small dinghy to go for help, and selected his co-pilot, Lieutenant Chips Temples and the stewardess, First In-Flight Superviser Damson Singsong for the mission.
Of course, no-one knew how long it would take to be rescued, so the captain charged the steward with rationing the airship’s emergency supplies of frozen peas and scampi in breadcrumbs.
Captain Cookie busied himself with maps and compasses, trying to figure out where they were and how they had got lost.
The passengers, for their part, remained quite calm. Luckily, one of the penguins had a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the Imperial Palace and they spent the first two days putting the corners and sides of that together. The broad expanse in the middle, scattered with the remaining jigsaw pieces was like the lake and the waterlillies.
On the third day, the penguins got the main tower of the Palace done, and then on the fourth day they completed a section of the roof and battlements.
Fred and the spiders kept themselves busy with some mathematics and fly-catching.
Ron read the inflight magazine about ten times and stared out of the window, watching the waterlily flowers daily opening and closing. As he gazed, he thought about everything that had happened. The jigsaw had reminded him of the Imperial Palace’s dungeon and the trial. He thought about the Spy. Ron wondered what Benny was doing. He must have heard that the airship had gone missing.
Just then there was a big cheer, “Yoooohoooo!” as the penguins completed the large part of the puzzle showing the Palace. The penguins high-fived with their flippers and then immediately got back to work on the difficult sky and mountain parts.
Ron looked back through the porthole... Hey! What’s that! It can’t be! Is it? It is!!
© David Severn 2012
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