“Stop him!” Annabeth yelled, but it was too late.
Just before I banged him on the head with a deck chair, he hit the alarm.
Red lights flashed. Sirens wailed.
“Lifeboat!” I yelled.
We ran for the nearest one.
By the time we got the cover off, monsters and more security men were swarming the deck, pushing aside tourists and waiters with trays of tropical drinks. A guy in Greek armor drew his sword and charged, but slipped in a puddle of piña colada. Laistrygonian archers assembled on the deck above us, notching arrows in their enormous bows.
“How do you launch this thing?” screamed Annabeth.
A hellhound leaped at me, but Tyson slammed it aside with a fire extinguisher.
“Get in!” I yelled. I uncapped Riptide and slashed the first volley of arrows out of the air. Any second we would be overwhelmed.
The lifeboat was hanging over the side of the ship, high above the water. Annabeth and Tyson were having no luck with the release pulley.
I jumped in beside them.
“Hold on!” I yelled, and I cut the ropes.
A shower of arrows whistled over our heads as we free-fell toward the ocean.
TEN
WE HITCH A RIDE WITH DEAD CONFEDERATES
“Thermos!” I screamed as we hurtled toward the water.
“What?” Annabeth must’ve thought I’d lost my mind. She was holding on to the boat straps for dear life, her hair flying straight up like a torch.
But Tyson understood. He managed to open my duffel bag and take out Hermes’s magical thermos without losing his grip on it or the boat.
Arrows and javelins whistled past us.
I grabbed the thermos and hoped I was doing the right thing. “Hang on!”
“Iamhanging on!” Annabeth yelled.
“Tighter!”
I hooked my feet under the boat’s inflatable bench, and as Tyson grabbed Annabeth and me by the backs of our shirts, I gave the thermos cap a quarter turn.
Instantly, a white sheet of wind jetted out of the thermos and propelled us sideways, turning our downward plummet into a forty-five-degree crash landing.
The wind seemed to laugh as it shot from the thermos, like it was glad to be free. As we hit the ocean, we bumped once, twice, skipping like a stone, then we were whizzing along like a speed boat, salt spray in our faces and nothing but sea ahead.
I heard a wail of outrage from the ship behind us, but we were already out of weapon range. ThePrincess Andromedafaded to the size of a white toy boat in the distance, and then it was gone.
As we raced over the sea, Annabeth and I tried to send an Iris-message to Chiron. We figured it was important we let somebody know what Luke was doing, and we didn’t know who else to trust.
The wind from the thermos stirred up a nice sea spray that made a rainbow in the sunlight—perfect for an Iris-message—but our connection was still poor. When Annabeth threw a gold drachma into the mist and prayed for the rainbow goddess to show us Chiron, his face appeared all right, but there was some kind of weird strobe light flashing in the background and rock music blaring, like he was at a dance club.
We told him about sneaking away from camp, and Luke and thePrincess Andromedaand the golden box for Kronos’s remains, but between the noise on his end and the rushing wind and water on our end, I’m not sure how much he heard.
“Percy,” Chiron yelled, “you have to watch out for—”
