It was another two days before they heard from Kit. Lemony was having trouble waiting, not only because of his eagerness to find Beatrice but because of the increasingly loud complaints of Captain Widdershins about his bad cooking.
Finally, a telegram arrived from Kit saying the fishing boats were going out late that night. The plan was for the two submarines to meet, with the Octopus staying deep for concealment, for Lemony to swim down to join his two siblings, and then for the Octopus to move in to attack the fishing boats. Widdershins would stay at the surface in his vessel to watch for anyone approaching.
The problem Lemony faced was getting Gregor Anwhistle from the cabin where he was being held prisoner, through the main room where Widdershins was working, and out of the sub without being caught. He moved two diving suits (with the picture of Herman Melville on the front) from their storage locker to his cabin early in the day. Just before it was time for him to go, he opened the door to the prisoner's cabin.
"There's one condition if I help you to escape," he told Gregor.
"What's that?" asked Anwhistle.
"I know you were raising deadly mushrooms as weapons for the V.F.D. and I must ask you to promise never to do that again," said Lemony.
"Don't worry," said Gregor. "I can't trust any of them any more. I'll go into hiding and they'll never see me again."
"Here, put on this diving suit and helmet," said Lemony. "Then walk through the main room with your head held down. Widdershins will think you're me. Then go straight down the corridor and out the top hatch. You can swim to land. We're at the surface and very close to shore."
"How will you get through the room?" asked Gregor.
"I have a plan," said Lemony.
The first phase went smoothly. Gregor walked through the room and Widdershins just nodded to him and called "Good luck, Cookie! Aye!"
"Aye!" said Gregor, his voice so muffled by the diving helmet that Widdershins couldn't tell it wasn't Lemony's.
Lemony put on his own diving suit. He bent down to his two marmosets. "Now, Pyramus and Thisbe! Distraction!"
As they had been trained, the two monkeys sneaked into the room and climbed the wall behind the Captain's back. Then they jumped down and began screeching loudly. Just as Widdershins turned around to look, Lemony ran midway across the room, and faced as if he had come back through the other door.
"Cookie! Come back here and shut up these blasted monkeys! Aye! Oh, there you are," said the Captain, turning to face him.
"Hush, Pyramus and Thisbe. It's all right, I'll be back soon," said Lemony. He left Widdershins still grumbling about the noisy monkey menagerie in his sub.
As he watched Gregor swimming away, Lemony thought, "I've rescued a kidnapped ichnologist tonight. That's half the battle." Little did he know...
Just as Lemony was putting on his own helmet in preparation for diving down to the other sub, he noticed a peculiar odor in the air, something between dead fish and octopus sushi. Where had he smelled something like that before? Oh well, it didn't matter now.
He dived down and boarded the Octopus. Kit and Jacques met him at the airlock.
"Hi Lemony, good to see you," said Jacques with an ingratiating grin. "Can we let bygones be bygones?"
Lemony's stomach clenched at seeing the brother who betrayed him. It was painful to be civil to Jacques, but there was too much at stake to alert his suspicions.
"All right, Jacques," he said with a forced smile. "After all, it's been fifteen years..."
They passed quickly through a room in which several people were chained to oars. Lemony particularly noticed a bald man with a big nose and a large person of indeterminate gender.
"Who were those?" Lemony asked Kit.
"Just traitors being punished. Don't bother about them," said Kit.
Lemony frowned to himself. This hardly seemed the same noble, idealistic organization he had known fifteen years ago.
Lemony manned the periscope while Kit steered and Jacques commanded the rowers. The Octopus surfaced among the fishing ships and began slashing nets with the long sharp blade attached to the flexible mechanical fly-swatter arm on the top of the Octopus's "head".
With each slash another net was split open. It was going very smoothly. Almost too smoothly, Lemony thought. There were very few fishermen aboard the ships, and those that he could see were wearing diving suits and flippers. Suddenly, it came to him where he has smelled that odor before. In the South Seas...
"It's a trap!" Lemony yelled. "We've got to get away, NOW!"
Kit didn't question him. She immediately put the controls into reverse and began a dive.
On the intercom, they could hear Jacques calling out, "Row, row for your lives!"
The people on the deck of the fishing vessels suddenly dove into the water and swam away, just as the enormous tentacles of the sea-monster, a gigantic killer Nautilus which Lemony had first faced in the South Seas, grabbed the ships and began to crushing them. The Octopus would have been crushed too, if it has stayed on the surface an instant longer.
"How did they know we would be here tonight?" gasped Kit.
"The waiters! They must have betrayed us -- the other side gave them a better offer," said Lemony.
Suddenly the ship shuddered and Lemony was thrown to the floor. When he got up and looked out the porthole, he saw that one leg of the Octopus had been caught by a tentacle. The submarine was being drawn inexorably back into the crushing death-grip of the monster.