- As Deryn and Newkirk near the bow, they hear the sound of bats.
- The other middies catch up, in a hurry to feed the bats just before the fléchette.
- Newkirk gets spooked by a flock of strafing hawks, and Mr. Rigby blows a whistle to make the glowworms under the airbeast's skin light up.
- The middies throw the bats' food to them: dried figs with a metal fléchette in the middle. Wait a minute and you'll see why…
- And so will Deryn, since Mr. Rigby lets the middies stick around to watch the fléchette strike—an old schooner in the ocean is the target.
- The fléchette strike consists of the bats flying over the target, and uh, dropping the fléchettes, which are like little razors.
- The strike completely disables the old schooner, and then a kraken rises from the depths of the ocean to finish the job. Nobody even has to say, "Release the kraken"—it just knows what to do.
- Deryn reflects that the possibility of war must just be a crazy rumor, because Clankers surely could never stand up to Darwinists.