The Hunchback of Adventure Bay

Searching for Skye

(Dissolve to morning. Humdinger is exiting his carriage. Waiting for him is Chase.)

Chase: (To Guards) Attention! (To Humdinger) Morning, sir. (Humdinger moans.)

Chase: Are you feeling all right?

Humdinger: I had a little trouble with the fireplace.

Chase: I see. Your orders, sir?

Humdinger: Find the gypsy girl.

(troops ransacking a home, eventually finding a group of gypsies hidden in a trap door. They gypsies are lined up outside, with Humdinger looking down at them.)

Humdinger: Ten pieces of silver for the gypsy Skye.

(He shoves a handful of coins out, but there are no takers.)

Humdinger: (To Guards) Lock them up!

(Humdinger's men push a carriage into the bay. As it begins to sink, gypsies come floating to the surface. Once again, they're lined up, with Humdinger surveying them.)

Humdinger: Twenty pieces of silver for the gypsy Skye!

(Again, no takers.)

Humdinger: (To Guards) Take them away!

(house with a large windmill. Humdinger's guards have found
gypsies there. Humdinger is interrogating the miller.)

Humdinger: We found this gypsy talisman on your property. Have you been harbouring gypsies?

Miller: Our home is always open to the weary traveler. Have mercy, my lord.

Humdinger: I am placing you and your family under house arrest until I get to the bottom of this. If what you say is true, you are innocent and you have nothing to fear.

Miller: But we are innocent, I assure you! We know nothing of these gypsies!

(Humdinger pulls their door shut, then bars it shut with a guard's staff. He turns to Chase.)

Humdinger: Burn it.

Chase: What!?!?

Humdinger: Until it smolders. These people are traitors and must be made examples of.

(Humdinger hands him a torch.)

Chase: With all due respect, sir, I was not trained to murder the innocent.

Humdinger: But you were trained to follow orders.

(Chase takes the torch and douses it in a bucket of water.)

Humdinger: Insolent coward.

(Humdinger grabs another torch and touches the flame to the windmill. The entire structure is quickly engulfed in flame. Chase crashes through the window and brings the family outside to safety. As the building continues to burn, guards grab Chase.)

Humdinger: The sentence for insubordination is death.
Such a pity-- you threw away a promising career.

Chase: Consider it my highest honour, sir.

(Humdinger raises a spear and is about to kill Chase, when Chase kicks Humdinger's horse. The horse bucks, and Humdinger is thrown off. Chase escapes the guards, hops on Humdinger's horse and is off.)

Humdinger: Hit him! And don't hit my horse!

(As Chase rides off, he is showered with arrows. One of them goes through his shoulder, and he falls off the horse, off the bridge that he's riding over, and into the river. A volley of arrows follow him in. Skye, who has witnessed the entire spectacle in disguise, gasps.)

Humdinger: Don't waste your arrows. Let the traitor rot in his watery grave! Find the girl! If you have to burn the city to the ground, so be it!

(Skye runs down the hill to the river, keeping under cover. She wades into the water, then dives under. She comes back up with the unconscious Chase. She pulls him out of the water as we dissolve to a long shot of Adventure Bay burning. Humdinger is approached by a guard.)

Guard 7: Sir! We've looked everywhere, and still no sign of the gypsy girl.

Humdinger: I had the entire cathedral surrounded, guards at every
door. There was no way she could have escaped, unless...