Winter Holiday

by Arthur Ransome

  A NOISE OF SAWING AND HAMMERING

  “We might do worse,” said Mr Dixon at last.

  “It’s not sic a job as we can’t tackle it,” said Silas.

  And that night, after the main expedition had gone back to Holly Howe, and Dorothea and Dick had had an early supper and been bustled off to bed with a tremendous supply of hot bricks wrapped in flannel (“Better sure than hoping for the best,” said Mrs Dixon), they were for some time kept awake by the noise of sawing and hammering down in the woodshed.

  At last Dorothea could bear it no longer.

  She slipped out of bed and went to Dick’s room.

  “Dick,” she said, “Dick. The sheep’s died after all, and I can hear them making the coffin.”

  Dick went to the window. Down in the yard he could see the light in the shed. Silas crossed the yard. Dick called down:

  “Is the sheep all right?”

  “Doing fine,” said Silas.

  And then there were a couple of loud bumps on the floor beneath them; and Dorothea, knowing well what Mrs Dixon meant by them, fled back to her room.

  CHAPTER XIII

  TO SPITZBERGEN BY ICE

  NEXT morning when Dorothea came down to breakfast, beating Dick by two minutes, she was a little shocked to find Mrs Dixon putting her little finger into the milk she was warming in a saucepan, to see if it was getting too hot.

  Mrs Dixon looked up and caught the expression on her face. She laughed. “The very spit of your mother,” she said. “I’ve seen her look just so if the thunder had turned the cream and she had a taste of it in her tea. Come you along with me now, and see where this milk’s going . . .” She took the saucepan and a small bottle that was lying on the table, and went out of the kitchen, followed by Dorothea, and across the yard to the shippen. In there was lying the rescued sheep, Dick’s sheep, as Mrs Dixon called it. She filled the bottle with the warm milk and poured it into the sheep’s mouth, tilting its head up as she poured.

  “Scarce strength to swallow,” she said, “but milk’s getting down and staying down, and we’ll have her well again inside of a week. Aye. Dixon thinks a lot of you for bringing her down,” she went on, seeing Dick in the doorway of the shippen. “I thought he’d be up all night with making that sledge, him and Silas.”

  “Sledge,” cried Dick. “Was he making a sledge?”

  “I thought it was a coffin,” said Dorothea.

  “You should have been asleep,” said Mrs Dixon. “I heard you gadding round. Well, it’s all done now, and wanting nobbut a couple of iron rails, and that’s blacksmith’s work, he says, and he’ll be going in to the smithy when you’ve done breakfast.”

  “But where is it?” said Dick.

  “Not so far,” said Mrs Dixon.

  They found it in the woodshed, a new, strongly built wooden sledge, not so high off the ground as the big sledge from Beckfoot, not so long either, but, as anybody could see, a good strong sledge, fit for a lot of hard work.

  “What’s he going to use it for?” asked Dick.

  “It’s what are you going to use it for,” said Mrs Dixon. “He’s made it for the two of you, to have a sledge of your own as well as the one they’ve got at Jacksons’.”

  And just then there was the clang of the gate. Mr Dixon was leading the old horse into the yard.

  Mr Dixon simply would not be thanked.

  “Nay,” he said. “One good turn deserves another, and that was a right good one you did me.”

  And after breakfast Mr Dixon, for the first time since they had known him, spoke without being first spoken to.

  “Happen you’d be liking to come with me to the smithy whiles we get runners fixed and all trig?”

  Mrs Dixon looked at him in astonishment.

  “I’d like to very much,” said Dick, “but I’ve got to run up to the observatory first in case there’s a signal to answer.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Dorothea.

  And presently Mr Dixon and Dick drove off together in the milk cart, with the new sledge and some lengths of iron railing that Mr Dixon thought would happen be just the thing.

  “I’ve never seen him take to anyone like that,” said Mrs Dixon as she and Dorothea watched them move slowly off along the slippery road. “It’s that sheep’s done it.”

  Dorothea, too, as she trudged away up the hill to the barn, was very pleased about it. Sometimes, she felt, Dick wanted a lot of pushing in affairs of that kind. But he had driven off with Mr Dixon as if they had been a couple of old friends.

  Indeed, this was the beginning of a queer kind of alliance between Dick and Mr Dixon. They were neither of them great talkers, but together they got along very well. Of all the Eskimos Mr Dixon came to know most of what was going on among the explorers and of what was being planned. Sometimes for days he would not talk at all, and then he would come out with something to Dick that showed he had been thinking all the time about conditions in the Arctic, and of the things that might be needed on a sledge journey to the North Pole. He seemed always to be thinking that there was a kind of competition between the two settlements of Eskimos, and he didn’t see why the explorers settled at Jackson’s should do any better than those who were lodging with himself. Dick several times tried to explain that there wasn’t really any competition, but Mr Dixon knew better. “Jackson’s lot mustn’t think they’re doing all,” he said. “We mun pull our weight, lad, pull our weight.”

  In the smithy, while Dick worked the bellows and the blacksmith heated the rails in the little snoring fire, shaped them on the anvil, made holes in them, and fastened them in their places under the wooden runners, there was talk of the frost.

  “Freezing grandly,” said the smith. “Did you hear Bill Bowness got right down to Low End on the ice and a wetting in the river and all, for trying to go too far? But t’ lake’ll be froze all over yet, and that’ll be good for trade.”

  “Eh?” said Mr Dixon, who was busy poking the ends of a rope through two holes he had bored in the front of the sledge, and knotting them at the other side.

  “Trade?” asked Dick.

  “Yours won’t be the only sledge wanting runners,” said the blacksmith. “There’ll be hundreds before the week’s out. I had twenty in yesterday. And if the frost holds there’ll be ice yachts out and more wanted, and that means work enough, and welcome these days with no horses left but on the farms.”

  “Ah!” said Mr Dixon.

  Dick was interested in many other things. He wanted to know why the hot rail had to be dipped in water, and why dipping it in water tempered it, and what temper in iron really means. But the news that there was ice bearing all along the edge of the lake was good news indeed, and he was not surprised when on their way home from the smithy they met Dorothea, carrying his knapsack as well as her own, coming along the road and close to the gate into the field above Holly Howe.

  “No igloo today,” she called out. “Diamond over north cone. Holly Howe. So I brought our things along.”

  “They’ll be going on the lake,” said Dick.

  Mr Dixon took the sledge out of the cart for them, and set its shining runners in the show.

  “It does look a beauty,” said Dorothea.

  “Better’n nowt,” said Mr Dixon. “Happen it’ll take you down the field.”

  There was a steepish slope from the road down the field to Holly Howe. The cart track to the farm wound to and fro across it to make it easy for horses but, with the field covered with snow, there was nothing against going straight across country with the sledge, and they could see the tracks of the Beckfoot sledge on which the other explorers, going home, always tobogganed down the field to the house.

  Mr Dixon stood up in the milk-cart to watch the start. Dorothea sat in front with the knapsacks. Dick sat at the back, astride of the sledge, worked it forward over the brow, felt it suddenly moving by itself, and flung his legs forward so that he could steer with his feet in the snow that flew up like spray when he touched it with his heels. H
olly Howe, the old whitewashed farm, with the big yew tree at one end and the hollies and yews in the garden, seemed almost to fly uphill to meet them. Down there, Peggy and the others had been impatiently watching for them, wondering why those D.’s were so late just when there was good reason to hurry. And now, here they were, coming full tilt, and with a sledge of their own.

  “Stick your heels in,” cried Dick. “Jam them in. I can’t stop it!”

  Dorothea did her best. The snow poured up over them, and, just in time, they brought the sledge to a standstill. Another four or five yards and they would have crashed into the wall.

  “Was that why you were late?” said Titty. “I knew it wasn’t just breakfast.”

  “It’s a jolly good sledge,” said John.

  “They won’t want to be our dogs any more,” said Roger.

  Everybody crowded round to admire it, and to hear how it had been made at Dixon’s Farm in the night, and how this morning it had been finished at the smithy, where Dick had worked the bellows of the fire. But Peggy would not let them waste much time.

  “Look here!” she said. “We were just going to start without you. There’s ice all along this side of the lake. Holly Howe Bay’s bearing everywhere. We’re going right down to Wild Cat Island – Spitzbergen, I mean. What’s the ice like by Dixon’s Farm?”

  “I don’t know if it’s bearing all the way to the island,” said Dick. “I meant to try, but I had to go to the smithy.”

  “Worth it for a sledge like that,” said Peggy. “But do let’s get going.”

  “How’s the Polar bear?” asked Roger.

  “They’re giving it milk out of a bottle, and it’s going to be all right in a week,” said Dorothea.

  “Come on, my hearties,” said Peggy. “Let’s start.”

  It always sounded a little odd when Peggy shivered her timbers or talked about hearties, but everybody understood that she was trying to make up for Nancy’s being away in bed. Everybody knew that Peggy was worrying all the time in case something or other was not being done that Captain Nancy would have thought important.

  On the field sloping down from Holly Howe to the boathouse, Dick and Dorothea tried the new sledge again and took Roger and Titty as passengers. The Beckfoot sledge with the three elders came rushing after them. They took the sledges down on the ice beside the jetty from which they had started on that Arctic voyage in the Beckfoot rowing boat. The ice was solid enough today. They sat on the sledges to put their skates on. Then, cautiously, towing the sledges, they moved out over the ice towards the Peak of Darien, with its pine-topped cliffs that shut in the southern side of the Holly Howe bay.

  “It’s much more of an expedition with two sledges,” said Peggy.

  “Are you sure the ice is thick enough?” said Susan.

  “Someone’s been past here,” said John. “You can see the marks of the skates.”

  “But not a whole crowd like us,” said Susan.

  They stopped a moment to put the Alpine rope to a new purpose. One end of it was looped over John’s shoulder. He went first. Then, ten yards behind him, came Peggy. Ten yards behind Peggy was Susan and the Beckfoot sledge, to which the rope was fastened, so that John and Peggy were pioneers, testing the ice, and dogs to pull the sledge at the same time. The loose end of the rope was coiled on the sledge.

  “If John goes through,” said Roger, “we’ve got the rope, and we just grab it and howk him out again.”

  Roger and Titty were not yet strong enough skaters to be much good as dogs on the ice, but the days of practice up on the tarn had taught them a lot, and they were able to keep on their feet so long as they did not try to get along too fast.

  Dorothea and Dick, proud of the new sledge, were towing it together, skating in time with each other, but not hurrying, and sometimes giving lifts to weaker dogs.

  They passed close under the steep little cliffs of Darien, listening for the loud cracking of the ice, almost expecting to see it break and let John go through into the water. Beyond the point they turned in again along the shore, for out towards the middle of the lake there was something that looked like open water, and farther down they could actually see ripples where the water was stirred by a slight wind. Near the shore the ice was strong and beautifully clear.

  “Look!” said Dick. “There’s a fish in the ice.”

  It was a little perch, close to the surface, looking as if it were swimming in glass. The others turned back to see it and crowded round it, till a loud cracking of the ice gave them a warning.

  “Spread out!” cried John.

  “Don’t get in a bunch,” cried Peggy, “or you’ll take us all to Davy Jones!”

  “Good for you, Peggy,” laughed John.

  “Who is Davy Jones?” asked Dorothea.

  “He hangs about on the bottom of the sea and puts drowned sailors in his locker,” said Titty.

  “Do stop just a minute,” said Dick. “Can’t we cut a hole in the ice and take the perch out?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” said John, “and somebody skating in the dark might come an awful smash if he caught his skate in the hole.”

  “It probably was a sick fish anyway, swimming right at the top,” said Dick, comforting himself, as the expedition moved on. “But I wish I knew what would happen if we melted it out.”

  “We can’t stop,” said Dorothea; “not when they’re going to Spitzbergen.”

  They skated on, but not until Dick had pulled his pocket-book out and written in it, “Saw perch frozen in ice. Right way up,” and the date, under his yesterday’s entry about the buzzard’s nest.

  And then, as they left that bay and rounded a point into another, they saw something that made even Dick forget frozen perch altogether.

  “Hullo!” cried John. “The houseboat’s frozen in.”

  An old blue houseboat, with a raised cabin and a row of windows, and a high railing round the after-deck, lay there in the smooth ice, heading north as if still riding to the big buoy that could be seen frozen in close under the bows. Once upon a time it had been a steamer, a little passenger launch carrying visitors to and fro on the lake. Long ago it had been turned into a houseboat, with a little mast for a flagstaff and, in summer, an awning over the after-deck. Dick and Dorothea had never seen it before, for the woods that ran round the little bay hid the boat except from the lake or from the nearby shore.

  “THE HOUSEBOAT’S FROZEN IN”

  “But what is it?” said Dick.

  “Does anybody live there?” said Dorothea.

  “It’s the houseboat we told you about,” said Roger. “It belongs to Captain Flint.”

  “Nancy’s and Peggy’s Uncle Jim,” explained Susan.

  “Retired pirate,” said Titty.

  “Is he there now?” asked Dorothea.

  “Gone abroad for the whole winter,” said Peggy. “If only he hadn’t he might have been useful.”

  “I say, Susan, unhitch the Alpine rope,” called John. “We won’t take the sledges, but I think we might just have a look. Don’t come in a bunch till we know the ice is all right.”

  But the ice seemed firm enough, and presently all the explorers had come to the side of the old boat. Curtains closed all the cabin windows, so that they could not see in; but Dick and Dorothea heard strange tales of the things that were there, brought from all over the world, and of the night when the houseboat had been burgled and how Captain Flint had given Titty a green parrot and Roger a monkey because they had found the box that had been stolen with the book that he had written.

  “Where’s the parrot?” asked Dick.

  “At the zoo,” said Titty. “I couldn’t very well have him at school, and mother couldn’t take him to Malta. So he’s gone to the zoo.”

  “Gibber’s there, too,” said Roger.

  “Is Gibber your monkey?” asked Dorothea.

  “He’s called Gibber because he gibbers,” said Roger, “especially when anybody’s giving him monkey-nuts and hasn’t got any m
ore.”

  “Oh, look here!” said Peggy. “It’s no good hanging about the houseboat if we’re going to get down to Spitzbergen for dinner. What’s the good of bringing a kettle if we don’t?”

  “I wonder if anything ought to be done about the houseboat,” said John. “Being frozen in, I mean.”

  “We’ll put it in dispatches to Captain Nancy,” said Peggy, “but do come on.”

  And the expedition went on out of Houseboat Bay, leaving the forlorn blue houseboat, stuck in the ice, with the white snow on its decks and on the roof of its long cabin.

  Spitzbergen was now plain to see; that rocky island covered with trees, with a steep little cliff at the northern end of it, and a tall pine, the tallest tree on the island, standing on the top of the cliff.

  “Lighthouse tree,” said Titty.

  “Lighthouse?” said Dorothea.

  “Yes,” said Roger. “We had a lantern and Titty hoisted it up the tree at night, and the Amazons came down in the dark, and we were all sailing when it was absolutely pitchy. I was quite small then. Very small indeed, I mean.”

  Dick and Dorothea heard the story, but Dorothea was thinking of a story much newer than that. She was remembering how she and Dick had come down to the shore from Dixon’s Farm that first day and had found only an upturned boat they could not use; and had seen the Beckfoot rowing boat, with Nancy in command, rowing to the island. That had been a lonely morning. The island and those children in the boat had seemed a thousand miles away. And now, here they were, she and Dick, sharing an expedition with those very children, and with every minute the island was nearer and nearer.

  And then she noticed that the others were skating much faster than they had been. Roger and Titty had left them and caught up the Beckfoot sledge; and, with nothing to pull, were doing their best to overhaul the pioneers strung out along the Alpine rope. And these too, were not talking, but skating much faster than when they had set out from the jetty at Holly Howe. It was as if the island was a magnet and the explorers were scraps of steel pulled harder and harder towards it. It was almost as if they were trying to leave the D.’s behind.