Winter Holiday

by Arthur Ransome

  But, once they had reached the island, and the two sledges had been drawn up off the ice at the little landing place, side by side, like two boats, the feeling changed and the old discoverers of the place seemed to want to tell Dick and Dorothea everything about it and to show them round as if they were guests being welcomed to a house.

  “It’s Spitzbergen,” said Titty, “just for now, but you can see what a splendid place it is when it’s Wild Cat Island and we live here by ourselves without any natives at all.”

  “Like to come and look at the harbour?” said John.

  “This is the camp,” said Susan.

  “Our tents were this side the first year,” said Roger. “Hung from the trees. But the next year we had four tents. I had one and so had Titty, the sort you can put up anywhere.”

  They were taken through the bare trees and bushes along the old path to the southern end of the island and shown a little sheet of ice almost shut in by high rocks, and told that it was a harbour.

  “Oh, bother it’s being winter,” said Titty.

  They came back to the camp and found Susan clearing the snow from her old fireplace.

  “All hands to get firewood,” she said, as they stood round watching her. “Here we are on Spitzbergen, and we don’t want to freeze to death.”

  “Dry branches,” said John, “but in a frost like this almost anything’ll burn.”

  In a very few minutes a column of smoke was rising from Spitzbergen into the Arctic sky.

  “We ought to have filled the kettle before we started,” said Susan.

  “Nobody’ll be trying to skate in the harbour,” said John, and took the kettle and went off with Dick and Roger. They smashed a hole at the edge of the ice, with the help of a big stone. They got their hands wet and extremely cold, but they filled the kettle and brought it back to find Susan and Peggy showing Dorothea the proper way to feed a fire in the open.

  Then they went down to the landing-place and pulled the sledges up into the camp and ate their dinner by the fire, using the sledges as benches.

  It was far too cold to do much sitting about. The moment dinner was over and the mugs rinsed out at the hole in the ice of the old harbour (there was no other washing-up to do), they did a little skating practice. John skated round the island, keeping close to the shore, but he was against anybody else trying this because there was open water not very far away, and there was no point in taking risks for nothing. Then they did some signalling, between Spitzbergen and the mainland. But the long slope of clear snow that came down from Dixon’s Farm to the shore was very tempting to owners of a new sledge, and before long the expedition left Spitzbergen and got extremely warm, pulling the sledges up that slope, and racing them down again from the farm to the shore and out on the lake, where they were soon brought to a standstill by the stiff frozen reeds that stuck up out of the ice.

  Then they called on the Polar bear, and watched Mrs Dixon give it a bottle of milk. She asked them all to come in to tea, but Susan remembered that Mrs Jackson had told her to bring Dick and Dorothea back to tea at Holly Howe.

  “Come in then and have a cake or two to set you on your way,” said Mrs Dixon. “There’s a lot still left to be eaten.”

  They were just going into the farm-house when Peggy, who had been silent for some time, said to Dorothea: “Considering it’s winter it’s not so bad. Greenland yesterday. Spitzbergen today. Or do you think Nancy will wonder why we haven’t done something more?”

  “How are you going to let her know?” asked Dorothea.

  “Dispatches,” said Peggy. “It’s all right our sending a dispatch, isn’t it, Susan?”

  “Yes, I should think so,” said Susan. “If the doctor’ll take it. Mrs Blackett said we were to send messages by him, and he’s going there every day.”

  “Well, let’s jolly well cheer her up,” said Peggy. She looked at the clock in the kitchen. “We’ll get it to him tonight if we’re quick, and he’ll give it her in the morning.”

  “I’ve got some writing paper,” said Dorothea.

  And there, in the Eskimo settlement at Dixon’s Farm, while they were eating cakes and having a glass of milk all round, Peggy sat with a sheet of paper in front of her on which in big letters she had written “NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION,” and waited, looking at the point of her pencil.

  “Say, ‘To Captain Nancy, Amazon Pirate,’” suggested Titty.

  “But she isn’t being a pirate now,” said Peggy.

  “Wrong time of year,” said Roger, taking another cake.

  “Don’t say anything about what she is,” said John. “Just stick down where we’ve been. That’s all she’ll want to know.”

  Dorothea watched and listened. What a chance for Peggy, she thought. Words poured into her mind. “Trackless solitudes . . . marching by the glow of the northern lights . . . heroic work among the frozen peaks . . .” and so on. But she said nothing. These experienced seamen and explorers would perhaps know better what to write. Dick had lost interest very quickly, and was busy with his pocket-knife, carving out some little wooden cleats, copied from those on the Beckfoot sledge, so that he, too, would be able to rope down baggage in the proper manner, as soon as the cleats were fastened in the right places.

  John, Peggy, Titty and Roger made up the dispatch between them. Here it is: –

  “NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION

  “Crossed Greenland. Reached Spitzbergen by ice.

  “Captain Flint’s houseboat is frozen in.

  “Signed – North Polar Expedition.

  “PS. – The D.’s have got a sledge. That makes 2.

  Peggy.

  “PS. – Mr Dixon made it because Dick (and us too) rescued a Polar bear which was starving.

  Roger.

  “It is getting better with hot milk.”

  Dorothea thought that this dispatch missed a lot of things that might very well have been said. In her own story about the Arctic she would have one altogether different and more exciting. But she said nothing. After all, the dispatch did say what had happened.

  And then, as there was little time left, they went off at full gallop to Holly Howe, going by road this time, instead of over the ice. Luck was with them. At the gate at the top of the field above Holly Howe, they met Fanny, the girl who had been helping Mrs Jackson, going home earlier than usual. She took the despatch for them and promised to leave it at the Doctor’s. Two minutes later and they would have missed her and lost a whole day. After tea, Dick and Dorothea set off home, with the lantern to light their way, Dick thinking how best to fasten his cleats to the sledge, and Dorothea thinking about the dispatch and wishing it had been a little more eloquent. Mr Dixon settled the question of the cleats with a screwdriver, before they went to bed, and he went so far as to say “Champion,” and “I’m right glad of that,” when they told him what a success the sledge had been. But, of course, nothing could be done about the dispatch, and when Dorothea woke in the morning she thought of Nancy reading it, and was afraid she would be very disappointed.

  *

  But Dorothea was wrong.

  The doctor, with the dispatch in his pocket, forgot all about it while he was seeing Nancy. He remembered it only after he had said goodbye, and was just going off in his motor car. He hopped out and ran up the steps with it. Nancy did not get it until after he had gone. She lay in bed and read it and was very pleased. So that galoot, Peggy, was trying to keep things going after all. She really wasn’t doing too badly. And then a bit of news in the dispatch made Nancy throw her counterpane off and jump half out of bed. A new idea had caught her mind. “Hi! Mother!” she shouted. “Stop him! Stop him!”

  “He’s coming again tomorrow,” said Mrs Blackett.

  “Oh well,” said Nancy, “I’m not really ready for him yet.”

  But, if he had not been coming next day, she would almost have dipped her thermometer in her breakfast tea, to work up such a temperature as would mean that he would be telephoned for in a hurry. She had an answer t
o send to that dispatch. And such an answer. And somehow or other she would have to get the doctor to take it.

  CHAPTER XIV

  NANCY TAKES A HAND

  TWO days later, a postcard from the doctor came to Holly Howe at breakfast-time. “Collect the gang. Inspection of jaws at 9 a.m.” John had run upstairs again at once to hoist the diamond over the north cone to let Dick and Dorothea know that they were to come to Holly Howe. And then, when breakfast had hardly been cleared away, there was the doctor, stamping the snow off his shoes on the doorstep and complaining of the slipperiness of the roads. “Chains on both back wheels,” he was saying as he was taking off his gloves, “and in spite of all I was skidding on the hill. But it’s grand weather for all that. Well, and where are the exiles?”

  “Hullo!” said Peggy. “What’s the proper way to treat frostbite?”

  “What?” said the doctor. “Frostbite? I hope none of you have been such idiots . . .”

  “Oh no,” said Peggy. “But Roger asked what we would do if we did get frozen, and nobody knew for certain.”

  “Rub the part affected,” said the doctor. “If you think you’re getting a nose or an ear frozen, put a handful of snow on it.”

  “Why, that’s what Dick said.”

  “He’s quite right,” said the doctor. “In cold countries it’s the commonest thing to be walking along and to see someone else touch his nose or his ear. That means he’s noticed that your nose or ear is getting frozen. Then you pick up a handful of snow and rub the place with it.”

  “But how does the other man know before you do?”

  “Because when a bit of you is frozen, you can’t feel anything in it, and it turns white so that other people can see it.”

  “Ours mostly turn red,” said Roger.

  “So long as they’re red you needn’t worry,” said the doctor. “Now then. Any aches and pains? Jawbones? Anybody feeling a little stiff in the jaw. Not a bad disease for some chatterboxes. It’s worked wonders with Nancy.”

  “How is she?” three or four voices asked at once.

  “It’s pretty hard on her not being able to laugh,” said the doctor, “but everything’s going on just as it should,” and with a slight blowing out of his cheeks and a gesture of both hands round his jaw, the doctor somehow managed to make everybody see poor Nancy with a face like an enormous pumpkin. There was a roar of laughter.

  “That’s what I wanted,” said the doctor. “Nobody holding aching jaws? That’s right. If you can laugh like that there’s nothing amiss. No toothaches? No earaches? Good. Clean bill of health. Where are those other two, Dorothea her name was, wasn’t it? On their way here? . . . I’ll meet them and save time . . .”

  “Didn’t Nancy send us any message?” asked Peggy. “Thank you very much for taking our dispatch.”

  “I don’t think it’s a message exactly,” said the doctor. “It doesn’t sound like one. But I have got something here for you.”

  “What is it? What is it?” said Roger.

  “She’s a masterful young woman, that Nancy of yours,” said the doctor. “I told her I could take nothing because Mrs Blackett is so anxious to make sure that none of you comes out with mumps after you do get back to school. And before I quite knew what had happened . . . Well, here it is, anyway . . .”

  He opened the bag in which he carried stethoscope and bandages and all the other things he might be needing on his rounds, and brought out a small parcel wrapped in paper that seemed to have been somehow singed. On the outside of it was written in big capital letters, “DONT OPEN TILL HE’S GONE. HE KNOWS WHY.”

  “She offered to show it me,” the doctor went on, “but I’ve known Nancy for some time now, and I said I’d rather know nothing about it. Your Uncle Jim gave me that bit of advice a good many years ago. And Nancy doesn’t grow safer with age.”

  He handed the little parcel to Peggy, who looked at it and shook it, when there was a noise of something heavy banging about in a tin box.

  “I asked her if it would stand heat,” said the doctor, “and she said that so long as I didn’t melt it, it would take no harm. So there it is, and whatever is inside it, I can guarantee it free from mumps. Not that I think there was any danger anyway. It isn’t as if she had scarlet fever.”

  “What is it?” said Roger.

  “Don’t open till he’s gone,” said the doctor. “And he’s just going. Well, so long. Any messages for Beckfoot?”

  They all sent their love to Nancy and to Mrs Blackett, and he told them to keep their jaws working and to let him know at once if they felt any stiffness in them. With that he went out of the room, and they heard him outside asking Mrs Jackson after her husband’s wrist that had been sprained some time before.

  “Oughtn’t we to see him off?” said Susan.

  “He’s gone,” said Peggy. “Where are those scissors?”

  In another moment string was cut and paper torn off and they were looking at an old tobacco tin.

  “Navy Cut,” said John. “That’s what father smokes.”

  “So does Uncle Jim,” said Peggy struggling with the lid.

  It fitted tightly and flew open with a jerk. A key fell out on the floor. It was a large brass key, old and tarnished. There was a luggage label tied to it and on the label, in capital letters, was written a single word: –

  “FRAM.”

  “Fram?” said Susan. “Fram? What does she mean?”

  “The Fram was Nansen’s ship that was frozen in the ice,” said John.

  “Of course it was,” said Peggy. “I remember Captain Flint reading about it, when they went into the ice on purpose, and were frozen there and drifted right across the Polar sea.”

  “But what’s the key?” asked John.

  “It’s the key of the houseboat,” said Peggy.

  Everybody looked from face to face.

  “So that we can get inside?” said Roger.

  “Not while Captain Flint’s away?” said Titty.

  “Why not?” said Peggy. Just for one moment she had been taken aback, but now, already, she saw things with Nancy’s eyes. The houseboat, frozen in the ice, was better than any igloo on the hillside. Why, Nansen’s Fram had been in the ice for years. His expedition had lived in her. And here was a Fram ready and waiting for them.

  “Why not?” she said. “I’d forgotten the keys were at Beckfoot. He leaves them there when he goes away in case he wants anything, and sometimes mother rows across with us, to open the windows and give the cabin an airing.”

  John looked up.

  “It’s very bad for a boat to be left shut up a long time and not properly aired.”

  “But are you sure Captain Flint would like us going into his cabin?” said Susan. “He might not mind us just on deck.”

  “He’d be jolly pleased,” said Peggy.

  It was at this point that Dorothea and Dick arrived at Holly Howe after meeting the doctor and having their jaws inspected on the high road. There was Susan, looking very doubtful. There was John, sitting on the edge of the table, looking anxiously at Susan. Roger and Titty were looking at the big key and its label. Peggy, square and determined, was just saying, “Come on. Where are those D.’s? We ought to start at once.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Dorothea.

  “Oh, here you are,” said Peggy. “We’re just going to the Fram, Nansen’s Fram, and we’ve got the key of the cabin.”

  Titty held out the key.

  They looked at it and read the label.

  “But the Fram was a real ship,” said Dick.

  “So is this,” said Peggy. “You’ve seen her, when we went to Spitzbergen. Captain Flint’s houseboat.”

  “The boat we saw frozen in the ice?” said Dick eagerly.

  “Of course,” said Peggy. “And we’re going aboard now. Jib-booms and bobstays,” she said, turning to the others, “What’s the key for?”

  “Well, if you’re sure he’d like to have the cabin aired,” said Susan.

  “Ca
n we come, too?” said Dorothea, “not knowing him?”

  “You know us,” said Peggy. “Nancy’s sent the key. She’d be jolly sick if the whole expedition didn’t go. Come on.”

  A minute or two later the two sledges were flying down to the lake. The North Polar Expedition set off, round Darien, to the little bay where the old houseboat lay motionless and fast in Arctic ice.

  Dick and Dorothea looked at her with new interest as they turned the corner into the little bay. But they were not alone in this. The others, too, felt differently about her now, as they skated towards her with the key of the cabin in Peggy’s pocket. When they had first seen her frozen in the ice, they had wondered whether Captain Flint would be aboard her in the summer. Today, in a very few minutes, they would be aboard her themselves.

  “It’s awfully like burgling,” said Titty.

  “He’s our uncle,” said Peggy.

  “And we let him into the alliance,” Titty comforted herself. “It isn’t as if we were enemies.”

  “I wonder if he knows she’s been frozen in,” said John.

  The more they talked, the clearer it was that the Swallows, except perhaps Roger, were not at all sure that they ought to go aboard, and were glad to have the excuse that it would really be a good thing to open the windows and let a draught through to keep the inside from getting too damp. Peggy, on the other hand, was worried only lest the others should fail her. After all, even if it was burgling, it was not for the first time. She remembered the capturing of the green feathers that Captain Flint had put aside for pipe cleaners, and the firing of the Roman candle on the cabin roof that summer when her uncle had gone native and been too busy to share in the adventures of his nieces. Burgling? Well, why not? Anyhow, Nancy would never have gone to all the trouble of getting the key and making the doctor bring it to them if she had not meant them to use it. As for Dick and Dorothea, they were not worried at all, but wanted very much to see what the houseboat was like inside. The houseboat belonged to Peggy’s uncle. Peggy had invited them aboard, and they asked nothing better.