She gave in. She was very tired, and so was Dick. They spread their sheepskins on the floor, used the packing-case to lean against, and sat there watching the fire.
*
“Ahoy!”
Dorothea stirred in her sleep. Time to get up? Had Mrs Dixon found a new way of calling them?
“Ahoy!”
There it was again. A long way off.
Dorothea opened her eyes. Where was she? The fire had burnt low, but she saw the red glow of its embers not far from her feet. With a jerk, she pulled her feet away, and then saw that there was no need. She knew where she was now. That hard thing against her back was Captain Flint’s packing-case. They were at the North Pole. She looked at Dick, huddled down on the sheepskins, with his chin on his chest. Should she wake him? Or had she dreamed that noise? She must put some more coal on the fire. She stirred and then again, not so far away this time, she heard that call.
“Ahoy!”
The lantern was still burning, hanging from the flagstaff in the middle of the hut. The windows looked black except where the light from inside showed the edging of frozen snow outside the glass. It was black night out there, and the lantern made it seem even blacker than it was.
“Ahoy! Ahoy!”
With a soft plop something hit one of the windows and stuck there, a white splash on the blackness.
“Ahoy! Ahoy, there! North Pole, ahoy!”
“Here they are!” cried Dorothea. “Here they are!” She shook Dick by the shoulder. He woke with a start, rubbed his eyes, and then, as he heard Dorothea crying, “Here they are!” and another lump of snow flattened itself against a window, he jumped to his feet and opened the door. A cold breath of night air came into the hut, and the lantern threw a bar of light sideways across the snow.
“Make straight for the door,” Dick shouted. “It was awfully deep, but it’s not bad now.”
“It’s quite deep enough here,” said a clear, cheerful voice out of the darkness. “I’ve been fighting through it for ages. Didn’t you hear me yelling?”
Dick and Dorothea stared out into the night, and at last saw a figure struggling in the snow. A moment later Captain Nancy, with her skates hung round her neck, stumbled up the steps at the door.
“Good! Good!” said Dorothea, eagerly dusting the snow off her.
Just for a moment Nancy felt herself dreadfully tired. Even with all her efforts to get into training she was not yet the sturdy Amazon pirate she had been before she had got the mumps, and had had to spend so long being coddled in a hot bedroom. She sat down on the seat at the foot of the flagstaff.
Dick was still looking out into the night.
“But where are the others?” he said. “They haven’t turned back?”
“What others?” said Nancy. “I started the moment I saw your signals. The others are at Holly Howe. But why are you here at all? Everything’s fixed now. We’re all coming tomorrow.”
Dick stared at her.
“But you put up the signal,” he said.
“What signal?” said Nancy.
“Flag on the Beckfoot promontory.”
“Oh, that! To say I could come to the council in the Fram. The blizzard scuppered that. But the others were there all right. Everything’s settled. And now you’re here already . . .”
NANCY REACHING THE POLE
Dick was digging furiously into his pocket. Out came a lump of tangled string, a handkerchief, an indiarubber, and with them that important pocket-book. He turned hurriedly back, through sketches of the constellations, drawings of the Nansen sledges, the pages on which Nancy herself had drawn the semaphore alphabet for him, and the Morse code, until he came to the page for which he was looking. There, at the bottom of some mixed notes, he found what he wanted, and held it out for her to see.
“Flag on Beckfoot = start for Pole.”
“I wrote it down when you told me,” he said, “in the top of the observatory the day we were learning the signals.”
Nancy’s mouth opened. She bit her lower lip. Her indignation was gone.
“Golly,” she said. “I remember your doing it. And something happened, and I never told the others. And then came mumps, and I forgot every little bit about it. And then when Captain Flint asked about my getting away soon enough for the council in the Fram, I said that if I could I’d run up a red flag and the biggest I could find. And so I did. It was a bedspread.
“I saw it at once,” said Dick, “but I was jolly late anyhow, so I thought the others must have started.”
“And you two came by yourselves and got here through all that blizzard?” said Nancy. “However did you find the Pole?”
“The blizzard helped, really,” said Dorothea.
“We were sailing,” said Dick.
“Jib-booms and bobstays!” cried Nancy. “Sailing? In that?”
“The wind was just right,” said Dick. “It took us straight here.”
“Well,” said Nancy, “it’s the best thing I ever heard. You couldn’t have made it more real. But what a pity you did it a day too soon.”
“And we’ve gone and opened the stores,” said Dorothea. “And eaten some of them. You see, we lost our food when the sledge turned over and the mast broke . . .”
“Capsized!” cried Nancy. “Mast gone by the board! Oh, you lucky, lucky beasts! Of course, you were right to go for the stores. That’s what they were there for.”
She looked round at the neat larder, read the writing on the packing-case, and looked at the label fastened on the flagstaff.
“He’s really not done it half badly,” she said. “I forgot he’d have fixed up stores for tomorrow. I swiped a cake, just in case you might be starving.” She pulled it out of her knapsack and put it on the bench with the rest of the food. “Have you had supper yet?”
“We haven’t properly,” said Dorothea.
“You’d much better,” said Nancy. “I will, too. How did you manage about water?”
“There was a kettle full to begin with,” said Dick, “and we’ve melted a lot of snow.”
“Good work,” said Nancy. “Let’s have supper right away. Anybody’d say we ought to. It’s no good thinking of starting back now. I can’t, anyway. We’d better not use more coal than we can help.”
She broke up the lid of the packing-case, splitting it in pieces with hammer and chisel. The fire blazed up again when fed with the dry wood. The kettle boiled. Tea was made. And all the time Nancy kept asking one question after another. Nearly a month’s questions were boiling inside her and waiting to be asked. There was the voyage in the blizzard with the sailing sledge, every detail of which she wanted to know. But there was also that business of the cragfast sheep, of which she had only heard at second-hand, and the story of Captain Flint’s finding his houseboat not at all as he had left it.
“Shiver my timbers!” said Captain Nancy, sitting on a sheepskin in front of the fire with a mug of hot tea in one hand and the leg of a chicken in the other. “Shiver my timbers! The others will be jolly sick at missing this.”
“What’ll they do?” asked Dorothea.
“Come along tomorrow,” said Nancy. “Daylight. Fine weather. Captain Flint to help them. I’ve left a message to let him know we’re here. He’ll collect them in the morning and they’ll come along as tame as anything . . .”
And at that moment there was a chorus of loud “Hurrahs” close outside the hut. At that moment the relief expedition, after struggling up from the shore towards those lighted windows, had noticed the halyards and turned their torches upwards and seen the little yellow quarantine flag that told them their search was ended.
Nancy was up in a flash and had the door open.
The loud “Hurrahs” of the rescuers turned to shouts of astonishment. “It’s Nancy!” “Nancy’s here, too!” “But Captain Flint said you were at Beckfoot!”
“So I was,” said Nancy, “till I saw their flash signals. Proper ones this time. Morse. N-P for North Pole.”
“Lanter
n signals?” said John. “We never saw them.”
“But why were they here?” said Susan.
“Why didn’t they come to the council?” said Peggy.
Everybody was talking at once. There was Nancy clapping people on the back, shivering timbers, barbecuing billygoats, delighted to be with the others once again. And there were John and Susan, very pleased indeed that the search was over, for they had known that Titty and Roger were too tired to go much farther. And there were Titty and Roger trying to tell the story of their journey. And there were Dick and Dorothea dreadfully anxious to explain that really it had not been their fault that they had started a day too soon. And there was Peggy, tremendously hoping that Captain Nancy would not think she had done so badly, and very pleased indeed that she was back and ready to take command. She herself was quite ready by now to be a mate once more.
Presently Nancy noticed that John, Susan, and Peggy, although they had come to rescue them, had very little to say to the D.’s.
“It’s not their fault at all,” she said. “It’s mine, really.” She explained about the signal. “I’d forgotten all about it, with the mumps coming in between.”
“That’s all right,” said John. “I thought all the time they couldn’t have done it on purpose.”
“Anyway it’s a good thing they’re found,” said Susan. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get back and rested enough to do it again tomorrow. Titty and Roger are about done.”
“So’m I,” said Nancy joyously. “So’s everybody. That’s the best of it. Now you’re here there’s no need to do it again. We’ve done it. We’ve all of us done it. This is miles better than anything we planned . . . Sailing to the Pole in a gale of wind and a snow-storm.”
“Sailing?” said John.
“Rather,” said Nancy. “Sailing . . . and then nobody knowing where anybody was and your tremendous sledge journey in the Arctic night. Why, tomorrow everything would be easy. A picnic. Like going for a walk at school. But this was the real thing. They’d never been farther north than the Amazon and they found the Pole all by themselves.” And then she said things about the D.’s and their wild sail through the blizzard that made Dick splutter out that it was only accident, and Dorothea sparkle with pride in him. First that sheep and then the sailing. They knew now that he was more than a mere astronomer.
“Everybody’s done jolly well,” said Nancy.
“Captain Flint, too,” said Roger, admiring the larder. And then, noticing the coal-sack. “That was why his sledge was all black and sooty.”
And then, of course, the relief expedition, although it had set out after supper, found that after crossing the Arctic to the Pole it could eat a little more. The big Beckfoot sledge was unpacked. Sheepskins and knapsacks were brought in.
“It just can’t be helped,” said Susan. “We’ve got to spend the night here now. I’m sure mother wouldn’t mind. The main thing is that we’re all here.”
CHAPTER XXIX
AND AFTERWARDS
IT had been bedtime for Titty and Roger before ever they started on their journey to the North Pole. It had been bedtime for Peggy, John and Susan long before they got there. As for Nancy, she had been going to bed earlier than any of them while she had been recovering from mumps. Dick and Dorothea had had some sleep already, but they were very tired. This late supper at the Pole began most joyfully, but before it was finished eyelids seemed weighted with lead, sentences trailed off into silence, and people found themselves talking without being quite sure what it was they had meant to say. One after another the explorers dropped off to sleep, no matter whether they were sitting on a wooden seat at the foot of the Pole, or on a bench against the wall, or lying about in front of the fire on the sheepskins that had been spread over the floor.
“Eh? What? Sorry,” said Nancy, in answer to a question that she thought someone had been asking her. “Look here, we mustn’t all go to sleep. Somebody ought to keep watch. We’ll take turns.”
Susan pointed to Dick, Titty, and Roger, who were asleep already. John was blinking at the fire. Peggy yawned, smiled cheerfully at Nancy, yawned again, and pulled a knapsack into a comfortable position for her head. Susan made up the fire with coal from the nearly empty sack. Dimly, Dorothea saw her cover Titty and Roger with spare sheepskins. Nancy’s eyes were closed. Nobody could keep awake. Soon the silence of the Arctic night was broken only by little restless noises from the fire and by the quiet breathing of the eight explorers.
When Dorothea woke it was already far into the night. The lantern (John’s lantern1 was still burning, but the fire was very low. Dorothea looked at Dick, who was sleeping as easily as if in bed, with his head pillowed on his arm. He was all right. What had there been to disturb her? She looked at Titty, who had turned half over and buried her face in a sheepskin. She looked at Susan, sleeping as she sat in a corner. She looked at John, who had stretched himself along one of the narrow benches. She looked at Nancy, propped up against the packing-case beside her. She looked at Peggy and at Roger, curled up on the floor before the fire, with knapsacks as pillows. No, there was nothing wrong.
She slept again. It was in something very like a dream that she heard a crunching of snow and a faint laugh. She was never quite sure, when they all came to talk about it afterwards, whether she had been dreaming or not when she felt a breath of cold air on her face and knew that the door was open out of the hut into the Arctic night, and that people were moving in the room, Eskimos, friendly Eskimos, who must not be allowed to wake the others. There was a faint noise of the scraping of snow in the doorway, and then the quiet closing of the door.
“’Sh!” said Dorothea, without opening her eyes.
“’Sh!” There was a reassuring answer.
*
It was long hours afterwards, and a new day was beginning when Dorothea woke again, to find Susan looking at her and holding her finger to her lips.
Susan pointed behind her. There, fast asleep, sitting on the bench against the wall opposite the door, was Captain Flint.
Beside him was his sister, Mrs Blackett, the mother of the Amazons, fast asleep with her head on his shoulder.
“Did you make the fire up?” whispered Susan.
“No,” whispered Dorothea.
“They must have done it. However did they get in without waking us? Don’t let’s wake the others yet if we can help it.”
Susan put on a few more bits of coal, filled up the kettle from the saucepan and put it, as quietly as she could, on the fire. But a scrap of coal slipped through the bars and fell on the hearth. Nancy woke up with a start.
“’Sh!” said Dorothea, just as she had in her dream.
“Giminy!” said Nancy, following Susan’s pointing finger. “Well done, mother!”
“What’s the time?” yawned John.
“Quiet!” whispered Susan, and John sat up and stared at the sleeping Eskimos.
Titty was the next to wake, rolling over and lifting a head as tousled as her sheepskin.
“Susan,” she murmured. “Where . . .?”
And there was Susan holding her hand and whispering into her ear.
Peggy and Roger and Dick slept on, while the others watched Susan, busy about fire and larder, as silent as she knew how.
Dorothea crept quietly to the middle window and stood there, trying not to see the lantern’s reflection in the glass, while she looked out at the earliest beginnings of the February dawn. White snow everywhere, even on the Arctic ice, and dim dark patches in the distance marking the leafless woods. Immediately below the windows she could see deep footprints and tracks in the snow. No snow had fallen since the rescue parties had arrived, and it was easy to see what a struggle they had had. Faintly, on either side of the frozen lake, she could see the white shapes of the hills. The North Pole? Well, nothing could be more wintry or lonelier than this.
And then she turned round and looked again at the homely, comfortable scene. There was the lantern hanging from the Pole, and the
bit of paper labelling the Pole for what it was. There were the sleeping explorers and Captain Flint and Mrs Blackett sleeping too. Titty was dozing again. Steam was drifting from the spout of the kettle. Nancy and Susan were debating in whispers, wanting to break up some more wood for the fire, but afraid of the noise it would make.
“We may as well now,” said Susan. “The kettle’s very nearly boiling as it is.”
“Right,” said Nancy. “Here goes.” There was a crash and a loud splintering noise, as, with hammer and chisel, she split another plank from the big packing-case. “It’s about time people did wake up anyhow.”
*
The sleepers woke with a start and looked about them.
“But how did mother get here?” said Peggy, rubbing her eyes.
“Hullo!” said Roger. “Breakfast?”
“Ruth, you dreadful girl,” said Mrs Blackett.
“Not Ruth,” said Nancy indignantly, but giving her mother a hug.
“Nancy, then, you good-for-nothing, galloping off like that when you ought to have been going to bed. And Peggy, too. And all these years I’ve been telling people what a lot of sense Susan had . . . And I dare say if I knew the truth it would turn out to be your Uncle Jim’s fault as much as anybody’s . . .”
“Oh, look here, Molly,” said Captain Flint. “I’ve been nothing but a beast of burden. And, anyhow, if everything had gone according to programme we should all have come up the lake today, had a feast here, and been carted back by road in the evening. What could have been more harmless than that?”
Winter Holiday Page 29
