The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom

by Margaret Mahy

  His moment of wicked glee, accompanied by a secret Number One smile, passed and Rancid went on plotting…

  I’ll have to choose exactly the right moment, though. If the Sapwoods do find The Riddle and I do manage to get my hands on Captain Cathcardo’s lost logbook, I’ll need to have the Sapwoods exploded. A good explosion will bury them deeply, and if anyone should record the explosion back at Scott Base they’ll think it’s just another avalanche. But once the Tambo brothers have brought off a successful explosion they are doomed.

  Thinking this, he glanced slyly sideways at the black gun in the luggage net beside him. Then he put down his champagne glass, leaned towards the window and focused his powerful binoculars once more. The red and blue specks swam into sight. He studied the blue one.

  “I’ll give them something to sing about!” he muttered resentfully. Here he was, the rich and wicked one, forced to share a tiny helicopter cabin with one of the Tambo brothers, while the other was probably tormenting the pilot. “I wish Crambo Tambo was down there, travelling with the Sapwoods. They wouldn’t be having a good time then.”

  And at the exact moment he was thinking this, the coastline below suddenly exploded.

  It was as if a bad-tempered volcano had erupted. Snow and ice burst up in a great glittering fountain. Rancid gasped. Vibrations from the blast struck the helicopter which rocked like a rough cradle in the clear Antarctic air. There were shouts and cries from the control cabin and the pilot’s voice was plainly heard yelling angrily in some unknown language.

  At last the pilot managed to get control of the helicopter. It steadied, and Rancid was able to clap binoculars to his eyes again. On the coast far below he saw white hills that had not been there ten seconds ago. There was no sign of a red skiddoo – no sign of a blue one either. As Rancid stared, stunned and shaken, the door to the helicopter cabin opened. The pilot’s voice, sounding even louder now, ran on and on, as both Whizzy and Rancid turned their two accusing gazes on Crambo who was peering in at them with a rare, guilty expression.

  “A bomb of mine!” he said. “It just slipped out of my hand. Whoops!”

  CHAPTER 22

  Smotheration by Snow

  “What happened?” screamed Corona. At least, she was trying to scream, but snow was rushing into her mouth and stifling her. Most of her strength was concentrated on spitting it out again. She wiggled her fingers as well as she could, groping for space, but of course her fingers were deep in her mitts and her outstretched arms were firmly held in the grip of a snowdrift.

  Only moments ago they had been frisking along the coast, singing and studying the white world around them very carefully, hoping to see some narrow little entrance that every other explorer had overlooked until now. They had all been feeling certain that they – the wonderful Corona-Wottley-Bonniface-Sapwood-and-family exploring team – were about to discover something that no one else had ever noticed before. The lost Riddle and its logbook might soon be theirs.

  But then the very air around them had roared savagely, as if it were tearing itself in two. Corona had been whisked right off the blue skiddoo and then… well, she wasn’t quite sure what had happened next.

  “Help!” she tried to shout and, like an echo in her mind, came the cry of her dream. “Help!” Same word! Different voice!

  “Breathe,” Corona commanded herself, struggling as snow pushed up her nose. With her nose full of snow she had to open her mouth, and of course snow immediately rushed in once more, tingling every tooth in her head and pushing every last little bit of air out of her. I can’t believe it, thought Corona incredulously. This is IT. I’m going to die!

  But then another mitt flapped against her mitt. Curling fingers inside that mitt locked with Corona’s fingers in her mitt. (How wonderful fingers are! thought Corona, clinging on desperately.) Someone was dragging… yanking… hauling… tugging. Inch by inch, Corona was being rescued.

  She came up out of the snow, with her snow goggles clamped crookedly across the bridge of her nose, rather than her eyes. The hood of her survival jacket hung down heavily behind her, like a huge Santa Claus bag, but filled with snow, not presents. It’s nearly Christmas, she thought in a curious dreamy way, wondering about the strange, whooping sound that was filling her ears. What was that noise? Where was it coming from? Then she realised that she was making the noise as she gasped for air… wonderful air. Gasping was all Corona had time to do.

  At last the desperation left her lungs and she was able to begin looking around her, and to ask herself just what had happened to them all. They had been zooming down a rather dangerous ridge, towards a beach covered in thick snow. Corona could remember that clearly. Now the centre of beach, which had been flat and empty, was rounded up into white hills and it was alive with penguins… hundreds of Adelie penguins, and even a few grand and serious Emperor penguins.

  Hotspur was in the middle of them, bouncing and bounding and calling out in what was probably a penguin language – but how could you truly tell about penguin language unless you were a penguin yourself? Corona certainly didn’t know. And there, beside her, was Sophie – Sophie who had dug with her mitts, then heaved and yanked and tugged, and finally pulled Corona out of the crushing snowdrift that had swallowed her. Sophie was digging yet again. Corona took another long, slow breath, stared up into the sky, and laughed with the relief of being able to do something as simple as breathing. Then she looked at the penguins again.

  They were hurrying to cluster around Sophie. They were trying to dig along with her – digging as well as they could with beaks and flippers. It wasn’t easy for them, but they did their best. And, as Corona stared, a mitt thrust up through the snow and waved around hopefully She leaped to her feet. What was she doing, laughing and breathing, when things were still so dangerous for her friends? She must use her newly-won breath to help them.

  Corona grabbed the wrist below the mitted hand, while Sophie felt for the fingers. Working together, they heaved and hoisted. A piece of Edward shot out of the snow. An important piece, too! His head. Now, it was Edward’s turn to gasp and whoop, though the rest of him was still entirely buried.

  “Where’s Bonniface? Where’s Bonniface?” screamed Corona. “Oh Bonniface! Where are you?”

  Edward blinked and whooped and wagged his head from side to side. It is horrifying to realise, just as you are being given the chance to breathe again, that your father might have vanished forever, and that someone you met only yesterday loves your father dearly. Edward stared at Corona, and Sophie would have stared at her too, except that she was far too busy searching the snow for signs of Bonniface – a twitching mukluk, perhaps, or a wiggling finger-tip sticking out of some newly-formed hill. Yet, even as she attempted so desperately to guess where her father might be, Sophie could feel the pendant responding to Corona’s cry of fear. It shivered against her skin as if it were just as frightened as Corona.

  Then she saw that the penguins had collected around a tumbled stretch of snow and were bowing and pointing with their beaks at a certain spot. Hotspur gave a penguin cry of rejoicing.

  “There! There!” cried Sophie, but Corona was already diving into the heart of the penguin circle. This time it was her mitts that plunged down into the snow. This time it was Corona who struggled and strained, who gasped and groaned, tugging gallantly at something no one else could see. Sophie flung her arms around Corona’s waist and pulled backwards as hard as she could. Edward’s head could do nothing, except shout desperately “Pull! Pull! Pull!”

  By now Corona was flattened down on the snow with Sophie bending over her. Corona’s arms were totally invisible, her head was turned to one side and she was struggling and straining with all her might. Then she lifted first her cheek and, a second later, her whole head. Slowly, slowly (helped by Sophie’s hauling) she inched upwards, raising her shoulders. Slowly, slowly she struggled back on to her knees, tugging furiously the whole time. But then Hotspur flung his arms round Sophie’s waist, dug in his heels and l
eaned backwards as hard as he could, and somehow, although he was only four years old, the power of his little extra weight made an important difference.

  Every little helps. Slowly slowly something was being hoisted into the Antarctic air. Not only that, when Hotspur began to pull, many penguins rushed forward to grab pieces of Corona’s survival jacket in their beaks. Leaning backwards they pulled with penguin power, so that, suddenly, almost like a baby being born, Bonniface burst out of that snow, grinning and goggling, but most of all gasping, as the Antarctic, which had been holding him so tightly, gave an icy sigh and surrendered him once more to the world of sky and sea.

  Hotspur cried out in penguin language, and all the penguins answered him in chorus. Hotspur danced, and the penguins around him danced as well. “Hooray!” shouted Edward. But Sophie, Corona and Bonniface had no breath for shouting and dancing. They slumped into a pile of soggy explorers, all whooping hard.

  Of course, everyone breathes all the time, and nobody thinks about it much, yet it seemed to Sophie that being free to breathe (and seeing her dear family clustered around her all breathing too) was like having the best possible Christmas arrive a day or two early She would never take breathing for granted again.

  “What happened?” asked Bonniface at last, speaking in a weak voice.

  “We must have skiddooed into some sort of nowhere place,” gasped Corona. “Everything disappeared. Oh, Bonniface!”

  “Oh, Corona!” gasped Bonniface. His eyes slid left, then right. “Where’s Edward?”

  “Where are the skiddoos?” Edward inquired. Sophie looked around and saw that, not too far away, a fresh pile of snow was shivering and jittering as if it were trying to stop something escaping. But Bonniface hadn’t noticed that jittering snow. He was too busy staring in horror at Edward.

  “My poor boy! He’s been beheaded!” he wailed.

  “No, no!” cried Corona, leaping to Edward’s side. “It’s just that we looked for you before digging him out properly.”

  “I could breathe,” Edward pointed out. “You couldn’t!”

  At which, helped by many penguins, they all went to work excavating Edward. First they loosened him and freed his arms, and then they levered him back to the surface again. The Sapwood family stood there, covered in ice crystals and glittering like people from another planet. They were all very cold and needed hard work to warm themselves up again.

  “Did we fall into a hole?” asked Corona. “The ground seemed to vanish under us.”

  “No! We flew up in the air,” declared Edward, brushing crystals of snow from his sleeves and shoulders.

  “Flew up in the air? No way! A lot of snow came out of nowhere and tumbled down on top of us,” declared Sophie. “Wasn’t there a great bang?”

  “Did we go up and then down, or down and then up?” asked Corona again. “Everything seemed to happen at the same time as everything else.”

  “The Antarctic is a mysterious place,” said Bonniface, trying to sound as if he were the only one who understood its mysteries. “A volcanic eruption, maybe!”

  “We flew up in the air,” repeated Edward obstinately “And while I was turning upside-down I saw the whole coast breaking into pieces.”

  “It just seemed like that,” said Bonniface, who didn’t want Edward knowing more than he knew. “We must have been caught in some strange Antarctic accident. They do happen,” he ended, in his best explorer’s voice.

  “But what about that black helicopter?” cried Sophie.

  Bonniface looked up into the sky and saw the black helicopter was still throbbing and spinning. “Don’t bother about stray helicopters,” he said impatiently. “What we need is our skiddoos. Begin digging!”

  At first they all tunnelled with their mitted hands, beginning at a place to which the penguins seemed to be pointing – a place where the snow was definitely shuddering, and almost at once they found the pointed state-of-the-art nose of Bonniface’s red skiddoo, coughing and complaining to itself. Then the penguins screeched and pointed them towards yet another throbbing drift.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly, shivering, shaking but working well together (and warming up as they worked) Corona and the Sapwoods excavated the red skiddoo, then searched eagerly under the blue tarpaulin on the back to find their spades. With spades to help them it did not take very long to dig out the blue skiddoo, although it was hidden rather deeper in the snow than the red one had been.

  “What did happen to us?” Sophie whispered to Edward. It really bothered her that no one seemed to be sure.

  “Well, I think that helicopter dropped a bomb on us,” said Edward.

  Bonniface overhead this. “Edward!” he exclaimed. “This is what happens to a boy who writes science fiction stories. Your ideas get twisted. Bomb indeed! That helicopter up there is a black one, which means it belongs to Swarthy Industries, and they’re on our side. Remember, they told the Scott Base authorities that we were to have every assistance, which is why we got that state-of-the-art red skiddoo. No more fantasy! Let’s pull ourselves together and get on with the next thing. After all, you and I – all of us together – are the heartbeat of a great adventure. A true one, too!”

  “Oh, Bonniface,” said Corona. “Just as I start to think you are an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy, you say something that makes everything come alive again. You’re right! We are the heartbeat of a great adventure. Let’s start singing.”

  “Right!” said Bonniface. “But before the singing begins there’s one thing I want to say” He looked at his children proudly. “You kids have been wonderful,” he said. “So brave… so capable… it makes me think every explorer should bring his children with him when he sets out on a voyage of discovery I am proud of you – all three of you!” he declared, patting Hotspur’s little hood.

  “And we’re proud of you, Dad,” said Edward quickly. “And if I ever write a good book about an adventure like this, I’ll make the hero almost exactly like you.”

  “Almost?” exclaimed Bonniface, his proud smile vanishing.

  “Well, maybe a bit shorter!” said Edward quickly, and Bonniface relaxed, beaming with pleasure once more.

  “It takes more than a there earthquake or volcanic eruption or a possible bomb to discourage Sapwoods and Wottleys,” he declared boldly. “Off we go again!”

  And so off they went, shooting along the beach, looking sideways at the huge blocks of ice tossed up by storms and winds, then gazing out beyond the ice to the sea, always smiling its wide, cold, blue smile at them. Meanwhile, on their other side, yet another cliff began to rise, and once again those frozen faces full of icicle teeth began to snarl at them. In spite of possible eruptions and explosions, the Sapwood-Wottley exploring expedition was not defeated. It was on its way.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Captain Waits

  The blue line is plaited into the red line, thought the Captain’s ghost, locked in the ice-shroud of The Riddle. They got into some sort of tangle back there, but they are now they are on the move again. The black skull is still following them. Is that good? Is that bad? Should I try to warn them? Of course, I do want someone to bring me the pendant and set me free. But I don’t want other people to be trapped in the way I am trapped. Why, I can’t even walk down my own gangplank. But even if I did manage to warn them I’m not sure they would take any notice of me. My cries for help may have started them off, but every one of them is coming because they really want to. Whoever they are, they’ll be ready to take on their own dangers.

  CHAPTER 24

  Sophie Believes the Pendant

  High, high in the sky above the Sapwoods and Corona Wottley there came the faint beat of a black helicopter, sounding, if you listened to it carefully, like the throb of a wicked heart. But the adult explorers of the Sapwood-Corona Wottley expedition were much too busy steering their skiddoos and showing the Antarctic they were not going to let it shrug them off to notice the sound. Edward and Sophie, however, looked at it suspiciously – Edward because he was
still wondering if they had been bombed, and Sophie because the beat of that distant engine was making the pendant shiver against her skin.

  Up they went, then down. Out around a wide headland, then in once more… on and on and on. They climbed up yet another treacherous slope and found themselves tilting steeply downwards towards yet another shoreline, obviously covered in deep snow.

  “Watch out!” called Edward a little anxiously. But Bonniface was an experience skiddooman. The red skiddoo shot down faster – faster!

  “Show off!” shouted Corona, speeding up so that the blue skiddoo went just as fast as the red one, its trailer bouncing about behind it. Edward, Sophie and Hotspur shouted with excitement. Ferocious mouths, full of icicle teeth, snarled at them as they went by.

  They shot out grandly on to that long beach which looked so pure and simple, so perfect and untouched that Sophie felt suddenly sorry that they were going to change it all by shooting across it and ploughing it up with the tracks of two skiddoos and their trailers. But; while she was still thinking this, something happened that made her forget the snow, the song and the skiddoos – made her forget everything but the pendant tucked secretly against her skin.

  For the pendant began a struggling dance. Even her thermal underwear, her shirts, jerseys and jackets could not stop it from dancing. She could feel it move first right, then left… could feel it twist itself around, then untwist. Sophie felt its dance writing a message, in letters of an unknown alphabet, upon her skin. In one way it tickled, in another it almost hurt, and in yet a third way it filled her with strange happiness for the Antarctic itself seemed to be part of the dance, even though she could see it stretching up, down and out, still and salent, all around her. But mostly the pendant seemed to be trying to tell her something that she needed to be told before it was too late.