Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome
She stood there, well wrapped up and thoroughly warm, watching the distant Eskimos skating on the part of the lake that could be seen from Houseboat Bay. She made up stories about them. There were two big ones and a little one who, if only they had known it, had gone through a lot of adventures before they disappeared. And every one of those distant black figures skimming about over the ice would be going home at night, poor things, while she and Dick . . . She let her mind run on. And then, when the afternoon was already closing in, and the red sun dropping low above the western hills, she saw, far away by the end of Long Island, an Eskimo towing a sledge.
Not many of the Eskimos took sledges on the ice, and Dorothea watched him with interest from the first. Just for a moment she had thought he must be an explorer from some rival expedition. But he was too big, and his sledge was too small. He seemed to have come round the end of Long Island, and was skating fast towards Houseboat Bay. As he came nearer, she saw that he was a large fat man in grey clothes. He was towing something on that little sledge of his. A big suitcase with a round parcel tied to the handle. The sight of this large fat man, towing his little sledge, reminded Dorothea of a book she had read about Holland, with pictures of people doing their winter shopping, all with little sledges at their heels to carry their parcels. Yes, he must be a Dutchman, and his suitcase must be full of tulip bulbs. He was coming into Houseboat Bay, straight for the Fram. Probably, she thought, he must be aiming for the cart track up through the wood. But he was too good to be wasted and not made into a story.
“The tall Dutchman . . . (of course, he ought not to be tall, only broad, but it can’t be helped) . . . the tall Dutchman bowed low. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘Your taste in tulips has become proverbial in my country . . . (I really do like them) . . . and I have come from . . . from . . . Amsterdam . . . to offer you a small collection . . .’” Skates and Tulips would be the title . . . By Dorothea Callum.
But he was coming nearer and nearer. Was he going to say something in real life? Dorothea half turned and thought of going into the cabin. But there was not time.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” said the tall Dutchman.
CHAPTER XX
CAPTAIN NANCY GETS TWO BITS OF NEWS
CAPTAIN NANCY was waiting for the doctor. The worst of getting better was that the doctor came so seldom. And she knew very well that she was going to need him most just when he would stop coming altogether. Three days had passed since she had given him that picture. Perhaps already the Fram at night was a floating dormitory, full of explorers, gaily talking from bunk to bunk long after all the Eskimo world was snoring in its stuffy houses. They had only to send the world “All” to her, and she would understand. But no word had come. Perhaps those galoots had failed to read her picture. Or perhaps, they had read it and not seen what a chance was theirs. Susan, she knew, was always a little inclined to take a native view. But surely Peggy could do something with them. If only she had been there herself. All morning, walking solemnly in the garden, she had hardly liked to stir out of sight of the front door. If the doctor brought her a message from the other side of the lake she wanted to be there to take it from him and to see if she could not rope him in and turn him into an ally. Time was going on. Half a dozen things needed doing if the Pole was to be all that she had planned. She was at her wit’s end about how to get them done. If Captain Flint had been at home it would have been easy, but with him away she would have to do the best she could with the doctor, and all morning, walking in the garden, she listened eagerly for the sound of his horn at the corners along the road.
The morning passed, and he never came. It was afternoon, and she was back in bed for the day, when she heard him drive up to the door. The bell rang, and a moment later she heard his steps on the stairs. The door opened. There he was, and talking not at all as if he knew she had been waiting for him.
“Well, young woman,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be seeing you for another two days, but I met the Holly Howe lot in the road, and Peggy made me promise to leave a picture for you. They’re poor artists on that side of the lake. Their picture’s not a patch on yours. No action. Where is it? I can’t have lost the thing.”
Nancy sat up furiously, but forced herself to be calm. To make a fuss would give too much away. But it was hard to sit there and keep a polite smile on her face while the doctor dug about, first in one of his pockets and then in another, until, at last, he found the bit of paper he was looking for, slipped into a page of his prescription book.
“I think they might have done better than that,” he said, as he handed it over.
One glance at it told Nancy what she wanted to know. A boy and a girl, each with the right arm lifted straight above the head, each signalling the letter D.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s half bad,” said Nancy, looking at it as critically as she could. “Of course, it’s a pity they haven’t put in a few more.”
PEGGY’S ANSWER
“Lazy,” said the doctor. “That’s what they are, and I told them so, sending you nothing but that after the lively affair you drew for them.”
“What did they say?” asked Nancy.
“Oh, they said they’d do something different for me, if I wanted a picture to hang up.”
Nancy did not laugh, though she very well might have done as she thought of the others being scolded by the doctor for sending her a dull picture. She was just thinking how best to introduce the subject of those odd jobs she wanted done about the Pole, when the doctor, with his hand on the door knob, showed that he had not been quite as blind as she had thought him.
“Well, goodbye,” he said. “I’m only a messenger today. I haven’t come to see you put out your tongue or anything like that. But it looks to me as if in another week you’ll be back with your smugglers or pirates or whatever you all are, and I shan’t have any more of these pictures and mathematical formulæ to carry about. More in them than meets the eye, to my mind. I’ll be glad to be quit of you before you get me into trouble.”
Nancy’s jaw dropped. No, she thought, this was not the moment to talk to him about the transport of hampers and coalsacks and getting the people who owned the North Pole to let the expedition have the use of it. Perhaps later in the week he would be in an easier mood. She let him go, and, when the door had safely closed behind him, she looked again at Peggy’s picture, and gave herself up to gloating.
The answer to her question was the very last she had expected. Of course, it was a pity that the whole lot of them were not there, but that might have stirred up the Eskimos too much, and sent rumours flying all over the place. She would not have been surprised to hear that the four younger ones were sleeping in their beds, and that John, Peggy, and Susan were in the houseboat. But those two town children from Dixon’s Farm, sleeping in the houseboat by themselves. Good for the D.’s. She had not thought they had it in them. Well done, Dick and Dorothea! Sleeping out there in the ice. Wouldn’t she like to be with them! Well done! To have explorers actually sleeping in the Fram was the best thing that had happened yet. Yes, after all, difficult as it was going to be about the Pole, it was a jolly good thing that Captain Flint was abroad for the winter.
*
The doctor had been gone an hour when Nancy, sitting up in bed, still chuckling now and then at Peggy’s picture, heard another car drive up. It was not the doctor’s. She knew that by the note of its horn as it turned in at the gate. There was a colossal peal at the bell, but whoever it was who rang it did not wait for the door to be opened, but charged straight in. She heard luggage thumping down in the hall. She heard a voice, she was almost sure, calling for “Molly”. She heard the thrum of the engine (that had been kept running because of the cold) deepen as the driver put it into gear and drove away again. She listened. People were moving about down below. There was laughter. And then, only a very little later, the front door opened and closed once more. She heard her mother running up the stairs.
Mrs Blackett came cheerfully into the room.
“Well,” she said, “and who do you think that was?”
“Not Uncle Jim?” said Nancy, hardly able to keep her thoughts out of her voice.
“Yes,” said Mrs Blackett. “Just like him. Never a word to say he was coming. He knew nothing whatever about your mumps. I’d written to him, but he never got the letter. He thought you were both back at school.”
“Where is he?” said Nancy. “I must see him at once. I must see him before he sees any of the others.”
“He’s gone. You’ll see him in the morning. He’ll come and shout at you across the garden. No point in his spreading the mumps round just when you’re nearly through it and the others look like escaping altogether.”
“But isn’t he going to stay here?”
“He’s sleeping in the houseboat. He’ll be all right there, he says, with that stove of his. He’s gone off in a hurry to get everything warmed up before night.”
“Golly!” said Nancy. “Giminy! . . . Golly . . . Golly . . . Oh . . . Oh well, it’s too late to do anything now.” She broke off suddenly into fits of horrified laughter.
“But what’s the matter?” said Mrs Blackett.
“Nothing really,” said Nancy.
“Are you quite, sure?” said Mrs Blackett. “You know, I told the doctor this afternoon I thought something must be wrong with you because you’re being so good. You know, for you, you really are. All these weeks Ruth has been the right name for you, and not Nancy.”
“Nothing’s the matter with me,” said Nancy.
“Would you like to play a quiet game of dominoes before tea?” said Mrs Blackett.
They played, and went on playing all evening; but, for once, Nancy, who could usually beat her mother easily, lost game after game.
CHAPTER XXI
CAPTAIN FLINT COMES HOME
“WELL, I’m jiggered!” said the tall Dutchman.
Dorothea was almost startled to hear him talk English, not Dutch.
He pulled up. His sledge slithered round, and Dorothea saw that the big suitcase had a new, bright label on it, in red, blue, and white, “PASSENGERS LUGGAGE WANTED ON THE VOYAGE.” That parcel she had seen, swinging from the handle of the suitcase, looked as if it might be a loaf of bread. The tall Dutchman steadied his sledge, sat down on his suitcase, and began taking off his skates.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” he said again. “And, may I ask, who are you?”
“Dorothea Callum,” said Dorothea.
“Never heard of her,” said the tall Dutchman. “But she seems to be very much at home. Don’t you find it rather cold standing about on the deck of a boat when it’s freezing as hard as this?”
“Oh no,” said Dorothea. “You see, when it begins to feel cold, I go in and get warm by the stove; and then, when it begins to feel too warm inside, why, I just come out again.”
“What?” said the tall Dutchman, who was becoming less like a Dutchman every minute. “You’ve got into the cabin? You’ve lit the stove? I might have noticed that somebody’s rigged the chimney. You’ve got it lit now. And do you mean to say nobody’s come to turn you off? I don’t know what things are coming to. Why, everybody in the district knows . . . Any more of you aboard?”
“Only Dick,” said Dorothea.
“And who’s Dick?” The tall Dutchman reached up and laid his skates on the deck. He hove up the suitcase and dumped it beside them.
“I don’t think we ought to let you come into the houseboat,” said Dorothea doubtfully, “not without asking the others.”
“Well, I like that!”
He stood on the ice, just ready to climb up, and looked at Dorothea in great astonishment. He was not angry. Nobody ever was angry with Dorothea. But he was very much surprised.
“Who’s Dick?” he asked again, “and what others? Not allowed to come aboard! Well, I do like that!”
“Dick’s my brother,” said Dorothea. “He’s busy working in the cabin.”
“And the others?”
“Well, the boat doesn’t belong to them really,” Dorothea explained, “but it belongs to their uncle, and they’re taking care of it for him . . . Her, I mean . . . Her for him.”
“I might have guessed it,” he laughed. “I suppose I’ve Peggy to thank for this . . . Unless Nancy, mumps and all . . .”
He climbed up on deck.
Dorothea put out her hand with a smile. “Perhaps you are their uncle,” she said. “Of course, that explains everything.”
He shook hands with her. “I’m glad it does,” he said. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll just take this down below.”
“TALL DUTCHMAN”
“Perhaps I’d better tell Dick,” said Dorothea.
“I’ll tell him,” said Captain Flint. “Hullo, what’s this?”
He had just noticed the big label on the key which was in the lock of the cabin door. “So that’s what had happened to the spare key. I wondered why I could find only one. But who on earth is F-R-A-M?”
“Fram,” said Dorothea. “The Fram.”
Captain Flint looked round over the Arctic scene, the ice; the snow-covered hills. “Captain Nancy thought of that, or I’m a Dutchman,” he said. “Just like her. Well, may I go into my own cabin?”
“We’d have got it a bit tidier if we’d known you were coming,” said Dorothea. She did not tell him what sort of a Dutchman he had already been.
It would certainly not have been difficult to make the cabin a little tidier than it was. There were bundles of hazel sticks, remains of a rather unsuccessful experiment in making snowshoes. Then there was a pile of rabbit skins, where a sack of them had been emptied on the floor so that people could pick and choose skins that matched when they were making their fur hats. There were some unfinished mittens. Sheepskins were lying all over the place, and a huge pile of them could be seen through the door into the fo’c’sle. In one corner there was a great pyramid of empty tins. Properly speaking, empty tins should have been thrown overboard, but no one had liked the idea of letting them lie about on the Polar ice. Susan’s plan had been to make all the explorers put their waste scraps of fur and other rubbish into the tins and then, on the last day of the pumpkin holiday, to take them ashore and bury them, or, if the ground was still hard, to make a hole in the ice and post them, tin by tin, to the bottom of the Arctic sea. But everybody was always kicking over everybody else’s rubbish tin, and in the end the tins had just been piled in a corner, a monument of good food gone the right way. All these signs of the Polar exploration going on at the moment – skins, furs, and empty tins – looked strange under the trophies of very different travels that were hung so neatly on the cabin walls; things from Africa, the Malays, and South America. Most of the cabin table was covered with sewing things and scraps of fur, but the far end of it, by the stove, had been cleared, and here, his spectacles only a few inches from his book, the astronomer was hard at work.
Captain Flint stared at him for a minute or two but did not say a word.
Dick felt the cold draught from the open door, but did not look up.
“Dot,” he said. “I’ve got it right now, I think. About the constellations anyway. Beginning with Orion and the Twins. I’m making a tracing from this map. But I can’t make out about the planets. I’ll just mark that one I thought I saw, and find out afterwards which it is. Anyway, tonight, there’ll be time to have a decent look at them.”
“What’s this?” said Captain Flint. “Astronomy?”
“Dick,” said Dorothea. “It’s their uncle. He’s come home, and brought his luggage.”
Dick looked up with eyes that at first hardly saw. His head was full of his book and the map he was making. Pictures of the constellations swam between him and everything else. He stared at this big clumsy man who, after one gasp at the mess in his cabin, was just standing in the cabin doorway. Suddenly his eyes awoke, as if he had only then for the first time properly seen that anyone was there.
“I say,” he said eagerly. “They said you knew
He moved the book to the side of the table and swept a sheepskin out of a chair so that there should be room for Captain Flint to sit down.
“He’s always like that when he’s thinking about something,” said Dorothea quickly. “It isn’t at all that he means to be rude.”
Dick looked at her, but not as if he had heard what she was saying. “It’s just this bit,” he went on. “If only they’d leave the poetry out it would be so much better. What does he mean just here? I’m awfully glad you’ve come,” he added. “I’d just about given up hope of understanding that particular bit.”
“Well,” said Captain Flint, who had politely made room for Dorothea to go into the cabin before him, and now closed the door after her, dumping his suitcase on the floor. “I’ve had a good many queer home-comings, one way and another, but this is the queerest of the lot. I usually do know more or less what to expect. But first of all Nancy with mumps, and being driven out of Beckfoot and told to keep away, and then to come here and find . . . well, well! You’ve got it nice and snug in here, anyhow. Now, what about those stars?” He flung his hat on the top of a pile of sheepskins and went round to the end of the table, where Dick and the book were waiting for him.
In a few moments Dick and he were deep in discussion, and Dorothea was forgotten by both of them.
She found a place for herself, propped her elbows among the skins on the table, and settled down to have a good look at him. It was just as well that she had not got very far with Frost and Snow. She would have to begin that story again from the very beginning, and do it differently, so as to be able to work him in. What a good thing it was, too, that he seemed to know all about Dick without having to be told. Not like some people, who never seemed able to understand that Dick was always sure that for them, as for himself, stars, or stones, or birds, or chemical experiments, or whatever at the moment it might be, were more important than anything else in the world. It might have been most awkward if Captain Flint had been like Mr Jenkyns, for example, that day when Dick had succeeded in making sulphuretted hydrogen, and unluckily stumbled by the door and sent his whole apparatus flying into the, spare bedroom where Mr Jenkyns was to sleep. Why, about those stars, Captain Flint seemed to be just as bad as Dick. Dorothea watched him and wondered. Had anybody known he was coming home? Perhaps Nancy was his favourite niece, and he had come flying home when he heard of her illness. But no. He had not spoken of Nancy’s mumps at all in the way a devoted uncle would speak of the illness of a favourite niece.