Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome
“Or duller?” said Nancy. “What’s happened is a million times better. Why, just think, mother, if it had been like that, you would never have come to the North Pole at all. Anyhow, not charging through the middle of the night. And you wouldn’t have missed that for anything!”
“Wouldn’t I?” said Mrs Blackett.
“How on earth did you two come to get here yesterday?” said Captain Flint to Dorothea.
Nancy started explaining at once, and poor Dick pulled out his notebook yet again and showed how the signal had been written down there, and told how he had hurried to be off, thinking that the rest of the expedition were far ahead.
“And what about the blizzard?”
“Between you all, you’ve given a good many people a lively time,” said Captain Flint when the explorers paused for breath in their efforts to describe exactly what had happened. “There were the Dixons up half the night, and I’d stirred up the police. And then, just when I had everybody on the go, looking for the D.’s, there was Mrs Jackson like an old hen who’d lost her chickens to say that all her lot had gone out and never come back . . .”
“And a note from Nancy saying she was at the North Pole!” said Mrs Blackett. “North Pole, indeed! I didn’t know where she was until I’d got over to Holly Howe with Sammy and met your uncle and found Peggy and the others lost too. We’d have been here before, but, of course, he had to race round to stop the search parties . . .”
“Search parties?” said Nancy. “Not real ones?”
“Yes,” said Captain Flint, “though you wouldn’t think it. People who were ready to go looking for a pack of worthless children instead of getting their night’s rest.”
“And you stopped them all,” said Nancy regretfully.
Dorothea’s eyes sparkled. It was dreadful, of course, but splendid. She saw group after group of searchers going out into the night with their lanterns. She saw the lost ones struggling through the trackless snow. Days passed. And still the search went on. Digging . . . A sheepskin . . . An old knapsack . . . And then, oh grief! the young explorers frozen where they had fallen and buried deep in snow . . . What a story she would be able to write as soon as she had time. And then she looked at Dick pushing his notebook back into his pocket. She came back to reality. Everybody had got to the North Pole after all, and nobody was lost. What was that Mrs Blackett was saying about going back to school?
“Do you take sugar with tea?” said Susan to Mrs Blackett, in so ordinary a tone that Mrs Blackett said, “Please. Two lumps, if I may,” more as if she were paying a call than as if she were having breakfast at the North Pole.
Captain Flint laughed aloud.
“Polar hospitality,” he said. “Thank you, Susan. Three lumps for me, as usual.”
“But it’s you we ought to thank,” said Dorothea, suddenly remembering. “Dick and I lost all our food in the snowstorm, and we’d have had nothing to eat if you hadn’t put all these stores here.”
“That’s all right,” said Captain Flint. “Nancy’s idea, the whole thing.”
“If only she hadn’t been quite so secret about it,” said her mother.
“But she had to be secret,” said Peggy. “She simply had to be. Shiver my timbers! if we’d all known all about it, it would have been no fun at all.”
“What?” said Nancy, very much surprised. “Who taught you to shiver timbers?”
“Just while you were away,” said Peggy; and Nancy, startled for a moment at hearing Peggy talk in the Nancy manner, remembered that for all these weeks her mate had been the only Amazon in active life.
“That’s all right,” she said. “Did you use my other words?”
“Some of them,” said Peggy.
“Jib-booms and bobstays?”
“Yes.”
“Barbecued billygoats?”
“Yes.”
“She even called people galoots,” said Roger.
“Well,” said Nancy, “I bet it all helped.”
“Judging from results,” said Captain Flint, “I think it did. Look here, Susan, you’d better let me deal with that chicken.”
1 Dick’s had gone out while they were having their supper. Probably some of its oil had escaped when their sledge had turned over in the snow.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have often been asked how I came to write Swallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above it, finding friends in the farmers and shepherds and charcoal-burners whose smoke rose from the coppice woods along the shore. We adored the place. Coming to it, we used to run down to the lake, dip our hands in and wish, as if we had just seen the new moon. Going away from it, we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind’s eye, could see the beloved skyline of great hills beneath it. Swallows and Amazons grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.
A.R.
Haverthwaite
May 19th, 1958
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and went to school at Rugby. He was in Russia in 1917, and witnessed the Revolution, which he reported for the Manchester Guardian. After escaping to Scandinavia, he settled in the Lake District with his Russian wife where, in 1929, he wrote Swallows and Amazons. And so began a writing career which has produced some of the real children’s treasures of all time. In 1936 he won the first ever Carnegie Medal for his book, Pigeon Post.
Also by Arthur Ransome
Swallows and Amazons
Swallowdale
Peter Duck
Coot Club
Pigeon Post
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
Secret Water
The Big Six
Missee Lee
The Picts and the Martyrs
Great Northern?
THE ARTHUR RANSOME SOCIETY
The Arthur Ransome Society (“TARS”) was formed in 1990 with the aim of celebrating Ransome’s life and works, and of encouraging both children and adults to take part in outdoor pursuits – especially sailing and camping. It also seeks to sponsor research, to spread Ransome’s ideas in the wider community and to bring together all those who share the values and the spirit that he fostered in his storytelling.
The Society is based at the Abbot Hall Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry in Kendal, where Ransome’s desk, favourite books and some of his personal possessions are kept. There are also close links with the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, where the original Amazon is now kept. The Society keeps in touch with its members through its journal, Mixed Moss, and its newsletter, Signals.
Regional branches of the Society have been formed by members in various parts of the country, including Scotland, the Lake District and North, East Anglia, the Midlands, the South and South West Coast, and contacts are maintained with overseas groups in America, Australia and Japan. Membership fees are modest, and fall into four groups – for those under 18, for single adults and for whole families, and for those over 65. If you are interested in knowing more about the Society, or would like to join it, please write for a membership leaflet to The Secretary, The Arthur Ransome Society, The Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL, or email to [email protected].
THE ARTHUR RANSOME TRUST
“I seem to have lived not one life, but snatches from a dozen different lives.”
Arthur Ransome wrote twelve adventures about the Swallows and Amazons and their friends. He also wrote many other books and articles. He had a lot to write about, because in “real” life he was not only an author, but also a sailor, journalist, critic, story teller, illustrator, fisherman, editor, bohemian, and war reporter, who played chess with Lenin, married Trotsky’s secretary, helped Estonia gai
The Arthur Ransome Trust (ART) is a charity (no: 1136565) dedicated to helping everybody discover more about Arthur Ransome’s fascinating life and writings. Our main goal is to develop an “Arthur Ransome Centre” in the Lake District. If you want to know more about Arthur Ransome, or about ART’s projects, or think you would like to help us to put Ransome on the map, you can visit us at:
www.arthur-ransome-trust.org.uk
[email protected]
WINTER HOLIDAY
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 48310 7
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This ebook edition published 2011
Copyright © Arthur Ransome 1933
First published by Jonathan Cape 1933
The right of Arthur Ransome to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Arthur Ransome, Winter Holiday