“It’s no good going too fast,” said Dick. “We’ve got a tremendous way to go. We must just go ahead at the pace we know we can keep up for ever. We’ll catch them in the end. They can’t go quicker than Roger.”
“Are we going to use the sail?”
“Not without some more wind,” said Dick, looking over his shoulder at the clouds in the south. “It’s the right wind, but there isn’t enough of it. It’s no better than it was that day it wouldn’t move the Beckfoot sledge at all.”
“I wish it would blow a bit,” said Dorothea. This was not because she looked forward to sailing for its own sake, but because, supposing the others were really well on their way, she was seeing a picture of their arrival in the distant north. There would be the Swallows and Peggy, sailing over the ice on the big Beckfoot sledge, with the flag fluttering at the masthead; and there, a bit late, but coming fast in pursuit of them, would be a little sledge, with its sail made out of an old sheet, it, too, flying its flag. She did want them to see what Dick could do. “What was that, far away over the ice?” That was what they would say. “A sail. A sledge. The D.’s have done it after all.” And then the little sledge would stop beside the big one and there would be stamping of cold feet on the ice, and shaking of mittened hands, and they would do the last march to the Pole together. It would be a dreadful pity if the others had got too big a start.
The Fram, lying there in the ice, looked deserted when they passed by outside Houseboat Bay. Usually there was at least one sledge lying beside her, and one or two of the explorers would be stamping up and down on the after-deck. Today not a soul was to be seen. There were no sledges. No smoke was climbing from the chimney on the cabin roof, and the ladder was not hanging in its usual place.
“Captain Flint’s gone too,” said Dorothea. “He’s shut up the Fram for the day.”
“He and Nancy’ll be going together,” said Dick, “if the doctor’s let her out.”
In a few minutes they had passed the northern point of the bay, and could see the houseboat no more. They never saw a thick cloud of smoke roll up from the chimney as Susan put fresh coal in the stove which had burned nearly out while Captain Flint had been thinking of other things. They did not know that Captain Flint had, only half an hour earlier, shifted the ladder to the side of the houseboat nearer the shore, so that it should be less inviting to inquisitive seals on the lake. They could not guess that the two sledges had been lying on the ice beside the ladder, hidden from them by the body of the Fram.
They skated on, past Darien, with the dark pines on its rocky cliff, and swung eagerly round it into the Holly Howe Bay, more than half hoping that, after all, the Beckfoot sledge and five explorers would be waiting for them. The bay was empty except for two seals in the middle of it, who were cutting figures on the ice as if nothing else mattered in the world.
“They’ve gone right on,” said Dick.
“Let’s make quite sure,” said Dorothea. “They may be still up at the farm. And even if they’ve gone, they may have left a message.”
“All right,” said Dick. “You bring the sledge slowly in, and I’ll hare on and run up the field and find out.”
He was off, like the wind, so fast that even the figure-skaters turned to watch him, though he never knew it. As hard as he could he skated in to the Holly Howe jetty, got ashore there through the reeds, took his skates off, and ran up the field. It was no good trying to guess from the tracks what the others had been doing, for there were far too many tracks. Very much out of breath he dashed into the farm and opened the kitchen door.
“Nay, you’re late for them,” said Mrs Jackson. “They were off in a rare hurry today. They went up the field after breakfast and came down talking of Miss Nancy signalling from Beckfoot. She’s got a flag up there, they said. They just packed their things and were off in such a hurry as never was.”
“I thought so,” panted Dick. “Thank you very much,” and he was out of the farm and racing down the field again.
“Mrs Jackson says they started off as soon as they saw the signal,” he panted. “Come on, Dot. It doesn’t matter. Peggy said we couldn’t miss it. And anyway they’ll be hoisting a flag as soon as they get there, and we’ll see that.”
“They can’t be so very far ahead,” said Dorothea, “if you saw Titty and Roger.”
They were off again – left, right, left, right – out of the Holly Howe bay, between Long Island and the mainland, past the boatbuilding sheds, and then across by the steamer buoy and the Hen and Chicken rocks.
Rio Bay was this morning more crowded than ever. It was as if everybody was afraid the weather was going to break, and was taking a last chance on the ice. Half a dozen gramophones were playing at once, and playing different tunes. The D.’s had to slow up for fear of colliding with seals. Two or three times they thought they caught sight of the fur hats of the explorers, and each time something got instantly in the way: a group of hockey-players, or some accidental thickening of the crowd, just where they wanted to be able to see through it.
“Never mind,” said Dick. “We know where to go. And we’ll be able to see them when we get out of all this.”
A man had fixed a sort of coffee-stall on the top of a sledge, and was pushing it about from group to group among the skaters. Dick and Dorothea passed near enough to him to see that he was selling cups of hot coffee and small, steaming pies.
“What about getting some?” said Dick.
“Not coffee,” said Dorothea.
“No,” said Dick. “It takes too long to drink when it’s really hot. And we’d have to wait to give the cups back. But what about those pies? We’d better save our provisions as long as we can.”
“I’ll get two,” said Dorothea. “You take my rope.”
After all, it might be a long time before they could stop to have dinner. And they could eat the hot pies without stopping at all. She had a purse in the pocket of her coat with a sixpence in it and a few coppers. She skated off towards the coffee-sledge. “Hot meat pies – twopence each,” the man was calling out. She bought two.
“It’s the right day, miss, for hot pies,” said the man.
“What do you sell on a hot day?” asked Dorothea.
“Ice-creams,” said the man.
“Opposites,” said Dorothea.
“That’s right,” said the man, “and lemonade instead of coffee. You’ll find my stall in summer by the steamer pier.”
Dick had kept moving with the sledge, but Dorothea easily caught him up and took her rope again. They skated on, eating the hot pies.
“Jolly good,” said Dick.
“Yes,” said Dorothea. She was remembering how Titty, looking at all the busy crowd of skaters, had said, “We can count them seals.” Well, you couldn’t buy hot meat pies from a seal, and Dorothea liked thinking of the skaters as human beings, crowds and crowds of them, all busy with their own affairs and not suspecting in the least that she and Dick were part of a North Polar expedition, that their sledge was piled with bearskins, and that they had a lantern, an Alpine rope, and a meat-roll and everything else that was necessary. She wondered what they had thought of the main expedition with the five dogs and the big Beckfoot sledge. Almost, indeed, she had thought of asking the man with the coffee sledge if he had seen them go by, but, if the others were counting him a seal, perhaps it would hardly be right to ask him that kind of question.
They were working their way out of the crowds now, and were close to the little island where they had made a secret cache to mark their “farthest north.”
“They’ll have left a message in it,” said Dorothea, guessing that Dick, too, was thinking of the paper in the ginger-beer bottle as the island came nearer and nearer.
“It won’t take a minute to look,” said Dick, “and anyway, we ought to put down that we’ve passed it.”
There was a moment’s stoppage. They left the sledge on the ice, and, not very easily, because of their skates, they struggled over heather, snow, and r
ocks to the little pile of stones in which the bottle was hidden. Dick opened the cairn, and pulled it out.
“Lucky the cork’s loose,” he said, and a moment later was working the paper through the narrow neck. It was a disappointment. “They’ve forgotten about it,” he said. “They must have gone off in a terrific hurry.”
“Perhaps there were a lot of Eskimos about, and they didn’t want to show them the cache and have them poking into it after they had gone,” said Dorothea.
She looked at the paper. Nothing new had been written on it. It was just as they had left it. “Reached this point of northern latitude, 28th January. S., A., and D. North Polar Expedition.”
“What shall we write?” she asked.
“Passed Cache Island going north, 10th February,” said Dick.
“No message?” said Dorothea regretfully, “in case we never come back.”
Dick stared at her. Odd things did come into Dot’s head.
“Why,” he said, “it’s just to show other explorers.”
Dorothea pencilled down the short, simple statement of fact, and they each signed it with a D. Dick rolled up the paper, pushed it into the ginger-beer bottle, corked the bottle, and hid it once more in its place among the stones.
“We’ll make them look at it on the way home,” said Dorothea.
“Let’s get going again,” said Dick. “We’ve lost another minute or two.”
They scrambled back to the ice, harnessed themselves to the sledge, and were off again – left, right, left, right – as before.
Once clear of the islands, the whole of the frozen Arctic lay before them. There were fewer skaters here, but still too many to let them feel the proper Arctic loneliness. Perhaps, after all, thought Dorothea, Titty was right to count them seals. But where were Titty and the others? The great hills towered above the head of the lake, their rolling sides gleaming bright with blue shadows in the ravines where the sunlight could not reach the snow. Dick and Dorothea stared into the distance, searching this way and that from side to side of the lake and far ahead of them under the hills. They were looking for a sledge with five dogs, or perhaps a sailing sledge with a mast and a yellow flag like their own at the masthead, or perhaps even two sledges together. But, no matter how hard they searched, on all that great sheet of ice no sign of the main body of the expedition was to be seen.
On the Beckfoot promontory away on the farther side of the lake Nancy’s red signal was still flapping.
“If only we hadn’t been late this morning,” said Dick, “and I’d seen it in proper time. They’re probably at the head of the lake by now.”
“They’re bound to get there first, anyhow,” said Dorothea, “with Peggy knowing just where it is. I do wonder whether Nancy’s coming too. She and Captain Flint may be at the Pole already. But it doesn’t really matter, so long as we get there before they start back.”
“There’s more wind now,” said Dick. “What about sailing?”
But Dorothea was not very willing to stop. So long as they kept on skating, no time was being lost, but if they stopped to put up the sail, they might only have to take it down again. She would have liked Dick to come sailing after the others if the others were to be there to see. Now, with the others so far ahead, the main thing was to get on as quickly as possible. But there could be no doubt about it, there was a little more wind than there had been for the last few days.
“I’m sure there’s enough wind,” said Dick, after they had skated steadily on for some time, and had left Beckfoot far behind them, and were already on the part of the ice that they had seen only from High Greenland. “Just look behind us, Dot. There’s more wind coming. I’m sure John would say wind was coming. Just look at that cloud.”
Dorothea looked over her shoulder.
Anybody could see that something was going to happen. A thick grey cloud hung over the tops of the hills, and from side to side between them at the southern end of the lake. It was like looking at a different world, to glance back from the sunlit, shining slopes of the snow mountains, to that soft grey curtain that seemed to hang across the lake. There were the islands, and bits of the hills on either side, but beyond that nothing but grey.
“I believe it’s snow,” said Dorothea.
“Wind, too,” said Dick. “You can feel it. Do let’s get the sail up at once. What’s the good of having made the mast and everything? And we’ll get along twice as fast. Think of the way their sledge sailed when there was any wind.”
“Well, if there isn’t enough wind,” said Dorothea, “we mustn’t mind just taking it down again at once, and going on as dogs.”
“All right,” said Dick. “Separate and brake.”
They stopped skating, and let the sledge slip through between them. It came to a stop.
“Now then,” said Dick, hurriedly unfastening the bundle of mast and sail. “Lucky we’ve come so fast and got warm hands. It’d be awful if they were cold.” He slipped off his big fur mittens.
He tried to step the mast, but soon found that he could do nothing with it while he had skates on. At home as he was on the ice, every other second his feet would start off skating when he wanted them to keep still. He sat down on the sledge, and had his skates off in a moment.
“You’ll have to put them on again,” said Dorothea.
“Not if it really sails,” said Dick, “and it ought to.”
The wind was coming stronger. With Dorothea kneeling on the sledge to help him, he got the mast up on end and pegged into the place Mr Dixon and Silas had made for its foot. He fastened the shrouds on either side, and then wrestled with the sail, that flapped wildly round him while he tried his best to get it hoisted up the mast.
“You can’t say there isn’t any wind now,” he gasped. “I say, Dot, just sit down now on the top of everything and hang on to that rope.”
Dorothea sat down by the mast and hung on to the rope she was given to hold. There was a lucky lull in the wind, and before it was over Dick had the sail hoisted up to the big curtain ring he had fixed at the masthead.
It was easy enough now. The yard, that had been trying to bang him on the head, was still at last, and the sail that had been trying to wind itself round him, hung quiet as could be.
“I say,” said Dorothea, “everybody’s going off the ice.”
But Dick had no eyes for the skaters hurrying towards the shore. What was it to him that with every moment the lake was losing its crowds? He was thinking of nothing but his sail. Now was the chance. He fastened the ropes from the ends of the yard as he had seen them shown in the Nansen pictures. He fastened the ropes from the bottom corners of the sail. Everything was ready. But there was now no wind at all.
He looked back. Had he done it all for nothing?
That grey curtain of cloud was much nearer. The islands off Rio were no longer clear in sunlight, but dim, as if behind a veil.
“It’s snow,” said Dorothea.
“Here’s the wind,” cried Dick. “Now!”
He headed the sledge straight up the lake. The wind suddenly filled his sail and blew it out like a balloon. Nothing happened. He gave the sledge a push. The sail flapped again and hung idle. A moment later it filled with a sharp clapping noise. He was just pushing his skates in under the sheepskins, and felt the sledge stir.
“It’s moving! It’s moving!”
The sledge was pulling away from him. Harder. Harder. The wind freshened with a quick, startling sigh. Dick’s feet slid from under him. A mitten rolled off the sledge and was left behind.
“Don’t let go! Don’t let go!” cried Dorothea.
There was a desperate scramble. Dorothea had him by the shoulder. He pulled himself, chin first, flat on his stomach, over the sheepskins. That mitten was gone. It could not be helped. He made sure of the other. The blue-grey ice was slipping past them faster and faster.
“Hang on, Dot,” he said. “We’re sailing.”
And at that moment the first snowflakes reached them.
&
nbsp; Grey, ghostly, tiny figures of skaters making for the shore disappeared. The hills on either side of the lake vanished. The Beckfoot promontory was gone. Far up the lake a patch of sunshine showed on the tops of the snow mountains. A second later even the mountains had disappeared. Dick and Dorothea on their sledge, with the sail bellying out in front of them, and the little yellow quarantine flag flying straight before the masthead, were alone in a thick cloud of driving, hurrying snow. They could see nothing at all but snowflakes and a few yards of ice sliding away beneath them as the big wind that had come with the snow drove them up the lake like a dead leaf.
“IT’S MOVING!”
“Where are we now?” said Dorothea.
“I knew she would sail if we had a wind,” said Dick.
“But where are we?” said Dorothea.
“Hang on,” said Dick. “Lie as flat as you can. I don’t believe John’s sledge ever went faster. Just listen to it.”
And the little sledge, roaring as it rushed over the ice, flew northwards in the storm.
CHAPTER XXV
COUNCIL IN THE FRAM
“BOTHER those D.’s,” said Peggy, and then, remembering what Captain Nancy might have said, she added, “They ought to be keel-hauled and hung from the yard-arm. Being late for a council.”
“But they don’t know it’s a council,” said Titty.
“Sure you put the right signal up?” said Captain Flint.
“Oh, yes,” said John.
“They were busy with something for the expedition,” Susan reminded the others. “Perhaps they didn’t get it finished yesterday.”
“Somebody’ll have to go and stir them up,” said Peggy.
“Give them another half-hour,” said Captain Flint. “Nancy won’t be here till about one o’clock. She won’t be let out of Beckfoot till after twelve. I gather there’s some tremendous disinfection to be done, and she’ll come along smelling like a chemist’s shop.”