“We’d have run you up in style,” said Nancy. “Team of six dogs, eight with Dorothea and Dick . . . Here’s a place for you on this bench . . . it won’t let you down unless you joggle it . . . and there’s lots of dinner.”
“It’s Dorothea and Dick I came up to see,” said Mrs Blackett, looking round under the lantern. “Staying with the Eskimos at Dixon’s farm, aren’t you? . . . By the way, Nancy, do remind me to thank Mrs Dixon for that pork pie . . . Well, I wonder if you’d care to come across the fiord to an Eskimo settlement on the other side. You could join the others at Holly Howe after breakfast tomorrow, and Nancy and Peggy can pull over with the boat and bring you all across.”
“We’d like to come very much,” said Dorothea, and managed to catch Dick’s eye, so that he said “Thank you” before it was too late.
“The days are so short now,” Mrs Blackett went on, “you’d have to come first thing in the morning, because of getting back before dark. You might take a run up the Matterhorn – Kanchenjunga, I mean – or something like that.”
“It’ll be quite all right,” said Nancy. “We won’t be going to the Pole till the very last day.”
“Good,” said Mrs Blackett. “So that’s settled. Meet at Holly Howe first thing, and don’t bring any food. Better tell Mrs Dixon tonight, or she’ll be filling your knapsacks before you start. Oh, thank you, Peggy. What is it? Hot-pot? It smells very good. You’re not taking it out on the tarn . . .?”
“On the tarn?” said Susan.
“I was thinking of another hot-pot,” said Mrs Blackett. “It was once upon a time when I was young, and the lake was frozen all over.”
“If only it would hurry up and do it now,” said Nancy.
“And a whole lot of us spent the day on the ice. A big hot-pot and a basket of other things were sent down to us from the house, and brought out to where there was figure-skating going on in the middle of the lake. And the hot-pot was put down on the ice while the basket was being unpacked to get at the plates and knives and forks. And we all came skating along very, very hungry, and found no hot-pot. Just a little cloud of steam drifting away, a pleasant smell, and a neat round hole in the ice through which the hot-pot had that moment gone to the bottom of the lake.”
“What did you do?” asked Roger.
“Went without,” said Mrs Blackett. “What else could we do?”
“This one was so hot we cooled it in the snow,” said Peggy.
“Lucky it’s a long way to the tarn,” said Roger, who thought that if the ice had been a little nearer this hot-pot might have gone the same way as the other.
After dinner, when Mrs Blackett had admired the outside of the igloo as well as the inside, she said that she must be going, and that Nancy and Peggy must come with her.
“Your dinner was a fairly late one, you know, and it’ll be getting dark in an hour, so it doesn’t make very much difference. I’m sorry to take them off, but I was given a lift round the head of the lake, and the boat’s the only way to get back.”
“We’ll give you a full dog team now,” said Nancy, and they put Mrs Blackett on the sledge, and the whole Polar expedition pulled on the ropes or pushed behind as they ran the sledge along the old path through the wood until they came out of the trees and the snow stretched clear before them down to the road, with only one stone wall across it and that with a wide gap in it. Dozens of tracks showed where there had been tobogganing early in the morning.
Peggy, Nancy, and John joined Mrs Blackett on the sledge.
“Tomorrow won’t be wasted,” said Nancy to Dorothea. “Something always happens on Kanchenjunga. All right, mother? Tuck your feet in. John’s coming to bring the sledge up for the others. Let go at the stern there. Shove her off!”
There was a faint squeak from Mrs Blackett, and the sledge shot away over the snow, faster and faster, straight as an arrow down the steep hill-side, through the gap in the wall, and on towards the road.
“Come along,” said Susan, “we must tidy up in the igloo. Specially as we shan’t be there tomorrow.”
They raced back up the path through the trees, made everything what Susan and Titty called shipshape, and were back at the edge of the wood when John came toiling slowly uphill again with the sledge.
The six of them flew down the hill together.
“What about tomorrow’s signals?” asked Dick, as they were saying good night in the road.
“No point in climbing up there tomorrow,” said John. “Come straight to Holly Howe as early as you can.”
“I do wish it hadn’t all got to stop so soon,” said Dorothea, as she and Dick walked home along the road under trees heavy with snow. “Only three more days.”
Dick was thinking of something very different.
“Remember that first day, Dot?” he said. “Well, we’re going in a boat after all.”
CHAPTER VII
ARCTIC VOYAGE
IT froze harder than ever that night, and in the morning Dick and Dorothea set out for Holly Howe with the joyful news that there was an edging of thin ice along the shore of the lake. Dorothea had asked Mrs Dixon if she thought they ought to put on their best clothes. “They won’t be your best clothes if you spend a day in them with Mrs Blackett’s two,” Mrs Dixon had said. “If you ask me, you’d best go just as you are.” “But it’s a party.” “It won’t be that kind of party if those two have anything to do with it.” So they set out, just as they were, in ordinary Arctic rig, with woollen gloves and mufflers as well as their coats, for anybody could see that it would be pretty cold rowing across.
They found that news of the ice had already reached Holly Howe. A local Eskimo (the postman) had said there would be skating before night by the town landings, and John had just come up from the boathouse to say that there was a good deal of ice in the Holly Howe bay.
“Thicker than cat ice,” Roger told them. “John says it would bear a jolly big cat, a wild cat, or even a small puma.”
“They’ll have a job to bring their boat in,” said John, coming out with a big coil of stout rope, for use on Kanchenjunga. “I wonder what it’s like over on the other side.”
Titty came running round the corner of the house. She had been watching at the top of the field. “The boat’s just coming,” she called out, “but there’s only one of them in it.” She was gone.
“Come on, Susan,” John called in at the window, and they all hurried out by the garden gate. Titty was already running down the field to the boathouse. Roger was racing after her. Dorothea, in spite of what Mrs Dixon had said, could not help having a feeling that they were going to a party, though they saw that none of the others were tidier than usual. She did not run. Nor did Dick, but that was because he had pulled out his telescope, and was looking through it at the Beckfoot rowing boat, which was already in the bay.
“It’s Peggy,” he said.
“She’s taken the point of the bay very wide,” said John. “More ice out there, very likely.”
A moment later they saw Peggy looking round over her shoulder, and changing the direction of the boat.
“Come on,” said John. “Let’s get down there. She may not be able to bring the boat to the jetty. There may be less ice under Darien, where it’s deeper.”
Susan had caught them up, and now, party or no party, they ran full tilt down through the snow, through the little gate at the bottom of the field, and out on the stone jetty beside the Holly Howe boathouse. Roger and Titty had cleared a good deal of the snow off the jetty the morning before when they had gone down to meet the Amazons, and now they were stamping their feet on the stones to get rid of the snow from their boots.
“Look! Look!” cried Roger. “She’s met an iceberg.” And indeed they saw Peggy lift an oar and bring it down with a splash through a thin piece of floating ice.
John went scouting along the shore towards that high rocky southern point that they called the Peak of Darien, where pine trees rose above a cliff, but it was clear that, ice or no ice
, Peggy meant to come straight in at the usual place. Dorothea shivered at the thought that in a few minutes she and Dick would be themselves afloat in this ice-strewn sea, though she would have been willing to do almost anything rather than be left behind and miss the chance of such a voyage. Dick was eagerly watching for the boat to meet the edge of thin ice that stretched for a good many yards out from the jetty. Would the boat simply cut the ice or would it lift its nose over the ice and then break through it from above by its own weight?
“Hullo!” called Peggy, from out in the bay and then, heading directly for the jetty, settled down to row as hard as she could.
“She’s going to ram it,” cried Titty.
“Now, now, now!” shouted Roger. “She’s into it.”
Dick, his eye to the telescope, watched the nose of the boat cutting through the water.
Everybody held their breath.
There was a queer, cracking sound, taken up all round the bay, as the boat drove on, forcing a sheet of thin ice aslant out of the water before it, then another, then another, until Peggy’s oars were slipping and hitting ice on either side of her.
“She’s going to get stuck,” cried Roger.
PEGGY IN THE CAT ICE
“Go it, Peggy!” called Titty.
“It’s easier under Darien,” shouted John.
Peggy scarcely glanced towards them. She was standing up now, holding one of her oars the wrong way round, and, with its blade above her head, was bringing the solid end of it down again and again on the ice round the bows of her boat. She smashed the ice as far as she could reach and then paddled the boat nearer, using her oar as if she was in a canoe. Again she stuck. Again she stood up in the bows and used her oar like a pike.
“Don’t fall in,” shouted Titty.
“Teach your grandmother,” came from the boat, but Peggy did not even look up as she said it.
She hurried to the stern and drove her oar downwards to find bottom. She found it, and pushed. The boat moved forward. She prodded downwards again, and found it not so deep. Again the boat moved forward in the tinkling ice. She was close in now.
“Let’s have hold of an oar,” called John, who had come running to the jetty on seeing that Peggy meant to land there and nowhere else.
Peggy looked up at last, came forward again, and reached as far as she could with her dripping oar. John caught the end of it, and in another moment she had her hands on the jetty.
“Nancy’ll be jolly sorry she missed that,” said Peggy, with a grin.
“Where is Nancy?” everybody asked.
“She’s got a bit of a jaw-ache,” said Peggy. “She was holding it to the fire when it was time to start, and she said there’d be more room without her and told me to get along at once. She didn’t know what it was going to be like.”
“I’m coming now,” said John, throwing the coiled rope into the bottom of the boat, “and then you, Susan. We’ll want as much weight in her as possible to keep her steady while the others come aboard. We can’t get her alongside. Are you two accustomed to boats?”
“No,” said Dorothea.
“Well, you come along after Susan. And as soon as you’re in the boat, sit down. You can shift afterwards. But sit down right away. It’s horribly easy to tip over, coming aboard by the bows.”
“And a cold bath waiting,” said Roger.
Dorothea managed better than she had expected, sitting on the edge of the jetty, sliding down into the boat and kneeling instantly while grabbing the gunwale on each side. Luckily she had nothing to carry. Dick, who had put his telescope back in his pocket, scrambled down after her, and then, when the visitors were safely aboard, Titty and Roger, the able-seaman and the ship’s boy, did not say anything, but just showed how it ought to be done.
“Shall I shove off now, sir?” asked Roger.
“Peggy’s the skipper,” said John.
“Sorry,” said Peggy, “I was forgetting Nancy isn’t here. Shove her off forrard.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Roger, and the boat began to move stern-first out again through the broken ice.
“Heads out of the way,” said Peggy, swinging an oar forward, getting the end of it against the jetty, and giving a final shove . . . “I say, John, we can’t row yet. Will you paddle over that side?”
“If it goes on freezing it’ll be solid again by this evening, and you’ll have to land us under Darien on the way home.”
“Cook says it’s going to freeze for a month on end,” said Peggy. “If only the snow had come ten days ago we’d have been going to the North Pole over the ice.”
“The snow’s better than nothing,” said John.
“Couldn’t we go to the North Pole in the boat?” asked Dick, but all the others, except Dorothea, looked at him with astonishment.
“Not in a rowing boat,” said Peggy.
“Swallow and Amazon are out of the water, or we might have sailed,” said Titty. “Rowing boats don’t count.”
“Too easy,” said John, “and too much like summer. Sledges are the proper thing. Sledges and skates. If only the ice had come a bit sooner.”
As soon as John and Peggy had worked the boat out of the cat ice into the open water there was some careful changing of places. Four oars were put out. John and Susan on the middle thwart, and Titty and Roger in the bows, took an oar apiece. Peggy, captain for the moment, sat in the stern with Dorothea and Dick. She was glad of a chance to cool down after rowing the whole way from Beckfoot.
“Pull left, pull left,” she shouted, and they saw why as they passed the point on the northern side of the bay, where the water was shallow and ice was showing for ten or a dozen yards off shore.
“I say,” said Dick, “we never have rowed.”
Dorothea found Peggy looking at her.
“We’d awfully like to try,” she said.
“All right,” said Peggy. “You can take an oar apiece as soon as we’re through Rio Bay.”
“Thank you very much indeed,” said Dick, and settled down to watch the rowers to see exactly how it was done.
Pull. Blades out. Swing forward. Dip. Pull. Blades out. Swing forward. Dip. All four rowers working exactly together. It was like a piece of clockwork. No splashing either. Just a dribbling of water from the blades as they swept forward after each long pull. And the boat slipping along with a gentle noise under her bows. Would he ever be able to do it? It looked easy enough, and yet . . .
A narrow ribbon of thin ice stretched round the promontory and all along by the boathouses and building sheds into Rio Bay. Looking across the channel towards Long Island, they could see that it too had a fringe of ice. By the steamer pier in the bay there were a crowd of people.
“They think it’s going to bear,” cried Peggy. “Look, there’s Sammy, the policeman, trying the ice under the hotel. If it’ll bear him it’ll bear anybody. That’s why he’s prodding it with a pole and keeping safe on the landing stage.”
“It must be a lot thicker in there,” said John.
“It always freezes in Rio Bay first of anywhere,” said Peggy. “Hi! Pull right. Pull right. I ought to have been watching. My fault. We were nearly into the Chicken.”
“Chicken?” said Dorothea, looking about her for the drowning bird.
“That rock,” said Peggy, as they swept past it, near enough to touch the ice round it with the blades of their oars. “There’s the steamer buoy, and then the Chicken and then the Hen, and after that it’s more or less clear, except for good-sized islands.”
They swept on, past the Hen, across the Bay, and out beyond Long Island. There were two or three smaller islands to be seen, but not a single other boat on that great sheet of water that lay there as still as if it were already frozen between the snowcovered shores and the great hills rising above them, every gully and ravine shadowed blue in the sunlit snow.
“It wouldn’t be much good even if Swallow and Amazon were afloat,” said John. “There isn’t wind enough to stir a candleflame.”
“That’s why it’s freezing so fast,” said Peggy.
“Does the whole lake freeze?” asked Dorothea, looking far ahead to where the water seemed to disappear under the hills.
“It does sometimes,” said Peggy, “and it will this year. Everybody says so, and it’ll all be wasted on Eskimos, because we shall be going back to school.”
“And the North Pole’s right at the top of it?”
“As far as you can see . . . Easy all!” she called out, and the oars rested and the rowers turned round to look towards the north, like many explorers before them.
“Well, the snow’s come in time, anyway,” said John. “It would have been pretty rotten going to the North Pole over dry land.”
“Didn’t you two say you wanted to row?” said Susan.
One by one, carefully instructed by experienced seamen, Dorothea and Dick changed places with John and Susan, and took each an oar.
“Now then,” said Peggy. “The main thing is to keep time with each other.”
“And don’t you two in the bows go bunting them in the back,” added John. “Remember, they’ve never done it before.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came from the bow thwart, where Titty and Roger were waiting, their oars raised from the water.
“Give way,” said Peggy.
“That means, row,” said Titty, for the ears of the two beginners. They had guessed as much and, very nearly at the same moment, reached forward, dipped their oars, and pulled.
“Not so deep . . . That’s better. Keep together. Don’t lift the oar so high on the way back . . . It ought to go back in a straight line . . . As far forward as you can. Don’t bend your arms till the last moment. Pull with your back and your legs.” The air seemed full of flying directions. And something seemed inclined to hit one in the back if one changed the time while trying to do what one was told. Dorothea did her best. So did Dick, who had already found some private method of his own. “One and two. And one and two.” Dorothea heard him counting and carefully kept time with him. The voices from the stern came again. “You’re not doing half badly for a first go.” Gradually she became able to think of things calmly, watching the blade of her oar as it went forward. “They’re doing jolly well.” “Don’t try to go too fast.” “It’s no good racing.” “There . . .” A heavy bump shook the boat. Dick had somehow disappeared from beside her. His feet were in the air. His oar had missed a stroke and splashed across the top of the water.