The Golden Hind now journeyed south towards the Artic, passing what Gulliver knew as Japan and Drake knew as the Land of the Rising Sun, here they must be careful not to run into the mythical sea dragon or they would be sunk. Drake showed Gulliver the old map, or at least it looked old to Gulliver’s eyes, though according to Drake it was the most up-to-date chart available to him. Drawn upon this map Gulliver could quite clearly sea a large, coiled sea dragon breathing fire, swimming just off the coast of Japan. If they ran into the giant sea monster they really were sunk! It was here that the Golden Hind passed a giant oriental candle clock encased inside what looked like the glass of a lantern clock which had been converted into a lighthouse. It was also here that the ship got caught in a freak lightning storm and having left the safety of the ship\canoe in the bottle, and not yet being under the protection of the glass snow dome in the North Pole, it seemed to the crew that all hell was breaking loose. Drake wrote in his ship’s log: More fun and games – maybe the gods have deserted us for a desert island in the cosmological oceans, but the devil has obviously stayed and is having fun at our expense! Having said that, the devil normally works down below stoking the furnace, although as they were not a million miles from New Holland (Australia), which Drake knew as the Land of the Giant Kangaroo, perhaps this was the work of the Tasmanian devil. In this upside down, topsy-turvy world, that was more than likely!
The main mast was damaged, as were several sails, Old Father Time’s beard was partly singed and Hamish, otherwise known as ‘the big man’, caught a lightning bolt in his hand and threw it back in the direction from whence it came. Drake may have been talking metaphorically on that last one, although if you had ever stood in Hamish’s shadow you would probably think not.
Gulliver and Alice had somehow managed to sleep through the whole thing, although they both had similar nightmares of the gods taking lightning bolts from their quivers, placing them in their bows and firing them in the direction of the Golden Hind. Gulliver saw several bolts of lightning shooting through the air ablaze, which struck the water all about the ship, causing huge plumes of steam to rise like geezers. In Alice’s nightmare a lightning bolt hit a small island setting the whole thing into a blazing inferno in seconds.
After this little incident, the Golden Hind found a deserted desert island and stayed in the relative safety of the sheltered harbour. Here they repaired the damage to the masts and sails, gathering some more bread fruit and coconuts before continuing on with their voyage into the unknown. At some unknown time later, they were to run into a steamer, literally, although this steamer was broken down. Here they picked up a chap named Brunel, who had steam coming out of his ears as his crew appeared to have deserted him for the same deserted desert island that Drake had found. Now you may well have heard of Brunel, Gulliver certainly had, but that’s another story we will save for a little later.
Leaving the Tropic of Cancer behind them and with a new shipmate aboard, they sailed into the Bering Sea, passing through what Gulliver knew to be the International Date Line. This line was drawn on the maps in Gulliver’s world, however, this line was something Drake had not the foggiest notion about. In this world Gulliver was slightly surprised not to see this line written in the sand, for if it had of been then he would have known where the expression ‘drawing a line in the sand’ had come from.
Gulliver was aware that there was an imaginary line between the North and South Poles called the equator, and by all accounts, according to Old Father Time, this was then written upon the antique globe upon which they were now sailing. Of course, it had been written on the globe by the gods before the comets hit the earth bringing water with them, which eventually became the oceans and the seas. So this line was only visible to divers and creatures that inhabited the oceans as it was written upon the ocean floor.
Funnily enough, due to some fog, which literally came out of nowhere, it was in the Bering Sea that Drake temporarily lost his bearings. This meant the charts, compasses and sextants went out of the window, although thankfully for the crew of the Hind not literally. This unexpected turn of events meant Drake went back to the tried and trusted method of all good seafarers and trusted to Lady Luck.
Drake tossed his golden ducat and it landed head side up, that head thankfully being Queen Elizabeth I and not Queen Victoria, as she was often amused, unlike Queen Victoria who wasn’t! This Drake was sure was an omen, a sign that they were in Lady Luck’s goods books. It also meant they would find The Last Bookshop in the World and that Queen Elizabeth I would let him keep his head, unlike his friend Walter Raleigh, using her sword to knight him rather than to remove his head with it, hopefully!
Gulliver hoped this omen was indeed of the good variety and the Golden Hind didn’t get hit by an iceberg like RMS Titanic and sink, or get trapped in the ice and crushed like a walnut in a nutcracker. Mind you, he wasn’t sure whether Royal Mail Steamer Titanic had even been built yet or as time had stopped, if it would ever be built. Perhaps if things were preordained, not even time would stop this happening.
Gulliver wrote in his travelogue that it was a pity they hadn’t invented a sat nav for the sea in Drake’s time, although technically they weren’t in Drakes time as there was no time to be in. The closest thing they had to a satellite navigation system in this world was Coles’ compendium.
An iceberg was spotted from the crow’s nest so Drake knew they were now in the Artic Ocean, although the extreme cold told most of the crew aboard that this was indeed the case. Drake said that at this point he guesstimated they were roughly 75 degrees east and 165 degrees north of the equator, as the dodo flew!
‘Talk about one extreme to another!’ Old Father Time said as they sailed towards the coldest place on the God’s earth. Being the oldest on board the Golden Hind, he felt the cold more than most, felt it to his very bones, he told Gulliver.
Gulliver told Alice that Old Father Time’s skin reminded him of sugared almonds and Old Mother Hubbard’s shoe.
Gulliver thought about how they would get into the snow dome. Old Father Time had told him you only had to remove the plug at the bottom of the dome, like you did on the snow domes you found in novelty shops on the seafront. But was he joking, or was that exactly what you had to do? But how did you get underneath the snow dome, and how did you get into the dome without A, drowning in the onrushing water and B, flood the rest of the planet in a catastrophic event of Biblical proportions? Or C, would the water be frozen solid so you couldn’t possibly get inside it? And D, well, he couldn’t think of a D but he thought there probably was a D followed by every letter in the alphabet! Of course there was a D, D for dodo, which he obviously was!
Surely Old Father Time would know the procedure to gain entry into this winter wonderland, that’s if he could remember! He wasn’t being disrespectful but old people forgot things, he knew this because he had two grandfathers and two grandmothers and Old Father Time was older than all of them put together.
However, he couldn’t worry about that now, he’d worry about it later. He had always been good at putting things off till later, unfortunately most of the things he put off hadn’t turned out well. Procrastination was the thief of time, or was that the gods! Homework, chores, paying the rent the harbour required for leaving your boat\antique shop in the harbour permanently, turning the tap in the bath off before it flooded his parents’ house when he was nine before he sat down to watch Doctor Who, rather than after watching Doctor Who! Yes, but that was in his world, the world he was living in at the present moment was a parallel world, which meant everything was in reverse. Which meant in this world if he put it off till later, everything would turn out just peachy, probably! It was just lucky that Gulliver hadn’t left his bath tap running before he went gallivanting off through time and space, otherwise when he returned his world would be flooded!
*
The moons passed and the sun came up and then went down again which happened more times than Gulliver had had hot dinners, or at least had done lately, and the Golden Hind seemed no nearer to reaching the North Pole. Drake was standing on deck trying to navigate by using a gizmo called an astrolabe, which was a heavy circle of brass with a rotating arm at its centre bearing two plates with a hole in each. The instrument was hung vertically, the arm was moved until a beam of the sun shone through both holes and a pointer on the arm indicated a reading on the circle. However, using this device on a swaying deck in a rough sea was far from easy. Drake often used the pole star to help guide him to his destination when, he could find it. ‘Have you looked up towards the heavens recently, boy? The place is cluttered up with stars, it’s hard to tell one from the other!’ or so Drake often said in jest!
The sailors were scuttling around the deck like crabs busying themselves with one thing or another, although Gulliver had no clue as to what tasks they were involved in regarding the sea as he was still something of a greenhorn in such matters. Four men were climbing the rigging, unfurling one of the larger sails. These men appeared like monkeys on a vine or spiders in a web. Gulliver wrote as much in his travelogue and on the opposite page drew a picture of these men who were risking life and limb and whose only safety net was the sea. Having said that, if the sailors were lucky and Neptune had arisen from his seabed, there was always his net to save them. Gulliver wondered if this is where the expression ‘casting your net wide’ came from, probably, he thought, then changed his mind and thought not!
‘Are we getting close to the North Pole?’ Gulliver asked as he tried to keep his balance as the ship rolled one way then the other, as he felt like a ball bearing on one of those puzzle games he’d played as a child.
‘Well, according to my calculations… I haven’t the foggiest notion!’ said Drake shaking his head several times. This remark rather left Gulliver thinking that Drake was obviously no Phileas Fogg!
‘I mean, we must be getting closer as it’s getting colder and colder but if the North Pole got displaced when the gods shook time up, well, we could be hundreds of miles off course. The pole star is still in its rightful place, thank God, or at least thanks to the gods who don’t appear to have moved any of the stars in the map of the heavens or we really would be up a creek without a paddle!’ Drake said managing a half smile. A little later the captain was heard to utter the well-worn nautical term, ‘full sail ahead’.
Then a boat appeared upon the horizon and gradually came into sight until it passed within a league of the Golden Hind. Drake held up his spyglass and then smiled as according to the nameplate on the side of the boat, it was called Godspeed. Drake waved as it passed by, although he couldn’t see anybody onboard and Gulliver wondered if it was the famed Marie Celeste. Later Drake wrote in his ship’s log that to him it appeared this was like a ghost ship and being called Godspeed, its crew, like the gods of this world, had all disappeared. Either that or all the crew had been partying late into the night and were all asleep, which was the more likely. ‘Godspeed to you,’ Drake cried as they passed like ships in the night, although it was still late in the afternoon.
Once again Drake took the safest course of action, steering well clear of it for it could well be a trap set by pirates, a Trojan Horse of the sea if you like. This Trojan Ship was one of the favourite tricks of the infamous pirate Black Beard, who now captained the Queen Anne’s Revenge, a ship he had captured and renamed. The last thing Gulliver wanted to do was run into an angry band of cut-throat pirates with cutlasses to grind on his neck, that and he, like a lot of other people, was (sea) sick to the back teeth with pirates, especially ones who inhabited the Caribbean Islands! Sometimes it was expedient to let sleeping sea dogs lie, that and finding the mythical Last Bookshop in the World was a far greater treasure than some ship, which by the looks of her was not much more than a floating tree trunk. Gulliver knew that some old ships were said to be nothing more than floating coffins and he hoped this would never be said about the Golden Hind!
The ship was probably a private sea vessel transporting its cargo to the mainland, or at least Gulliver hoped it was!
The day wore on and night fell, although thankfully not on them otherwise they really would be sunk without trace! To Gulliver’s mind the stars at night seemed like glitter which had been sprinkled upon a black piece of card, something he had done as a child as part of a school project on the night sky.
Then it happened, Gulliver spied land with the help of Drake’s brass retractable telescope, which Drake had been kind enough to lend him. At first the word land wouldn’t come out of his mouth, it was as if in all the excitement he had been struck dumb, unless a pirate had cut his tongue out! More nautical horrible history I’m afraid and that was exactly what Gulliver was afraid of, nautical history!
‘Land!’ Gulliver croaked, ‘Land!’
‘What?’ said the ship’s first mate. ‘I can’t hear you!’
‘Land!’ Gulliver repeated the word as he pointed wildly at the horizon.
‘I think the boy’s eaten a frog,’ the boatswain’s mate joked, although funnily enough the boatswain and the boatswain’s mate couldn’t stand the sight of one another.
‘That’s the cook’s fault!’ the ship’s master said, joining in with the fun.
‘Well, the boy doesn’t want to get scurvy now does he?’ the cook’s assistant said in a cheery manner.
It seemed everybody was in high spirits and not a drop of rum had passed their lips that day, despite the cold. In fact, Gulliver was surprised nobody had said ‘Shiver me timbers!’ Mind you, the cook did say that it was a rum do that no rum had passed his lips that day, so for the time being he would just have to make do with the cooking sherry!
Then Gulliver passed the telescope to the ship’s first mate as he continued to gesticulate wildly in the direction of the horizon. The first mate put the brass telescope up to his eye, which by now was so cold that all you could see at the end of it were crystal patterns resembling a large snowflake under a microscope. That and the metal eyepiece of the telescope was ice cold so he immediately withdrew it and instead scanned the horizon from east to west with the naked eye before he exclaimed, ‘Land! Land!’
It was at this exact moment that Gulliver rediscovered the power of speech, ‘Land! Land!’
‘It seems we’ve got a parrot in our midst!’ one of the sailors joked as he patted Gulliver so hard on the back he almost fell overboard.
‘Pieces of eight, pieces of eight,’ said the midshipman in jest, or at least Gulliver presumed he was a midshipman as he was standing in the middle of the ship at the time.
‘What’s all the noise about? I was trying to get fifty winks,’ Drake said, as he staggered out of his cabin onto the deck. In truth, sailors were lucky if they got ten winks a night let alone the full fifty.
‘Land, Captain. The boy’s spotted land!’ the ship’s second mate said beating the first mate to it by a whisker. You could see by the expression on his face that the first mate wasn’t best pleased at the second mate stealing his thunder. At this rate these men were never likely to be mates other than Billy no mates, something that was often said about Barnacle Bill!
‘Thank the gods for that. Well done, my boy, well done. If it wasn’t for you we may well have sailed right past the North Pole!’ Drake said half in jest and half not.
Soon everybody was on deck shouting ‘land’ including Alice and Old Father Time who belied his age by doing a jig of delight a man half his age would have been proud of, and what’s more, he had Alice upon his shoulders at the time.
Soon the great glass dome was in sight and it was time for Old Father Time to spill the beans on how they would get inside it. All the snow domes Gulliver had seen in the gift shops in Brixham were full of water and snow, or something which resembled snow, normally glitter, which often being silver didn’t really resemble snow. However, Old Father Time had said that the snow dome was full of ice, although at certain times of the year that ice was broken up. But how do you lift a large snow dome up that is sitting on an even larger antique globe?
Soon these questions were answered for it was apparent to Gulliver and all aboard the Golden Hind that there was only one way into the snow dome and that was through the hole in the top.
‘Well, Gulliver, there you have it, that is our way into the North Pole!’ Old Father Time said pointing to the hole in the glass dome.
‘So how… what… why… when?’ Gulliver said as the words flowed from his mouth like sand through an hourglass.
‘Well, the how, and the what, are one and the same, for the hole was made by a gigantic meteorite. The why, well, you’d have to ask the gods that question, but as you know, they’re no longer around. The when was 5OO1 BC at 3.31am precisely Greenwich Mean Time. I remember it well for the noise woke me up. How Mrs Time slept through it God alone knows! I can tell you, it gave the polar bears and the woolly mammoths quite a scare when it hit, still, at least it didn’t wipe all life from the area like the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs!
Gulliver was still a little puzzled as to how they were going to get through this hole, which reminded him of the hole in the ozone layer.
‘And your next question is how do we get into the dome through such a hole, well, that’s easy enough, or should I say answering the question is easy enough. We, or should I say Drake’s able seamen, are going to shoot several lines with grappling hooks attached to them from out of a cannon until one of them finds its target. After which they will climb the ropes, attach some new ropes to the existing ones and abseil down them onto the ice, for as you can see, most of the water in the dome is frozen over. I hope that’s all crystal clear.’
To be honest, to Gulliver it wasn’t crystal clear as he was having trouble seeing clearly as ice crystals had formed pretty patterns upon the glass of the snow dome, like they’d done on the lens of the brass telescope.
Old Father Time, as he was often accustomed to doing after making the illogical appear completely logical, then folded his arms across his chest to signify he was more than satisfied with the explanation he had given.
‘Oh!’ said Gulliver, sounding like the wind had been taken out of his sails as he folded his arms across his chest to signify that he was far from happy with this explanation.
‘I hope you found that answer to your satisfaction, young Master Gulliver,’ Old Father Time said as he did his best to contain a smile that was desperate to break free from his lips and do a jig of delight.
It seemed to Gulliver that Old Father Time had been yanking his anchor all the while, and Gulliver had swallowed it hook, line and sinker! How Gulliver could have swallowed such a tall story as the one Old Father Time had spun him he couldn’t possibly imagine, and this from the boy whose grandfather had said he had ‘quite the imagination’. I’m mean, did he really think Drake’s men, even being as able as they were, were going to lift a giant snow dome up, crawl underneath it and pull the stopper out so they could enter the North Pole? To even contemplate such a thing was simply madness. Gulliver wasn’t sure if it was he that was mad or this world, or perhaps it was a combination of the two. This adventure made him feel like part of the crew of HMS Investigator, which had been lost in the Artic in 1850 and had been found in 2010 in Mercy Bay near Banks Island.
But luckily, Gulliver didn’t have to contemplate his own sanity for too long for the excitement of seeing Drake ordering his men into action. Cannons were brought on deck and positioned at the bow of the ship, which was no mean feat in itself as a cannon was a rather heavy object. And you could see just how heavy the cannons were by the strain on the faces of the sailors that were carrying them. It took six burly men to carry a cannon and two to carry a cannonball and woe betide any of them who dropped the cannonballs on their feet. Once the cannons were brought on deck they were reunited with the wooden blocks with wheels which they sat upon.
After this tricky and arduous task was done, the men then laid four wooden planks side by side at the starboard side of the Golden Hind, which enabled them to tilt the cannons to such an angle where the grappling irons might stand a chance of A, reaching the hole in the snow dome and B, the hook actually staying in place when it did so.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t exactly helping make this task any easier as the wind was beginning to get up, which made the Hind roll from side to side. If things continued in this vain the weather might well wreck their chances, in which case they may have to put the task off till a day when the weather was more favourable. The sails had already been severely tested by both the galeforce winds and lashing rain. The sail maker,
Wilberforce Worthy, who, in some cases had found them wanting, joked that if the sails got any more rips and tears in them, the only use they would be would be to make shirts with. He then went on to say he didn’t want to give the sailors onboard the ship the needle, but they might have to donate their shirts to the sail fund, after which he would stitch them all together like a patchwork quilt and make a sail out of them!
According to Gulliver’s body clock and the sandglass the ship’s boy was turning (or should I say supposed to be turning, as at the time he was fighting pirates, mind you, luckily for him and the ship’s company, this fighting was taking place in his sleep!). For nigh on two hours the sailors discharged the grappling hooks from the cannons in the direction of the snow dome without success. Most attempts just hit the glass of the dome, which made a sound like two champagne glasses clinking together followed by a scraping sound of the grappling hook scraping down the side of the dome. However, when I say ‘for what seemed like hours’ in actuality, without time it was difficult to know how long it took, although you could just as easily have said that about everything in this world.
It was at this point in the proceedings that Gulliver wished the snow dome was the same size as the one resting on his dressing room table in his bedroom at home. Or he was the size of one of the people from Brobdingnag in Gulliver’s Travels. However, neither was the case and all the wishful thinking in the world wasn’t going to make it so. And, of course, logically if he were a giant he would have been too big to fit inside the snow dome and his weight alone would have sunk the Golden Hind and… and nothing, as his grandmother was always so fond of saying! Unless, of course, there was a potion on hand like Alice drank in her wonderland to shrink her down to the size of a teaspoon. However, there wasn’t, so let that be an end to it!
Then eureka! The gunner Able Seaman William ‘Barnacle’ Wigglesworth, finally got his eye in and the grappling hook sailed through the hole without touching the sides. Able Seaman Wigglesworth, nicknamed Barnacle because of his first name, William, or Bill, Barnacle Bill, rather than his disposition being scratchy or bumptious in any way. No, to cut a long story shorter, Able Seaman William Wigglesworth had always been an able archer in his youth and was beside himself with joy when he hit his intended target, as was the whole ship’s company, which before that moment had been anything but good company. This ship’s company, included Beagle, who seemed to have gone barking mad and was chasing his own tail in a frenzy of excitement. Beagle had now become the ship’s mascot and was spoiled rotten by all onboard with titbits, and if not careful was in danger of looking like the bow of an old ship as it sagged in dry dock. The ship’s cook teased Gulliver, saying that the crew were fatting Beagle up in case supplies ran low, or at least Gulliver hoped he was teasing him!
‘Well done, lad, you’ve done it!’ Drake said, as he smiled in a contented fashion as he looked at William Wigglesworth, who at that moment in time was certainly no Billy no mates. Of course, that wasn’t the end of it, not by a long chalk, for now the line with the grappling hook had to be pulled back through the hole securing itself on the rim, otherwise it would all have been for nothing.
Drake gave the signal to weigh anchor so the ship could be closer to the snow dome but not so close as to put the Golden Hind in danger of smashing against the glass side of the dome. After the anchor was weighed, which all took time that they really didn’t have, it was dropped into the icy waters below, breaking the ice as it did so. Then the gunner set about the task of securing the grappling hook. Drake knew he was between a dome and a hard place, for if he spent too long in these perilously icy waters the game might well be up. As the ice closed around the Golden Hind, eventually the hull would be crushed like a walnut in between a pair of nutcrackers and if that happened the crew would be sure to call Drake a complete numb nut!
‘Steady as she goes, Will,’ Drake said in a firm but calm manner as the able seaman’s hands trembled a little as he pulled on the line. Everybody held their breath as foot by painstaking foot the line was pulled up, and by now several other crewmen were pulling on the line with the young able seaman.
Finally the sailors gave one last tug and the line was secure.
‘Thank God,’ Drake muttered under his breath before crying out, ‘Well done, lads, you all deserve a keg of rum for your troubles!’ Drake said euphorically, although the ship’s supply of rum was dwindling faster than the ice in the North Pole in Gulliver’s world.
‘Yes, well done, Barnacle,’ all the sailors cried as they surrounded the young seaman.
Then two brave sailors who were adept at climbing the rigging in rough seas, shinned up the rope with additional ropes wrapped around their necks and waists. Watching the men climb held everybody on the Golden Hind spellbound for one slip and they would fall to their deaths.
Every once in a while the men would stop and draw breath before continuing on; twice they slipped and dangled from the rope with one hand before regaining their grip on the rope. Both men wore leather gloves for the weather was so cold icicles were forming upon the faces of the whole ship’s company. Then finally, after much struggling, the two men were sitting on the top of the world waving in the direction of the Golden Hind. From a distance, it appeared as if they were nothing more than children who had just climbed a tree in their back garden, and were now waving at their concerned parents who were telling them to get down.
The men then abseiled down the line and when they got to the end of the rope they tied another one around it, securing it with a fisherman’s knot, the strongest, most secure knot in the world. They then continued with their abseil until eventually they jumped the last twenty meters onto a glacier covered with thick snow.
Drake said that this would be far too dangerous for any of the children to attempt and perhaps it would be expeditious for Old Father Time to sit this one out too.
Gulliver said that as he was fairly light, couldn’t he be strapped to one of the sailors? But Drake said this would still be too dangerous for a child. Old Father Time, being the wisest man onboard the Golden Hind, said what if they designed a pulley system like he had seen in coal mines, where buckets were attached to a line? Drake thought this a good idea so Old Father Time and the master of the Golden Hind got to work on such a system.
A few days later the system was finished and put in place and it worked like a dream, in fact, you could say it worked liked clockwork, although nobody did. This system was far quicker and safer and meant Gulliver and Alice could ascend to the top of the dome by wrapping themselves around the men and be transported safety onto the Arctic surface. The system involved taking some double-sheave pulley blocks from the rigging mechanism and attaching them to the ropes and securing them by using a wooden horn cleat to the Golden Hind.
Just for the record, the name of the ship’s master was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was born in Portsmouth in the earliest part of the nineteenth century. Brunel dressed as a master should in a tall black stove-pipe hat, a long black frock coat with a black waistcoat and a fob watch in his pocket for show, obviously, and underneath a stiff white-collared shirt with a blue silk necktie around his neck. He sometimes carried a walking cane too when the fancy took him, although he was definitely no dandy. You rarely saw Brunel without a cigar in his mouth, whether it was lit of not, some said he even slept with one in his mouth. The crew hoped this wasn’t true as they had no wish for a Viking burial at sea!
Again one has to remember that the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had been mixed up in the great shake-up of time and space.
Brunel had already designed revolutionary dock systems which were invaluable to Drake when the Golden Hind had to get from one ship’s bottle to the next. Brunel’s great dream was to build a ship that was powered by steam of all things, and to build a great railway which would connect one end of the country to the other. Of course, the Elizabethans thought he was one viaduct short of a railway line, but no matter, they liked the cut of his jib and that was all that mattered. Another thing they liked about their ship’s master was that he liked a joke, and was more than happy for the ship’s company to send his middle name up, which was Kingdom. Regular cries rang out upon the Golden Hind of, ‘My Kingdom for a horse!’ Well, a seahorse or a wave carrying white horses upon their backs perhaps!
‘Unbelievable!’ Gulliver said as he sat on top of the world, otherwise known as the snow dome, otherwise known as the North Pole.
‘Wow!’ Alice said as she surveyed this winter wonderland. And if this didn’t qualify as a ‘Wow!’ moment then nothing did.
Gulliver then lifted his shirt and for a moment Alice thought he had gone quite mad, especially as the temperature outside was minus twenty-five. However, Gulliver hadn’t gone quite mad, and that wasn’t because he was already as mad as the Mad Hatter, as he took out a sketch pad from his trousers and started sketching the snow dome with the Golden Hind far below him.
The good thing was that Gulliver and his fellow travellers had arrived at the Arctic at the right time as it was the end of the summer, which meant there was no night, however, the ice was still fairly thick. Drake was still finding it hard to imagine, The Last Bookshop in the World would have set up shop here, although funnily enough, Gulliver could imagine selling snow domes to the Eskimos in this desolate place. But then again, Drake was an adult and his childhood had sailed off into the sunset some time ago. However, the stars had never let him down before so he must assume what was written in the stars must be correct.