CHAPTER X

DOING WITHOUT NANCY

“SIGNALLING as usual,” John had said, and for the first three days they tried to do everything else as usual, too. Each morning the black diamond was hoisted at Holly Howe and the explorers met at the igloo, where they hoisted their yellow flags, made roaring fires, cooked their dinners, and talked of Eskimos instead of mere natives. They swept the snow from the ice on the tarn and had skating practice morning and afternoon. Titty was already giving both her feet an equal chance and Roger was getting through an hour of skating without sitting down, except when he tried to turn a corner too fast. John had let Dick use the saw, and as well as the woodpile in the corner of the igloo, a neat stack of sawn firewood was piling up outside. They might, John said, have nearly a month to wait before ice conditions were suitable and it was as well to be prepared. There were signal practices once or twice a day, and Dick and Dorothea, by going very slowly and looking up the code, could signal messages to each other in dot and dash. Dick was happy enough with his sawing wood, skating, and the stars at night, but Dorothea knew very well that, for all the others, things were somehow very different without Nancy.

Peggy was doing her best. She knew what had been in Nancy’s mind when she had first planned the expedition to the Pole. None of the others had been born on the shores of the lake, and now, with Nancy ill, Peggy was trying to fill her place. She even tried to use Nancy’s language, but, somehow, it was not the same thing as when Captain Nancy had been there herself, shivering timbers, talking of jib-booms and bobstays, and keeping everybody busy.

People kept on saying, “If only Nancy was here,” or “What would Nancy have said about that?” The expedition itself seemed to have lost its point, until they agreed in council that it was to be put off until she was done with the mumps and able to come too.

“But will she be done in time?” Roger had asked.

“If she hurries up, she will,” said John. “And, of course, if one of us gets mumps there’ll be another month.”

People looked at one another by the light of the lantern in the igloo. Who was going to drop out into a sick-bed to make sure that the others would still be here to go with Nancy to the Pole?

“There may be no need for that,” said John. “The doctor says she may be up and about in a fortnight and all clear in just over three weeks if the swelling doesn’t hang about.”

This sounded hopeful, but, at the end of only three days, Peggy was desperately wanting to ask Nancy what she thought they ought to do next.

And then on the fourth day, Mr Dixon, coming back from Rio with the milk cart, brought the news that folk had been skating clean across the lake by the islands, and after breakfast, when Dick and Dorothea went up the cart track to the observatory and looked down to Holly Howe, they did not see the usual diamond meaning “Come to the igloo,” but a diamond over the north cone, meaning “Come to Holly Howe.”

“Shall we go straight on?” said Dorothea.

“Quicker by the road,” said Dick, and they ran back down the cart track to Dixon’s Farm, and then, running and sliding, hurried along the road to Holly Howe, where they found the others waiting for them at the gate at the top of the field.

“You’ve got your skates?” called Peggy, as soon as she saw them. “That’s all right. The lake’s frozen right across.”

“I know,” said Dorothea. “Mr Dixon says people skated from one side to the other last night.”

“We’re going to now,” said Roger.

“But where are we going?” asked Dick, as they set out, not down the field to Holly Howe but along the road to Rio.

“The ice is still weak in our bay,” said John.

“We’re going across from Rio,” said Peggy. “We’ve simply got to see Nancy.”

“But we can’t, can we?” said Dorothea. “Isn’t she in bed?”

“She can skip out just for a minute,” said Peggy. “It’ll be all right if we’re in the garden and she just comes to the window. Even Susan says mumps can’t be catching through glass.”

“We’ll be signalling to her,” explained John.

“I’ve got my pocket-book,” said Dick.

There was no argument about it. Nancy, mumps or no mumps, was the real leader of the expedition. The plans were hers, and every one of the explorers felt that a council was the thing most needed. Besides, with the lake frozen across, everybody wanted to do some skating on it as soon as possible. Skating on the tarn was just for practice. The lake was the real thing.

They nearly turned back when they first saw the crowds in Rio Bay. The news that the lake had begun to freeze had been sent far and wide, and already visitors, hoping that this would be one of the good years when the lake froze from end to end, had been booking their rooms. The hotels that had closed for the winter had hurriedly opened again. The little town was busier than in summer. The ice round the steamer pier and out beyond Long Island was black with skaters, though a row of red flags warned people that farther north the ice was not strong enough for skating. A little way beyond the flags, indeed, a man in a boat was rowing slowly along in open water. “Hoping somebody will fall in,” said Roger. Close by the steamer pier a coffee stall had been set up on the shore where in summer rowing boats are drawn up for hire. People were going about selling roasted chestnuts. Everywhere in the bay were skaters, flying along arm-in-arm, or singly, or turning in circles, figure-skating or dancing.

“Never mind,” Dorothea heard Titty say, “we can count them seals.”

It was the only thing to do. Unless they were to count all these hurrying, laughing, shouting, grown-up skaters as seals or walruses, or something like that, it would be impossible to make much of an Arctic out of the crowded ice.

“It’ll be all right when more of it’s frozen,” said Peggy. “There’ll be plenty of room then. The seals’ll just hang about the Eskimo settlements. They always do. There’ll be thousands in Rio Bay and hardly any out in the open, especially up near the Pole.”

They went down to the shore and sat on one of the boat piers while they put on their skates.

“It’s a good thing we had all that practice on the tarn,” said Roger, looking round him at the skaters.

“Come on,” said Peggy. “Make for the end of the island.”

“Not too fast,” said Titty.

“You skate with me,” said Dorothea. “Let’s have that other hand.”

“Hullo,” said Titty, striking out with Dorothea and finding she was doing better than she had expected. “Hullo, that must be a school!”

A crowd of about twenty little girls in green coats were slipping about on the ice, with two young women looking after them.

“Keep away from them,” said Susan. “It wouldn’t be fair to give it them.”

“It wouldn’t be any good to them now,” said Roger.

“They don’t know we’re a sort of lepers,” said Titty. “We ought to have brought our flags.”

Keeping together, the expedition skated out from the pier, through the crowds, past the rocks they had seen from the rowing boat on their Arctic voyage, and close round the end of Long Island. Presently Rio was all but hidden behind Long Island’s wintry trees.

“Make for that cottage,” said Peggy. “Just there the road’s only a few yards from the shore.”

They skated on between two smaller islands, making for a small white cottage, with the blue smoke from its chimney climbing straight up in the still, frosty air, close under the dark woods on the side of the fell.

A strip of ice seemed to run along the shore towards the Beckfoot promontory and, for a moment, they were tempted to see how far it would take them. But Susan said there was no point in somebody getting wet so that they would all have to turn back. And Peggy said that if they came to Beckfoot round the promontory and up by the mouth of the Amazon they might easily be seen before they got near enough to the house to let Nancy know they were there. “It isn’t as if we could possibly catch mumps, but you know what Eskimos are.”

So they landed just below the cottage, scraped the snow off a fallen tree so that they could use it as a bench while they took their skates off, crossed a narrow field, went through a gate and set out northwards along the road. Above them, on the left, steep pine woods covered the side of the fell. On the other side of the road, along the shore, a few oaks, ashes, and chestnuts lifted their bare branches above the snow, and between these scattered trees the explorers could look out over the wintry lake. Far out in the middle of it they could see islands of thin, floating ice, smooth, dead patches on the water. There could be no doubt now that the Arctic was doing its best. But there was no loitering. They marched on at a good pace, and soon had turned away from the lake, up over the shoulder of the Beckfoot promontory. They were going downhill again when, on the right-hand side of the road, they came to a low stone wall and a wood.

“Here we are,” said Peggy. “We nip over here, and there’s a path just a few yards away. Then we creep along through the wood and right up to the house and come out on the lawn close under our windows.”

“Do our tracks matter?” asked Titty.

“It looks as if a herd of buffaloes had gone this way,” said John, looking back over the low wall at the trampled snow in the road. “Anybody could see how we’ve come.”

“None of our Eskimos use this road,” said Peggy, “anyhow, not in the winter. Single file now.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said John, and Roger stared at him for a moment and then said “Aye, aye, sir” himself.

Dick and Dorothea were last in the line, except for Susan, who said she liked that place best so as to be sure that Roger did not get left behind. They walked on in the tracks of the leader.

“Anybody might think there was only one of us now,” said Dick, “to look at our footprints.”

“’Sh,” said Dorothea. If only she had a minute or two, what a story she could make out of this! But there never was a minute. Peggy, stooping low, was hurrying along at a tremendous pace, and there was no time to think of anything but putting feet in the right places and keeping out of the way of the snow-laden branches of the trees.

Suddenly Peggy stopped. John signalled back for the others to do the same.

She was off again now, working along through the edge of the wood, the others after her.

“Now,” she said at last.

The grey stone house showed through the trees.

“All ready? Come on.”

The expedition came out on the white lawn.

“Nancy’s expecting us,” said Titty.

It almost looked like it. Over a window on the second storey of the grey house a little flagstaff had been fixed, and from the end of it the plague flag, black and yellow in squares, dangled over the wintry garden.

“They’ve fixed it up awfully well,” said Peggy.

What would happen next? How were they going to let her know they had arrived? Suppose they were seen by Eskimos first. Dorothea looked at John and Susan. They seemed today to be leaving everything to Peggy.

Peggy hesitated only for a moment. She picked up a handful of snow and squeezed it into a small snowball.

“If there’s reading aloud going on, or dominoes, it just can’t be helped,” she said, and, taking careful aim, let fly. The snowball flattened itself in a white splash on the glass.

“Good shot,” said John quietly.

In a moment Nancy appeared at the window.

But what a Nancy! “A face like a pumpkin,” the doctor had said, but no one had really believed him. But now, “Pumpkin” seemed to say less than the truth. It said nothing about colour. Wrapped in a pink shawl, Nancy’s face, unbelievably swollen, was a deep feverish red. She had on a red dressing-gown over her blue pyjamas.

Yet nobody felt like laughing.

The moment was too serious and Nancy had begun making her semaphore signals the instant she saw them.

“Get a bit of paper, somebody, quick,” said John, “Peggy and I’ll read out the letters.” He signalled to Nancy to wait.

Not one of the Swallows had any paper. Nor had Peggy. Dorothea rather shyly pulled a pencil and tiny notebook from her pocket. On the first page of the notebook was written, “Frost and Snow. A Romance. By Dorothea Callum.” On the second page was written, “Chapter 1.” But she had got no further and, hastily turning back these two pages, she made ready to write.

“Use the sundial for a desk,” said Susan.

An old stone sundial stood up in the middle of the lawn. It was just the right height. Dorothea scraped the snow off it to make a dry place for her book, and was ready to scribble down the letters as the others called them out.

“Q-U-I. We’ve got those already,” said John. “O-K. End of word. I. End of word, C-A-N-T. End of word. L-O-C-K. End of word. E-S-K-I-M-O-S. End of word. O-U-T. End of word. T-H-E-Y-L-L. End of word. B. End of word. H-E-R-E. End of word. A-N-Y. End of word. M-I-N-U-T-E. End of word. That’s all. Go ahead, Peggy, you do the talking.”

Peggy began now, throwing her arms into one signal after another, while that strange figure at the upstairs window nodded its huge head to show that it was getting the message letter by letter.

“What’s Peggy saying?” Dorothea asked Dick, who had got his scientific pocket-book open at Nancy’s page of semaphore signals and was trying to recognise each letter as it came, but was always finding himself two or three letters behind. “Look out! Nancy’s talking again.” She settled herself with her pencil to take down the letters as John called them out.

“S. End of word. M. End of word. T. End of word. What does she mean by that?”

“Shiver my timbers,” said Titty, and for the first time the whole expedition burst into laughter.

Nancy shook her fist at them, and went on signalling at dreadful speed.

“G-A-L-O-O-T. End of word. She means that for Peggy. W-A-I-T. End of word. T-I-L-L. End of word. I-T-S. End of word. A-L-L. End of word. F-R-O-Z-E-N. End of word. Tell her we’re going to wait for her.”

But Nancy would not stop for an answer. John went on reading her signals.

“L-O-T-S. End of word. T-O. End of word. D-O. End of word. Y-E-A-R-S. End of word. O-F. End of word. T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G. End of word. F-O-R. End of word. A-R-C-T-I-C. End of word. J-O-U-R-N-E-Y-S. End of word. M-A-K-E. End of word. W-I-L-D-C-A-T. End of word. S-P-I-T-Z-B-E-R-G-E-N. End of word, and about time, too. Have you got it all? T-R-Y. End of word. A-L-A-S-K-A. End of word. C-R-O-S-S. End of word. G-R-E-E-N-L-A-N-D. End of word. P-E-G-G-Y. End of word. K-N-O-W-S. End of word. W-H . . . ”

But at that moment the signalling stopped short. The signaller spun round, the pink shawl slipping from her swollen head. She seemed somehow to be whisked from the window. Just for one moment the watchers in the garden saw Mrs Blackett not looking at all pleased.

“Oughtn’t we to go away?” said Susan, as the expedition, cut short in the middle of a council, hesitated, almost as if Nancy might find some way of showing herself again.

Mrs Blackett answered that question.

A downstairs window opened, and there she was.

“Peggy, you little wretch,” she said, “you must not do this sort of thing. Why did I send you over to the other side of the lake? No. Don’t come any nearer. Be off with you at once. The sooner Nancy gets well the sooner she’ll be out and about again, and here are you hauling her out of bed just when she ought to be keeping warm. No. It’s all right. I know you didn’t mean it. But off you go. If you want to send messages to Nancy, give them to the doctor. Much better leave her alone. Never mind, Susan. But don’t let her do it again. Keep to your own side of the lake. Goodbye . . . ” And the window closed with a click.

“Come on,” said Susan.

But they had not had time to leave the lawn before there was a bang on the window under the plague flag. Mrs Blackett had run upstairs again, and, now that they were going, was waving to them in the friendliest manner.

“Jolly decent of her,” said John.

“She’s a very good Eskimo,” said Titty. “Mother would have done just the same.”

“Of course we oughtn’t to have come,” said Susan.

“It was worth it,” said Peggy.

They filed slowly back through the wood and out on the road. One thing was clear, that for the next few weeks they would have to do without Nancy. But she had sketched them a tremendous programme.

CAPTAIN NANCY GIVES INSTRUCTIONS

“Let’s have a look at what she said,” John asked Dorothea, when they were over the wall and back in the road again. Everybody crowded round as Dorothea, very glad to have been useful, showed the page in her book where the messages had been written down.

“We can’t do Spitzbergen till we can get to Wild Cat Island over the ice,” said John.

“What about Alaska?”

“Greenland’s better,” said Peggy. “I know what she means. It’s the country up on the fells above the tarn. It’s as wild as wild. Jib-booms and bobstays!” she cried, with as good a reflection of Nancy as she could manage. “We’ll do a crossing of Greenland tomorrow.”

They crossed over the ice to Rio, and, as it was already very late for dinner, ate their sandwiches on the way up to the igloo, where they made themselves hot tea, and planned an early start for the morning.

“It just can’t be helped having only one sledge,” said Peggy. “Captain Flint has a little one of his own, but nobody knows where he’s gone and stowed it.”

“They won’t mind being dogs with Titty and me,” said Roger.

“Not a bit,” said Dick and Dorothea.