But, even if they abandoned the sledge, and, with nothing to carry, forced their way on, could they count on getting through to that road along which they had driven with the doctor when he brought them back from Beckfoot on the day that Nancy had begun her mumps?
Dorothea knew in her heart that they could not.
“You hang on here,” said Dick. “I’m going to take the rope and explore as far as it’ll let me. I can’t get lost.”
“Don’t let go of it,” said Dorothea, who felt that they were lost already.
“You give it a jerk and I’ll jerk back,” said Dick. “Like divers. But don’t jerk too hard. It’s not very strong for an Alpine rope.”
He took the coil and, trying to shield his spectacles from the snow, floundered off to the right and in a moment was gone, swallowed up in driving snow.
In spite of knowing that he was only a few yards away, Dorothea jerked at the line.
Two jerks came back in answer; and a moment later there was Dick, frantically wiping at his spectacles, struggling back to her out of the storm.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to bring you back,” said Dorothea.
“I thought perhaps you’d seen something,” said Dick.
He set off again, only, instead of going back the way he had come, he bore away to the left. It had felt hopeless and empty away there to the right and, though this was most unscientific, he felt he would like to try the other way first.
He had hardly disappeared in the snowstorm before Dorothea wanted desperately to feel that he was still there at the end of the rope. But she did not let herself give a jerk to it. Two minutes went by. Three. Perhaps more. The rope gave a jerk, seemingly by itself, flicking scraps of frozen snow into the air. Dick was moving slowly round at the end of it. Dorothea put her hand on the rope, just to feel that she was not alone. Suddenly she felt a tug, another, then three or four tugs together. She heard a shout.
Dick struggled back into sight. He had left the rope lying in the snow, to be a guide to them, and was floundering back to the sledge, feeling for the rope where the snow had covered it, but being careful not to pull it with him.
“There’s a house,” he panted. “I could just see it. Come on.”
They set out once more, wading through the snow, dragging the sledge, picking up the rope as they went and using it as a guide.
“Are you sure you saw it?” said Dorothea, as they came to the end of the rope; and Dick stood there, with the end in his hand, looking about him but seeing nothing at all but flying snowflakes.
“I know I saw it,” said Dick; and at that moment there was a lull in the wind, the snow fell less thickly and, not a dozen yards away, and a little above them, they both saw the dim grey shape of a small building. They struggled towards it. Each step was now more difficult than the last. The sledge-runners sank deep into the snow, and their own feet went down and down as if there was nothing firm for foot to stand on.
The grey shape of the building disappeared, just for a moment, in a sudden flurry of snow, and then stood out close above them. It was smaller than Dick had thought when first he saw that there was something before him other than the snow. It was queerly shaped and could hardly be described as a house. The end of it that was nearest to them seemed to be nearly all glass, like a bow window, a big bow window, with snow crusted on the panes. It was only one storey high. There was a little chimney at the back. Its roof was thick with snow, and above the roof a tall flagstaff stuck forlornly up into the storm.
A snowdrift was forming round the front of it. The last few yards would have been the worst if the building had not been there to give them fresh hope. Dorothea leant thankfully against the wall under the windows. Dick left her there and forced his way on. It could not be all windows. He found steps and a door. He hammered on it. There was no answer. He turned the handle, the door opened inwards, and he almost fell through it into a small room.
Just over a hundred years ago, the little place had been built as a shelter from which, in all weathers and at all seasons of the year, the old man who had built it could look out on the changing scenery of the lake and its enclosing hills. He could sit there watching the lake in storm and be himself most comfortable behind windows that could be thrown open in the heat of summer, and with a fireplace so that he need fear no cold in winter. For nearly a hundred years he had been dead, but the old view-house, as it was still called, had never been allowed to fall into ruin. This was the building into which Dick had stumbled. He, of course, knew nothing of its history. It was shelter, and that was all he wanted for the moment.
“Dot!” he shouted, and a moment later the two of them were under cover. They closed the door upon the storm, and stood there panting after their struggle.
“But Dick, Dick, look at that!” cried Dorothea.
“Half a minute,” said Dick. He was busy wiping his spectacles, which were again covered with snow. He stood blinking, seeing almost nothing. Dorothea was pointing at an enormous box. Dick put on his spectacles and looked.
A queer place it was that they were in. First of all, though there were wooden benches with panelled backs along the walls and round under the windows and on either side of the little fireplace, there was a six-sided seat in the middle of the room, built round the base of the flagstaff they had seen sticking up above the roof, like those seats that are sometimes built round old trees in parks. Then there was a fire already laid, waiting only a match from the box lying handy. There was a small dirty sack that looked as if it must have coal in it. There was a kettle full of water, frozen solid, standing on the hearth. And then, between the flagstaff and the fireplace, there was an enormous box, a great packing-case, roughly roped as if for a journey. On the top of it was written in huge black letters,
“N.P.E.”
Dick had no time to wonder what they meant, for he read on the side of the box nearest to the door:
“NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION
S.’s, A.’s, and D.’s”
and then on the end of it by the flagstaff:
“TO BE OPENED BY THE FIRST TO REACH THE POLE.”
“The Pole must be somewhere quite close to,” said Dorothea. “Captain Flint must have put it here on purpose. But why haven’t they opened it?”
“He’s left a hammer and a wedge all ready,” said Dick.
“But where are the others?” said Dorothea.
“Perhaps we ought to go on,” said Dick. “I could try round again with the rope.”
THROUGH THE SNOW
“Let’s get warm first,” said Dorothea.
But at that moment they both noticed a sheet of paper fastened rather high up on the flagstaff that seemed to grow out of the floor and went up through the roof. Dick knelt on the seat and read aloud from the big printed letters.
“NORTH POLE.”
“Dot!” he shouted, slapping the flagstaff with his hand. “This is it! This is the place they meant. This is the Pole itself. That’s why the box is here. I knew the wind must be blowing us just right. We’ve done it. We’ve got there. And we aren’t last after all . . .”
“But where are the others?” said Dorothea. “They can’t have been and gone.”
“We may have sailed past them,” said Dick. “I wonder if there is any string on that flagstaff?”
He slipped down from the seat and opened the door. The little room was instantly full of wind, and a small whirlwind of snow danced round the floor.
“Shut it quick!” cried Dorothea. “Don’t go out!” But though, when it was a question of making up stories, Dorothea was better than anybody, in actually doing things Dick often remembered what Dorothea might have forgotten. Once he was busy with an idea, nothing would stop him. They had reached the Pole. They had reached it first. Where was that quarantine flag?
He fell down the steps into the snow, but picked himself up again. The sledge was nearly snowed under, but he knew just where to find the end of the broken mast, with the bits of shrouds dangling from it, and the little
yellow flag. Those few minutes out of the wind had brought some life back even to the hand that had lost its mitten. He found the little flag and freed the loop and toggle from the stick. He worked his way along the side of the hut. Better even than he had hoped. There, close by one of the windows, white halyards, new and stiff, came down from the top of the flagstaff and were fastened loosely round a cleat. Captain Flint had known that the discovery of the North Pole would be nothing without the hoisting of a flag. With cold, clumsy fingers, Dick dusted the snow from the scrap of yellow silk, fastened it to the halyards, and was just hauling it up when Dorothea, who had hated even those few minutes of being alone in the hut, came out into the snow to look for him.
AT THE POLE
The little yellow flag fluttered as if it would blow to pieces as it climbed up, up in the snowstorm to the very top of the flagstaff when, with knots that neither Captain Nancy nor Captain John would have approved, Dick made the halyards fast.
Something trembled in Dorothea’s throat as she looked up and saw that scrap of pale yellow fluttering among the flying snowflakes. How was it that Dick, who seemed so absent-minded, could think of things like that?
“Dick, how lovely!” she cried.
“What?” shouted Dick.
“The flag!” she shouted, close to his ear.
Dick scraped almost hopelessly at the snow caked on his spectacles.
“Of course we had to have it up,” he said, and turned to unload the sledge. “Come on, Dot. We’ve got here. We’ll have to wait for the others. Let’s get the things in.”
Between them they carried their gear into the hut, their sheepskins (shaking off as much snow as they could on the way), the knapsack that had the star-book in it, their skates, and the clothes-line that had been so useful. Somewhere in the deep snow at the edge of the ice they had lost the knapsack with the food. Dick was without one of his rabbit-skin mittens. The mast was smashed. There could be no sailing on the return journey even if the wind were to change. But the main thing was that they had found shelter and the Pole. Nothing else mattered.
They leaned their sledge upright against the wall, and for the last time floundered up the steps and into the hut. For a moment they had trouble with the door. Snow had blown between the door and the doorpost. In bringing in their gear they had stamped cakes of snow on the floor. More snow kept blowing in nearly as fast as they cleared it out. But they got the door closed in the end, and stood there, smiling at each other from simple pleasure at being out of the wind, at being able to stand upright without having to crouch to lessen the weight of the storm, at being able to look whichever way they wanted without fear of the blinding snow driving cold into their faces.
“I know what’s happened,” said Dorothea. “You know when all the Eskimos rushed to the shore to get out of the way of the snowstorm? Susan saw it coming, and she wouldn’t want Titty and Roger to get caught in it. She probably saw it long before we did, and took shelter in the woods on shore. And we just blew past them when we were sailing and couldn’t see anything. They’ll be coming along the moment it stops, and we’d better get things ready.”
Dick was considering the great, corded packing-case.
“To be opened by the first to reach the Pole,” he read aloud. “I wish my fingers weren’t so cold.” He squeezed them together and blew on them. Rubbing them was much too painful. But something had to be done about those knots. He had known John and Titty long enough to know that it would never do for them to come along and find that a member of a Polar expedition had used a knife to cut good ropes.
“I’m going to light the fire,” said Dorothea with decision. “They’ll be even colder than we are, waiting about like that.”
CHAPTER XXVII
TO THE RESCUE
EVEN though the lights in Rio Bay were fewer than usual, they had been enough to make the night seem black. But once out of the bay, with those lights left behind them, the rescue party soon grew used to the darkness, and found that they could see the dim white shapes of the mountains, the snow-dust on the ice, and the clumps of leafless trees that marked the islands.
John had said they would keep close along the shore, thinking that the blizzard would have driven the D.’s to look for shelter in the woods that here and there came down to the edge of the lake. But the sight of the islands, dim and dark in the faint snowlight, reminded him of something else.
“We’d better just make sure,” he said. “Swing left, the dogteam.”
“What for?” said Peggy, who was skating ahead with the lantern, keeping a look-out for the places where there was much snow on the ice, and leading the sledge party as well as she could where the wind had swept it clear.
“Cache Island,” said John. “They may have left a message there.”
“They won’t have touched it,” said Susan.
“They ought to have left a message there,” said Titty, “if they were trying to do things properly.”
“But they weren’t doing things properly at all,” said Peggy. “Going off like that without waiting for anybody else. I don’t know what Nancy’ll say about it.”
“Nancy’d go and look at the cache anyway,” said Titty. “Do let’s.”
“Come on!” said Peggy. The dogs and the sledge had hardly swung left for that dim ghostly little island before Peggy, guide and leader for the moment, was skating ahead of it, her swinging lantern showing the way. Yes, Titty was right. Captain Nancy would never think it waste of time to go and open up the cache when there might be a message in it.
By the time the sledge and its dogs reached the island Peggy was already on her knees in the snow, burrowing under the piled stones of the little cairn.
“Got it,” she said. “Here you are, Skipper.” It might have been different in daylight, especially as Peggy, unlike the others, knew the northern part of the lake. But at night, John, naturally, was in command. It was for him to see if any message had been left.
“They’ve been here,” he said, the moment he looked at the bottle in the light of the lantern that Peggy held aloft. “Or somebody has. I’m sure I never shoved the cork in like that.” The cork was nearly level with the top of the bottle. John got hold of the edge of it with his teeth. That was no good, and his lips nearly froze to the cold glass. The cork had to be slowly worked loose by eager, hurrying fingers. It was out at last. He unfolded the paper. There it was, the announcement of their “Farthest North”, just as he had left it. But what was that, below it, in a lighter pencil?
“He can’t see to read if you don’t keep the lantern steady,” said Susan. “Let me help.”
“Is there something written?” said Peggy.
“Who’s got a torch?”
Two torches flashed at once – Roger’s and Titty’s.
John read: “Passed Cache Island going north. February 10th, D.D.”
“That settles it,” said John. “Let’s get on.”
“Not a word about why they started,” said Peggy.
“They must have been here before it began to snow,” said Susan.
“When we were all sitting in the Fram waiting for them,” said Titty, “and the sunshine was coming through the windows – before everything went so dark.”
“The storm came pretty soon,” said John. “They won’t have got much farther before it caught them. We may find them any minute. They’ll have got off the ice the moment the snow began.”
“If only they had any sense,” said Susan. “But they haven’t got any, not that sort. People oughtn’t to be allowed to be brought up in towns.”
“Your turn for the lantern, Susan,” said Peggy. “Which is your rope?”
“Half a minute,” said John. “Oughtn’t we to write something?”
“We’ll do it properly tomorrow,” said Susan. “Do let’s go on and find them now.”
“In case we miss them,” said John; and scribbled hurriedly: “Relief Expedition passed Cache Island, 10th February.” “What’s the time? I haven’t got my wat
ch.”
MESSAGE AT CACHE ISLAND
“Horribly late,” said Susan.
John wrote, “After nightfall,” folded the paper, pushed it back into the bottle, jammed the cork in, scrambled over the rocks, and hid the bottle under the cairn. By the time he was back on the ice the sledge had been turned round, and the other dogs and the lantern-bearer were ready and waiting.
“Work towards the shore, Susan,” said John, and they were off once more.
“Hoo!” said Roger, when they were half-way between the island and the shore, “Hoooooooo!” He said no more, and there was no need. Everybody knew what he meant. Cold and loneliness and something more. Out there, on that enormous sheet of ice, with no other living thing in sight, they all understood that owlish cry. The lantern flickered and swung before them, as Susan steadily went on her way. They could see each other only dimly in the dark, ghosts looking at ghosts. In that tremendous silence there was no noise but that of their own skates and of the sledge runners.
John started giving the time aloud: “One, two, one, two.”
“It’s much worse for the D.’s,” said Titty, “altogether by themselves.”
“They may have starved to death,” said Roger. “They never remember to have plenty of chocolate.”
“What rot!” said Peggy.
“You’ve had your ration for the day,” said John.
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