The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom

by Margaret Mahy

  Most meteorites are small – no bigger than walnuts – but Captain Cathcardo had actually seen this one falling and it had been as big as a house. He found he could remember it quite clearly now, blazing down, down, down from outer space. For a dreadful moment it had even seemed that meteorite might hit The Riddle. How terrified poor old Escher Black had been. (Captain Cathcardo chuckled affectionately.) But it had missed them by a mile or two and had dived, blazing, into deep snow a little to the south.

  Aha! Of course! That explained the melted snow and the warm water. Everything is simple when you remember properly. That meteor tried to hide, but I found it, thought the Captain triumphantly. I even walked on it while it was still warm. I took samples from it. I measured it. And I filled my pockets with the diamonds that were scattered over it. I bought most them back to The Riddle and after that… now, what happened after that? Is that why I am here, haunting this upper deck? And where is my good-luck charm – my pendant?

  But then this ghostly presence glowed a little more brightly, standing there on the haunted ship in the haunted cave.

  “I’m sure that pendant is coming back to me,” murmured Captain Cathcardo. “I can feel someone carrying it in this direction. And once I have that pendant I might be able to get away from this frozen old Riddle. I might be set free. In the meantime, I’ll concentrate on remembering everything I possibly can. Where was I? Oh yes! Diamonds! I found diamonds. I wonder what happened to them?”

  CHAPTER 17

  The End of the Road

  Suddenly the line of flags ended. There was nothing but whiteness ahead of them.

  Bonniface gave a cry of joy. “Oh, the wilderness!” he cried clasping his hands as well as he could (for they were plunged deep into his mitts, and big mitts don’t work very well when it comes to deeply-felt hand-clasping).

  “Dad, are you sure you know the way?” asked Edward, rather anxiously.

  “It is printed in my heart,” said Bonniface, which did not encourage Edward much.

  “And Dad,” persisted Sophie as they shot onwards, “do remember that, from now on, there’ll be holes and hollows hidden by snow.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” cried Bonniface scornfully. He pointed ahead of him. “But there are advantages with coming second to someone else.”

  And, looking more closely, Sophie, Edward and Hotspur saw the marks that been made by Corona’s skiddoo shooting ahead of them.

  “Where she has gone, we can go ten times over,” cried Bonniface, a little recklessly. “She may have stolen my state-of-the-art skiddoo – but we Sapwoods have the hearts of white Antarctic lions.”

  “Dad, there aren’t any lions in the Antarctic,” argued Edward.

  “You’ll never write a science fiction book if you think like that,” his father answered smartly. “You have to imagine all sorts of possibilities.” And Edward fell silent, thinking this over.

  “We’ll have to stop soon,” said Sophie. “Hotspur needs to have a run-around and maybe a story too.”

  “Well, evening is coming on,” admitted Bonniface. “We will stop then.”

  Sophie looked up into the clear blue sky. The sun, which had swung from the east to the north, was now edging towards the west, but it was nowhere near setting. It was strange to see a circling sun, rather than a rising and falling one.

  “I am making for a snow house I know of,” Bonniface explained. “When we were last in the Antarctic, Corona and I, together with a team of explorers (well-trained but not as good as we were) built a snow hut from blocks of ice, and that’s where we’ll take a break.”

  “If it’s still there,” said Edward.

  “Of course it’ll still be there,” cried Bonniface. “Things last forever in the Antarctic. Oh, we’ll probably have to dig it out, mind you. But we have plenty of spades on the trailer.”

  There was no doubt about it, thought Sophie. Her father really was an explorer. She was beginning to feel rather tired, but he seemed as buoyant and bright as he had been at the beginning of the endless day. She touched the front of her fleecy jacket where, under layers of clothes, under her polypropylene waistcoat and her thermal underwear, the little pendant hung safely, resting against her, secret and warm. And, as she thought about it, she felt her tiredness disappear. Remembering the pendant had given her new energy.

  They drove on and on into the white world, while the sun swung westward. At last they came over a slight slope to see before them, neatly parked beside what seemed to be a small white beehive, the state-of-the-art red skiddoo. A little to the left Corona, armed with a stainless steel shovel, was digging what looked like a ditch around the beehive.

  “Oh, Shackleton!” exclaimed Bonniface as if he were swearing. “She’s remembered that snow hut as well!” And he began muttering with rage as they swooped down the slope towards her.

  “Dad!” shouted Edward warningly. “Don’t!”

  “Don’t what?” snarled Bonniface.

  “Don’t lose your temper,” ordered Edward.

  “Be kind!” begged Sophie. And though all Hotspur could do was to chirp like a sparrow, you could easily tell he was agreeing with his brother and sister.

  “That’s my snow house!” shouted Bonniface as he drew up beside the red skiddoo. “I built it.”

  “OK, big shot! But who helped you build it?” Corona yelled back, shaking her shovel at him. “And who got here first?”

  She looked like a courageous Antarctic warrior princess, but Sophie, squinting at the bits of her face showing between her snow goggles and neck gaiter, thought Corona also looked a little tired. Even warrior princesses can overdo things.

  “Don’t forget who taught you how to make snow huts,” Bonniface was howling. “Me! Me! You’d have been nowhere without me, back then.”

  “Back then, yes!” said Corona. “But this is now!”

  Edward stood up in his skiddoo seat. He was prepared to do a bit of howling himself.

  “Come on, you two! Give us a break!” he cried. “Here we are, being brave and bold in the wild, white wilderness. And brave and bold is enough! We don’t need to be bad-tempered, too.”

  Bonniface and Corona stopped shouting at one another. Their two mouths hung open for a moment. They looked at one another, then at the children, then back to one another again.

  “Er…” said Corona.

  “Well…” said Bonniface.

  “You were quarrelling with each other,” said Sophie. “You’re ruining the space and silence by howling at one another like a couple of cross wolves.”

  “You’re wasting good energy,” Edward went on, “and that means giving off heat which you’ll probably need sometime soon. Wasting heat is no way to explore another planet.”

  “And you’re wasting time as well,” Sophie added. “That icehouse is far too small for all of us. We’ll have to build another one.”

  “Oh, it’s big enough for all of us,” Corona told her, “but most of it is under the snow. We’re going to have to dig it out.”

  “Then let’s get digging,” cried Sophie, amazed at her own heroic voice. “Give me a shovel, too!”

  “And give me a spade,” cried Edward. “It’ll be much quicker if we work together.”

  Corona and Bonniface were still mumbling and staring. Something seemed to be happening under Corona’s snow goggles. Yes! No! Yes! Slowly, slowly she was smiling. Then she laughed aloud, turning to Bonniface. “What clever kids you’ve got!” she cried. “And they’re right, you know. Fighting like this is insulting the Antarctic. Bonniface… I apologise.”

  Edward and Sophie could hardly believe it. Bonniface began to smile, too – creakily at first, as if he had forgotten how to twist his mouth upward, glancing across at Corona as if he needed to copy her good smile. But, as it turned out, his own smile spread. It stretched. Corona’s laugh took her over – a deep, rowdy, catching laugh that made other people want to laugh as well. Somehow that laugh reminded Sophie of her mother’s.

 
“You’re lucky to have such a clever family,” Corona said to Bonniface.

  “Mind you, there’s a great tradition of Antarctic explorers quarrelling with each other,” said Bonniface quickly.

  “We can do better than those early guys,” said Edward, even more quickly.

  “Yes! Let’s prove we’re cleverer than they were,” Corona agreed.

  And within minutes, there they were – Bonniface, Sophie and Edward, side by side with Corona, all digging in the snow. Even Hotspur was helping, though the spades and shovels were much too big for him. However, he did the best he could, yarring to himself as he did so, like an anxious kingfisher. Every little helps, and Hotspur was determined to do his bit.

  At last, Bonniface straightened and stared around. Then he gave such a cry of amazement that the others straightened and stared around, too. They were surrounded by penguins… tall penguins and short ones… and every single penguin was watching them intently.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Bonniface.

  “Neither have I,” said Corona. “Look! Some of those penguins are actually Emperors.”

  “And some of them are Adelies,” said Bonniface, anxious to show that he, also, could name any sort of penguin he happened to be looking at. “Where have they all come from?”

  “And why?” asked Corona.

  “It’s Hotspur!” Edward explained. “He always calls birds around him.”

  As they watched, the penguins pointed their beaks to the sky and began a noisy penguin conversation, all talking at the same time. Hotspur certainly seemed to be listening to them, his mouth open and his head on one side, frowning a little as if it were hard to follow what they were saying. But then, suddenly, he roared with laughter, rolled backwards in the snow, kicking his mukluks in the air and squawking back at them. Sophie thought that some of the penguins did a sort of penguin-laughing in reply.

  “Are they making jokes?” she asked him. But if Hotspur answered at all, he answered her in penguin language, which was not a lot of use to Sophie.

  “Fascinating!” cried Corona, deeply impressed. “I’ve never heard penguins make that sort of sound before. What a remarkable child!”

  “Isn’t he?” said Bonniface Sapwood, looking at Hotspur with an expression that was half-proud and half-puzzled, as if he truly admired Hotspur but wasn’t quite sure just who he was admiring. “His mother loved birds, and somehow he was born knowing bird language.”

  “Well, we might all have bird language in some ancient part of the brain,” said Corona wonderingly, “but most of us don’t have any way of making it work for us.”

  Bonniface had forgotten that she was a bird expert. His expression changed and he quickly began thinking about orders he could give.

  “OK! Let’s all dig!” he cried. “We need this house to sleep in. Even though there’s no such thing as night at this time of the year, explorers still need to sleep.”

  “Sleep is vital to explorers!” agreed Corona. “We’ll all need some state-of-the-art rest.” Sophie could tell she was teasing Bonniface but, just for once, he didn’t seem to mind being teased. He gave a silly sort of grin and began digging again.

  Down, down, down they dug, slowly uncovering a big, round house built of blocks of ice. And after they had uncovered it they had to find its doorway, then tunnel their way into it, and then dig a whole lot longer, emptying it out, for it was entirely filled with snow. The penguins stood around, shuffling and watching, obviously anxious to help Hotspur. If he dropped his spade, penguins waddled forward to pick it up for him. A few of them even took it in turns to peck at the snow. Every little helps.

  “I think that’ll do,” said Bonniface at last, looking proudly at all the work they had done.

  “It will,” agreed Corona. “Just as well. I’m really tired!”

  As for the children, they were all too worn out to answer. Under the tarpaulins on their skiddoo trailers they found their narrow foam mattresses in green plastic covers, waterproof foam pillows and double-down sleeping bags, rolled up tightly.

  “And now,” said Corona, bending over yet another trailer carton, “now for dinner! I’m not only worn out, I’m starving. Let’s light the primus and make a big pot of fish soup.”

  “Are the penguins going to catch fish for us?” asked Edward, but Corona laughed and waved a packet labelled FISH SOUP at him.

  It turned out they were so hungry and so tired that they barely noticed the small black plane circling high above them in the cold, blue air of the endless day, the distant whine of its mosquito-like engine often swallowed by the silence of the Antarctic.

  CHAPTER 18

  Up in the Air

  High above, that black plane made wide, swinging circles through cold, blue skies. But inside the plane it was warm and cosy. A butler wheeled a trolley loaded with food though the black velvet curtains that hung across the cabin door. Rancid Swarthy was being served with a delicious dinner – lobster with brandy sauce, a pie stuffed with chicken, onions and sweet red peppers, tossed salad, and a rich dessert called summer pudding.

  The Tambo brothers piled their plates so high that food kept falling over the edge. They argued, as they did so, as to which of them deserved the best bits, and poked crossly at one another with the silver forks. Not only that, when they did stop arguing and start eating they were particularly untidy eaters. Crambo sucked in spoonfuls of delicate sauce, making noises like a loo slowly breaking down. Whizzy snuffled as he ate rice with a spoon. Then, hissing through his teeth, he chose a delicious fragment of lobster and flicked it across the cabin at his brother.

  It’s a terrible thing that a man as cultivated and rich as I am should find himself shut up in a plane with eaters like these two men, thought Rancid Swarthy, dodging a slice of red pepper. Shall I call my bodyguards and have them thrown off the plane?

  But then he remembered something. “Horrakapotchkin! They are my bodyguards! If I ordered them to throw themselves off the plane they’d probably refuse to do it, even though I pay them so well. Never mind! They will suffer for this. Once they’ve exploded Bonniface Sapwood and his family, the Tambo brothers are dead meat.”

  Glancing up at the luggage rack and a long, black gun that nestled there, he smiled his Number One smile, but only to himself.

  At this moment there actually was a sudden explosion, and summer pudding sprayed across the cabin.

  “Sorry!” said Crambo, but you could tell he didn’t really mean it. Rancid said nothing, but when he wiped the pudding from his face you could see his Number One smile still in place. Whizzy screamed and fainted, but Crambo looked back at Rancid as if he had seen something that interested him. Then he smiled too.

  Rancid’s mouth dropped open. Crambo’s smile was the exact copy of his own. It wasn’t quite like seeing himself in a mirror, for his face was long and lean, and his smile had a dip in the middle of it, whereas Crambo’s stretched out sideways.

  “I love that smile of yours,” Crambo cried. “Did I get it right?”

  “It’s my smile,” said Rancid. “You have to pay me if you want to use it.” And the smile quickly vanished from Crambo’s face. “Anyhow, our quarry is camping for the night,” Rancid added, “and we must return to Scott Base for rest and refuelling.”

  “Do you mean I’m not getting a chance to blow anyone up?” exclaimed Crambo. He sounded not only disappointed, but a little menacing.

  “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!” Rancid promised. “Probably!” he added.

  “Of course, we’ll blow someone up tomorrow!” said Whizzy faintly, patting his brother’s shoulder with a weak but affectionate hand. “You have to humour him,” he whispered sideways to Rancid, “or he might get a little – well – nasty. He depends on explosions to keep him happy.”

  Rancid reached for his intercom and gave the pilot instructions to return to Scott Base. Then he slumped back into his chair, but without his usual feeling of self-satisfaction.

  People always think a wicked l
ife is an easy one, he thought to himself. They don’t realise how difficult it can be. A man has to be really dedicated.

  And he refused to look at the brothers from Explosions Ltd. He rather wished he had brought some expert in avalanches instead.

  CHAPTER 19

  Ghostly Horror

  As the Sapwood expedition slept, and Rancid Swarthy headed back towards Scott Base, Captain Cathcardo’s ghost paced endlessly up and down, up and down the frozen deck of The Riddle. He didn’t need sleep. He didn’t need summer pudding. Round and round The Riddle he went, trying to walk down the gangplank every now and then, but quite unable to do so. He longed to hear his own footsteps just as he used to hear them seventy years earlier – firm and strong, the steps of a true captain. But his feet made no sound at all, and if he tried stamping, his stamping foot would go not only through the ice, but through the deck of The Riddle as well. There he would be – stuck, lopsided. Of course, no captain enjoys being lopsided.

  So he paced backwards and forwards, lit by his own ghostly light and struggling – always struggling – to remember. He tried to stalk his own memory by going over and over the things he knew already. He was a captain. Yes! He had come to the Antarctic with his old friend, Escher Black, as his First Mate. They had been doing research on meteorites. Yes! Exploring one particularly big meteorite, he had actually found diamonds. A triumph! So what had happened? Why had he become a there ghost reduced to pacing and puzzling? How had he lost his pendant, and why was he totally unable to leave the frozen Riddle? There must be other things he needed to remember first.

  As he glided towards the bow of The Riddle, he found himself looking, every now and then, out through a little gap hung with long icicles. Beyond the cave which held The Riddle there seemed to be a larger, lighter cave – and it also seemed to him that he could make out flickering white shapes on the other side of those icicles. He seemed to hear, as if from a distance, echoing cries, compliments and complaints.