The Shackleton Sabotage

by Gertrude Chandler Warner

  “Named for a lieutenant who sailed on the Terror, I am in the world’s southernmost harbor. Got it?”

  Jessie wrote the riddle down and repeated it back. Trudy nodded.

  “That’s a pretty short riddle,” Jessie said. “Is that why Tricia didn’t deliver a written clue this time?”

  Trudy’s smile faded slightly. “Yes, something has come up. You all know Agent Carter?”

  The children nodded. Mr. Carter was an FBI agent and friend of Grandfather’s. Last they had spoken to him, he was investigating stolen art from a gallery in Nairobi and a stolen ruby ring from an auction in Paris.

  “I just got off the phone with him. He was asking about your recent travels and your contact with Tricia.” Trudy took a deep breath. “Apparently a theft took place at a museum in Japan last week.”

  “Theft? Does Mr. Carter think Tricia had something to do with it?” Jessie asked.

  “There is a videotape that shows Tricia speaking to a woman with a blond ponytail,” Trudy explained. “The woman is thought to be the one who took the artifact on Thursday night.”

  “That sounds like Anna Argent!” Henry said. He paused to think. “We were in Thailand last Thursday. Anna must have been in Japan! But it’s strange that Tricia would be talking to Anna.”

  “No way Tricia would help Anna steal!” Benny said.

  “I don’t know why they were talking,” Trudy continued. “But the investigators think Tricia’s involved. They also think she might have been the one that sent you off to Thailand.”

  “But it was the Argents that sent us to Thailand,” Jessie said. “Plus, Tricia just helped us return another artifact, the holey dollar.”

  “I know she did,” said Trudy with a sigh. “But you also said that Anna tried to steal the coin. The police might think that Tricia told Anna where to go.”

  “But it wasn’t Tricia who led Anna to us. It was one of our pilots!” Jessie exclaimed. Just as Jessie finished her sentence, she heard a click-clack of someone walking up the airplane steps.

  Jessie took a deep breath. “Sorry, Trudy. We need to go. If you talk to Tricia, let her know we’ll figure out who the spy is as soon as we can.”

  “I’ll tell her. Good luck in Antarctica,” Trudy said, waving good-bye. “Remember to stay warm!” They all waved back.

  Just as Jessie was closing her laptop, Aunt Jane, Emilio, and Mr. Ganert came back into the cabin. Mr. Ganert went straight into the cockpit. Emilio paused to say, “Next stop, Christchurch, New Zealand!” before he followed.

  A minute later the jet started up, so the children and Aunt Jane took their seats and fastened their seat belts. Since the two pilots were busy in the cockpit, the Aldens didn’t have to worry about being overheard, so they filled in Aunt Jane on everything they had learned.

  “Sounds like we should get cracking on that riddle,” Aunt Jane said after they were finished. “It might help show that Tricia is innocent.”

  Jessie smiled. It was good to have someone with them to help. She took out the piece of paper and held it out so everyone could see.

  “Sailed on the Terror makes it sound like the Terror is a ship,” Henry pointed out. “Jessie, will you look online and see if there are any ships named Terror that sailed to Antarctica?”

  Jessie did a quick search. “Yep, here it is. There was a ship called the HMS Terror that explored Antarctica in 1839. But I don’t see a list of lieutenants that were on the ship.”

  “What about the part about being the world’s most southernmost harbor?” asked Aunt Jane. “Although every place in Antarctica is farther south that most of the world, I suppose one of them has to be the farthest!”

  Jessie looked that up too. When she read the screen, her face lit up.

  “Ah-ha! The world’s southernmost harbor is McMurdo Sound. And it says here that McMurdo Sound is named after Lieutenant Archibald McMurdo…of the HMS Terror!”

  “McMurdo…isn’t that where your friend works?” Violet asked, remembering what Aunt Jane had said earlier. “Is McMurdo Station in McMurdo Sound?”

  “It is indeed!” said Aunt Jane.

  “Tricia was right. You really are perfect!” Benny said.

  Aunt Jane gave him one of her best winks. “In every way!” she said, and they all laughed.

  * * *

  When the Aldens landed, Aunt Jane exchanged a few emails with her friend Jasper, and before long, she found the right desk to buy the special plane tickets that would get them to Antarctica. After they checked in with their passports, Aunt Jane helped Henry and Jessie read the airport terminal screens to find out where their special plane to Antarctica was waiting.

  After a few moments, they found the gate for their plane. Even though it was a special flight, the gate was just like other ones at the airport. Aunt Jane checked them in at the desk, and she made sure their names had been added to the list of passengers.

  “Yes, you’re all registered and good to go,” said the flight attendant. “Oh, I’ve been told to give you these too.” He had a big container waiting behind the desk. Inside, the Aldens found five big parkas and enough goggles, hats, gloves, boots, and snow pants for them all. Benny tried on his goggles first. They covered almost his whole face.

  “I’m ready for Antarctica!” he said. Everyone, including the flight attendant, laughed.

  They got dressed in their gear and went down to the bus that would take them to the aircraft. Other passengers were waiting on the bus, all with their warm parkas. Most of the passengers looked like scientists and researchers, reading books and wearing parkas with science logos.

  Benny watched out the window as the bus slowed.

  “Wow! Look at the plane!” he said.

  It was a big and gray military plane. Inside, it was nothing like the Reddimus jet. It didn’t even have the usual rows of seats. Instead, there were stacks of luggage and equipment in crates, strapped down in the center of the cabin. The seats were along the side of the cabin.

  Once the plane was in the air, the Aldens settled in. It felt just like a normal flight, except the booming of the engines was louder.

  “I was thinking about something,” Violet said while they listened to the plane’s engines. “In the riddle, there was a part about how Antarctica was a rumor for hundreds of years. Do you know anything about that, Aunt Jane?”

  Aunt Jane nodded. “Yes, a little. Early explorers were unable to travel all the way south because their ships couldn’t stand up to the cold.”

  “Like the Reddimus jet,” Benny said.

  “Right, just like the jet. So, for a long time, people from all different parts of the world saw only glimpses. Many people guessed that there was land at the South Pole, but no one could prove it.”

  “Wow, just think of it!” Violet said. “A mysterious continent. It’s funny to think that whole thing was just a rumor for so long.”

  Their conversation had caught the ear of the flight attendant sitting nearby. It was the same attendant who had checked them in at the airport. Now that they were relaxing on the plane, Benny could read his name tag. It said Brian.

  “Isn’t it interesting?” Brian asked. “And there is still a lot we don’t know about Antarctica and other parts of the world. That’s why so many of the people who go to Antarctica are researchers.”

  “How long is the flight?” Benny asked.

  “In a C-17 like this one, only about six hours…” Brian replied. He tilted his head, trailing off. “I just remembered. The woman who dropped off your coats and gear told me to tell you something…What was it?…Oh yes! She told me to remind you to watch where you sit. Do you know what it means?”

  “Watch where we sit?” Henry repeated. “We’ve already sat down.”

  “Watch could also mean that we should look,” Violet said. “Benny, can you see anything under our chairs?”

  Benny leaned forward and looked under his seat. There was nothing there, so he peered under Aunt Jane’s, Violet’s, Jessie’s, and Henry’s too
. He could see something taped to the underside of Henry’s chair.

  “Henry, there’s something under your chair,” he said. “It looks like an envelope!”

  Henry reached down. Benny was right: there was an envelope taped below his seat. It had a familiar logo with an R and an owl drawn on the front of it. Inside was a series of photographs.

  “What is it?” Aunt Jane asked. Brian leaned forward to look too.

  “Some photos of people with flags,” Henry said, puzzled. He handed the photos to Jessie, who looked and handed them to Benny and Violet. “I don’t know exactly what they mean yet, but I do get the feeling they are our next clue.”

  Shackleton’s Semaphore

  The Aldens took turns looking at the photos. Each one was of a man in parka standing on what looked like an airplane runway, except it was covered in snow. The man was holding two flags, one in each hand. The only thing different about the photographs was that in each one, the man was holding the flags in different positions.

  Each photo also had a number written on the bottom corner in permanent marker. The numbers went from one to fourteen. Benny put all the photos in order.

  “It must be some kind of message,” he said. “But what?”

  “The flags must be some kind of signal,” Jessie suggested. “Do you remember? When we were at the airport, I saw people using light batons to direct the planes. This man holding the flags looks like that.”

  “Maybe it’s a version of air traffic control,” Henry said. “Say, Brian. Do you know anything about this?”

  Benny, who was sitting closest to Brian, showed him one of the photographs.

  “Do you know what this might mean?” he asked.

  Brian flipped through the photographs and nodded. “I do. I mean, I think I know what these are, but I don’t know what they say. You see, I think these are letters in semaphore.”

  “Letters?” Violet asked.

  “Semaphore?” Jessie added. “What’s semaphore? Is it a language?”

  “Sort of!” said Brian. “Semaphore is a way of spelling out letters using the positions of flags. It’s a way of sending a message over a long distance without using a telephone or radio. It’s used by the navy, for example, to send short messages from ship to ship. You can see from the photographs that these flags are very bright. It would be easy to see them from far away.”

  “So the different flag positions represent different letters?” Henry asked. “Great! Then all we need to do is find someone who knows how to decode semaphore and ask them to help us write down which letter each photograph represents!”

  “Do you think anyone on the plane might know how to decode it?” Jessie asked.

  Brian tapped his chin with a finger. “Hmm…You know, there just might be. There are a few passengers here who work with the US Air Force and the US Navy. I’ll bet at least one of them would be able to help you. Wait here and I will go and ask.”

  Brian unbuckled his safety belt and walked through the plane, holding on to the hand straps and chairs to keep his balance. He asked if any of the passengers knew anything about semaphore. At first, it seemed like no one would be able to help them.

  “I wonder if there’s Wi-Fi at McMurdo Station,” Jessie said. “We could probably look up the letters of the semaphore code online. But for right now, I hope there is someone on the plane who might be able to help us.”

  Brian got to the last row of passengers. Just when it seemed like they were out of luck, Brian spoke to an older man who looked up and nodded. Brian explained and the man waved at the Aldens. A minute later, he came over to take an empty seat next to them.

  “I heard you could use some help decoding semaphore,” he said. “My name is Stephen Liau. I was a doctor in the navy, where we learned semaphore. It’s been a while, but I could probably help you.”

  “That would be great!” Benny said. He handed over the photographs. Jessie found her notebook and pencil and offered those too. While Dr. Liau looked at the photographs and wrote in Jessie’s notebook, Aunt Jane asked, “What brings you to Antarctica?”

  “I’m retired, but some of my nephews work for an Antarctic program. When I was in the navy, I traveled all over the world. I have been to all the continents except Antarctica, so I decided to make the trip!”

  “Antarctica is our sixth continent,” Violet said. “We’ve been traveling a lot lately.”

  Dr. Liau was almost done going through the photographs.

  “Good for you,” he said. “Traveling is wonderful for the mind and spirit. You learn so many things when you see how big the world really is…and, in some ways, how small! Here you go. I couldn’t remember one of the positions, but I think you might still be able to figure out what it says.”

  Dr. Liau handed the photos back to Benny and the notebook back to Jessie.

  “Thank you!” said Benny.

  “No, thank you,” said Dr. Liau. “It was fun to exercise my memory. It’s not every day you get to read a message in semaphore!”

  Dr. Liau waved good-bye and went back to his seat. The Aldens looked at the letters from the semaphore message. One letter, the letter Dr. Liau couldn’t remember, was missing:

  SHACKLETONS H_T

  “Shackletons?” Henry said. “What are Shackletons?”

  “It’s a name!” Jessie exclaimed. “Ernest Shackleton. I read about him when I was reading about explorers. He spent many years exploring Antarctica and trying to reach the South Pole.”

  “So what is the second word?” Benny asked. “Maybe…hat?”

  Henry nodded. “It could be Shackleton’s hat. I’m sure he wore hats on his adventures, because it was so cold.”

  “Shackleton’s hit doesn’t make any sense,” Violet said. “And it couldn’t be Shackleton’s hot because it’s not hot in Antarctica at all.”

  “Shackleton’s hat could be it,” Jessie agreed. “But I don’t understand yet how it helps us return the biscuit tin from the Reddimus box. Maybe when we get to McMurdo Station, the clue will make more sense.”

  “Wait a second,” Aunt Jane said. “If it was Shackleton’s hat, we would know. There’s an A in Shackleton. So, if it were hat, the same flag position would have been used there too.”

  “So it’s not hat?” Benny asked. He was a little confused, so Henry took out the photographs of the flags again. They lined the photographs up in order, and Henry pointed to the third photograph, which stood for the A in Shackleton.

  “Oh, I see what Aunt Jane is saying,” Henry said. “Look here. The flag position in this photo means A. But it’s different from the one that Dr. Liau can’t remember. That means that the letter in between H and T is not A.”

  “Oh!” Benny said. Now he understood. He looked at the photos some more. “Then it’s not het or hot either. The E and O are both in Shackleton too. But those flags don’t match the one between the H and T either.”

  “And hit still doesn’t make any sense,” Violet said.

  “What about hut?” Jessie asked. “Shackleton’s Hut! Maybe Ernest Shackleton had a hut where he lived when he wasn’t exploring.”

  Benny nodded. That made sense. “Maybe that’s where he kept all his biscuits!” he said.

  They spent the rest of the plane ride practicing the semaphore from the photographs. They didn’t have flags so they used pieces of paper from Jessie’s notebook. There weren’t many letters to work with, but she was still able to spell some words: cat, note, and sack. Benny had a fun time matching the flag positions to the letters using the photos, and Jessie helped him sound out the words.

  When it was Henry’s turn to spell a word, he wrote out SOS.

  “What’s S-O-S?” Benny asked. He tried to sound it out. “Soss?”

  “SOS doesn’t actually stand for anything,” Henry explained. “It’s a signal that means there is an emergency. If you were stranded on a deserted island, you might try to write SOS in the sand in case a plane flew by. Then they would know you needed help.”

  “SO
S is a good thing to be able to spell in semaphore,” Violet said. “You could use it to signal for help on a ship or to a plane, even if you didn’t have a cell phone or a radio.”

  “I want to practice SOS using the flags,” Benny said. “But I hope we never have to use it from a deserted island!”

  “Don’t worry, Benny. I don’t think we will,” Aunt Jane assured him. “This plane is very safe. The Reddimus Society has taken very good care of us on our journey.”

  “Now if only we could find out which pilot is spying on us,” Henry said. It was a relief to talk about this now, when they didn’t have to worry about being overheard. “After we return the biscuit tin, we should figure out which of the pilots is working for the Argents.”

  “I was just thinking about that,” said Jessie, “when we were trying to figure out the mystery letter in the semaphore riddle. At first, when we thought it might say hat, I was thinking about all the ways we might try to find Ernest Shackleton’s hat. But when we realized it said hut, I had to change my plans to imagine a hut instead. Depending on how we thought about the message, we could have gone on two very different adventures. I wonder if we can use that idea to figure out which of the pilots is working for the Argents.”

  “The Argents led us on a fake adventure already,” Violet said. “When they gave us the fake message about Thailand and tried to trick us into giving the artifact to the wrong person.”

  “But if we give both pilots a message and send them both on a fake adventure, then we won’t have anyone to fly the jet,” Benny said. “Then we would have to signal SOS for the Silvertons to send us new pilots!”

  Jessie sighed. It was a difficult problem to solve. There had to be a way to single out the Argent spy. If they thought about it, they would be able to figure it out.

  “People will do different things depending on what information they get,” she said. “Just like with our message about Shackleton’s Hut when we thought it might say Shackleton’s hat.”

  “What if we gave them two different messages and watch what they do?” Violet suggested. “But I don’t know what kind of message would show us which one of them is a spy for the Argents. It’s not like we can say, ‘If you are the spy, then tell us right away.’”