The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom

“Bonniface Sapwood!” he announced down the phone, almost expecting to hear someone shouting for help at the other end. But there was no shouting.

“Is it really you, Bonniface,” said an oily voice. “The great Bonniface? The Antarctic explorer who almost discovered the long lost Riddle some years ago?”

“Who is this?” demanded Bonniface crossly. “I was just working out an important dream and you’ve interrupted me.”

“Never mind who I am,” said the voice. “I am a secret admirer. That should be enough for you.”

It was almost enough. Bonniface relaxed and smiled, pleased to think he had a secret admirer. The voice went on.

“I thought you should know that Corona Wottley (that other famous Antarctic explorer) decided (about twenty minutes ago) to visit the Antarctic once more.”

“She is probably going to do more penguin research,” said Bonniface. “She is very sound on penguins.”

“I was just talking to her on the phone, and she is already packing her thermal underwear. She was boasting a little bit, I’m sorry to say – boasting that she would be the one to discover the lost Riddle!” said the oily voice.

Bonniface jumped as if he had been stung.

“How can she?” he cried. “I’m the one with the map – well, not a map, exactly. But I’m the one with ideas. I’m the one who nearly found it last time. And only five minutes ago I decided to set out and search for it all over again.”

“Five minutes ago?” asked the oily voice. It chuckled. Somehow that chuckle had a very dark sound about it. “Five minutes is already a long time ago when it comes to an Antarctic race.”

“Corona Wottley won’t find The Riddle!” shouted Bonniface. “She’s only a junior explorer. I should know, because I’m the one who gave her her first exploring lessons. Anyhow, as it happens, I’m leaving for the Antarctic myself. I know it’s nearly Christmas, but I’ve been at home for four Christmases now, and besides, my children have Daffodil, our housekeeper, to look after them, so they’ll be OK for a little while. And think how proud of me they’ll be when I come home in triumph. It’ll be a wonderful present for them.”

He slammed the phone down and leaped to his feet, so excited that just for a moment he found himself dancing on the spot.

“Tonight will be too late!” he muttered to himself, looking at his watch. “I must go immediately!” he cried. “Or even sooner! No one must find the lost Riddle but me.”

CHAPTER 6 On the Trampoline

Up and down… up and down… the three Sapwood children were out on the big blue trampoline, all enjoying a bit of early-morning bouncing while the early-morning blackbirds sang They were having fun. As usual, Edward and Sophie were trying to outbounce one another. Edward zoomed up, turning a somersault as he did so and feeling like a spaceman on a low-gravity planet. It seemed like practice for space travel and Edward longed to be a space traveller. In fact he was writing a science fiction novel just to go on with, and felt that bouncing on the trampoline was good practice for science fiction as well as space travel.

As Edward zoomed up, Sophie was zapping down. Boing! She hit the trampoline. Up she went, high into the air while Edward zapped down. It was all zap-and-zoom, zap-and-zoom with Sophie and Edward. Meanwhile, to one side of the big blue trampoline, Hotspur did a few little-kid-bum-bounces. He was a beautiful child – everyone said so – with black curls and long black lashes fringing big, blue eyes, but he was slightly strange as well. He was four years old, but had never said a word that anyone could understand. Mind you, he had plenty to say, but he sang and squawked and quacked and crowed and cawed and cooed and clucked and cackled. The trees close to the trampoline were crowded with sparrows and blackbirds all listening intently to Hotspur whistling and chirping as he did his bum-bounces.

Higher! Higher! Higher! went Edward. Higher! went Sophie! Higher, and then higher still! It felt wonderful.

“I’m going into orbit!” cried Edward, turning his usual somersault at the top of his bounce, then diving down again. He was longing to take notes for his science fiction adventure book, but it is hard to take notes when you are actually bouncing. It would be too easy to stick a pen in your eye.

“I can see Daffodil cooking breakfast!” Sophie sang, shooting up past him.

“I almost looked in at Dad’s bedroom window that time,” Edward boasted a moment later.

“And I am looking through Dad’s bedroom window,” Sophie shouted another moment later. “He’s on the phone.”

They kept on shouting cheerfully to one another as they zapped and zoomed.

“He’s just slammed the phone down…” cried Edward.

“…looking excited…” screamed Sophie

“…rushing to the wardrobe…” (Edward)

“…dragging out his explorer clothes…” (Sophie)

“…his explorer clothes and his brown suitcase,” Edward exclaimed. “Wow!”

“Oh-oh!” Sophie and Edward groaned in chorus as they accidentally bounced on top of one another. “This means trouble.” But it wasn’t their collision they were groaning about.

Off to one side, Hotspur whistled in apprehension and every bird in every nearby tree joined in too.

CHAPTER 7 Mukluk Kissing

Bonniface was packing quickly. Explorers are good packers. Quickly, quickly he packed seven pairs of underpants, one pair for each day of the week. Quickly quickly he pulled on his favourite red thermal underwear, then lovingly folded his second-best blue thermal underwear and pushed it in beside his underpants. He packed his long johns (top and bottom), his second-best long johns, his woollen shirts (one red, one blue and one green) and his best explorer’s padded waistcoat made of polypropylene.

“I’ll be cosy, I’ll be clean, in my polypropylene,” he sang as he folded this splendid garment. On top of his waistcoat, he packed woollen outer socks, vapour-barrier liner socks and a pair of thin polar-fleeced socks to go inside the other two. He packed sweaters, a fleecy inner jacket, an outer survival jacket, three balaclavas and a neck gaiter (which covered the part of his neck where his collar left off and his balaclava began). He also packed inner gloves, outer windproof mitts, sunglasses and snow goggles.

“But what about my feet?” he cried aloud, and began a feverish search, tossing there sandals and sneakers left and right in his desperation. “Where are my fleecy salopettes? Where, oh where, are my mukluks?”

Shoes flew out behind him in all directions.

“Aha!” he cried in rapture a there moment later. “Mukluks! My mukluks! Marvellous!”

Soaring up from the trampoline and looking through the window yet again, Sophie saw her father hugging two tall, tough, hard-and-heavy laced-up, bright blue boots, especially made for walking in snow. She saw him plant smacking kisses on either shiny toe.

“Dad’s kissing his mukluks,” she cried as she plunged back to the trampoline.

“Uh-oh!” cried Edward, shooting up to see for himself. “Mukluk kissing means trouble. Not just ordinary trouble either. Mukluk kissing means real trouble.”

Little Hotspur gave the cry of a particularly worried thrush.

But then all three children fell down and began rolling around on the trampoline, giggling their heads off. Something exciting was about to happen and, naturally, they loved excitement.

CHAPTER 8 Two Different Careers

Bonniface Sapwood grabbed his passport, some spare money and his notebook, along with various lists and maps which he then packed safely. He unlocked the safe in the corner of his room and took out a covered green folder filled with maps and pages covered with scribbles and question marks.

“Ready to go!” he cried happily and danced downstairs.

Sophie and Edward were trying to tell little Hotspur what was going on. It was hard to know if he could understand them, but they told him just the same.

“Dad’s packed his terminal underwear!” cried Sophie.

“Thermal, not terminal,” Edward said. “Get it right!”

“Terminal means the end of something, and it might be the end of Dad,” argued Sophie. “It nearly was, last time.”

Hotspur crowed like a rooster. Rooster voices answered him from backyards all over the city.

“Hey, what will Daffodil say?” asked Edward beginning to bounce again.

“You already know what she’ll say,” cried Sophie.

“Who’s going to look after the kids?” the two of them cried together, and they began laughing again. Only Hotspur looked uncertain.

“Don’t worry, Hotspur,” Sophie declared. “We’ll look after ourselves.”

“We always do,” agreed Edward. “We’ve had to, haven’t we? I mean, Dad’s done his best, but we’re the clever ones.” And he began bouncing high… high… maybe higher than he had ever bounced before.

“Edward’s going into orbit,” shouted Sophie, looking up at him in admiration. “He’s a distant planet.”

Inside the house, Bonniface Sapwood, faithful brown suitcase in hand, came thundering downstairs in his mukluks.

“What’s for breakfast?” he cried joyously.

But his housekeeper, Daffodil, was standing at the door with her own suitcase (a pink one) packed and bulging beside her. They stared at each other in horror.

“Where do you think you’re going?” they cried together, pointing at one another’s suitcases.

“I’m an explorer, remember!” Bonniface declared. “I’m going to find The Riddle. That’s always been my dream.”

“But I’ve got a chance of dancing in a Christmas ballet,” Daffodil declared right back at him. “And that’s always been my dream. I’ve been practising for weeks.”

“Who’s going to look after the kids?” they shouted simultaneously, glaring across the kitchen at each other.

Out on the trampoline, Edward, Sophie and Hotspur were listening, rolling on the trampoline, and laughing crazily.

“They’re your kids!” said Daffodil at last.

“But listen…” begged Bonniface. “I’ve just had a new theory about where we might find the wreck of The Riddle. Daffodil, I must find that lost ship before anyone else does.”

“It’s just an old ship,” said Daffodil. “It probably won’t ever sail again.”

“It’s The Riddle!” yelled Bonniface. “The First Mate, Escher Black, led the crew to safety after the ice closed in on it, but that’s only part of the story. If I find The Riddle, I’ll find the ship’s logbook, and then I’ll know exactly what happened and why. I’ll write a book about it all. It’ll be a bestseller and someone is bound to make a film of it. Maybe even a ballet – a mukluk ballet!”

“Listen!” said Daffodil. “I told you when I came to work here that I’d have to go when I had a chance to dance. I thought you understood. Well, you said you did.”

“But I’ve already packed my thermal underwear and my best polypropylene waistcoat,” said Bonniface. “Be reasonable!”

“And I have packed my tights and my tutu,” said Daffodil. She leaped to straighten the curtain at the kitchen window – a leap so graceful that Bonniface was distracted by her footwork and failed to see the expression of great cunning which crossed her face. “Oh well, perhaps I will be reasonable,” she cooed, turning round again, “Eat up your fried egg and we’ll argue about it later.”

The fried egg certainly smelled good.

But out on the trampoline, Edward, Sophie and even Hotspur had all seen that expression of cunning cross Daffodil’s face.

“Shall we tell?” asked Sophie, while Hotspur twittered like a fantail. Fantails came out of the garden trees and twittered back at him.

“Let’s just see what happens next,” said Edward. “That’s what you do in stories. I might take a few notes.”

A writer never knows just what is going to turn out to be useful.

CHAPTER 9 The Treachery of a Housekeeper

What happened next, in this particular story, was that their housekeeper sneaked out of the back door. She ran over to the trampoline, holding a finger across her lips. Then she took the finger away and kissed Edward, Sophie and Hotspur, but very quietly. (She usually gave them great smacking, musical kisses like cymbals being flicked together). Then she vaulted lightly over the garden wall with the grace of a trained ballet dancer, and slid into her car – a red ‘Snifitzu’ – which was parked in front of the garage.

Gently and silently, she put it into reverse; gently and silently she took off the handbrake and coasted down the sloping drive. When she hit the main road (after looking carefully both ways), she took off like a rocket.

Three minutes later Bonniface called out, asking where the tomato sauce was.

Four minutes later he got up and began to search the house for tomato sauce, calling Daffodil’s name as he did so. His voice echoed in empty rooms.

Five minutes later a howl of fury and anguish rang out in the Sapwood kitchen.

CHAPTER 10 A Startling Idea for a Devoted Father

“How could she do this to me?” Bonniface complained bitterly. He mopped up the last of his egg with the last of his toast – toast he had been forced to make himself.

“It’s nearly Christmas,” said Sophie, for the children had come in from the trampoline to comfort their father. “You could put off going to the Antarctic until after Christmas.”

“You don’t understand,” cried Bonniface. “I’ve just had a dream. I heard a mysterious voice. ‘Help!’ it cried. Now, a lot of people would be confused by a voice calling ‘Help!’ but not me. I knew – knew for sure – that it was an Antarctic voice. And it was calling me! ME! And it wanted me now! And not only that, I had the strangest feeling that I knew where it was calling from. I suddenly remembered an inlet – the Inlet of Ghosts, they called it – which people talked about without quite knowing whether it was really there, and I woke up with a sudden new theory about where I might find The Riddle, so…”

“You’ll have to take us with you,” interrupted Edward. “I’d rather go to another planet, but going to the Antarctic might be a sort of science fiction practice.” Hotspur gave the cry of an excited goose.

“Antarctic explorers never take their kids exploring with them,” shouted Bonniface. “Scott didn’t! Shackleton didn’t! Amundsen? No way!”

“It might have been more fun for them if they had,” said Edward.

Bonniface crunched his toast thoughtfully. Slowly, his expression changed till suddenly he thumped the kitchen table with his clenched fist. He thumped it so hard that the bottle of tomato sauce leaped high in the air.

“You’re right!” he cried. “Why should I copy Scott and Shackleton? Why shouldn’t I be the first explorer to take my children with me? I want to look after you kids. I long to try out my new Riddle theory. And I absolutely need to answer that cry of ‘Help!’ I’ll do all three things at once. It’s settled. We’ll all go south!”

“Hooray!” shouted Edward and Sophie, while Hotspur chortled like a happy magpie. “We’ll pack at once.”

“You will need thermal underwear,” their father shouted after them.

“You gave us some last Christmas,” Sophie called back. “And the Christmas before that.”

Bonniface smiled proudly, thinking what a good father he had been.

“What I really wanted was a reflecting telescope,” Edward muttered. Still, it was no use worrying about past disappointments.

“And do you have polypropylene jerkins?” Bonniface shouted again.

“You gave us jerkins and jackets for our birthdays,” Edward’s voice came back faintly. “We have complete sets of explorer clothes! And mukluks! Even Hotspur has mukluks – though he really wanted trainer skates.”

Hotspur! Bonniface suddenly frowned. The older children might be useful. They could cook, do up their own jerkins and jackets and mukluks. But Hotspur!

“Perhaps we should send Hotspur to Granny’s,” he suggested. But this suggestion made Hotspur squawk like an angry seagull.

“Dad!” cried Sophie. “We can’t leave Hotspur behind. I know he’s little, but every little helps.”

Oh well, thought Bonniface, there wouldn’t be too much work in looking after anyone as small as Hotspur. He ran to his fax machine, planning to contact Scott Base on Ross Island, on the very edge of the great, frozen continent. He wanted to let them know he was coming and to order a particularly good skiddoo – a sort of Antarctic motor-sledge.

“It must be a state-of-the-art skiddoo!” he muttered to himself. “Nothing but the best will do. And when they hear that I’m bringing the kids, they’ll make sure that I get the very best. After all, it’s nearly Christmas. They’ll want the children to be safe as well as happy at Christmas. There might, after all, be great advantages in taking the kids with me.”

CHAPTER 11 Unexpected Air Travel

The Sapwood children always travelled by plane when they visited their grandmother. They were used to airline seatbelts, and looked forward to free aeroplane lollies. But the inside of the Hercules aircraft (which was waiting to take explorers and scientists to Antarctica) took them by surprise. For travelling by Hercules turned out to be rather like flying in a second-hand-clothes-and-general-junk shop. There were seats, of course (you didn’t have to stand all the way to the Antarctic), but they weren’t like ordinary aeroplane seats. They were made of a curious orange webbing and they ran around the edge of the Hercules cabin. You strapped yourself in and sat there, staring inwards towards the middle of the plane. And down the middle of that cabin ran tall racks on which people hung coats and slung luggage. A man in an orange-coloured overall and headphones moved around, handing out plastic bags. Sophie thought perhaps they were being given large bags full of sweets, or something to be sick into, but it turned out he was handing ear-muffs to everyone.

Of course, the Hercules was full of people all going to Antarctica and, while they waited for the journey to start, Bonniface pointed them out to his children… helicopter pilots, geologists, penguin experts, drill-operators, and so on.

“It’s almost as good as going to another planet,” Edward whispered to Sophie, who nodded in a rather distracted way. As she had climbed on to the plane, suddenly the pendant, hidden under layers of warm clothes, had shifted against her skin as if it were startled. She had the odd idea that, even through layers of jerseys and jackets, it had recognised someone, and that somewhere in the Hercules, someone smiling and cheerful had also recognised – not the invisible pendant, perhaps, but certainly the whole Sapwood family, and had stopped smiling. Sophie peered around anxiously, but there wasn’t a single person looking disturbed, dismayed, or disgusted by the sight of a famous explorer taking three children on a dangerous expedition.

The Sapwood family settled down on the webbing seats and strapped themselves in. A merry crowd of Antarctic helicopter pilots were settling themselves opposite, and singing a fine old Antarctic helicopter-pilot’s song.

“Oh, let us meanderOut over Lake VandaWhere we’ll take a ganderAt prospects of snow.

Or we may be nosierAnd make for Cape CrozierThe prospect is rosierAt forty below!”

Sophie touched the front of her jacket under which the pendant was nestling – a warm tear just over her heart. Then something caught her eye. A cluster of bright orange waterproof coats with hoods was hanging almost opposite her, billowing out over the end of an empty section of seating, and below these coats she saw a pair of mukluks that looked as if they might have real feet in them. It was hard to be sure. But, feet or not, these mukluks were particularly interesting in themselves. They were blue, and decorated with gold and silver stars. Sophie liked the look of them. She liked the idea of someone taking starry strides across the Antarctic. But was there someone concealed by those coats… someone sleeping or, perhaps, hiding under them? It was hard to tell.

“There aren’t many windows,” muttered Edward interrupting Sophie’s thoughts.

“Where’s the air hostess?” she asked her father.

“There aren’t any air hostesses on an Antarctic Hercules,” cried Bonniface scornfully. “We’re not tourists!”

But just then the Hercules started up, and the cabin immediately became far too noisy for any of them to hear a word. Bonniface hastily slid ear-muffs on to Hotspur’s head, and gestured to Edward and Sophie to put on their ear-muffs as well. He pointed at the bag of books dangling from the rack that ran down the middle of the plane, meaning that they were both to read quietly because it was going to be too hard to talk during the flight.

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