Winter Holiday. Arthur Ransome

The D.’s Take Charge XX Captain Nancy Gets Two Bits of News XXI Captain Flint Comes Home XXII Next Morning XXIII The Uses of an Uncle XXIV Flag at Beckfoot XXV Council in the Fram XXVI The North Pole XXVII To the Rescue XXVIII Arctic Night XXIX And Afterwards

      ILLUSTRATIONS

       Signal Station and Observatory

       “Is It For Us?”

       The Martians in Sight

       The Igloo

       Signals

      Pages from Dick’s Pocket-Book: –

       (1) Private Code

       (2) Semaphore Code

       (3) Scientific Notes

       The Igloo in Snow

       Peggy in the Cat Ice

       Captain Nancy Gives Instructions

       Dog Team in High Greenland

       “Lower Away”

       A Noise of Sawing and Hammering

       “The Houseboat’s Frozen In”

       Airing the Fram

       “Shove Your Port Legs Down – Hard!”

       Nancy’s Question

       The Fram in the Moonlight

       Peggy’s Answer

       “Tall Dutchman”

       Eskimo Settlements in the Sub-Arctic (map)

       “It’s Moving!”

       Capsized and Dismasted

       Through the Snow

       At the Pole

       Message at Cache Island

       Nancy Reaching the Pole

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      I have often been asked how I came to write Swallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above it, finding friends in the farmers and shepherds and charcoal-burners whose smoke rose from the coppice woods along the shore. We adored the place. Coming to it, we used to run down to the lake, dip our hands in and wish, as if we had just seen the new moon. Going away from it, we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind’s eye, could see the beloved skyline of great hills beneath it. Swallows and Amazons grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.

      A.R.

       Haverthwaite

       May 19th, 1958

CHAPTER 1

      STRANGERS

      STEPS SOUNDED on the wooden stairs, and counting, “Seven and eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and that’s the dozen.” Mrs Dixon was coming to tell the Callum children that it was time to get up. They had come to Dixon’s Farm only the night before. Mrs Dixon had been their mother’s nurse when she was a little girl, and Dorothea and Dick had come to stay at the farm for the last week of the winter holidays.

      For some time already they had been lying half asleep, listening to the strange noises down in the yard, so very different from the roar of the traffic in the streets at home. They heard