The Adventure Calendar of Mr Timothy Hope is a seasonal story of unlikely accidents and hair-raising escapes told in 24 letters sent home by Timothy Hope as he journeys in the Arctic Circle. Featuring characters such as the unhinged big-game hunter Baronet Oxshott, the scatter-brained genius Professor Cumulus and the always inventive Timothy Hope, the story is a frequently silly, always exciting sleigh ride across crevasses, through wolf packs, into the heart of Christmas itself.
4th December
My Dear Lady Misericordia,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I’m sure it will, relishing, as I’m sure you are, the delights of being without a tutor for the moment. Have you made a bonfire of your books, I wonder, and are you busy unlearning your Latin?
I’m sure your friend Viscount Fox will be happy to supply you with plenty of useless knowledge to replace it with, he does seem to know such a lot about nothing of any consequence.
I am certainly improving, not least because we have finally reached the North Sea port where your father’s expedition is to board its ship for Norway and we will no longer have to be jolted across country by that dreadful coach.
Moreover today’s journey was markedly less springy than yesterday, after Lord Daunt persuaded the Professor that he really should stop tying us to the coach with his special elastic rope. Unfortunately, however, although our progress included less bouncing, it did include altogether too much more Oxshott.
The Baronet had, apparently, grown bored with riding inside the coach (and, judging from your Father’s expression this morning, the coach had grown tired of him) and so he decided to join us on the roof for today’s journey.
Quite how he could enjoy himself so much being shuddered and lurched along on top of all that teetering luggage, I cannot imagine, but certainly seemed to, trying to get us all to join him in a Swahili sing-a-long, thumping out the beat on a box of china that had begun to rattle ominously and laughing at us when we lost our grip and almost fell off.
But while Oxshott might have been enjoying himself, no one else was, mostly because his position on top of the coach put him in a prime position to spot any wildlife in the surrounding countryside. And for the Baronet, as I’m sure you know well, to see any animal is to wish to kill it.
“A grouse!” is what began it, not long after we had started out, “Guns! Now! Stop the bally coach! Guns!”
And he leapt forward, grabbing the reins from the coachman and hauling us to a stop. He then turned and started unloading baggage, passing us all boxes and packages as he searched for his shotguns in the luggage.
“What’s going on?” demanded Lord Daunt, “Oxshott, what the devil are you playing at?”
“Guns,” replied Oxshott, brandishing one, gleefully, “Grouse!”
Lord Daunt turned an interesting colour: “You men, get that baggage back on the coach immediately! Oxshott sit down and stop behaving like a demmed fool! Coachman, drive on!”
“Grouse!” bellowed Oxshott, almost plaintively, if one can bellow plaintively.
“Oxshott, sit down!” roared Lord Daunt. And Oxshott slumped down next to the driver, his shotgun cradled sulkily between his knees.
His sulk was soon forgotten however, when half an hour later:
“Rabbit!” and the coach juddered to a halt again.
“Oxshott, sit down!” and once more we rattled off.
“Deer!”
“Oxshott!”
“Sheep!”
“Oxshott!”
“Man with hat!”
“Oxshott, do that one more time and I swear I will shoot you with your own demmed gun!”
It was then, as Professor Cumulus tried to persuade Lord Daunt not to start diminishing the numbers of their expedition before they had even begun, that something occurred to me.
“I’ve got it!... Your Lordship, sir, I beg your pardon, sir, if I may” I said, remembering my disguise, “I may have an idea.”
Without the Professor’s elastic rope it would never have worked, of course, so perhaps it was a good thing he had brought it along, after all.
I and the other footmen quickly rigged up a crude catapult with the elastic rope, attached to the roof of the coach. With this we could then fling out pieces of the broken dinner service that Oxshott had been thumping on earlier, creating a sort of clay pigeon for the Baronet to shoot away at to his heart's content.
And so, once again, we were finally on the move, bouncing down from the mountains, through steep valleys and small villages towards the sea, to the sound of a constant cry of:
“Pull!” and the bang of a shotgun as we flung bits of broken plate at passing farms and Oxshott blasted away merrily at the countryside as it jolted past, startling crows, breaking windows and generally covering England with shattered china.
But he has been happy, and we have finally arrived here in the port where our ship is waiting for us, ready to take us away on our extraordinary adventure.
Yours
With ringing ears and crockery in my hair
Timothy Hope, Esq, Tutor
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