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.
10th December
My Dear Lady Misericordia,
I hope this letter finds you well.
We haven't had any post since we boarded the train, but I think I am safe in assuming that you have been having a lovely time gathered round the card table with Viscount Fox and not crammed into a luggage cart with a poached shark. Which is what I have been doing.
Yes, I'm afraid Baronet Oxshott is still determined to bring the shark's head for you. I'm not sure what for: perhaps as a reminder to never go on holiday with him. Anyway, the Professor has become interested in how what remains of the shark could be preserved and, as a consequence, has roped both Harry and I into helping him and Oxshott with their experiments.
Sadly, given that Lord Daunt will permit neither Oxshott or his shark out of the rear carriage, partly because of Oxshott's behaviour over the soup and partly just because of the smell, we have had to join him in there.
I have to say that when I decided that I was going to have an adventure, I did not imagine that adventure to consist of sitting in a freezing, rattling, rickety railway van with a pungent dead fish, watching a member of the English aristocracy trying to stuff its head with straw and cleaning his fingernails on its teeth.
And that was before the Professor decided to try and pickle the shark meat and Harry and I had to spend a day splashing each other with various foul concoctions until we felt quite sick.
Which is why I jumped at the Norwegian engineer's suggestion. He pointed out to me that on hunting trips he and his friends would bury their catch in the snow, using the cold to keep it fresh. It seemed a perfectly sensible idea... at first.
It was having both Oxshott and the Professor talking at me at the same time. It bewildered me and made me agree to things I shouldn't have, things like being tied to the roof of the moving train while holding a smelly, headless shark in the air.
The Professor was convinced that having cold air rushing over the shark would dry it as well as freeze it but while I, certainly, froze, it did nothing to dry out my nose, which has been running ever since.
As for the shark, we shall never know, as my hands got so numb with the cold that I dropped it and it bounced away from the rumbling train, down a ravine, there to lie in the quiet, untouched snow and really confuse whoever finds it.
For all that, though, there was something rather wonderful about lying there, on top of the swaying, chuntering train, especially without the shark, the cool, clean air rushing past.
The further north we go, the further away the sun appears to get. The nights are drawing out and the days becoming little more than a long twilight. All around me were dim mountains, shaggy with firs, only the snowy peaks glinting gold and pink in the failing sun. All was faded, distant and quiet, a gentle nocturne.
And then Oxshott started shouting about his shark and I was allowed to come down again and get warm in the restaurant car.
But more important than the Professor's experiments and Oxshott's sea-life is that we have at last crossed the Arctic Circle: North is no longer a direction - it is where we are!
We all got together last night in the saloon car to celebrate. To you, my Lady, a cramped railway carriage, lumbering through a freezing night at the top of the world probably does not seem like a very likely place for a party, but with a little effort great things can be achieved. A little effort and, as it turns out, rather too much Norwegian strong drink.
The Norwegians, it turns out, know a thing or two about parties in strange places and were able to contribute more than a little spirit, of all possible kinds.
The Norwegians and, in fact, Oxshott, who decided that he wanted a ceremony to match the one he underwent when he crossed the equator for the first time.
The Professor and Lord Daunt were excused - the Professor because he has crossed the Arctic Circle before, apparently, and your father because no one dared ask him - but the rest of us were made to sit in a bucket of snow and pay homage to the Professor in the guise of the great Polar Bear. It probably all seems terribly silly to you, but I must say that the Professor does a tolerably good bear.
And so, my Lady, a little giddy from my encounter with Professor Bear and a rather squashed and overenthusiastic jig with Harry and a lot giddy from the Norwegian spirit, I am going to crawl into my bed and dream of mountains and reindeer and polar bears and the incomparable, magical Arctic!
Yours,
Gradually thawing out
Timothy Hope, Esq, Tutor
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