My Dear Lady Misericordia,

I hope this letter finds you well. Now we have gone beyond the reach of the postal service, I will simply have to imagine how you are getting along.

So, I imagine you sitting in the drawing room, with your Pekinese lap dog Knife curled up at your feet, a blazing fire in the grate and tea being served. You are not, I think, hurtling across the freezing ice behind a pack of yelling dogs with nothing but wind-dried herring to chew on.

I, however, am.

I have to say, I'm afraid, that travel by dog-sled is not nearly as delightful as travel by reindeer sleigh. For one thing, these are not friendly English dogs - but then neither is your dog Knife, who has earned his name by shredding the cuffs of at least three pairs of my trousers.

Also, the weather has changed. For the last day the sky has been overcast, one great expanse of monotone cloud, and I cannot describe the dullness that settles in the heart at this endless, rattling travel over a white ground, under a grey sky towards an ever retreating horizon of black mountains.

Fortunately I have been sharing a sled with Professor Cumulus, who has provided many cheerful hours of rambling conversation on all subjects under the sun. Except one: where we are going and why. Although he has been very complimentary about my contribution to our venture so far and continually drops dark hints that I may be very useful in some way, he still refuses to be drawn on what, exactly, we are doing here.

I gather, from some of what he says, that he believes that he is on the track of some new fuel or energy source that will revolutionise modern industry, but, when I question him further, however delicately, he simply grins, impishly, and changes the subject.

I simply cannot imagine what he is about: of course there may be untold minerals hidden away in this great icy expanse, but even if we could find them, how one would go about extracting and transporting them in this vast wilderness is beyond my skill.

But a greater challenge might still lay ahead of us, even before we reach that mystery: that being the challenge of staying alive long enough to get there - especially with the Professor in charge of the expedition.

You must understand, my Lady, I do not wish to be unkind about Hedley Cumulus - he is, without doubt, a great and brilliant man - in his field. I merely wish to insist that his field, no matter what he might claim, is not dog-sled driving, and that he should never be allowed in one as long as he, or at least as long as I, live.

Our sleds, you see, were all in one long caravan, rushing across the snow, with Jim, our Finnish guide, driving the leading sled, and each pack of dogs coming after him in single file, diligently following his path.

The Professor, however, got it into his head that by watching Jim ahead of us, he had quite perfectly figured out the principles of sled driving and, finding a long whip tucked in under our seat, decided to put his new skills to the test.

Before I could stop him, he had stood up and cracked the whip loudly over the heads of the dogs. The whip then snapped back towards him, wrapping round him in tight coils, and slapping him round the face. By then, however, it had done its work and the dogs leapt forward, bucking the sled and pitching the Professor overboard into the snow, arms and legs completely bound up.

I, on the other hand, was still in my seat, which was not, sadly, the best place to be, as the dogs lurched away from Jim's safe path and went bolting off across the snow, barking and yelping at each other as they went. I heard Jim shout something at me as we bounced past, but I was far too busy hanging on for dear life to pay any attention to what he was saying.

Then I noticed the traces that held the dogs to the sled - if I could get hold of them, I could, perhaps, slow the dogs up, as the reins of a carriage can slow a horse - not that I had ever driven a carriage before, let alone a dog sled - but I had to do something.

But even as I reached forward, there came a terrible grinding and rending and the snow beneath my sled suddenly dropped away, opening up a great hole right below me.

A crevasse! The snow had just been a shallow bridge over a a chasm of ice and rock, and the weight of my sled had broken it. Under me, jagged and glittering walls of ice dropped away into an terrible inky, freezing depth.

What was worse was that at the sound of the collapse, the dogs had stopped running, and the sled was now teetering on the edge of the drop, with only their strength keeping it - and me - from plunging down into the cold dark.

At any other time the sight of those walls of ice, shading from the white of snow at the top, down through a deep, clear, translucent blue, into the impenetrable shadow below, might have been captivating: but that was the view from above - the view from the bottom, I suspected, would be very different indeed.

I instinctively stood up to try to jump to safety but, feeling me move, the closest dog turned round, tail wagging, and started towards me. The sled gave a lurch back into the crevasse and I dropped into my seat with a yell. The dog stopped and looked at me, puzzled.

I yelled again. He cocked an ear and gave me a look that told me he thought I might be dimwitted. I waved my hands. And then yelled again for good measure. The dog looked at me and then at his fellows. The sled gave another creak and shifted a little, a small shower of snow crumbling down into the gloom beneath.

On some unspoken agreement between the dogs turned back, set their shoulders to the traces and heaved. The sled shivered and dug into the edge of the precipice. I stopped yelling and waving and contented myself with hanging on. They heaved again and this time the sled strained and then juddered forward, up onto the snow. 

They pulled forward, those splendid dogs, and the sled came after them, up, up out of the crevasse and up again into the air. I am afraid, my Lady, that I have never been that friendly with dogs, especially, as you have pointed out before, with your companion Knife, but I can say that I have never been happier to see a pack of dogs as I was when I jumped form that sled onto the good, solid snow and they all crowded round, tongues flagging, barking and panting as they welcomed me back to safety.

The Professor, I must say, I was less pleased to see, when we were finally reunited, although he seemed rather surprised that I had taken what had happened quite so badly and that I insisted on him swapping sleds so that I could ride with Harry instead.

Indeed, the Professor was so taken with his exploits that, once we had made camp, he spent the whole evening interrupting everyone by 'practising' with the whip, wounding himself several times, breaking two cups and flicking Oxshott's dinner out of his hands in the process.

Eventually Jim, our guide, hid the whip and told the Professor it had been eaten by a reindeer, which at least diverted him into an enquiry into the digestion of Arctic ruminants and gave us a break from the unpredictable whistle and crack of the thing, which had had us on edge all evening.

But now I must go and have my supper before Oxshott steals it - I believe I have earnt it today.

Yours,

Safely back on firm ground

Timothy Hope, Esq, Tutor