My dear Lady Misericordia,
 
 
I hope this letter finds you well. It certainly leaves me a good deal better and, more importantly, a good deal steadier, given that we are now finally on dry land and the world has ceased to rock quite so much.
 
Yes: we have finally arrived in Norway, and our expedition can at last begin in earnest, although I must say our adventure has already started with what we went through to get here.
 
We sailed from a bright calm day into a dark and stormy night. The sea was mountainous, one moment pitching the ship into dank, green troughs, surrounded by great churning walls of water with the fish blinking down at us through the curling waves and the next flinging us right up to the sky on the peak of a watery mountain with only endless ocean far below us.

Finally, as dawn began to break around the clouds, we saw the coast and the port. But just when we were almost safe ashore, the land itself became our worst enemy, as the heaving sea tried to throw our ship up onto the stone jetty round the harbour - it was all our Captain could do to stop us being smashed to pieces and all drowned in the terrifying storm.

The Professor was beside himself - but not because we were about to be crashed to damp smithereens - oh no, he was worried because we were going to miss the train that he had specially chartered to take us from the port into the far North of the country - and if we missed that, then our expedition was over before it had ever begun.

We had to make it to shore as soon as possible, but the Captain was adamant: if we got any closer to the harbour, we were done for. As we stood debating this problem, clinging to the the railings of the fo'c'sle for dear life, shouting to be heard over the raging tempest, I became aware of a commotion below us on deck.
"Let go of me, man! I'm going to give that dashed sea-monster a hiding!"

It was Baronet Oxshott, being wrestled away from the lurching side of the ship by two of the crew. For a moment I thought (a little cheerfully, I must admit) that he was trying to throw himself in, but then I noticed the great harpoon in his hands, attached to a long length of rope. And there, in the water below him, the flick of a shark's tail - a massive shark's tail, that could only be attached to one end of a massive shark - the other end of which could only be full of massive shark's teeth.

"I'm going to skewer the bounder and bring its head home for Lady Misericordia!" he bellowed. Although I don't think it was really polite of him to bring your name into it.

It was then that the idea struck me.

"Could you hit the shark in this storm, Oxshott?" I shouted.

"Of course I could, you bally fool!" he shot back, "I could hit you, too - go on, try and dodge!"

"What about the jetty? Could you hit that?" I continued, ignoring his taunts.

"I should bally think so! Watch this!" And without warning he turned and threw the harpoon, which shot out over the water like a steel lightning bolt and with a thud buried its head between the stones of the jetty.

"Quick!" I shouted, "Secure that line! Captain keep the boat as steady as you can - you men, start bringing up our supplies - you, bring another length of rope..."

They all stared at me as if I had gone mad, but the Professor, a gleam in his eye, saw what I had planned and quickly joined in.

"Do as he says, its our only chance!"

"Oxshott," I continued, "Could you climb along that rope to the jetty?"

"In this weather, with that beast down there?" And the shark showed us his fin again.

"I know," I said, "I wouldn't dare, either."

"Then I would," shouted Oxshott, "Out of my way," and he flung himself across the deck and out onto the rope, dangling by his arms only feet about the raging water.

The boat heaved up and down and back and forth, the wind buffetted him and the waves snatched at his feet, but still Oxshott pulled himself hand over hand along the rope, slowly getting closer and closer to the dry land ahead.

He was almost upon the harpoon, sticking out from the rocks of the harbour, and was reaching out his hand for it, when out of the boiling water beneath came roaring the shark, its terrible mouth gaping wide enough to swallow a hansom cab, its stark white teeth like a row of knives in a cutler's window.

And without pausing Oxshott turned and punched the shark square on the nose.

The beast seemed to pause for a moment and then dropped back into the water, stunned, and Oxshott swung himself neatly up onto the jetty.

Then, following my instructions and with Oxshott's grudging assistance, we created a simple pulley system that allowed us to haul our supplies from the boat to the shore and, while we were doing this, Harry managed to knock up a bosun's chair, on which we were all pulled, one after another, across the yawning, horrfying gap, to dry land.

I must confess I kept my eyes closed the whole time, finding the splashing and roaring of the waves quite frightening enough, but was quite terrified to open them only to find myself staring straight into the mouth of the shark.

"Ha ha!" shouted the shark, "That made him jump!"

I realised that it wasn't the shark talking, after all, but Baronet Oxshott, who had hauled the poor thing up from the water and was now dragging it about the pier, scaring people with it and enjoying himself immensely.

Professor Cumulus and Harry were both very congratulatory, however, and I am pleased to report that even your father tapped me on the shoulder and commented on my resourcefulness. Although he did point out that it was rather undermined my asking for my mother all the way across from the ship.

But we are, at last, ashore, on steady legs and ready to begin our journey into the Arctic North.
 
Yours,
 
Still dreaming of teeth
 
Timothy Hope, Esq, Tutor