The Polar Bear Explorers' Club by Alex Bell (books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

‘If you must know,’ Ethan said in an ice-cold voice, ‘my brother saved my life.’

Stella glanced at the magician, surprised. She’d never heard him mention a brother before.

‘How?’ Captain Ajax asked.

Ethan hesitated for a moment. Then he said, ‘He cut off the squid’s tentacle. Now it hangs in the entrance hall of the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club.’

Captain Ajax gave a low whistle but didn’t say anything more. They walked back out into the tavern and everyone looked round at them expectantly.

‘Well, what do you know – the moustache wax works after all!’ Skullface said when he spotted Ethan. He glanced at one of his tablemates. ‘Looks like you lost the bet.’

‘The explorers need to get back to their exploring,’ Captain Ajax said. ‘So give them back their goose, and they’ll be on their way.’

‘What goose?’ Skullface said innocently.

Captain Ajax pointed a stern finger at him. ‘The one I can see wriggling around under your coat. Give it back to ’em. Now.’

Skullface sighed and grumbled but he opened his coat and allowed the goose to scramble free. Some of her feathers were a little ruffled but otherwise she looked no worse for wear. Skullface set her down on the floor, and she ran over to Stella, stared up at her and honked to be picked up.

Stella hurriedly scooped her into her arms and they followed Captain Ajax out from the warmth of the Yak and Yeti and into the frozen landscape. It was properly dark now and the moon and stars gave the snow a ghostly blue sheen. It all seemed very inhospitable after the log fires and glowing orange light of the candles they’d just left. Felix had told Stella once that even though exploring was the most fantastic, wonderful thing in the whole entire world, there were still times when you wished you were warm and safe and dry, and back at home in your own bed. Stella supposed this was one of those times.

But there were still adventures to be had. Now that the panic with Ethan was over, Stella went straight up to the frozen rainbow and placed her hand on it. It tingled and fizzed like sherbet beneath her touch. She grinned, delighted. Now she could go home and say that she had actually touched a rainbow, and that it had felt just like fizzy sherbet. Already, the urge to explore was coming back and she suddenly found herself eager to be off and find out what they would discover next.

‘Well then,’ Captain Ajax said. ‘My advice, if you want it, is to head that way.’ He pointed out across the blue snow. ‘My ship – the Snow Queen – is still there, trapped in the ice. It ain’t much: it’s rotting, it smells something fierce, and there are probably rats and all, but it’ll provide shelter for the night.’

Stella wasn’t sure she liked the idea of spending the night on a smelly, rat-infested, doomed ship trapped in the ice, but there was such a thing as ‘any port in a storm’ after all, and the simple fact was that they didn’t have enough tents with them. And after one close shave with the frosties, Stella didn’t fancy the rest of them ending up with frostbite during the night too.

So they said their goodbyes and their thanks to Captain Ajax and piled back into the sled. As they pulled away across the blue snow, beneath the glittering night sky, Captain Ajax suddenly called out after them, ‘Just make sure you don’t wake up the cabbages!’

Stella frowned, thinking she must have heard him wrong. She glanced at Ethan beside her but he just rolled his eyes.

‘Nuts,’ he mouthed. ‘Totally nuts.’

Stella felt rather inclined to agree with him. Useful though he may have been, perhaps, after all, Captain Ajax had had a bit more of One-Eyed Bill’s terrible grog than was really good for him.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The ship wasn’t far away and it didn’t take long to find it. It was frozen at an angle in the ice, looking pale and ghostly in the moonlight with the prow rising up into the sky, its shredded sails hanging in tatters, and gaping holes showing through the rotted, crumbling wood. Cold and still in the starlight, it seemed like a dead thing, a husk, a ghost ship.

‘Wow,’ Shay said. ‘That is extraordinary.’ He turned to grin at the others. ‘Isn’t being an explorer just the best thing in the whole world, ever?’

Everyone agreed that the ship was magnificent, but the problem was that it wasn’t stuck in the middle of a vast, flat expanse of ice, as they had expected. At first, Stella thought it was perched on the edge of a cliff, but then she saw that this was no cliff – it was a wave that had frozen right at its highest peak. A ladder ran all the way up the ship’s hull but the rungs sparkled with ice, and the whole thing looked a bit precarious.

‘Do you think it’s safe?’ Ethan asked, peering at it suspiciously.

‘The wave is frozen solid,’ Shay replied. ‘It’ll be fine. Besides, it looks like this is our only option.’

They quickly put up their one tent, which was only just large enough to shelter the animals, and then the four explorers took one of the mountain-climbing ropes and tied it around their waists to form a chain. Shay was in the front, then Stella, followed by Ethan and finally Beanie.

‘Beanie, put Aubrey away,’ Stella said, noticing that he had the wooden narwhal clutched in his hand. ‘You can’t climb the ladder if you’re holding that.’

After checking that the knots were all securely tied, they took hold of the frozen rungs and carefully made their way up the side of the ship. It hadn’t seemed so high from the ground but, now that Stella was up there, she thought it seemed very high indeed – dizzyingly high, in fact – and she