Being marooned on the Goodwin Sands in the middle of the English Channel is enough to frighten you — and the Pott family and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, except that they are all fast asleep, dozing in the sun — out of your and their wits!
To make matters worse, one of those summer mists came creeping across the sea, hiding the family and their magical car from the Goodwin Lightship, which lies anchored some way south of the Goodwins. To warn them and all shipping of the terrible danger of the sands, the lightship began sounding its great fog-horn, which is one of the loudest in the world, and blinking its dazzling white danger light.
It was CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG who first woke up to the danger. You see, she had got very hot flying out to the sands and sitting in the sunshine, and as the sea came creeping up, glug-glugging in the hulls of the wrecks and whispering softly over the flat sand, the water gradually submerged the wheels of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG. When it reached the bottom of her radiator, she let out a loud warning hiss from the hot metal.
The family opened dozy eyes and then at once they were all on their feet and Commander Pott was running to the car. He jumped in and pressed the self-starter, and with a quick “CHITTY! CHITTY! BANG! BANG!” of relief, the big car, spinning her wheels in the wet sand so that the spray flew, crept up out of the incoming tide and was steered by Commander Pott up on to the dry centre of the rapidly diminishing sandbank where the rest of the family was waiting.
“Quick! Jump in!” he shouted. “We’ve just got room to take off.” But as Jeremy and Jemima piled into the back seats and Mimsie got in front, already the first little waves had run up the flat sands after them and the bottoms of the tyres were awash again.
“My goodness!” said Commander Pott anxiously. “Now we’ve had it! CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG can never get up enough speed to take off through the water. The only hope is that the lightship will realize the trouble we’re in and send their rescue boat for us. But that’ll mean leaving poor CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG marooned out here alone, and she’ll gradually be covered by the sea. During the night, she may easily be washed off the sands into deep water and we’ll lose her for ever!”
They all sat there gloomily as the water glugged around them and the fog thickened and there was no sign of a rescue boat. They suddenly realized that they might all be drowned out there in the middle of the English Channel.
All this while, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s engine had been running steadily on, but very soon, any minute now, the level of the sea would be up to her electric generator; there would be the blinding blue flash of a short circuit and the engine would go dead.
Suddenly, amongst the many dials and buttons and levers on the dashboard, a violet light began to blink urgently showing the words TURN THE KNOB. And quickly, although Commander Pott didn’t know the secret of every one of the row upon row of gadgets on the dashboard, he turned the knob under the violet light, and from underneath the car there came a soft grinding of cog-wheels and a curious lifting and shifting of the chassis, so that the whole family peered out over the sides to see what was happening.
And do you know what? I bet you can’t guess! All four wheels, pointing fore and aft as all car wheels do, had turned and had now flattened out like a hovercraft! Being an inventor, Commander Pott realized what this meant and what the result would be, so he pressed slowly on the accelerator and, just as the waves came up level with the floorboards, all four wheels began to turn like propellers. There was a jerk and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG began to move through the water, just like a motor-boat, with the four wheels whizzing round and round propelling her forward.
Well, that was all very fine, but she was a heavy car with four people in her and the only way to keep from sinking was to go so fast that they were almost skimming over the surface. So Commander Pott trod the accelerator into the floorboards, there was a great whirl of spray from the four wheels, and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG fairly sped across the surface of the sea, kicking up a big bow wave like a speed-boat.
Commander Pott had quite a tricky time dodging the masts of the sunken wrecks on the Goodwin Sands, weaving in and out of the tall, rusty, iron spikes as if they were involved in some kind of watery maze — but a dangerous one, because if Commander Pott hadn’t whirled the wheel this way and that, they would have ended up as just another Goodwin wreck. The fog swirled around them, the fog-horn from the lightship gave its huge double hoot every two minutes, and it really was pretty dangerous and spooky.
To tell the truth, Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima held their breath and clutched tight to the arm-rests, expecting any moment to hear a grinding crash and find themselves swimming for dear life. But somehow Commander Pott and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG between them managed to dodge all the obstacles and soon they were in clear water and swooshing along through the fog.
They had all let out a great “Pouff!” of relief when Jeremy, who had a good sense of direction, said, “But Daddy, aren’t we pointing the wrong way? There’s the hoot of the Goodwin Lightship fog-horn coming from down on the right. Oughtn’t we to sail towards her and then on past her towards Dover?”
Commander Pott said sternly, “You mustn’t say ‘down on the right.’ We’re all sailors now. You must say ‘to starboard’— that’s naval language for ‘right.’ And at sea ‘left’ is ‘port.’” He twirled the wheel to the left so that CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG swirled to the left. “Now we’re going to port.” He turned the wheel to the right. “Now we’re going to starboard. Quite easy to remember. ‘Port’ and ‘left’ both have fewer letters in them than ‘right’ and ‘starboard.’ Got it?”
“Well, yes,” said Jeremy, “that sounds easy. But still, Daddy, whichever way you’re going, to port or starboard, I bet you’re going the wrong way — away from England, I mean.”
At this, Commander Caractacus Pott put on his secret face — the face he wore around Christmas time when Jeremy and Jemima asked if they were going to get what they had asked Father Christmas for, and the face he put on when, for instance, he was preparing the Easter-egg hunt. All of them, Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima, recognized their father’s secret face and waited excitedly for what was to come, as CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG sped on through the fog, throwing up fountains of spray from her whirling wheels while the sound of the Goodwin Lightship’s fog-horn got farther and farther away.
“Well,” said Commander Pott in his surprise voice (he also had a particular voice for springing surprises with), “it’s the holidays, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” they chorused.
“So we’d all like to have a holiday adventure. Right?”
“Yes,” they said breathlessly.
“Well,” said Commander Pott, “CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG is going like smoke. The Channel’s as flat as a mill-pond. We’ve got plenty of petrol and the oil pressure’s fine, the engine temperature’s all right, and the fog will lift the farther we get away from land, and it can’t be more than about twenty-five miles now to the other side of the Channel, and we’re doing about thirty knots and a naval knot is 1.15 miles per hour, which gives a speed of about thirty-five miles per hour, so the whole trip would take less than an hour. And as it’s only just five o’clock now”— he paused for breath —“and as we’ve never been abroad, I thought it would be rather fun to go to France!”
“Good heavens!” said Mimsie.
“Gosh!” said Jemima.
“My hat!” said Jeremy.
And for a moment they all sat thinking about this colossal adventure. Then Mimsie said, “But we haven’t got any passports!”
And Jeremy said, “But don’t they have different money in France — francs, they’re called. What about francs?”
And Jemima said, “What about the language? I’ve only learnt ‘oui,’ which means ‘yes,’ and ‘non,’ which means ‘no.’ That’s not going to get me very far.”
Commander Pott said firmly, “That’s no way to treat adventures. Never say no to adventures. Always say yes. Otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life. Now then, passports — we’ll make for Calais, which is dead ahead, and go to the British Consul, who represents all English people, from the Queen down, in Calais, and get provisional passports. Money? We’ve got pounds and we’ll change them into francs. Language — Mimsie and I both talk French a bit and if we can’t make ourselves understood, we’ll find someone who talks English. More people in the world talk English than any other language and we’ll soon find someone. Right? Then that’s settled. CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG’s going to take us right across the English Channel to France. Now then, we’ll turn on the radio and get the weather report for ships and we’ll steer a bit more towards the north, as there’s quite a current running down the Channel and we don’t want to be swept along with it and suddenly find ourselves in Portugal or even in Africa.” He chuckled. “Do we?”
And all together, and very loud and definitely, they said, “No, we don’t!”
So Commander Pott fiddled with the dials on the radio and out came the familiar voice they had never bothered to listen to before. But now it was very important indeed. It said: “And this is the shipping forecast — North Sea and English Channel: dead calm. Patches of fog near the English coast. Further outlook, unchanged.”
Commander Pott switched off the radio. “Well, that’s all right. But now we’ve got to keep our eyes and ears open. The English Channel’s always crowded with shipping sailing up and down from London, which is the biggest port in the world, and from Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Sweden and Norway — even from Russia — on its way to and from Africa, India, America, and even as far away as China and Japan. Ships of every nationality use the English Channel, and we’d better watch out or we’ll be run down.”
And even as he spoke, they heard the giant beat of the engine of a big ship approaching, and Commander Pott quickly sounded the klaxon as a fog-horn, and it said “GA-GOOOO-GA, GA-GOOOO-GA” to warn the big ship. Back out of the fog came a series of huge MOOs, just like the noise a vast iron cow might make, and through the fog, coming straight at them, was the bow of a gigantic white liner.
Well, all I can say is that she missed them by a cat’s whisker, and they just had a glimpse of lines of passengers a hundred feet above them, staring down with astonishment at the sight of a green motor-car, using its wheels sideways like propellers, in the middle of the English Channel. Then the huge stern disappeared into the fog, leaving them pitching and tossing in the choppy wake.
“Whew!” they all said, more or less together. “That was a narrow squeak!” And Commander Pott added, rather unfairly, the others thought, “CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, for heaven’s sake, keep your eyes open and watch where you’re going!” This gave him an idea, and he switched the fog lights on and kept on making frequent GA-GOOOO-GAs on the klaxon.
Well, they heard many more ships passing in both directions, up and down the Channel, and once the periscope of a submarine came shooting up out of the depths to have a look at them and then quickly slid down under water again. They imagined word being passed round among the eighty or ninety men of the crew (yes, big submarines carry as many crew as that!), “Stone the crows! There’s a perishing motor-car overhead!”
Then suddenly the fog cleared and they were out in the sunshine with the big white cliffs of France showing up on the horizon, and they all let out a cheer that quite surprised the crew of a Dutch schuyt (a kind of small barge you see a lot of in the Channel, though when it’s at home it pronounces itself “skoot”) that happened to be passing. The Dutch crew let out a big “Hurrah” too as they gazed in amazement at CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG whizzing across the surface of the calm sea.
They sped happily on, getting nearer to France, and Commander Pott said it was now time to steer north so that they would arrive in the harbour of Calais. But this was easier said than done. The strong current kept drifting them southwards, and every time Commander Pott turned the wheel to steer north, CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG had to slow down because her wheels couldn’t go round and round like propellers and change direction at the same time. Commander Pott, and in fact all of them, began to get quite worried because there was no doubt that they were going to land on the beach at the base of the gigantic French chalk cliffs that are just as high and steep as the ones on the English shores near Dover. Sure enough, the water got shallower and shallower until they touched the shingle and the violet light on the dashboard blinked urgently and said TURN THE KNOB. When Commander Pott turned the knob, there came the same purr of machinery under the chassis, and the wheels straightened out and clicked back into the straightforward position and they bumped and churned their way up onto the beach.
Of course everyone was very glad to be on dry land again, but nothing could alter the fact that they were stuck at the bottom of giant cliffs that soared up above them towards the sky, and the tide was still coming in and it was half past six and there would only be about three more hours of daylight. It really looked as if the whole family, and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, were in the most dreadful and dangerous situation.
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