In Arthur Ransome’s 1933 children’s novel Winter Holiday, Nancy Blackett, quarantined with mumps, sends a picture to her friends of a sledge being drawn by skating figures. Nancy is encouraging the group to pursue their plan to explore a frozen lake. The seven figures in the picture correspond to the seven children in the group. “But,” asks Peggy, “what did she put in the crowd for?”
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It’s a message in semaphore. The children had earlier discussed the semaphore alphabet; reading right to left, the figures in the picture are spelling out WHO IS SLEEPING IN THE FRAM?, a houseboat named for Fridtjof Nansen’s Arctic exploration vessel. Nancy was proposing that one of the children spend the freezing nights in the warmth of the ship’s stove.
Sherlock Holmes solves a similar cipher in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1905 story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men.”
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