Ian Fleming - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

No one heard the glug-glug-glug as the sea quietly, softly flowed into the half-sunken hulls of the wrecked ships.

And no one—not one of the dozing family—noticed that the wheels of CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG were slowly, inch by inch, being submerged by the incoming tide. And no one realized that soon, very, very soon, the whole family, Commander Pott, Mimsie, Jeremy, and Jemima and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG, who by now was really a member of the family, too—would be marooned out in the middle of the sea—THREATENED WITH MORTAL DANGER!!!

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 to the south of the Goodwins. To warn them and all shipping of the terrible danger of the sands, the lightship began sounding its great foghorn, 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 center of the rapicily 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 seat and Mimsie got in front, already the first little waves had run up the flat sands after them and the bottoms of the tires 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 cogwheels 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 foyer wheels began to turn like propellers. There was a jerk and CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG began to move through the water, just like a motorboat, 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 speedboat.

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 foghorn 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 armrests, 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 boot of the Goodwin Lightship foghorn coming from down on the right. Oughtn’t we to sail toward her and then on past her toward Dover?”

Commander Pott said sternly, “You mustn’t say ‘down to 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’ have fewer letters in them than ‘right’ and ‘starboard.’ ”

“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 foghorn 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 millpond. We’ve got plenty of gas 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 us 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!”