Sunday 8^th August, 1937

            A chilly start! Being dropped off last night with the last of the light on an unknown shore made us hard to follow, but it also made for an uncomfortable evening. We found an abandoned quarry sheltering a dense clump of bushes, and passed a not particularly cosy night. Being an aspiring movie starlet is at least “safe indoor work” as the phrase goes, and there are less comfortable places to be than a casting-couch. Sadly we were dressed more for a stroll in a Boston park than a night in the fresh air by the North Atlantic.

            Miss Cabot mused that we might be somewhat overreacting, behaving as if the NKVD was on our trail and we could expect professional tracking teams with four-legged scent hounds to be scouring the shore for our paw-prints. Possibly so, but better safe than sorry – at least we are keeping our skills in practice. It would be better to have our Songmark clothing and packs on, but learning to use them is Lesson One for a first-year; Lesson Two is learning to manage without. At least we did not have to manage without breakfast; a pack of ships biscuit and a can of sardines between us was hardly luxurious but good enough.

            Miquelon Island is very little developed; it looks rather like some of the wilder parts of Scotland I have seen with thin soil, peat bogs and a wide, open landscape with the occasional stone-built farmhouse nestled under what shelter it can find behind crags and rock edges. Still, it is more traditionally “Euro” than anything we have seen in Canada so far, having been settled five hundred years ago when the site of Boston was hardly a pencilled coastline on the chart. It has a sparse web of cart tracks, and once on there we made reasonable time (though wishing sturdy boots were part of the outfit.)

           The twin islands are about fifteen miles across, and as we started early we were at the start of the sand spit between them before midday. There were a few furs about, heading into church, and dressed in our conservative “Boston respectable” we did not look too out of place. I made a point to greet everyone; country folk all over the world as far as I have seen are much likelier to hail strangers. I was challenged a few times in a friendly manner, but my reply that we were visiting to meet friends here seemed to satisfy the islanders’ curiosity as well as being broadly true. Unlike Spontoon this is not a place that has a tourist season, and since the bootleggers left I expect furs are realising the full extent of their isolation.

           There was a steep drop down what looked like an old cliff, and we were off the ancient ice-scoured rock of Miquelon Sud and onto the low lying sand-spit that links the two parts. Not a place to be caught by a tidal wave – it is three miles of bare uninhabited sand with no pretence of a permanent track. We have seen no motor vehicles so far that would need such, and if one made a tarmac road it would soon be buried by the drifting sand. Judging by the line of marker posts we followed, everyone uses the leeward side of the beach as their highway. How that would be in a howling Winter storm sweeping in from the East, we are glad not to be finding out.

           Then – a welcome sight indeed! Where the spit becomes a beach wrapping around Miquelon Nord, there is a big triangular lagoon perhaps a mile across – and floating just offshore, the Storm Bird. Nor was she alone; I recognised Miss Jenks’ Dragon Rapide floatplane anchored next to her. Being a hundred yards offshore in a lagoon is a handy trick in doubtful territory; if any passing Gendarme decided to get officious there is little he can do about it without a wetting unless he brought a folding canoe along. One can easily plead ignorance of a language at a hundred yards.

           I confess I had been expecting a more desperate pursuit with the Eldorado harrying us along the coast and pursuers closing in from all sides – but this will do very nicely; we had enough of the other in Kuo Han. We hailed the Storm Bird, and in a few seconds the middle engine coughed into life and the floatplane taxied over to us awaiting on the lagoon shore.

            Helen and Maria were very glad to see us – they both looked definitely strained, having evidently had a less relaxing time than us since Boston. First things first; they called over to Miss Jenks’ aircraft to make for Saint Johns in Newfoundland, and as soon as the Dragon Rapide was on the step Helen fired up the outer engines and swung in behind them to take off.

           It was a treat indeed to be back in the air. The first thing we did was to change back into our travelling clothes, a far more comfortable outfit. Maria fired up the spirit galley, and in five minutes we were tucking into a very welcome late second breakfast with tinned sausages and beans.

           The trip to Saint Johns was just over an hour, and indeed we were over Canadian airspace in the first five minutes. The nearest coast of Newfoundland was clearly visible from Miquelon, but it was a rocky and forbidding cliff with no convenient harbours or we would have headed that way to start with. As soon as we turned the cooking stove off I took the opportunity to use the shower, where with some of our cooking supply of methylated spirits I washed off my Siamese fur-markings and put Kim-Anh Soosay away for awhile. I suppose it is like having a genie; at any rate she is useful and lives in a (fur dye) bottle. Kim-Anh has had a good “run” this time, and enjoyed much that a respectable girl would not admit to. At least, my fur is back to normal although other places are more affected by the dye and in the natural course of things would take some days to revert to normal – though nowhere that is described on my passport.

           I told Helen and Maria our tale, not that there was anything startling to report aboard the Eldorado (apart from our discovery of certain… distinguishing features of marsupial gentlemen, which we already knew in theory. Molly Procyk once met a Quoll at one of Lars’ parties.) A clean getaway from the G-men, the recovery of the photographs, and a successful rendezvous with the Storm Bird – our side of the trip has gone rather well. Eddie might not even notice the photographs are missing until he returns to his studio, and for consolation he has those of Kim-Anh Soosay.

           Maria seemed definitely sunk in thought, and only said there was a lot to tell us, that had best wait till we had time in Saint Johns. The rugged landscape swept by beneath us, hundreds of lakes sparkling in folds of the ancient rocks with bright green patches that even from five thousand feet we could tell were nasty bogs. Alcock and Brown left from here to fly the Atlantic only to try and land on an Irish equivalent, and them without a floatplane. Unless there was open water nearby, our chances of taking off again would be little better than theirs.

           At last we spotted the smoke of factories, and just after noon the capital of Newfoundland swung into view on the horizon. The wind had picked up considerably, and looking at the white-capped waves below us I hardly fancied landing on the open ocean and taxiing into the harbour. Miss Jenks’ aircraft is smaller, and still less suited to being tossed around on the Atlantic. Fortunately, there is a newly opened flying-boat terminal on a nearby mile-long lake (“Quidi Vidi Lake” on the map – one could hardly make such names up) just outside town, and Helen brought us in to a very smooth landing as we followed Miss Jenks in. She has been here before, according to Maria.

           Being an international destination, there was a Customs post at Quidi Vidi Lake where my passport as Lady Allworthy came in very handy. It is just as well we had supplies of spirits on board, as a half-Siamese girl waving a passport with a picture of a pedigree British short-hair might not get far! The customs post was scarcely Vostok in terms of thoroughness, but they would have certainly jumped on Kim-Anh with that passport.

           In our respectable travelling costumes, after refuelling the aircraft we walked the mile or so into the city centre. A very fine place – the harbour busy with fishing boats and two modern destroyers carrying the familiar white ensign. It makes a change to see the Royal Navy; on Spontoon one is as likely to see the Japanese or French stopping by to show the flag.

           Miss Jenks recommended the Shorelands Hotel, a fairly modern establishment looking out over the main harbour. Fortunately it is upwind of the distinctively scented fish cannery on the other side of the harbour; by four we were settled into two adjoining twin rooms and enjoying the first bath since Boston. Definitely a treat. We arranged to meet and dine at seven with Miss Jenks and her brothers downstairs, giving us all time to relax.

           From the window we could see a fine old stone tower in the distance – by coincidence, the map lists it as the Cabot Tower (though our Miss Cabot owns no title to it.) Although it is still Summer, there was a definitely cool wind coming off the Atlantic, and the windows leading out to our balconies were staying shut. Still, it was warm enough in the rooms and as Miss Cabot and me dried our fur, Helen and Maria brought us up to date with their adventures.

           After seeing us depart on the Eldorado, they returned to the Cabot household and for two days more or less played hide-and-seek with the Federal Agents who were still hunting Miss Cabot. Presumably their Mister Jonesson eventually told his employers that she was no longer in the area, as after that Helen no longer spotted their spotter looking for her. Along with Miss Jenks and her brothers they were invited to another party the night before their departure, which they could attend and if asked tell furs with a clear conscience that we had gone on ahead.

           Oh my. Things certainly happen at parties, even respectable ones on Knob Hill. Helen was introduced to the Cleveley family, one of the leading thoroughbred equine socialites, including their daughter Barbara. One of the other party-goers had whispered that Barbara had been the black sheep of the family (a difficult trick for an equine) and involved in some shocking scandals but now was seen everywhere in society once more. Helen said she seemed a perfectly normal girl – until she used her Warrior Priestess skills. As the saying goes, if you look hard enough you may learn many things to your disadvantage.

           Oh dear. To put it mildly. From what Mrs. Cleveley was saying, the social elite of Boston have access to advanced means of reforming socially hopeless cases. She mentioned a Doctor Petronius, who had taken one patient every month last year and delivered guaranteed results – with the proviso that the patients would never be the same again. He was certainly telling the truth there. Helen spotted basically a second copy of Miss Cabot standing in front of her – modified by a year’s life in a different environment.

           When we left nothing alive in that Kuo Han temple, it was probably too much like wishful thinking to expect that kind of Dark Priestess was extinct. Although this Doctor Petronius was not an oriental fur, he does have a “Chinese man-servant” as Helen managed to discover, and they have a discreet line in top-of-the-market transformations that no American alienist will be able to match. Further, by all accounts he takes the most extreme cases, which have families who are unwilling to discuss them in public, does his work and moves on to some other “bon ton” where the money is good and the families discreet.

           This was rather a conversation-stopper. We all sat back with our ears right down. Had this practitioner of Kuo Han’s dark magic still been in Boston, there would have been nothing in the world that could have stopped Helen going right after him, with Maria’s most enthusiastic backing. He had moved on months ago, and left no forwarding address – unlike other “doctors”, his patients will need no repeat prescriptions. The idea that something like this is loose in the world at large and probably doing his evil work right now (that the socially accepted “doctor” is only a front to the real practitioner, we hardly doubt) rather put a cloud over the evening.

           Maria has to rejoin her Uncle, at least for awhile, and I have to settle the Allworthy estates. Tracking down evil priestesses (or priests, possibly) across America with the G-Men on our tails is a career in its own right, and nothing we can just allocate a week to. Besides, technically speaking I doubt Doctor Petronius is breaking any actual laws that a court would recognise.

            Helen says she really hates to leave things like this – and when we reach the parting of our ways, she knows what her life’s mission is going to be. Given the chance, I will join her. I noted that she will have a timetable to wrap it around, being Mrs. Hoele’toemi with a husband waiting on Spontoon and hopefully a cub on the way after that honeymoon.

           At that, both Helen and Maria rather “froze up”. Helen sighed, and noted that she could have used a longer honeymoon. Maria has indeed other reasons to be upset. Looking at the two of them, it is rather ironic.

           All too soon it was time to dress more formally and meet the Jenks family downstairs in the foyer to dine. I can report that the clam chowder of Newfoundland is just as good as they serve in the grand houses on Knob Hill, and we did justice to a colossal tureen between us. Certainly a fine evening! Tomorrow the Government offices will be open, and we will be able to get detailed charts, forecasts and suchlike for planning our next leg, the open ocean crossing. One does not just fill up the fuel tanks and head out towards Europe with a song and a compass bearing!