(The continuing adventures of Amelia Bourne-Phipps, studying at the Songmark Aeronautical Boarding School For Young Ladies on Spontoon East Island. Her second term looks as if it's going to be quite as Eventful as her first, which will take some doing. As ever, her diary is in the never-popular Lexarc School Shorthand, which was obscure enough even then to make a quite secure code.)

January 12th, 1935

Dear Diary - back again to the Songmark Aeronautical Boarding School for Young Ladies,  back to Eastern Island with its hangars and classrooms.  A splendid Christmas break has only made  returning here more of a shock for Helen Duclos and myself - two weeks of "going Native" in most appreciative company, was something we could have definitely used more of.

 Still, here we are - dressed neatly in our Aeronautical Boarding school uniforms, looking at the driving rain hissing on the runway outside the hangar doors. ("Boarding School" has such a depressing sound to it, I always think - bringing to mind some dingy ex-manor house in the Home Counties, with porridge, cabbage and boiled mutton perpetually on the menu.)

 All of our group have arrived on time - Maria Inconnutia having been specially flown from Italy by one of her Uncle's "Reggia Aeronautica" floatplanes. He must think a lot of Maria - no sooner had she appeared in Rome fresh from her Alpine skiing holiday, than she was taken straight to the airport and put on the first flight out, without even the inconvenience of having to unpack!  It must be gratifying, to have relatives so concerned about one's welfare.

 Our chum Molly  arrived this morning, all the way from Chicago - and this time round, thanks to a special licence, all her baggage made it in through Customs. At least, it all arrived on the Islands - she is complaining that the large cello case she carried has been licensed only for her to use on the official ranges across on Moon Island - and how disappointed her Uncle "Lewis-gun" Lewis would be if he heard how Officialdom are treating the Xmas present he gave her. One dreads the prospect of her arriving next time with a double-bass case, probably the gift of Mr. "Paris-Kanone" Parizzi or some such gentleman.

 Of our other friends, only Jasbir Sind is late in arriving, though she has to travel across all her home state of Utterly Pradesh to find an airport -  and the radio reports have been full of storm warnings delaying flights and sailings across from India to Humapore, where she would pick up the Imperial Airways flying boat.  One hopes she will arrive safely!

 Our Tutor, Miss Devinski, welcomed us back and looked us up and down with a rather steely eye. She had a notebook which she referred to as she counted us in and handed out the paperwork - to judge from the number of pages she turned over between students, the quantity of Intelligence gathered on us varies quite widely. "Soppy" Forsythe rates a page, whereas Helen and myself must have taken a half-inch of notebook between us! It would be fascinating indeed to read through that notebook someday, though no doubt it is guarded using "extreme measures" that we might take a term or two to counteract.

 Indeed, Miss Devinski took her time flicking through our records, while we tried to look angelic - and though she shook her head slowly at some of her notes, it was with a smile  that she welcomed us back. Songmark does after all pride itself in developing Initiative and Innovation - and while Soppy has no doubt diligently collected a Nature study of pressed leaves, rocks and beetles in between listening to her gramophone this past holiday, we have certainly been finding out as much about the Island's true life as is good for us.

 It was certainly fun to meet again with the rest of the first-years, though the definitely full timetables we were handed left us in no doubt over our work load. Madelene X looked quite shocked to see how much we are to get done - she has been staying at her Father's aircraft-factory back in France watching prototype wings and fuselages being tested to destruction, and loudly complained that our Tutors must be running bets on Our breaking strain this term.

 I sincerely hope that the cooks here have not taken the same New Years Resolution that I made, "begin as you mean to go on." For after nearly a month's freedom from the noxious stuff, we were faced at teatime with a huge sludgy mound of Poi, the local tuberous mess that combines the texture of flour-glue with the visual appeal of wet concrete.  Missy Kahaloa is back, looking bigger than ever,  and on seeing our faces announced that Pacific Islanders in far parts of the world wake up dreaming about the Poi of their homeland. Maria suggested raising an appeal fund to export our ration to them, as rapidly as possible.

 (Molly added under her breath that she should report our cooks to the League Of Nations, as she is sure it would count as a chemical weapon. In a matter of days, anyone stuck with nothing else to eat would surely be bored to death.)

 Our rooms were freshly swept and decorated,  and we retired early to talk over our holiday experiences before catching a good nights sleep. Lessons start in tomorrow, and start in with a vengeance - tonight being the last truly free evening in sight.  Maria had a lot to say about her Alpine trip - and had a sheaf of photographs to show us. Her chalet happened to be a bare mile across the snow from a hut used by trainee "Carabineri", most of them younger sons of good family who are being sponsored through military schools by the benevolent Government. Their black shirts look very dashing, and stand out well against the sunlit snow. By Maria's accounts, a certain mile of snow became very heavily ploughed by ski-tracks in the ten days she was up there.

 Molly, on the other hand, was complaining that her Father's business was getting dull, since diversifying into dealing tinned foods rather than ferociously inflammable liquors.  Not suprisingly, there is not quite the same flair and intrigue in controlling train loads of pressed ham, as there is in racing "cigarette boats" of elegant cordials across half-frozen lakes from Canada or St.Pierre. When Maria asked her if she had any interesting Experiences, she grumbled that the average worker at a meat-packing plant was about as exciting and lively as the tinned product.  Most of her Father's more colourful associates seem to have left Chicago, as witnessed by a postcard from a Mr. "Knuckles" Maldonado from Cuba which was awaiting her on her return here.

 And then, of course, the two of them wanted to know what Helen and I had been doing while given the run of South island. I hesitated slightly, letting Helen set the tone - for not everything we had discovered was entirely safe for our friends to know, and we had promised to say nothing of our discoveries about the "Waterworks Project".  Still, there was an awful lot we could tell them - Molly in particular was looking almost green with envy as I described our experiences of "going Native". Certainly, she declared straight away that she would put her name down to stay here at Easter, though it is three months and more ahead of us.

 I let Helen finish the story, explaining where we had spent the night before last, in excellent company on the mountain top - and we could almost hear poor Molly seething at the thought of what she had been missing out on.  This term,  if we have any free time at all, I feel sure Molly will be trying hard to catch up on some parts of her Education that are not on the timetable.

 An early night, with some of us still worn out from travelling, and all of us wincing at the sight of the timetables on our writing-desks.  One thing we are very sure of - the Holiday, is definitely over. This time, I have managed to get the bed furthest from Maria, who is certainly a staunch comrade by day, but snores deafeningly. I kept waking up last term in the middle of the night, with dreams of Flying Fleas with misfiring engines about to shake loose from their mountings. (Happily, when that happened to poor Flea #6 back home, I was over the Vicar's ornamental lake and only received a wetting. The engine parted company at sixty feet and did a rather striking aerial torpedo impression - nobody was injured, and the Vicar's gazebo must have needed replacing anyway, to disintegrate the way it did.)

January 13th, 1935

A full day indeed! The timetables mentioned flying today, which had been the one thing to look forward to - but alas it was a refresher course on air navigation with Miss Pelton, setting us some ferocious tests full of wind drifts and dead-reckoning. None of us scored brilliantly, except Molly - which surprised us, till she admitted rather grumpily to having taken her textbooks to bed most nights.  I can see the point of our Tutors making sure we had not forgotten the basics, before entrusting us in the cockpit again - and indeed, we spent most of the morning in unearthing whatever skills had been buried while on holiday.

 The afternoon was more interesting, though still classroom-based - as promised,  we made a start on aerial photography. It seems that Songmark must have contacts in the Government Surplus trade, for we practised on war-surplus reconnaissance cameras. Very nice instruments, though rather battle-scarred and rather older than ourselves.  Helen has done a little survey work for her late Father, but complained bitterly about having to work out the focal lengths and exposures on paper first.  As with her flying - she prefers to work by the seat of her pants, but that is hardly something one can measure on an examination paper.

 The lesson finished with some darkroom work, a fascinating subject. I have a box brownie camera at home, but always simply handed the plates in to the local chemist to be developed. It looks as if this time the whole process will be up to us, with nobody else to blame when the films come back fogged or the top of one's subjects' ears are cut off in the frame. (Madelene X received a useful lesson when she had been keeping a roll of film in her pocket, next to her expensive and very bright radium dial stopwatch. Her photos emerged appearing to have been taken in thick fog, which caused much hilarity.)

 After supper, Maria remembered to unpack her cases - the dear girl has Christmas presents for us!  We have parachute training starting next week, and she has brought back some jolly useful accessories. It seems that her Uncle's Air Force is conducting joint parachute exercises with the German "Luftwaffe", and she managed to acquire four prototype emergency knives intended for the trials. They look rather like pocket-torches, but the blades drop out under gravity and lock firmly when the trigger is released. They can be used one-handed: should we drop into the jungle canopy and have to cut our way out of the parachute rigging, they will be very handy! (Although the idea of cutting up sixty guineas-worth of parachute is not something one really looks forward to.)

January 16th, 1935

It has been a hard week already - with little to write in the diary, but an awful lot to fill our exercise books. Air safety, navigation, First aid and almost everything has been crammed into a fast refresher course - definitely our Tutors believe in knocking the dust off us before carrying on with the main courses.

 Jasbir Sind arrived a day late, having been delayed by bad weather off Humapore. She listened with great interest to what we told her of our "Native" holiday - in her case, it has been quite the reverse. From being a plain student (actually, quite a pretty one rather than plain) she returned to take up the luxury of a junior Maharani, complete with hunts and banquets. She confided that although having a dozen or so servants around was very handy, she had rather enjoyed getting about these Islands in privacy. Once we have settled down this term, we must see about organising another breakout to Mahanish's Pilot's bar beside the runway. So near and yet so far - after a few weeks like this one, we will certainly be wanting some diversion.

 Thinking of which, we at least have our radios working again - tonight I managed to get in touch with Jirry and pass on my regards to the rest of his family. Rather odd - Jirry mentioned that it would be very good if Helen and I were to be on especially good behaviour, and to use extreme caution. I wonder why ? We have seen nothing out of the ordinary this week, and surely he could have given us that advice when we last met. Helen seems to have a bad case of nerves, looking around most carefully when we go outside the Academy to the various facilities, as if she is looking for someone. But the only people we regularly see are instructors, janitors etc - and surely she is in no fear of anyone pushing a broom. I have looked around myself, but seen nobody who really looks much like a counterintelligence Agent.

 In the meantime, we are looking forward eagerly to getting airborne again.  Maria has come back waving plans for some fascinating Italian aircraft, which looks rather like a flying cigar, with no obvious propeller. It seems the propellers are on the inside of the tube, and extraordinary thrust is to be generated by burning fuel downstream of them. She has been arguing with Madelene X, who not unnaturally supports her own countryman Monsieur Rene LeDuck. His planned aircraft look very impressive, but have no way of getting off the ground since their "athodyd" engines will only start up when already flying at the speed of a Schneider Trophy winner! Maria is busily doodling "reaction jet" aircraft, much to everyone's amusement. I am sure they will never catch on.

January 18th, 1935

At last - our first weekend, when we can draw breath after a hectic return to hard work. Actually, this involved a lot of hard work in itself, as we returned to Casino Island to start on the Native dance classes! Helen and I had practised a little at the Hoele'toemis' place, but hardly competitively.

 The two groups of us were escorted by Miss Wildford to the water-taxi, and after a fairly rough crossing, we were glad to be around the bright lights again as we arrived as the Casino Island Dance Studio.  Alas, our rivals from the Spontoon Island Technical High School were there already, and with many a cry of "Who let You back in again?" and similar, they let us know they had not forgotten us, or our challenging them to a dance contest.

 Actually, it all went very well - Molly seemed a little rusty, Chicago not really having the atmosphere to practice hula moves, but Maria seems to have been keeping in excellent condition on and off the piste. We started to learn another dance, "The Palm Sway", which our instructor admitted afterwards had been invented some five years ago for the first "talkie" to be filmed in the Islands.  Lunch followed at "The Missing Coconut" - sadly, Jirry and his family are busy this weekend, though we had plenty to talk about.  Helen and I passed on our tips on improved Costume, which Jasbir and co. listened to eagerly. Unlike last term, we should stand a good chance of passing for Natives on whatever unofficial excursions we might manage.

 Just to annoy us, the S.I.T.H.S. crowd "accidentally" dropped a copy of their own newspaper on our table. I had to admit, it is a rather well-produced affair, with some twelve pages of news and articles. On the back page was a rather boastful announcement by their Flying Club, who (unlike us) actually build full-scale aircraft. They claim to have a "high-speed model range" laid out on Moon Island and ready to start testing shortly. Still, they must have easily ten times our number of students, and by all accounts receive a lot of support from the Authorities,  despite not being as well-funded as Songmark. We shall definitely be looking out for their "model range" next time our classes take us over to Moon Island.

 Our dance classes in the afternoon were rather more relaxing, as we learned more of the basic steps, and were invited to improvise to tunes played by a trio of Spontoonies on flute, drum and guitar. If every dance tells a story, possibly we can write some of our own scripts when we get the hang of it.

 On the way back, Helen seemed rather alarmed for some reason. Not till we were heading back up the hill towards the airfield, did she confide that she had noticed the same water-taxi driver driver on the past three trips - despite there being quite different boats and routes involved. I recommended she see Matron and request something for her nerves - evidently the poor girl has been working too hard and reading too many of Ethyl's "Three-fisted Detective Tales" and sees Agents everywhere now. (Thinking of which, Molly is reading through the latest edition of "True Crimes Illustrated",  with evident amusement. She keeps making amendments in the margins, and complaining about unsympathetic journalism.)

January 19th, 1935

A very bright day, if rather windy - we are already noticing the days getting a little longer. Off to Church, in our various directions - Maria to South Island, Helen and I to Casino Island to hear Mr. Bingham preach, and Molly to play the role of Conscientious Objector and stay behind with a mountain of sweet potatoes to peel. She had successfully argued that being given the taro tubers to scrub was Cruel and Unusual Punishment, since being made to spend all morning preparing Poi and then having to eat it, is certainly adding insult to injury.

 Helen was quite relieved to see a different boatman awaiting us on the trip out - though he does look somewhat familiar, and I am sure he was on Meeting Island that time we met the survivors of the Gunboat Wars. Still, this is not such a huge place that one should be surprised by meeting the same people around and about.

 The sermon was rather fine, with the Rev. Bingham in creative mood, with "The parable of the four lascar sailors and the lifebelt." Not a tale I recall from Scripture, but I was never top of the class in the subject (unlike my friend Phoebe back at St.Winifreds, whose Father was a Reverend at age twenty, a Very Reverend at twenty-five, and by now is probably off the top of the scale of most measuring instruments.)

 Happily, Jirry and family were there in church when we arrived - and we managed ten minutes talk after the sermon, on the way back towards the water taxis. A far cry from this time last week - I could hardly help my ears blushing as I looked across at Mount Kiribatori, or noted that Jirry's scratches were healing very rapidly. His parents were both there, and had many kind words for me - indeed, Mrs. Hoele'toemi told me that she would do all in her power to protect me. A pleasant thing to hear, but rather puzzling, as the main risks we run these days would be spin-stalling a Tiger Moth or striking sparks too near open tins of fabric Dope - neither of which she could really help us against.

 On the way back, Helen relaxed a little more,  the mysterious boatman being nowhere in sight. Actually, I spotted him fishing on the dock as we arrived, though I did not want to alarm Helen by pointing him out - and I presume the binoculars he carried were for spotting shoals of fish entering the harbour. There is an innocent explanation for most things, if one only has the right attitude.

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