Spontoon Island
home - contact - credits - new - links - history - maps - art - story

Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
27 December, 1935 to 31 December, 1935

Tuesday 27 th December, 1935 (back-dated)

Dear Diary – life does keep on getting Interesting in this part of the world. We have found a few things on this "fact-finding trip" that we would not get from reading the official tourist guides to Vostok (assuming there was one, which I somehow doubt.)

We started off on Saturday (Christmas Eve) going back on patrol, an early start and out with our Pelmeni hosts with Mosin-Nagant rifles ready on their slings and a jolly good packed lunch of black rye bread and smoked sausage in our knapsacks. This time we headed deeper into the woods, climbing into the highlands.

A fascinating experience – in the redwood forests one can go for half an hour without a sight of the sky, and the trees are so huge one could easily drive lorries around on the forest floor between their trunks.

We found our first Sasquatch camp just after luncheon, in a clearing where some forest giant had fallen years ago and torn a huge swathe of destruction all around. Sergeant Alex is a mine of information, and explained that living under the trees is a rather dangerous thing to do – they shed branches in storms, and a redwood branch can be awfully heavy with a long way to fall. There were garden plots and quite neat wooden huts, rather primitive-looking but nothing we have not become accustomed to on Spontoon. I must say, it was a bit over the top the way the Pelmeni first surrounded the clearing and closed in with weapons drawn and fixed bayonets – though of course there are Red infiltrators somewhere around, and they might have been holding the locals captive.
Anyway, there turned out to be nothing more sinister than two families of Sasquatch, very impressive at nearly seven foot tall for the adults, and even the children were taller than me. They are rather ape-like, with shaggy winter fur coats and simple hide clothing – the huts could have been a little cleaner, but obviously they were not expecting visitors. From what we heard (and for once Sergeant Alex’s accounts and Tatiana’s roughly coincided) they had seen no strangers for weeks, but had heard a lot of aircraft noise, some of which were autogiro rotors. Sergeant Alex seemed rather startled, and demanded exactly when and where our hosts had heard them. He made careful notes in the notebook he always carries – he is a meticulous note-taker, and writes down almost everything we say. He says he hopes to write a book one day.

Another surprise came when one of the Sasquatch ladies turned out to speak English! Her name is Tamahuatipa, and she too had been in the Rain Island trade, some sort of agent for gathering interesting local mushrooms that various Pacific Island shamans speak of highly. Churchmen always do enjoy their food, at least all the ones I have met. She seemed very surprised herself to see us, noting that there are few visitors to Vostok, and indeed the Authorities hardly encourage them. On telling her where our camp is (no great secret as the local Djilaguns are let off paying tax by supporting it) she nodded and promised to meet us again.

I asked Maria about our schedule, having recalled that we would be going back after Xmas – and received another great surprise. Unlike the rest of the world (except the Albanian Empire) on Vostok they still use the old Gregorian Calendar, that we dropped a century and a half ago! It has drifted severely out of joint, making the local Xmas January the Sixth – so we will be here a lot longer than I thought.

We said farewell to the locals and headed out, but had only gone half a mile when Svetlana called a halt and pointed at the trail. Both the tigers and a mastiff trooper came forward and sniffed the ground and all around – and when they had done, Sergeant Alex invited us forward to take a look. It was a boot print, but we had noticed the Sasquatch were all bare-pawed or wore plain bark moccasins, not nail-studded military boots.

Quite a dilemma – by all account the "Djilaguns" know almost every leaf that falls in their forest, but Tamahuatipa and her family had sworn there had been no strangers around. Either the prints were very new, or they belonged to some local trader or woodsman quite innocently passing through, or the Sasquatch were fibbing to us. If I had to wade ashore from a rubber boat on a rocky coast with tough territory to cover, I would wear something better than moccasins myself.

Tatiana whispered rather smugly that some of our companions were debating whether to go back and ask some more pointed questions – but Sergeant Alex overruled them, and we set off along the tracks in cautious pursuit.

I had tracked folk around South Island last Summer holidays, but this was rather different, acutely aware of the rifle bumping on my back and the savage good humour of our Siberian chums. One would think they had been invited to a party, to look at the expressions on their faces. Molly seemed quite in her element, jogging along with bayonet fixed and a look of unholy glee on her features – I stayed behind her, as she had a clip in her rifle and scorns safety catches. Maria seemed quite uneasy, looking around into the trees, where indeed one could have hidden a company of tanks behind the twenty foot boles of the giant redwoods.

For about an hour we carried on, deeper still into the forest – before one of the tigers in the lead gave a paw gesture and everyone suddenly froze in place. From the growing daylight we were obviously coming into another clearing, where the trail had led us. One of the troopers, a rather battered-looking ermine Corporal, was waved forward and vanished quite soundlessly into the bushes - it actually gets harder to see near old clearings, as new trees make a tangled burst of low growth very different from the clear aisles between the forest giants.

In three minutes he was back and whispering urgently to Sergeant Alex. That worthy came over silently and informed us that they had found what they were looking for – an actual Bolshevik camp. This left him with a problem, as he had been tasked to show us the day-to-day life of his group, not put us in the firing line of an infantry assault with no quarter given or asked for. If we were Vostok citizens it would of course be quite another matter.

There was very little time to discuss it – but I had a hurried whisper with Molly and Maria. Maria’s mission comes first to report on what she finds here and as obviously someone had to send back the news to the camp, she should be the one. But we were easily a dozen miles from "home" through the woods, and she could not go alone, nor could Sergeant Alex really spare any men. Some of us would have to go back and some forward, if we were to witness the events here. Molly and I played our usual fast "Paper-scissors-rock" to decide – and much to her delight, she got to stay and "watch the action" as she put it. Tatiana was not asked, not being exactly an unbiased witness.
We dropped our packs, had a whispered word with a suddenly very relieved Sergeant Alex and set off the way we had come, first at a walk then at a jog as we cleared the area. It seemed very quiet for a few minutes, and then a volley of shots and various confused noises rang out in the distance behind us.

Although by tradition a Bourne-Phipps does not willingly run from a fight or leave friends behind, it is not strictly speaking our fight and Molly was keen to stay. In the meantime Maria and I made good time along the pathway for about a mile, and were running through what we would try and say to the folk at the camp radio without our interpreters.

And then – it looked for a second as if one of the trees had come to life, as six figures clad in bark-brown clothing jumped out in front of us. One of them pointed at Maria and shouted something commanding – with a rather sinking feeling I realised we had run into a trap. Our rifles were slung across our backs out of immediate grabbing range, and before we could think to use them there were four pistols trained on us.

Captured by Bolsheviks!

Of the six brown-clad figures five were some sort of rodent and the sixth was a canine, a bristly-furred mastiff who seemed to be the leader. He strode up to Maria, who was admirably calm, and looked at a photograph in a green notebook – by the way he nodded with an unpleasant curl of his lip, I definitely gained the impression that they were specifically looking for her in these woods and not just any Loyalist citizens who blundered into them. In about five seconds we were disarmed and standing with our paws up.

Oh dear.

After a brief flurry of orders, one of the rodents was dispatched off one direction while we were shepherded off in the other, the five surrounding us with pistols ready and looking as if they needed no excuses to use them. We were hurried down a maze of minor trails, changing direction all the time and with the setting sun invisible through the forest canopy I quite lost track of our direction.
About forty minutes later we arrived at what was obviously a lumber camp, with a great pile of cut logs seasoning under cover and two office buildings. Our captors evidently took stock, and took the time to search us more thoroughly, relieving us of our watches, documents and pocket-knives. They herded us into one of the unlit offices and slammed the door, two of them visibly standing guard outside.

At last, we had time to talk. Maria was looking not unnaturally pale-nosed at our situation, but held up pluckily. It was full dark outside, and we were quite lost in the woods, not even having a map position of our base camp. We could hear the sentries outside talking quietly and laughing, which boded no good for us.

I pointed out that as one of the Reds had obviously gone to tell someone senior that we were captured, the sooner we could get away the better before someone who speaks English or Italian shows up and starts asking us pointed questions (probably assisted by pointed objects). Maria quite agreed, adding that there was no future in staying where we were – especially for me. We set to work in the dim light quietly looking at the office, which had only the one door, narrow windows and was very sturdily built – from an empty cash-box, evidently it had been used as the administrative block handling the lumberjacks’ pay.

For a few minutes it looked fairly hopeless, until I looked up at the ceiling – a rough-hewn truss structure studded with the pegs holding on the cedar roof tiles. It was ten feet up, but I was soon standing on Maria’s strong shoulders examining it more closely – and I could see definite possibilities. Each tile was pegged to every other and to the supporting frame, except at the very top where a V-shaped tile sat on the roof ridge holding everything else in place.

I would have given worlds to have a pocket jemmy kit like Molly’s with me, but with enough desperate strength and a lot of damage to my claws I managed to work the first peg loose. For a second I thought the tile was going to roll down the roof and alert the guards – I managed to grab it with the tips of my claws and pass it down to Maria waiting inside. The other tiles were easier after that, and in ten minutes I had removed a dozen of them leaving a hole about two feet square, with a view over the dripping trees behind the hut.

With my head outside I made an unpleasant discovery – there were two guards at the front, and one wandering around at the back! He seemed to be strolling quite randomly, pistol in paw – if I had not heard his breathing under the eaves I might have hurried straight out of the hole and dropped right onto him.

Fortunately he must have been at the other end of his patrol when I was dislodging tiles, or he would have heard me for certain.

I very quietly slid back inside and whispered the bad news to Maria. Still – we had a way out, and only needed a chance to use it. We took stock of what we had, as our captors had not searched beyond the obvious.

Our jackets have tiny glass button compasses built in – that is, Maria’s had, but she had swallowed hers for concealment at the first opportunity, though mine was available for immediate use. As we have heard time and again at Songmark, there is no point in having tools and equipment so comprehensive you cannot take it everywhere with you. We both have wire rope woven as draw-cords into the seams of our jackets, fish-hooks in our lapels and a few other odds and ends that only someone specifically searching for would be likely to discover.

Our chance came two hours later, when I heard more voices outside. Quickly getting up again on Maria’s shoulders to hear better in the open air, I spotted some different voices talking with the canine leader – and the sentry around the back went around the front to see what was happening. We were very glad of our rock climbing practice as I pulled Maria up to join me on the roof truss, and I inched my way out of the hole, barely hanging on till I could grasp the side of the roof. It was a desperate move, but I dropped into the dark behind the hut fearing it could be a pile of noisy rubbish – but to my relief it was deep, silent leaf-mould. A quick mew of encouragement and Maria joined me – we stood for a few seconds not breathing, listening for approaching footsteps before stealthily heading into the darkness.

We were in luck, in that the logging camp was new and there had been no time for the groundvegetation to spring up – in the pitch darkness bushes and creepers would have slowed us and made too much noise. I had to lead Maria, my night vision being far better than hers, though even I found it hard work to avoid fallen branches and the like. The only thing that kept us going straight was my little button compass, its single luminous speck pointing our way. Hurrah for Radium paints! Maria had done the right thing with hers, as in this sort of situation we are taught to swallow the compasses against any search short of an X-ray. Certainly, some of the things we have learned at Songmark are turning out to be very useful.

In most circumstances we would have stopped to take shelter rather than groping our way in the dark, but at least one of the Reds had looked as if he had a keen nose and we were determined to give him as long and cold a trail as possible. So we just kept moving all night, carefully stepping around giant trees and mounds of fallen timber, making perhaps one mile an hour until the dawn came. We were jolly hungry by then, our last meal having been the packed lunch with the Pelmeni the day before.

Standing panting against a huge root buttress for a minute’s break in the silently dripping forest, I realised something – it was Christmas Morning! The official Vostok calendar might not agree, but Maria and I wished each other a heartfelt Merry Christmas. We may have no standard gifts to exchange, but having a staunch friend with me right now was as welcome a gift as anything I have ever unwrapped under the Christmas tree. Shafts of light shone through the leaves ahead as dawn came as if the whole forest was a great cathedral of pillars and green stained-glass windows – an awe-inspiring sight, and one we looked at with muzzles bowed for a few minutes until we had to press on.

This time of year and this far North there is barely eight hours light on a good day, and when the clouds came over I believe it could not have been much after four. A whole day of dodging pursuit by heading up or down shallow streams, walking over bare rocks where possible and other tricks made us feel warily confident that we had shaken off our pursuers. One thing we did not have time to do was to stop and forage for food, so as we piled up dry pine-needles under a forest giant for the night, we went to bed with our stomachs complaining loudly and insistently. Folk say civilised folk are "two missed meals away from barbarism", and by the time we had missed four, I can quite understand it. Happily, another useful saying is "The forest is the poor man’s jacket" – there is a lot of mileage to be got out of folk sayings even in these days of radio.

So that was our Christmas Day, 1935! We had matches sealed in wax in the lining of our jackets, but dared not risk a fire. It was a long, chilly night even under a foot of pine branches and needles, and I was glad of Maria’s warmth – we had to press tight for any sort of heat, and I was glad it was not Ada Cronstein or Prudence I was sharing such close quarters with (though to be fair they are hardly evangelical about their tastes.) Dawn came with a gloomy grey tinge and we were up brushing off the pine needles from our fur as soon as we could make out the trees around us.
Another two hours of stiff walking brought us to the coast, with the forest behind us and the grey wintertime waters of the Nimitz Sea stretching ahead as we discovered we were on the Eastern side of Romanov Island. With no map we had no idea whether the Djilagun Village was North or South of us, but it was the only landmark we knew on the coast. There were great towering cliffs we did not recognise off to the South, so after a rest we headed North. I can confirm what we have read in the books, about how tired one gets exercising on an empty stomach; one hears of people fasting for weeks, but they rarely attempt to cover rough countryside at the same time. At least we have been full of good Songmark meals this year, and Maria had been saying she wanted to lose some weight. She at least retrieved her compass, one might say.

One advantage of reaching the coast was being able to gather a light breakfast of shellfish knocked off the rocks, not exactly a gourmet treat raw (more like eating fishy India-rubber full of sand and shell fragments) but very welcome. I agonised briefly over whether to feast on a rather deceased washed-up fish – had I time to cook we might have risked it, but the consequences of food poisoning was just too great in our situation.

It was two p.m. by the sun when at last we reached familiar territory, and flopped down just below the skyline to observe the village half a mile further on. The idea of a rest by a fire and a meal was very tempting – but Maria was thinking cautiously, and wondered out loud if the locals really had known nothing about the rubber boat on their beach. Having run slap-bang into one nest of Bolsheviks we were not about to repeat the experience. As she pointed out, the sensible thing would have been for them to secure a beachhead for the quite substantial force of infiltrators we had met (thirty or forty, is my guess.)

As it happened, we had been right to worry about being followed – there was a quiet hail from behind us and we recognised the large and shaggy form of Tamahuatipa, the Sasquatch girl we had met the day we were captured. The path behind her was clear of any brown-clad figures, but we stayed wary until she came to meet us – and we stayed wary after that, "grilling" her rather sharply as to how she had found us.

By her account, some of her people had come across the track of the Reds a few minutes after we had left the clearing, and hurried back to report. She had followed, but been forced to hide and lose our track by a much larger force that she eventually tracked to the logging camp, but hit our scent trail leading away. So despite not having much of an outstanding muzzle she tracked us all the way through the forest – an impressive feat and for us rather an alarming one! If she can scent our trail through the dark and the whole of the day despite our attempts at breaking it with crossing streams and such, either our escaping skills are sadly lacking or the Sasquatch should take Olympic gold in tracking events.

Tamahuatipa offered to escort us back to our base camp and act as interpreter – the two things we most needed, despite what our empty stomachs were telling us. A quick whisper with Maria and we agreed, despite having no evidence whose side Tamahuatipa is on. After all, if we told her to go away she could simply keep tracking us, and if she was a Red she has no need for subtlety – she could have brought the rest of the infiltrators along with her. If she decided to tackle us I would not give sixpence for our chances, as she is seven feet tall and we were worn out and feeling faint with hunger. She gave us what food she had, a handful of some dried berry apiece – and no chef’s confection has ever tasted so good at the time.

We did ask about the village ahead of us, but to our surprise she agreed with Maria about not strolling casually in without backup. Although many of the Djilaguns are perfectly loyal to their government (she says), the Pelmeni are rather disliked for their heavy-handed approach and they tend to have the feared Cheka secret police working with them. To my surprise she casually named Sergeant Alex as a salaried Cheka agent who had first appeared at the camp just an hour before we did, with instructions to look after us!

Maria rounded on that statement in a flash, asking just how Tamahuatipa knew it. Tamahuatipa smiled and told us that although Vostok was not the largest or wealthiest of nations, it could afford more than one secret police – there is the Cheka who the place "inherited" from Tsarist Russia, and the other one. She refused to say what the "other one" was called, and hinted that it was not called anything at all.

From the various stories we have heard, I would not be a bit surprised if the Cheka and its rival enlivened many a dark winter evening by infiltrating each other and chasing each other’s "Agents Provocateurs" around the island, just to keep in practice.

Indeed, as we bypassed the fishing village, Tamahuatipa told us a story of how Vostok also has a modern legend of a quite different sort of agent to anything modern Governments usually employ. She told it as a folk tale, of mysterious figures known as Akula * who are usually chosen from good families and officially die, often being "lost at sea" or something equally untraceable. They take on new identities, but unlike other Agents they are given no orders and send no scheduled reports, acting as their principles dictate and answerable only to the Tsar in person. So if we can believe her, we have two Secret Police agencies and some sort of modern Knight Errant running around these islands, about the ultimate in "loose cannon" with tacit approval of a Government who take the credit but accept no responsibility for their actions.

This might explain why Vostok is the sort of place it is.

Whatever else Tamahuatipa might be, she was perfectly honest about leading us back to our camp, taking us by a short cut no wider than a wild animal trail. We found the place in an uproar, a dozen lorries parked at the roadside and about a hundred heavily armed troops forming up. Evidently we were not the first to get back with the news of the encounter.

If the scene had been frenzied when we first saw it, it became doubly so when we walked in through the main gate and a much-bandaged Sergeant Alex spotted us (Tamahuatipa had vanished very silently into the forest.) He gave a shout and Molly came running over, much to our delight.
An hour later we had finished a combined breakfast, luncheon and explanation, with Sergeant Alex scribbling at good shorthand speed and handing over page after page to his radio clerk for immediate transmission. We rather simplified our account, mentioning meeting a Djilagun by the coast who pointed us in the right direction, but not naming Tamahuatipa or repeating anything she said.

Molly’s own account was quite a ripping yarn – the Pelmeni had surrounded the forest camp, counted the infiltrators and decided to tackle them with the most sophisticated military manoeuvre known to them. A headlong bayonet charge while yelling ferocious war-cries, to be precise. This actually worked rather well at first, but it got rather unfortunate when the Reds received an unexpected reinforcement – six unmarked black autogyros dropped spiralling into the clearing, all of them heavily armed twin-seaters!

The trouble with fighting Revolutionaries, Sergeant Alex complained, is that one never knows if they will be some disgruntled lumberjack who barely knows one end of a rifle from another, or hardened troops sneaked in off a boat or submarine. In this case, although none of the opposition was wearing Soviet uniforms, he is sure most of them have been issued with one at home. The Pelmeni were split and pinned down for half an hour, and he regrets that Tatiana was captured – she was bundled into the back seat of one of the three autogiros that got away.

Molly recounted with shining eyes how the affair finished, suffice it to say our Pelmeni hosts won the day at the cost of half their number and were none too fussed about taking prisoners. I had imagined her being shocked and distressed at seeing the reality of what we have practiced on the target ranges on Spontoon – it turned out quite the other way. Self-defence is one thing, but Molly seemed rather too keen describing how she took part in the "mopping-up" and setting fire to all the buildings, a life-long ambition of hers. Being surrounded by folk who praised her for it and offered handy hints and tips would not help matters. All this time I have been trying to teach her civilised manners, but this looks like a big step backwards.

(Later) We rested all afternoon, enjoying an extra meal and a most welcome visit to the sauna. Both Natalia and Svetlana survived the raid, and were in bounding high spirits – it is equally impressive and alarming to see two jovial bear girls equipped with about half a gallon of vodka and in festive spirit – they made Maria look like a gentle flower-spirit, as they roared and bellowed some stirring songs and splashed like icebergs in the plunge pool.

Molly needed no encouragement to share their local potato brew – I had one sip, and that was quite enough for me. The bottles looked definitely industrial, and tasted like something made in a refinery. I would hesitate in pouring that fiery mixture into the fuel tank of my Sand Flea, let alone into my digestion. I had been under the impression that she stayed well clear of the sort of home-brewed paint stripper her Family fortune had been built on, having seen what happened to a lot of their steady customers.

We left them to it, returned to our hut and there received the news that our itinerary had changed again, now the Bolsheviks had caught up with us. Tomorrow we head out again, leaving Tatiana in (hopefully) friendly paws. We can hope that she had some sort of password or hidden document to help in this sort of situation – and more so, that the local Reds recognise it! After all, if she can persuade them what she really is, she is safer with her current company than she would be with our Pelmeni hosts.

      *Akula = Shark, in Russian (Editor’s hasty translation.)

Thursday 29 th December, 1935

On the move again – six hours in an army truck brought us to the far side of Romanov Island, out of the forests and onto a wide rolling landscape, rather bleak with outcrops of rock that had my paws itching to get out and climb them. Certainly, we have acquired some new habits in the past year.
Sergeant Alex has stayed with us, acting as translator. He says he received new orders last night and has been posted away from his Pelmeni unit while we are in the field. Actually, it is looking rather as if he really is a Cheka agent as Tamahuatipa told us – but there is nothing much wrong with that, really. I assume we have the best Secret Police in the world, back in Britain, as everyone "knows" we have none at all. That’s my idea of Secret.

At last we arrived and could stretch the kinks out of our tails (sometimes I envy Molly her short tail) after a definitely Economy-class ride. The weather was definitely chilly, a North-West wind blowing right down from Siberia making it the coldest I have been outside a cockpit since I first arrived at Songmark.

Our new "home" is rather more like it, an airfield! When we arrived there was nothing to be seen except the runways, and some very large hangars that are dug flush with the hillsides. Looking out over the sea, it is very impressive, realising the next landfall is the Soviet Union, somewhere I suppose on the Kamchatka Peninsular. Considering that a Kalinin K-7 reached Spontoon last year on a one-way flight, one can certainly imagine all the Vostok being within bomber range, especially if they got that trick of mid-air refuelling working.

The hangars were not the only things built into the hillsides – the entire airfield looks like a rabbit warren, with doors and windows looking out of smoothly curved turf mounds. We are told it is for protection against the elements as much as for fortification and concealment – although when we arrived it was no more than breezy, it is a giveaway that nothing is out in the open without being securely lashed down.

We had just been shown to our billet, a rather generously sized underground hut like a buried pipe with doors and windows in each end, when we saw just what sort of aircraft called this place home. A great shadow passed over us – we looked up to see one of the silver airships wheeling like a fighter, on a tight spiral onto the runway! It must have been a hundred feet in span, but pulled up in a perfect "flare" landing, running to a halt in hardly fifty yards on aircraft type undercarriage. Fascinating.

Of course, one would hardly be a Songmark girl and not want to go straight out and take a look. I bet most Vostok citizens have never seen a "Balalaika" up close (which is its unofficial name, and indeed the airship is shaped rather like the body of that musical instrument) but Maria’s name and Sergeant Alex’s papers worked like magic and we got the ten-shilling tour.

If someone had talked to us about finding armoured airships, we would have filed them along with the left-handed spanners, elbow-grease cans and other fictions newcomers are told to go and look for. But we are assured (and we have examined the dents) that against small-calibre weapons the lower sides of a Balalaika are bullet-proof at most ranges! They are built of a Vostok patent Magnesium alloy nearly an inch thick, and are welded together without any inner skeleton being needed. The radiators are inside the shell, immune to battle damage and dumping their heat into the hydrogen for added lift effect – in fact the Balalaikas are only lighter than air when half their fuel and all the bomb load is gone, and they have to take off like regular aircraft.

We are impressed. Although the exact performance is classified, we are told a Balalaika has reached the Spontoon group and returned unrefuelled still carrying five thousand pounds of ballast. That would put it over Vladivostok with no trouble, though I doubt it would be carrying sand ballast on that trip.

Maria wanted to go up on the very next flight, but there is severe weather forecast and the airships were all heading for land as we arrived. We did get to help taxi the first one in, and took a look around the crew compartment, something like a glass-fronted torpedo slung under the main lifting body. Some of the flight has recoilless cannons in the stub wings and some have open crates of rockets, depending on the mission. As we watched, the rest of the squadron arrived, wheeling in like great plump vultures – actually more like slightly squashed oven-ready birds wrapped in metal foil, to be brutally honest.

The local weather forecasts must be better than usual; for just as the last hangar doors were shutting and locking tight (they have five-inch steel locking posts) the weather broke with a roar of wind that set my fur quite on end. Looking out onto the concrete outside, I could see the rain splashing back ankle-high, and almost going sideways in what had gone from a fresh breeze to a full gale in ten minutes flat.

I asked the flight crew (through Sergeant Alex) and they replied the weather at this time of year was rough – but nothing like as bad as in the Aleutian Isles, where one of them had worked as a whaler. The Aleutians are where we are one day scheduled to go for two weeks "training" with Songmark, and I remember the shell-shocked expressions of the third-years coming back from that little excursion. Help!

Saturday 31st December, 1935

After two days of absolutely howling gales and lashing rain, the weather cleared up as quickly as it had broken.

In fact, the sudden calm woke us up just after dawn; we had become so used to the roaring outside our snug burrow that it was as if a ship’s engines had just shut down outside.

Yesterday we spent indoors, looking round the cavernous hangars and exploring with voracious interest the squadron of Balalaikas. It seems that Vostok is trying its hardest to work on its strengths – oil and electric power. They can export both, in a way – they use their huge hydroelectric plants to make aluminium (importing the ore from Kuo Han in exchange for oil) and increasing quantities of magnesium, which they extract from sea-water. Anywhere with a coast could do this, but it is awfully dear on electric current, and only Vostok has decided to go for it in a big way. So we have magnesium girders in the hangars, magnesium furniture in the rooms, magnesium left right and centre on this airfield, even the pots and pans on the stoves are magnesium. Having only seen it in flash-bulbs and fireworks at home, I was a little wary of using it at first, but was reassured it would have to be finely ground or molten to actually catch fire.

There are large buckets of sand in the corner of every room and detailed fire notices next to them, just the same.

I fear we gave Sergeant Alex a hard time yesterday, with Maria insisting on a flight in one of the Balalaikas, and he having evidently been briefed after our experience with the Reds to see no further harm comes to her. We reached a compromise that had Maria tossing her horns in impatience, but grumblingly accepting the result – as an Ambassador she may be too valuable to risk, but Molly and I are not. It suddenly makes being just "Plus 3 on the Guest List" seem all worthwhile.

Quite a trip! We had to do without Sergeant Alex, there being only room for us plus the crew even if Molly lay flat on a sort of horizontal couch the crew showed us under the main cabin floor, which had a good view ahead and forwards through an optically flat porthole. There is also a rather good set of built-in binoculars rigged with her position, which the mostly mustelid crew explained in gestures was for navigation and tourism use. I rather think they were fibbing. We borrowed flying kit (rather worn but freshly washed) and squeezed on board just after luncheon with Maria looking up at us from her volunteer job of helping the ground-crew.

The Balalaika was chained down till the last minute, while both engines were run up to full power and the crew watched the strain gages relax on the undercarriage, the engines heating the hydrogen in the great metal shell above us. The stub wings swivelled to about ten degrees and the chains let go with a rattle – and we were off! It seemed an impossibly bulky craft to get in the air, and indeed without hydrogen it would be. We raced down the runway, bumped a few times and were very smoothly in the air – the Flight Engineer calling out from two instruments our mass and buoyancy, starting at fifty tonnes and thirty-eight respectively as we left the runway. So in effect we had twelve tons of aircraft flying with the biggest "wing" any aircraft has ever had, the whole top curve of the airship shaped for lifting.

I must say, it was amazingly quiet in flight. We were a long way from the engines, and they had great slow-turning propellers the size of autogyro rotors that hardly made a whisper. I can quite believe some of the tales of the Dirigible Fighters in the Great War, "loitering" behind woods and houses in ambush a few feet off the ground, before suddenly dropping ballast and leaping over their cover like a wild beast (they scored a few notable successes at first, but would have been better for ground-attack had they been bullet-proof like the Vostok models.)

Romanov Island was soon far behind us, lost in the grey haze as we climbed steeply. The air speed indicator was reading eighty as we climbed; only kilometres an hour to be sure but very respectable for a gasbag. I watched the wings and engines swivel as we levelled out at three thousand metres, glad of my warmly padded flying jacket. Molly and I kept up a running conversation through the speaking-tube, much to the amusement of the rest of the crew: from her position she has a great view of the ocean but none of the cockpit, whereas my view was the other way round.

One hour and ten minutes from the Vostok coast we slowed and changed course, swinging North at about a quarter engine power. Indeed, looking at the gages we were only four tonnes "heavy", and hardly needed much air speed. The crew’s mood changed, very markedly. They stopped chatting and voices became tense, the Flight Engineer manning a sort of periscope that came out on the top of the shell some five metres above us.

I wriggled forwards to get a look at the map, just as we changed course. Molly had been reporting a chain of tiny rocky islands below us, the map describing them as the Strely Visetski Islands, though "shoals" might be a better word – the rocks being only occupied by sea-birds as far as Molly’s sights could show her.

We were slowly moving back along the line of the islands when the Pilot gave a terse exclamation and pointed off to starboard. My eyesight is good, but his must have been amazing, as with binoculars it took me half a minute to see what was out there. By that time the fore and aft gunners were swinging their twin machine-gun mounts (good British Lewis’s, I was glad to see) and the Pilot had the cover off what was obviously an arming switch.

Dear Diary. It was quite a scene that afternoon, all the more so for us being unprepared for it. The only land visible was the Strely Visetski Islands, as desolate a bunch of rocks as any castaway could fear to find. There is nothing down there – except a line on the map, which neither side are likely to agree about.

Behind us lay the Vostok group. Ahead of us, a hundred and fifty miles of frigid ocean and Siberia.
But it was not what was down on the water that worried me. Our Balalaika was hovering over the islands, just holding position against the wind with its big propellers flicking round lazily – and slung under the wings, two twenty-packs of rockets primed and ready to fire. Because just a mile away, we had company. There were three Soviet aircraft on their side of the line, giants of the skies flying in a "racetrack" pattern at the holding point just outside Vostok waters, two of the huge eight-engined troop carrying "Maxim Gorky" whose civilian variants carry cinemas, radio stations and printing presses on board, and a Kalinin K-7 just like the one that buzzed Spontoon in front of the world Press in the Schneider Trophy competition. To be accurate, there were six aircraft; the Kalinin had three of those unknown Polikarpov fighters slung on "trapeze" mounts under its huge oval wing, their pilots looking extremely chilly and probably relishing the chance of some excitement.
I can see why Maria was not allowed on this trip. And I can see why the Vostok authorities were keen that we should go, to report back to her on just what is out there. We stayed on station two hours, while a big Beriev flying boat arrived and went into its own holding loop about two miles away. As I watched through binoculars, one Soviet aircraft after another broke ranks to join it in formation, and in the low evening light I just make out a hose glinting with ice in the sun which each connected to. It looks as if the Soviets actually have got in-flight refuelling working now – a fact that is NOT in "Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft."

Just as the sun was setting, another Balalaika turned up for the standing patrol and we turned for home. I must say, as long as they are facing nothing more manoeuvrable than a K-7, the airships do make super patrol aircraft, with great range and endurance. If a swarm of parasite fighters decided to enter the contest though, it would be just too bad – and even if the Americans would let the Vostokites have some of their helium, it would hardly improve matters. I had been having as much of a conversation as I could manage with the Flight Engineer, who had pointed to the arming switch and traced a wire leading to the radio. I gathered that if Ioseph Starling had decided to cross the line today, the Balalaika has neither the speed nor inclination to run away – the pilot would expect to knock a Maxim Gorky or two out of the sky with his shotgun scatter of forty rockets, but having done so would not expect to last long enough against the fighters to radio base in the normal way and tell them about it. Hence the automatic switch leading to the radio, no doubt triggering some special signal that will tell the base what has happened and what to expect overhead in forty minutes time.

It was a great relief to see the coast looming up in the last of the light and the familiar pattern of landing lights switch on as we were identified approaching. We were thoroughly chilled, and as soon as we staggered out of the aircraft the ground crew were on us like returning heroes, thumping the pilot on the back and offering us great steaming flasks of hot coffee. I prefer tea myself, and from the scent this coffee was about a quarter added plum brandy – but I drank it very gratefully, my nerves being rather shaken. I must say, about a quadruple measure of "Slivovitz" actually helped them a lot.

(Later) Maria was very keen to hear everything, and indeed we had a lot to tell her. I never thought I would be the one to dissuade her from taking a flight, but playing "Russian Roulette" at the holding point over the Arctic Ocean is rather too much excitement to be a healthy habit.

Still, if there is one thing the Vostokites do well apart from making Magnesium and recruiting excessive numbers of Secret Police, it is to throw a good party. About ten, we realised it was New Year’s Eve – in all the travelling and excitement we had forgotten. (For some reason they celebrate New Year tonight along with the rest of the rest of the world, though by my reckoning on their calendars it should be "our" January 12 th .) There is an Officer’s Mess on the base, to which we were invited by a rather clumsily spelled (but exquisitely written) note that looked as if it had been put together using nothing but a Russian-English dictionary – and I think we shall attend. Good night, 1935!

next