Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
25 December, 1936 to 27 December, 1936

25th December, 1936

Merry Christmas! Although we are definitely progressing in the Spontoonie religion, there are no commandments there against going to other social events. I can hardly forget I met Jirry in the first place at the Reverend Bingham’s church on Casino Island. That is where we went this morning, tipping the water taxi drivers generously and sitting through the service.

    It is a rather long time since I went to a standard Church, and indeed the last Church we were in had murals showing rather different services taking place. Reverend Bingham has a rather more orthodox approach, which is certainly a good thing. I felt my ears blushing as I considered the next time I might be here – if I become Mrs. Amelia Hoele’toemi I will have to do so at a “Euro” church to make it legally stick at home. There are plenty of stories of folk heading out into the wilds, being willingly married in Native ceremonies then being snatched back by shocked relatives who totally ignore the fact and want to “save” them. This would quite certainly have happened to Saffina’s mother in Ubangi-Shari had she not been living so very far from the local Colonial government. Embarrassing mixed cubs tend not to be brought back to Europe.

    Back to help Mrs. H with the Christmas dinner; the Spontoonies of course have their celebrations on the solstice and the calendar New Year, but she put on an excellent meal for her guests. Shark wrapped in taro leaves, then cased in clay and roasted in the fire-pit! An excellent family-sized dish to carve, and indeed we felt no lack of meat (the idea of turkey for Christmas is a recent import, roast beef or goose was the done thing in my Grandparents’ youth).  It is much nicer than that Icelandic “Hakarl” I had in Vikingstown once, but as that involves leaving shark to ferment for months in Arctic sand it is scarcely surprising. Prudence and Tahni declare it the finest dish in the world, but Tahni is a Hyena and dogs will eat almost anything.

    It is always a problem working out what to give Molly; could I buy a case of grenades it would be much appreciated but look rather out of place under the Christmas tree-fern. I compromised and bought her a sharpening and honing kit, which she can use on other things than her saw-backed bayonet. I gave Maria and Helen silk flying scarves (always useful) and discovered they had clubbed together to get me a really good chronometer, handy for navigating all over the world. Many thanks all round!
 
    My ears dipped a little as I imagined having followed Lady Allworthy’s advice and waited till today to open her “present” in front of the family – especially if I really had been carrying another Allworthy gift since Krupmark. We are better off well away from that place, and if I never see it again except through a bomb-sight I will be very happy. Molly has other ideas, but she generally does.

    Some good news at least came out of there – Maria says Adele has been on the radio and she and Madeleine X are alive, well and “enjoying the hospitality I had before.” That is a rather odd phrase, considering she refused to go into details about just what she did there in Summer. Still, as long as they get back in time for the new term, I doubt our Tutors will complain much. If a girl can survive on Krupmark she can thrive respectably anywhere else.

    Mrs. H made the public announcement that Saimmi had hinted about – all five of us are now officially free to go wherever we wish on Spontoon (save Sacred Island), even Crater Lake. Not that I particularly want to go there, knowing what is under those waters. It would be like camping on the fields of the Somme, it is all grassed over now but not the place for an undisturbed night’s sleep knowing what is under one’s groundsheet.

    Molly has a really rather odd present to show off; in fact it is as implausible for her as one can get. She has been given a Vostok-built agricultural sprayer by Lars, and yet seems very happy with it. It comprises a big metal knapsack tank and compressed gas cylinder with manual pump, which through high-pressure hoses feeds a two inch diameter cylinder rather like a mechanic’s “grease-gun.” She was demonstrating with water; certainly it makes a good water pistol but is rather over-engineered for the job. There are valves at entry and exit of the cylinder; pulling the bolt back fills the chamber from the reservoir, and a blast of air behind the piston ejects the contents to twenty yards in a fine spray or fifty as a solid jet. She was gleefully picking off overripe breadfruit from high in the trees with it for an hour in the afternoon. Still, it is harmless enough and keeps her out of mischief, so I can hardly complain. Oddly enough, some bits of it seem … unfinished, but that may be for optional accessories to be bolted on. There seems no actual use for the battery and capacitor arrangement, and she does not as yet have a manual explaining it.

    An excellent afternoon relaxing around the fire-pit with Jirry and the rest of the family. digesting the ample luncheon and generally enjoying all the quiet domestic things that an Adventuress rarely gets the chance for. Still, it makes it all the more welcome for us when it does happen. Some people have nothing else yet seem content with their lot; yesterday a letter came from my old school chum Mabel who is in Switzerland with her husband says she is expecting a kitten next year! That really does seem strange; I have not seen her since Saint Winifred’s and that is how I remember her, swinging a lacrosse net in the First Team.
 
    I doubt Mabel would really want to exchange places, in fact I have left rather a lot out of my letters back to her. The idea of living in a longhouse wearing nothing but grass skirts and a smile would hardly fit her idea of respectability; she always thought games like Australian Rules Hockey were “unladylike”, not a word I have used much of late. While she was learning social graces at her finishing school I was swimming into secret air bases on Spontoon, fleeing from Bolsheviks and Mensheviks on Vostok and dyeing my fur as an exotic Eurasian dancer in the heat of the Gilbert and Sullivan Islands. Settling down with a respectable scion of a Swiss banking family might be rather dull after awhile. It is like the Tourist season, where hundreds of furs are perfectly happy to lie in the sun on the beach all day – after a suitable rest any Songmark girl is liable to be looking for something to do by luncheon on the first day, and bored witless by the second.

    Back to the guest longhouse all evening, something I have missed all this term. Jirry says he will be going on more official trips in the near future, so we will have to make the most of these days. When term starts it is going to be hectic. Seven terms finished at Songmark already, and only two to go! Miss Devinski was getting insistent about our future plans – at least everyone in our year has been able to think of something already. I am not sure what a “modified Ponzi Scheme*” is, but Beryl says she has devised one that is actually legal in Mixteca.

    Overall, the best Christmas yet on Spontoon! Remembering the great gloomy redwood forests of Vostok last year with only hunger pangs and the taste of fear in our stomachs for days, sitting down to a good meal with the Hoele’toemi family around me and Jirry by my side feels even better than it would anyway. “A bowl of breadfruit, a jug of palm wine and Thou” – it might not be quite true to the original, but I have no complaints.


* Editor’s Note: recipe for original mix Ponzi Scheme, 1920’s style.

You will need:

1 quantity seed money (non-counterfeit)

1 collection fairly gullible, greedy and well-connected dupes as an initial target group. Recommend insecure up-and-coming socialites, beginning movie stars/starlets etc.

1 unverifiable plan that could possibly make large quantities of untraceable, untaxable profits. Smuggling family heirlooms/bullion/jewellery assets out from the Soviet Union sounds about right. Who’s going to want to disprove it, after all?

Take seed money, spend some on own clothes and short-lease office, secretaries etc. Persuade target group to invest trifling sums in your “enterprise”. Almost immediately reward them with (say) triple returns in a week. Watch the word spread, and reward the first investors lavishly from seed money. Now expand scheme with taking the money of second generation of investors. Use a portion of that to keep the initial target group happily singing your praises and gathering still more investors; quietly stash the rest overseas.

To serve:

Take one carpet-bag full of all remaining cash and depart country under assumed name by fastest transport, just before office lease/public credibility expires. Ruminate on famous sayings of P.T. Barnum, to taste.
26th December, 1936

Dear Diary; every time I congratulate myself on getting some peace and quiet, I suddenly discover that I no longer have. At least we have had two very nice days, more than we might have done. We had a whole free day together, and took great care to make the most of it.

    Just as I expected would happen someday soon, Helen and I were happily comparing our respective nipped ears and neck-fur at breakfast, when a certain ferret dropped by for a chat. My heart and ears sank at the sight, and at his suggestion there was an exercise we might be interested in. Not only have I lost my chance to be Tailfast this Winter to Spontoon “Official Business” but most of my chances to make it up to Jirry, or I miss my guess. Mr. Sapohatan asked where Molly was, and seemed fairly relieved to hear she was down in the village still.

    Although it is nearly a year and a half ago, the authorities have no more forgotten Molly’s experience with Captain Granite than she has herself. More so, in that they know of several cases where victims have vanished without trace, never to surface again. Molly got off lightly in comparison, though she is never likely to say that. The ship, the Three Moons is back in the Nimitz Sea, and a fur who has been known to act on their behalf as a scout has been seen on Spontoon. It seems likely that they are hoping to pick up the sort of cargo that will not be declared on the Customs manifest.

    Mr. Sapohatan asked us not to tell Molly, although he will do so when the time is right; he wants us all in on the capture. In fact, he says the plan is a “sting”, setting up an opportunity for Captain Granite in the nearer Kanim Islands that is too good to miss. Of course we volunteered – we have done this before, and that finished up most successfully – except for the crook who fell off the hotel roof, and the ones we and Lars captured. We never did find out what happened to them, and for our peace of mind have agreed it is better not to ask. Considering high ranking Diplomats are “found drowned” or “fell off cliffs” around here, what happens to folk the Althing is not obliged to officially account for could be more … exotic. Unlike Jasbir’s story of Traditional justice in her homeland there are no hungry tiger ants around the Nimitz Sea, but there are crabs.

    Anyway, the good thing is that although we are to be on short notice to move out, the actual trap should not take long, one way or another. I did ask if Lars would be helping us this time – at which a grey ferret muzzle wrinkled, and it seems he is certainly not. Mr. Sapohatan did hint that although Lars has been very useful in wiping out other criminals, there are several possible motives for that.

    He did point out that a tramp steamer that got away into International Waters would be outside Spontoon legal jurisdiction, and there would be nothing the police or the Rain Island Syndicate could officially do about it. But he mentioned almost casually that old tramp steamers had a habit of mysteriously going down with all hands far out at sea, being poorly maintained for the most part – that or sunk after being boarded by Pirates and looted for whatever cargo they were carrying.

    I know one dorm of the first-ever graduates of Songmark turned air-pirate and are still at large, but that was one career plan I had not put before Miss Devinski! Molly has sometimes thought about it, but I hope she is joking. I asked Mr. Sapohatan if he wanted our help with such a backup plan – and indeed he does.

    Well! It is one thing for Molly and me to have defended a smuggling ship against ruthless pirates as we did on the Parsifal, but doing the opposite is one step too far. I pointed out that one would never know till boarding if any “live cargo” was on board, and such would probably have been concealed against all but a very thorough search for secret compartments in the bilges, coal bunkers and such. A Pirate ship as has no innocents on board, and nobody would complain if it got in the way of a torpedo in thousand fathom waters. But unless we knew for certain that the Three Moons was guilty on this particular trip, I would have to turn that commission down. I added that Molly would do the job very happily. Anyway, we have not trained in torpedo dropping, and by all accounts it takes more than a few days to learn.

    I must say, Mr. Sapohatan is unfailingly polite even when one turns him down. He noted my objections, and assured us that he would think of a suitable role for us. We are very happy to help on this mission, but it would be nice to have some degree of law on our side. No doubt he has plenty of other folk he can ask.

    When he left, Helen and Saffina met out in the three-yard jungle at a shrine far from prying ears and talked it over. Saffina is very keen to help; her homeland has always been subject to slave raids, and in fact still is. She tells me that having the “Euro” legal markets closed down a century ago changed very little; slavers were raiding before Euros ever wanted plantation labour, and the only difference today is their victims stay on the same continent in probably worse conditions. She has no problems with being a pseudo-Pirate on this mission, she says. In the old days our equivalent would be privateers carrying official “Letters of Marque” – officially sponsored, and something like a Special Constable but with cannon rather than a truncheon.

   
27th December, 1936

A clear, bright day. Not having heard from Post Box Nine by the early post, I stepped onto a water taxi for Meeting Island. Passing Casino Island I could see furs in Tower Hill Park starting to assemble the New Year bonfire; hopefully we will be able to attend that one or at least the South Island local party. Duty calls when it chooses to, but missing out on both the Solstice and New Year rituals would be a bit much. I have heard from Saimmi that Prudence and Tahni were there; she blessed their rings herself.

    Meeting Island was quite deathly quiet; few people actually live here and the offices traditionally close between Christmas and New Year. With no customers, the shops and luncheon bars take the holiday off. It is rather strange on Spontoon; as most of the business takes place in other folk’s traditional Summer holidays, the Spontoonies have to take any long holidays in the middle of Winter! One can see there might be a market for those trips to New South Thule if they are cheap enough; they are suitably exotic foreign holidays for furs who already live on an exotic foreign holiday destination. Spontoonies have all the beach they want any day but never get the chance to sledge and ski, and right now it is Midsummer and light all the time in German Antarctica.

    Knocking on the door I was answered by the Judge himself, who apologetically explained his housekeeper had gone home for the holidays, and he was “getting by.” Well! While he sorted through papers I found the kitchen in the back and by dint of half an hour’s labours managed to put together a palatable dish of broiled gammon from the pantry and local fresh greens, followed with a sago pudding from recipes learned at Saint Winifred’s, totally different from Mrs. H’s version made from the sago palms of the village. I have heard Euros saying that just as some foreigners even get the names of their own towns wrong (according to Maria, Florence in Italy is “really” Fiorenza, despite my showing her the correct spelling in my clearly printed atlas) local growers never get their native foods quite right. Anyone fresh from Europe ordering tapioca or sago in a Spontoon native restaurant will not recognise the dish.

    The luncheon went down very well, and indeed Judge Poynter was full of praises. It is rather ironic, that a Lady Allworthy would not be expected to do her own cooking, and the public image of a tough Adventuress would mostly eat out of cans, though perhaps not with a saw-backed bayonet like Molly. Personally I like cooking, and sharing a joint of gammon such as I have never seen at Songmark is more than enough payment.
 
   As to my legal state, he had to admit that it was a problem. The best bet was to argue that as the Songmark Tutors are our legal guardians, I could not be married or engaged without their permission. Unfortunately this does not work as far as Krupmark Island is not technically under (enforced) Spontoon legal jurisdiction, so it is hardly conclusive. A lot of the problem stems from the fact that I cannot dispose of the title without admitting it is mine to give away! It is looking as if there is little I can do from this end – if I could find a proper claimant for the title they could contest it and win it off me in the Courts, but they could not do that while I was in Spontoon and unable to defend myself (not that I would actually want to defend, but the law sees these things differently.)
The judge’s ears drooped, and he confessed that he feels he has rather let me down. He opened a locked drawer and displayed a bottle of what they used to call “crusted port”, something he rather sadly told me he had been saving since the year before, and offered me a glass. He had looked forwards to clearing me, in that the Allworthy case had left him with a decidedly bad taste and he wanted all the pieces tidied away before he finally retired after fifty years service. He has written off to various Law Lords in London, but it is the Michaelmas Court Recess and right now they are mostly sitting around roaring fires judging the country-house weekend murders for style and imagination.

    Dear Diary: if I made myself stop feeling sorry for people, I am sure my conscience would give me just as hard a tweak as when I let my sympathies run free. I pointed out that he had done everything he could with the legal materials and the situation, all on my behalf – if there was no local solution, at least now I know and can make alternative plans. Our Tutors would not expect us to get a barn door flying, though it could make the basis of a jolly decent raft. After a second glass of port (the first I have had since leaving England) I was feeling rather sympathetic, and shortly afterwards it registered that I was being chased round and round the table. The exit door was there and available once per circuit, and there were a dozen options available from my self-defence classes – but I did not feel like using any of them. After about the fifth circuit I thought it might not be healthy for the good Judge to do this all afternoon, so decided to apparently run out of fuel first.

    While he completed the last half lap, I rapidly ran through my options – one of them was to stand and imperiously order him not to “get fresh” as Molly puts it, and add a few choice words about the actions of a Gentleman. That should certainly have brought the afternoon to a crashing halt. Looking at the faded room and photographs on the wall, somehow I did not have the heart to do it. I remembered everything Helen said about the last time this happened – but I have every assurance from Mrs. H who I trust with my life, that Harold Poynter is no Leon Allworthy. He is far from fat, which is one nice feature. I told myself there should be no surprises with him being canine, having visited this room on the Ark already, and anyway I had brought Precautions specially tailored for such demands.

    Actually, the only time my conscience did twinge was when I was walking back to the water taxi half an hour later. I could tell this to Jirry or our Tutors without any qualms; I know non-sentient canines like having their tummies rubbed,  but I expected something different. That was absolutely all he wanted. I even had specific … precautions ready with me that Helen insisted I buy at Herr Rassberg’s, that as it happened were quite unnecessary. If only all lawyers asked such reasonable fees! It seemed a harmless but odd request, although I have only known one canine and I hope Leon Allworthy was not typical. My only conscience twinge was when I had looked back at the very comfy-looking sofa also going unused, and realised I was willing to offer rather more. Now, that is a problem.



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