Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
17 February, 1937 to 21 February, 1937



Wednesday 17th February, 1937

A relaxing day. We spent most of yesterday asleep in our seats, waking up for teatime when we had our last silver-service meal of the trip. Lady Allworthy and party were booked to Tillamook where they changed for the return flight to Alaska and the big triple triplane Caproni that connected for the polar crossing back to Europe. At least, that is what the paper-trail of tickets and reservations will say if anyone decides to follow it.

    There is only one decent hotel in Narrawangan Bay, and we were very glad to see it again. I signed us in as Lady Allworthy, and we had our old rooms with the nice cedar furniture and Native rugs on the floor. There is no sign of Adele as yet. But an hour later another four Songmark students walked in through the front door – as far as the front receptionist officially saw. It was us, having found our outfits laid out in the rooms as we left them and having gone out the back window as soon as we changed. Molly did grumble they had not been cleaned – but a second later clapped her paw over her snout in embarrassment. It would look odd for us to stroll in from a week and more in the back-woods wearing cleaned and pressed uniforms! People remember that sort of detail.

    It was a great relief to be wearing practical clothing again; our rubber-soled boots do not click maddeningly on hard surfaces announcing me half a street away. And at last I have pockets again, which is a great blessing. Molly got her sewing kit out and incorporated the “weighted sleeves” into her Songmark kit, then spent an hour practicing with them rather like a non-spinning yoyo. She can certainly do a lot of lethal damage to a reject pumpkin, as I can vouch for.

    Thinking of pumpkins, it was a relief to be able to relax and sample the local brew again. In Macao we had to be on our guard all the time; Tillamook is safer and four Songmark girls hopefully attract less predatory attention than a genuine Lady. Actually, I felt my ears rather blushing as I thought about this last weekend. Somehow, Lady Allworthy definitely did attract a lot of attention, and not just as an agent of a shipyard. I remember that auction, and the more I think of the details the more embarrassing it gets. It could have been worse, the winner might have bid a trivial sum and still won. I will have to ask Lars about that, although as he was not one of the bidders he might not know. Nobody else we know has Macao contacts, though.

    There were only about a dozen other guests in the hotel, half of them changing flights. The only two who had come on the Macao flight with us we waited till they had left before coming downstairs, or they might have spotted our change of identity. The main room was very cheerful with a great Russian-style porcelain stove the size of a tankette in the middle of the room, and the snap of fir logs blazing within.

    Back in Songmark uniform, we had to think about Adele. There has been no word from her since the day we last saw her, although admittedly post boxes are rare in the deep woods and she never said she would be writing to the hotel. She might have had her curse fixed and be on the way back right now, in which case going out to search would only get us lost or at least delayed as well. On the other paw, she might still be cursed, or not even managed to find those shamans. In which case we will have to find her. Tillamook is a big place, we do not speak the language, and the woods are deep and dense over most of the area. This is one part of the world where an aircraft search would not be much help, what with the frequent fogs, low cloud, steep terrain and dense forest cover.
 
    By the end of the evening we had put our plan together, assisted by some but not too much pumpkin brew. There are three days before we have to leave for Spontoon; we will assume she is in trouble and start looking for the start of her trail. But someone has to stay here at all times and man the fort (the hotel is a log building, if not quite a log fort.) Going back without her is not an option; to say Miss Devinski would not be happy with us is about as accurate as saying Krakatao caused the locals some inconvenience when it erupted. True, but hardly a good description of the scale of things.

    Although the baths here lack the sort of “personal service” we have had in Macao, they are well worth waiting for. If anything can put Tillamook on the tourist trail this is the attraction to do it. I had a definite reminder of my Macao trip when I relaxed in the warm water – one might say that although the pool does not require a bather to wear a cap, I had been wearing one inconspicuously for three days anyway. Madame Maxine’s pamphlet mentioning the … characteristics of equine gentlemen was right about that!

   
Thursday 18th February, 1937

At last, the clouds cleared and we had a decent view of Tillamook. I have never seen the tops of the hills before and they are a daunting sight, ridge after ridge of dense pine and redwood forests sparkling wet in the sun and reaching back into the distance. As we saw on Vostok, one could hide an army or an industrial complex from the air in those woods, if one was careful about smoke. That gave me pause to consider why Vostok is so keen on hydro-electrical power, when they have so much coal, oil and gas. With electrically powered factories there would be no tell-tale plumes of smoke rising through the trees, and power cables can be buried.

    Unlike our escape across Vostok where we were glad of the dense trees and wide landscape to evade pursuit in, the prospects are bleak for us finding one lop-eared rabbit even if she is where she expected to go and not miles off the beaten trail by now. We needed local advice, and started with Kalakapa, the marmot girl who served our breakfast and seems to be in on the plan as to our being Songmark students both ends of our trip. At least there is nothing secret about this part of our trip; our friend is out there somewhere and we are anxious to find her before we miss our scheduled trip back.

    Looking at the maps, Narrawangan Bay is on the South coast of the main island but only occupies a small dent in the coast – there are few roads going into the interior and they all head rather steeply uphill. The area Adele was making for is at the headwaters of the Squeeshonk River, which at its nearest to here is thirty miles over the passes and the headwaters are thirty and more upstream of that. Plus they are forest trails rather than roads – traditionally most long-distance travel in Tillamook was by canoe, but here we are not on any major river. Our hearts and tails drooped at the prospect. There is a loose network of trails rather than one main highway, so if we did by pure luck head towards where Adele happened to be coming our way, we might be on parallel paths and unknowingly pass each other! In fact the chances are that we would. It would take all of Songmark to cover the area in any sort of comprehensive sweep, and for just three to search of us with one staying here – it seems a rather hopeless task. If Adele really is cured and well and making her way back from an unexpected direction it will be a pointless one, too.

    Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The trouble is, we do not have time to head out on foot two days into the target area, search and then hike back. We can search in one-day sweeps, returning to the hotel to check if Adele has arrived. If there were telephones along the route it would make life so much easier. One day radios might be portable enough to carry in a cycle pannier, but with all these steep valleys getting any sort of reception is a problem.

    Of all people, Molly had the idea of asking around if there were any bicycles in town we could hire. Kalakapa says there is no hire shop as such, but she promised to ask her friends in town and get back to us by lunchtime. She confirmed that most of the main trails were practicable with care on a bicycle, though a double-sized puncture kit is a must.

    As our local contact headed out to enquire, Molly admitted she had not been looking forward to returning to the cycle club on Spontoon, which had put the idea in mind. Her head-fur is jet black with almost bluish highlights, but she says she is about black and blue under her fur after a morning on Main Island falling off bicycles onto gravel roads, with or without a leather Sidcot suit. She not surprisingly volunteered to stay here and mind this end of the business.

    In an hour we heard the good news; there are three sturdy cycles available for a few day’s hire, all of which have already survived rough use on local trails. The hire fees are reasonable but the deposits are awfully steep – Kalakapa pointed out they do not have an actual cycle shop for a hundred miles, and getting any replacements in would be difficult. We will do our best to take care of them, and bring them home safely. I gritted my teeth and handed over a gold sovereign per cycle as deposit from our emergency supply – if we do not find Adele, explaining how I had to spend it will be the least of my troubles. Hopefully we will bring bikes and bunny both safely home.

    After a good luncheon we started begging, borrowing and improvising equipment. We did not  expect to be camping in the Tillamook cloud forests in February. Tarpaulins are cheap and common around the docks, so those stood in for cycle capes, groundsheets and shelter halves. Our regular Songmark uniforms are practical enough but we borrowed warmer clothing for the evenings, as well as gloves for the inevitable spill off the trail. Then it was time for us to caution Molly against drinking too much pumpkin brew, and head off!


Saturday 20th February, 1937

Quite a trip! We waved Molly goodbye and pedalled off on the Thursday, having taken delivery of three sturdy machines. Rather too sturdy for my tastes; they had no gears and if the frames were not solid cast iron they were good imitations. I found myself wishing for the five gears of Miss Wildford’s Vostok-built magnesium framed racer, by the time I panted up to the first pass. The trail is mostly smooth and cycleable, but steep and muddy in places. Still, one is more efficient pushing a loaded bicycle like a cart than carrying the same weight on one’s back.

    One thing we quickly learned about Tillamook is half the trails are not on the map and any navigating by “third left, second right” is hopeless. Without our compasses we would have soon been helplessly lost, but by the end of the afternoon we reached the valley of the Squeeshonk River, thirty miles as the aircraft flies in one afternoon. No great feat for a cyclist, but respectable given the state of the trail. Even going downhill we had to go carefully, looking out for sharp rocks poking up through the pine needles flooring the trail. We still had two punctures to fix despite all our caution.

    Although it is a worrying search and possibly rescue mission, I found myself quite enjoying it – at least on the downhill sections. The sun was shining through the glades, making the water on every tree sparkle, and the three of us seemed to be riding through a green-lit world of our own,  the only noise being the hiss of wheels, the snap of twigs and Maria’s voluble Italian as some branch or other got tangled in her horns.
 
    About two hours out we found a village by a tributary of the Squeeshonk, where they recalled seeing Adele passing through last week. So far so good! They had not seen her returning, but that means little in a forest with so many trails. We agreed to keep together for safety; on these rough trails anyone could slide off the edge into a ravine very easily, with nobody knowing where they had vanished to. It is enough that we have to search for Adele, let alone each other.

    By the time we got down to the main river it was already too dark to cycle under the trees. Half an hour’s work set our camp up snug against the rain; instead of tent-poles we lashed the upright cycles together in a triangle as the core of the tent, as we got the campfire and heat reflector going outside. One of the saddlebags came with a helpful selection of camping equipment, such as a good hatchet for firewood and what Helen thought was a coffee-pot until she noticed it was hollow inside.

    I could identify the device as a “Kelly kettle”, a rather handy combination stove, kettle and fireplace all rolled into one. Hanging a regular kettle over an open fire is awfully inefficient with the heat going everywhere, but with this the fire is inside the hollow kettle and a dozen paw-fulls of pinecones and twigs had the water boiling within minutes. Rather a handy device, I recall seeing one years ago used by my school chum Kitty Marlowe’s family when I holidayed on their estate. Despite expectations, none of the two girls I ever knew called Kitty were feline, nor was Jill in my St. Winifred’s class a ferret.

    So: with a reflector fire outside and a hot meal inside us we had a fairly comfortable night at the edge of the forest. The pine needles were soft underneath us and the tarpaulins mostly kept the damp out. After all the strains of Macao and Songmark before that, it was good to just have an evening around the fire with nothing to worry about till the morning. The food we had bought for the road was good; smoked fish and what Helen calls “parched corn”, that is roasted maize that only needs hot water to make up into a porridge that most folk would prefer to poi.  Though she says cornmeal mash is what the poorest furs mostly eat in the Southern States of the USA, we will hopefully not all go down with pellagra overnight.

    Fortunately we had supplies of both tea and coffee to make good use of the Kelly kettle; although I do not mind its smell, I will definitely leave the coffee to Helen. Maria has been reading a lot of local histories, and came out with the entertaining story of how Hawaii regained its independence around the time of the Gunboat Wars. They had been invaded in the 1880’s and their rightful monarch deposed, but the revolt began when patriots dressed up as Indians complete with turbans, and threw the occupying forces’ coffee rations into Honolulu harbour. A sad waste, Helen thought.

    The next day we started at dawn, not even waiting to light a fire before pedalling off up the valley. Cold tea is better than plain water, but not much. By midday we had arrived at a village that nestled under the shelter of a great overhanging cliff, and set about our enquiries. Much to our relief we found someone who spoke English, as the Amerindian languages are awful things to try and learn, and by the time you master one you find they speak something utterly different in the next valley.

    It was good news – well, mostly. Adele had been here; she arrived two days late with her ankle strapped up and leaning on a staff. The local shaman had been expecting her and took her under his wing (literally; he is a most impressive sea-eagle gentleman) and a week later, that being yesterday, she waved farewell and headed back towards the coast. She was looking happier, and her ankle much improved.

    Well, not every rescue party finishes with a dramatic rescue, and we have had enough excitement this trip to last us awhile. We stayed at the village for luncheon, a rather fine fish stew with the predictable “three Sisters” of maize, beans and marrows, then turned our wheels around and headed back. Tillamook is a very unpopulated land, with almost no “Euro” development around here and the villages scattered half a day’s canoe ride apart along the rivers. The people here are mostly various rodents, many of them marmots and beavers, with some bears and a few deer and the like. What the capital is like we will not find out on this trip. The village had a carved wooden sign in addition to its towering totem pole, with trails pointed out measured in time rather than miles. The capital is four days hike away down the trail, and I think it would be two hard days on a bicycle, if the trails are anything like we have found!

    Maria was musing as we saddled up that heavily forested areas like Vostok and Tillamook could absolutely eat invading armies, given a resolute population that did not depend on having recognisable strong-points or vulnerable industry. You could not get a tankette down any of these trails, and they would be very vulnerable to ambush if you tried it. As for air power, it may be flattening the open cities of Spain right now rather effectively but it would be like trying to hunt ants on a lawn with a sledgehammer. Most of Ioseph Starling’s air force could be circling overhead right now and we would have little to worry about. Besides, even if they got lucky with a Kalinin K-7 and five tons of high explosive it would hardly be worth their time. A heavy bomber against cheap bicycles pushed down an easily repairable mud trail – we agreed with Maria, that’s never going to happen.

    Having got used to our cycles and eaten much of our food, we made an all-out push to get back to the hotel in the day. On a regular metalled road it would have been easy given the distance, but it was an awful slog getting out of the Squeeshonk valley before dark. We all wished it was a month or two later in the year, darkness being at five on the clearest of days (of which Tillamook has few.) Luckily the fog and cloud held off or we would have had to set up camp in the forest again an hour away from the hotel, and resigned ourselves to another night on the ground while comfy beds were going empty awaiting us. As it happened, a flat-out effort got us over the pass and free-wheeling down the trails towards the lights of Narrawangan Bay just visible through breaks in the tree canopy below us.
 
    It was pitch dark before we actually got into town, bruised from a dozen tumbles apiece and covered in mud, but very glad to get here. The first thing we did was clean the bicycles before worrying about our own fur. After all, we did borrow them from their owners, and we are always taught to return things at least as clean and working as we found them.

    At the hotel we discovered that we almost caught up with Adele! She was there to meet us, having only arrived an hour before. Explanations had to wait while we ordered supper preparing and all staggered into the hot pool. Adele and Molly joined us, in Molly’s case more in companionship than needing a soak.

    Adele had quite a story to tell. She had twisted her ankle when a stable-looking piece of trail vanished downhill, and nobody happened along that section all day to help her. But she is a Songmark third-year after all, and having checked there was nothing actually broken she strapped her foot up tight and carried on. By the time we were in Macao she had reached her target, the village we had almost found her in. From there she was introduced to Waterfall-go-Backwards, the sea eagle Shaman we had heard of, who had taken her further into the woods where a conclave of elders had assembled eager to look at her Curse. It seems that Clear-Skies Yakan had judged their reactions very well; had Adele actually been guilty of what she had been cursed for they would have turned her away, but once they proved otherwise (how, Adele could not tell) they were very keen to put things right. The ceremony was rather impressive and awfully hard work – Adele says she will write it out for Miss Devinski but that will take a few days.

    Anyway, she has been pronounced cured! She had a bad minute on the way back when she fell off a log bridge into a stream, and wondered whether her curse really had gone. But on reflection, she thought back on having seen the rest of Songmark slipping and tumbling off things on many occasions. One hardly needs to be cursed to fall off a wet and mossy tree trunk. It is as easy as falling off… well, a log.
 
    Molly splashed out of the pool and rummaged in her pockets, returning with a new set of cards. These she explained she had bought yesterday in town, being waterproof celluloid playing cards sold for use in the backwoods. Of course in the Tillamook climate ordinary pasteboard packs would soon revert to paste. We had an impromptu poker game played for pebbles, and though Molly and Maria scooped the pot Adele actually beat me! I am no great card player, but even so Adele was thrilled. We will try her with the buttered toast test sometime.

    We did caution Adele that removing her curse is no reason to get reckless. She probably does not have five years’ worth of good luck piled up and ready to spend, things do not work like that. And she should be careful next time she flies, just in case her airborne luck has deserted her. It would be an awful thing, having a curse removed and that making her fail the flying exams!

    Adele says she feels exactly the same as before, and is looking forward to seeing how it all turns out. That makes two of us; Miss Devinski did tell me to fix her or else. It would be good to be in good odour with our Tutors for a change – hopefully I can keep them in the dark about a few of the things that happened on Macao. There is a first time for everything, and we are third-years after all.

    An excellent meal followed, which we were very ready for. Cycling all day on rough, steep trails is hard work, and uses quite different sets of muscles than most things. One lesson a Songmark girl learns early is how very many places she can ache. We all thought we were fit when we first arrived, having practiced as the prospectus warned us in running and swimming. Rope climbing, rowing, cycling and hula dancing are very different matters, and by this time there can be hardly anywhere we have not exercised to the limit.

    (Later) Our last relaxing evening for quite awhile; no more soft beds and pumpkin brew at Songmark, and our Tutors promised us we would have to make up all the work we missed. If this had been a holiday that might be fair enough, but it has been quite an ordeal all round. Still, we have accomplished quite a bit in the time – in my case, rather more than I should have. I will definitely have to talk with Saimmi on that score.


Sunday February 21st, 1937

A long day in the air, picking up the Sealth-Spontoon-Hawaii route as it pulled in just after breakfast time. The trip ended better than we had hoped; returning the bicycles got the gold sovereigns back as deposit, so that is one thing our Tutors should not be annoyed about. Adele is with us, alive and well and curse-free, and we are even spot on time!
 
    As before the trip was uneventful; exactly what a commercial airline should be. Then, the great Imperial Airways. Handley-Page Heracles have a perfect safety record of eight years without a single passenger injured in flight. Which explains why they have that model on airlines and not bigger versions of the Gee Bee racers. I doubt any pilots would survive eight months regularly flying those, let alone years.

    On the way, we had time to talk over our plans. None of us are planning to be airline pilots; a life of sticking to timetables and running the same routes would probably pall quite rapidly. Things are rather different in the wilder parts of the world: nobody has ever claimed that bush flying around Pauper New Guinea (the poorer half of Papua) is dull! What with a definite lack of flying aids and most of the world’s supply of natural hazards there is plenty to make a pilot’s life uninsurable.

    Adele confessed that she had to go to Krupmark Island at Easter – she has “Unfinished business” there. Molly offered to get her some ammunition, but Adele and Molly have rather different meanings to that phrase. Adele says she has to know what part of her was the curse and what was really what she liked – though by her expression it is liable to be disturbing either way.

    The rest of us are due to get our snow-shoes on and head down to the all-year Winter Sporting Paradise ™ of Neue Suden Thule, to see what furs are doing down there. Saimmi and Mr. Sapohatan are certainly getting their shells’ worth out of us this year.
 
    By evening we looked down and recognised the low plateau of Orpington Island below us, with the fractious local spirit-cults happily invisible from five thousand feet. In twenty minutes we were circling over the central waters of Spontoon,  somewhat torn between being eager to get back and having awful presentiments about how much hard work is piled up waiting for us when we do. Still, there is not much we can do about that but grin and bear it – it has been quite a trip, and we are just happy to have all made it back in one piece!


(And they found out what was waiting for them in “Spring forwards, Fall back”….)

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