Spontoon Island
home - contact - credits - new - links - history - maps - art - story
comic strips - editorial - souvenirs - Yahoo forum

Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
  21 April, 1937 to 22 April, 1937



Wednesday, 21st April 1937

An exceedingly damp day, so of course we had our refresher Survival training on Main Island. Arriving in the middle of a streaming wet jungle, our Tutors put up their umbrellas and took out their stopwatches as they cheerfully announced we had to get a good fire going. Molly’s Extreme Danger matches were disqualified, as were those magnesium blocks used with flint and steel that Alpha Rote has sold to most of us. Hard work and about a mile of hiking through the forests located enough dry tinder deep in dead timbers caught up in trees,  then manage to keep it dry long enough to return it to the campsite. There are always tolerably dry dead branches caught up in foliage and half-fallen dead trees in any natural forest – the trouble is, half fallen trees are called “widowmakers” by the loggers for good reason. One never knows just how much or little persuasion it will take for them to fall the rest of the way.

    Most of us managed to get camp fires burning in shelters – Helen and Maria had rigged up a sort of umbrella of split bamboo suspended a yard over the flames that shed most of the rain off the fire, which was built up on a “hearth” of timbers above the wet ground. Lunch was a tin of Maconochie each warmed up on the ashes; Songmark is down to its last two cases and probably the new first-years arriving in September will be spared the experience even as an emergency ration. To be honest, a good batch of it is not bad when eaten hot by a hungry fur – most of the complaints from the Great War were from troops who had been fed it five days in a row and anything would get tiresome served like that. Our own logistics classes are tricky, working out how best to feed a party of furs a long way from the nearest shop, with severe restraints on food weight, bulk, cost and perishability even before we can start thinking about whether it makes an edible meal. One would have to work out a complex system of at least half a dozen different but equally well balanced cans to keep the troops happy for any length of time – Rain Island do a very nice canned salmon and pasta mix which would do for one of them.

    The rain happily stopped after lunch, and we trotted back through the dripping forest. I recall Adele last year coming out of the woods drenched when the rest of us were only somewhat splashed – all the rain squalls that had about a one in ten chance of shaking the trees over a passer-by,  shook themselves over her. Molly and Maria never could work out how the mechanics of that happened, though Helen and I have studied it with Saimmi. Anyway, Adele is now cured of that curse, as far as having any extra trees drop branches on her – which is not so say it will never happen. It would be nice if there was somehow a store of her several years’ unused supply of good luck piled up for her to draw on – she could probably bankrupt the Casino winning roulette on long odds and nobody could catch her cheating. Unfortunately except for the Casino, it does not work quite like that.

    Despite the rain having stopped the waters were decidedly choppy in the Lagoon and this afternoon I re-started my small-boat handling course. In two weeks we are examined for our “certificates” which certainly do count towards the Songmark course. Happily I was sailing with my brother from a tender age, and was reefing and luffing years before I ever spun a propeller. Cats are not famous for liking the water, but that is one of the great benefits of our Public Schools – one gets accustomed to all sorts of things as part of the team spirit. It has taken me all this time to get Molly and Helen to pull together but of course they did not have my early advantages.

    Actually the boat handling is about as much relaxation as we will probably get this term; although a few minutes per hour are hard labour that is nothing we are afraid of, and running before the wind through the Spontoon springtime waters is the sort of thing tourists eagerly queue up for, with the wind and sun on one’s fur. Once we are on course we can just relax until the next turning point which might be ten minutes away – a rare treat for us. I saw that odd rescue craft made from a crashed flying boat going through its paces, and next month there may be tourists stuck on the sand flats having misread the charts or misjudged the falling tide. It would be awfully embarrassing to be their first rescue of the season.

    Back for a very welcome meal after our labours. The local garden plots are already turning out plenty of fresh vegetables, which the Songmark cooks do in a sort of stirred and lightly fried manner with a rather oriental spicing. It greatly surprised me when I first got here that there are other ways to cook cabbage than the usual half hour boil. That reminded me of my old school, and indeed awaiting my return on Sunday was a letter from there, as they are keen to hear from me as one of their distinguished “old girls”.  Though I can hardly spare any time to think of such things right now, I know when I get back to England this Summer I will have a demanding time of it as Lady Allworthy with many duties to perform and a social scene for which I am hardly prepared. My dear friend Mabel spent a whole year at finishing school in Switzerland on such studies, and is now a respectably married lady of ever-increasing social rank. Alas, I can hardly think of myself as ladylike with all the “adventures” that I will definitely not be recounting to the old school if I go there on speech day or suchlike! Exactly how I became Lady Allworthy is a story I will leave to Maria to describe who is good at selecting the right journalistic angle on tricky issues.

    Then, there is the problem that I hardly plan to settle down as Lady Allworthy – somewhere out in the world is the rightful heir, who I will happily pass the job over to and return to South Island, Spontoon to become Mrs. Amelia Hoele’toemi. How I can manage that I can hardly see right now, having more immediate problems “the evils of the day are sufficient unto themselves” as our Scripture mistress used to keep quoting.

    Actually, Madeleine X came up with one of the best ideas on those lines I have heard. We keep on being hit with one thing after another but get through or over them somehow, rather like our sailing boats heading through one wave at a time. Madeleine is unfortunately just as much of a pain as ever, especially since the French have started a rather Songmark-like institution run by their Colonial Office, rather nearer Paris on the island of La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay. She regrets it was not founded three years earlier, and so do we.
 
    Madeleine even turns her nose up at our other French girls, who are not Parisian. Sophie D’Artagnan is a fiery Gascon who has inherited a lot of her famous ancestor’s spirit – or as Madeleine translates it, “brawl for one and one for brawl.” Saffina would be considered bad enough if she was just a Native of Ubangi-Chari, but being of mixed stock as her mother was a pure French Missionary’s daughter and married an African prince … well, it is just as well Saffina has a fairly good sense of humour. Apart from her house-cat tabby fur Saffina is a full-grown lioness, and would make hash of Madeleine even if she is a year behind in the self-defence classes.

    Molly has family troubles of her own, as I discover. Her Father somewhat cut her off as she refused to leave Songmark and join him in tax exile in Cuba, where by Molly’s account the local scene is too crowded with exiled racketeers for any of them to get rich especially as the locals need no teaching when it comes to their specialities such as smuggling or corruption. But it is an unexpected and rather unwelcome “relation” she had no idea of – she has a letter from Captain Granite’s mother, offering to officially adopt her in recompense for what happened to her. It seems that Captain Granite comes from a rich and a distinguished Boston family, and her actual name is Cabot after the great navigator.
 
    Poor Molly! The worst of it is, it is a deal that she could do very well out of and so can hardly afford to turn it down on the spot. Of all of us her future is the most uncertain; she has never talked about marrying Lars and settling down, not even on Krupmark. She has sympathised with my being stuck with the Lady Allworthy title, which is such an irony in that many people would love to get it, and I would love to lose it to a rightful heir. The difference is that unlike with her and Granite almost everything I did with Lord Leon was my idea (and some of the other things he did I know Molly actually likes.) In fact, although she knows I am no “gold digger” she has often said I did the job by accident better than most of them could with long years of practice. Getting the Allworthy title from a family of wanted criminals would not bother Molly a bit considering her Chicago background, though managing to cope with Society would be the big challenge for her. I recall she once claimed that not everyone on Krupmark was actually a fugitive from International justice, but many just enjoy that lifestyle. Rather her than me, I should think! Then, she is at her happiest being trigger-happy and furs in Fort Bob mind that sort of thing less than in England.

    Anyway, that is one more thing to worry my dorm this term just when we have enough on our plates what with our exams and such. It never rains but it pours, as they say. Fortunately a Songmark third-year is qualified in getting into shelter, or learning to live with the occasional soaking.


Thursday April 22nd, 1937

A rare and stately sight today; the arrival of one of those ultra long distance Caproni Ca60 airliners. They do not generally fly via Spontoon, being normally found on the polar route from Alaska over the top to Greenland, and this one is putting in for repairs. It is quite a sight, being the only commercial triple triplane to fly – and despite its somewhat unwieldy appearance they have been a big success, with thirty in service and an excellent safety record.
 
    Maria rarely throws her political weight around, but after a word with Miss Devinski she was granted a Pass to trot down to her embassy and start making a few “suggestions”. Result – all the third-years got passes to look it over this morning and were even allowed to taxi the Caproni around the central waters! It looks and feels rather like steering a galleon, and indeed all that wing area catches the wind quite alarmingly. Amazingly enough, one won a prize last year in Speed Week as the fastest of its class! It was not raced on its own as the sole entry in “triple triplane” class, either. It seems I missed a lot heading down to the Albanian South Indies, and not only in terms of Nootnops Blue and friendly company.

    Unlike our disappointment with the strict Lufthansa regulations getting back from German Antarctica, my dorm were allowed to take the stick on a test flight, when safely airborne for a quarter of an hour each which is the minimum our Tutors count in our logbooks. Some of my poor Flying Fleas back in England did not survive that long in the air, alas. Actually we were in the second pilot’s seat for the flight, which has dual controls. It really is a flying boat, as indeed the prototype was an existing houseboat on one of the Italian lakes before being given wings and engines. If we head over directly to Europe after graduation it might be via the polar route on one of these, as Maria has described many times.  Touching down at Byrd Station, Maria is probably the first Songmark girl to have been very near both poles. We will pass over the Aleutians on the way, six months after our exploits there. I wonder what happened to that respectable plantation family the Penningtons? Living in such isolation, almost in hiding, I doubt we will ever know. They had been there generations with hardly half a dozen furs in the outside world knowing of their exact location, after all.

    Flying the Ca60 was certainly one for the logbook; six engines to control (although actually the Flight Engineer handles the details) and a set of controls that handle like nothing else that flies. My admiration for the pilots who land these on the polar ice cap in pitch darkness increased quite a bit having sampled a little of their problem. The good thing is, with such a huge wing area the Caproni can stay aloft at fifty knots, which cuts down the strain on landing on ice or water. There is not enough money in the world to make me risk that sort of landing with passengers in a modern fast monoplane like a DC-3! Definitely for safety sake, this is the shape of future airliners. All it needs now is reversible propellers like a Vostok Balalaika, and as soon as the hull touches water or ice it could flip all six engines into “full astern” and I should think it could stop on a sixpence.

    As soon as we had waved farewell to the Italian team, I had to wave farewell to the rest of my dorm. Today is the start of my night sailing classes; it is one thing to be a fair-weather sailor skitting about the central waters along with the tourists, but nobody gets sailing Certificates unless they can deal with night, storm and fog. Today was just the start of it.

    I am one of just three Songmark girls taking the sailing certificate; Madeleine X and Sophie D’Artagnan are coming along with me. Why Madeleine boasts about her Naval ancestry is hard to decide – they were officers in Napoleon’s fleet which rarely actually won any battles. Her great-grandfather was in the Crimea, but apart from a few shore bombardments that was hardly noted for Naval action. She is quite good at sailing, as indeed is Sophie – but my money would be on the Gascon rather than the Parisian any time. The day a bichon frise beats an otter at aquatic sports a lot of bookmakers are going to go out of business.

    Happily today was not the time we found out about the difficulties of navigating in fog; one would need to sail to Tillamook or Vostok to guarantee that at this time of year. But after four hours of our usual sailing practice the sun went down and we had to navigate by the lights and bells of the harbour buoys. There is no manned lighthouse on Spontoon in the traditional Euro manner, but a whole string of automated lights that help to keep the tour-boats off the reefs and sandbanks.  Judging distances is always harder at night, and one certainly needs to memorise the chart in advance as having a torch to read it would quite ruin one’s night vision.

    Apart from passing the wrong side of a bell marker buoy we all steered the sea-going yawl successfully around the course and received Captain Ruzkov’s gruff approval. Having feline eyes certainly helps in night sailing; indeed felines were usually chosen for night watch lookout jobs on the old sailing ships. If I manage to get my Certificate at least that will be another option available should our Tutors make good their threat to throw me out for foolish behaviour.

    Looking back at the ship from above the Eastern Islands docks, I was quite glad it was too dark for anyone to see my ears blushing. It is about the same size as Mr. M’wede’s yacht, and equally ocean capable. I might have woken up “all at sea” after that evening in Macao, with Lady Allworthy being given a ride back to Tillamook by the admittedly handsome Onager. That would have taken a week and more – and after such a trip in such company, I expect Mrs. Oelabe would have some embarrassing news for me at my next health check. Still, it is a peculiar feeling to know that fairly soon we will no longer be worried about family complications losing us our Songmark places. Still, it would hardly have done for Mrs. Amelia Hoele’toemi or Lady Allworthy to end up with a mixed zebra striped kitten – or colt, more likely. Although both Malou on Casino Island and our ex-tutor Miss Pelton are feline and have very handsome equine husbands, they of course are married.

    As we have passes for our night sailing, that is not something that has an exact timetable given the vagarities of winds and tides; on the return we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Sunset Grill, that new place which has opened this Spring between the airport and the seaplane slips and indeed faces due West over the central waters. It is too far to visit Mahanish’s from the docks this late at night – we would either have to risk being spotted going past the staff bungalows or go a very long way round to avoid them. Stopping off to dine on the way home as we missed the evening meal at Songmark is one thing, but heading past Songmark out to party is quite another matter. We will leave it to the first-years to climb fences and dig tunnels – when I might pass or fail my final exams by one mark I am taking no chances.
 
    Although it was late the place was quite full; it seems the airport have been running a full “dress rehearsal” and training up new crew for the coming season. Certainly the tables were loud with furs discussing how they handled all the stressful things they had been practicing on. Had a rookie news reporter walked in and not known what they had been doing, he might soon have been rushing off to report on the two-aircraft pileup on the runway with every water taxi drafted in to take most of the casualties to the Casino Island hospital with those too badly injured to move far treated on Eastern Island. There has never been a serious tourist crash on the airstrip yet, but it is good to know folk are ready.

    The Sunset Grill is setting up to cater for the tourist trade though not exactly the tour-boat crowd – it is not only in Speed Week that this section of the island is crowded with pilots, support crews and airline workers with Euro tastes and decent wages which the Spontoonies are always eager to relieve them of. The cuisine is Euro with local flourishes – the chicken grilled with chillies was decidedly welcome after a long wet evening on deck, and the breadfruit mousse a rather upmarket version of the Songmark equivalent. Still, we could hardly relax for long even tonight; in fifteen minutes after cleaning our plates we were all back in Songmark, washing the salt out of our fur before the hot water in the showers cuts off for the night.
 
    I recall back in the first year going to bed bone weary every night, and being amazed to hear the then third-years complaining of much the same despite being so much fitter. One could say that though we are on a higher level now, the Tutors make sure the climb is just as steep. Certainly we are managing things that we could never have hoped to do two years ago – but it still hurts.


next