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-
28 April, 1937 to 30 April, 1937



Wednesday 28th April, 1937

Off to Main Island! A far brighter day, and one we resigned ourselves to starting with a few bruises when we met up again with half a dozen Spontoon Guides. Quite a long walk first, West of Main Village then over the ridge that goes up to that volcanic cone, to the quarry where the sculptor Mr. Tikitavi has his quarry and workshops.

    The quarrying has exposed some lava tubes that once ran down from the active volcano, and the biggest are about ten feet across. As there is nothing in there to damage, we had a morning of self-defence exercises in the cramped caves. All the moves many of us have prided ourselves on practicing are rather constrained in such close quarters – trying any high leaps and kicks is hardly a good idea inside a seven foot tunnel. I found myself matched against a hefty badger guide, whose style was more “grab and grapple” and suited a tunnel tussle embarrassingly well. The Guides are decidedly well trained, and it is no disgrace to get convincingly sat on, as indeed our Tutors have instilled in us a hard-earned knowledge that any fight can be lost however skilled one may be. No Songmark girl ever lost points for running away, especially to get reinforcements.

    Lava tubes look smooth but up close (as in, being thrown against the walls or sat on by a very solid badger) they are more like welded rubble. Definitely wearing on the fur. Still, our Tutors seem to be happy enough with our progress though Beryl was cautioned that her “sleeper hold” would have her disqualified in professional wrestling. I believe Saint T’s was the only girl’s school to have that as an official sport – but then, they did bare-knuckle boxing as well. Not a sport that appeared in the Saint Winifred’s prospectus.

    It was a rather battered collection of furs who sat down for lunch near Mr. Tikitavi’s quarry. As Spontoon is such a tourist attraction, the Althing would not approve great gaping quarries spoiling the scenery (the old one was a Plantation-era working)  so these days the quarries are more properly “stone mines” with inconspicuous entrances. Madeleine X was unusually forthcoming and mentioned that a lot of Southern Paris was built on the same principle from stone quarried directly underneath its foundations – which prompted some chaffing from the rest of us about French common-sense. Excavating the rock to build a house out of its own cellar hole is one thing, but quarrying under streets of tall, heavy and expensive town houses is another.

    The Spontoonies certainly put all their resources to good use! I suppose that on such a small island there is little alternative. Even the basalt dust from the quarries is collected and shipped out to farms, as well as to the “Bio-reactor” over in Vikingstown where apparently it boosts the compost nutrient levels. Professor Kurt has quite an operation going there, getting electrical power from crop wastes, fish trimmings and seaweed. Indeed as Prudence has often quoted, “Where there’s muck there’s brass”, meaning money. Doubly so if one’s raw materials are things that otherwise folk would have to pay to get rid of.

    A hike in to Main Village and then another rude surprise – Miss Wildford cheerfully announced she had “forgotten her purse” and we had to swim back. A mile and a half across the central waters, fully clothed! Most of us had cuts and scrapes from the morning’s contests that sting awfully with salt water, and we were already tired. But without too much grumbling we got on with it, only glad it was almost May rather than January.

    A long, cold swim regardless. Somehow Miss Blande had found enough change in her pocket to hire a water-taxi for herself and Miss Wildford, and indeed a couple more were following us with those red warning flags they use when clearing driftwood and suchlike from the seaplane ways. Swimmers in the water are inconspicuous from the air, and it would not improve our day to have a DO X land on our heads. Everybody made it on their own power, with no serious straggling, and indeed at a quite respectable speed considering the currents. Furs swim far more slowly than generally supposed; we hike with packs at four miles an hour over most terrain but it is a definite sprint to swim at two.

    What a day! It was nineteen extremely tired third-years who staggered up from our landfall on the coast near the “Bicycle factory” leaving a saltwater trail. Li Han is at a disadvantage being the smallest, although Beryl is nearly as badly off. Still, even Missy K has to work hard getting through the surf. We were only glad it was not the West coast of Main Island where the waves come in straight off thousands of miles of the Pacific.

    One thing Songmark teaches is not to raise one’s hopes too high as opposed to one’s ambitions. Nobody would have been amazed to sit down to a bowl of cold three-finger poi apiece then sent off on another run round the island. Not pleased, indeed, but not amazed. Helen murmured that our Tutors have to work hard now to find things to really test us and she is probably right.

    Actually things turned out rather better – after a brisk shower to get the salt out of our fur (and clothes – the fact that we are dripping wet is of no concern to our Tutors as long as we are clean and brushed) we had a treat indeed. We became the test pilots, so to speak, for Rain Island’s new military menu! The fact that untested tinned rations are such an improvement on our usual fare probably says a lot about how our Tutors put their priorities in dividing up our Songmark fees. A maximum on hours in the air and a minimum of succulent roasts on the table. Or palm hearts, for any pure herbivores.

    Of course, nothing comes without its price and we had to fill in detailed questionnaires about our supper. The idea is to ring the changes on five basic tinned “full meal” rations – one gets the idea they plan to eat them all week on duty and take weekends off. As to the main supper menus, they have:

     1. Salmon and pasta. Rather tasty.
     2. Beef and vegetable stew. Not yet called “Maconochie Junior”, but doubtless it will be. There was nothing really wrong with the recipe for Maconochie, without a sub-contractor pushing his luck and profit margins on skimped ingredients or with the best will in the world, wartime supply shortages.
     3. Pumpkin, bean and corn stew, “Three Sisters brand”. A taste of home for a lot of the Rain Islanders.
     4. Vegetable Chilli, though the Rain Islanders could use a spelling lesson (The dictionary does NOT have “Chili” as a word.)  A decidedly fiery mix and probably not the best one to dine on before anything involving sneaking around in the dark with sentries sniffing the air for scents.
     5. Cheese and mashed potato “Sea Pie” – nobody much liked it. The vegetarians would not eat it, and it was about ten percent tastier than pastefish, fifteen percent better than a tin of poi. Enough said.

Actually, Molly had a good deal to say about the ration apart from wondering if she can produce a better one when Fish Log is out of season. Rain Island is quite a small place in terms of fertile farmland (one cannot eat pine trees) and her guess is they are spreading the menu because they have difficulty getting sufficient supplies of any one ingredient. There are only so many surplus pumpkins available for the factory making the “Three Sisters” stew. The cans are very honestly labelled – that menu and the salmon pasta both contain five percent kelp meal, which is something the Pacific coast has in abundance and is said to be highly nutritious.

    One wonders if some of the produce of the Pennington family in the Aleutians ended up on our plates! It is a long way from their undersea “plantation” to Eastern Island.

    Having only two cases of the Rain Island rations to review, the treat was reserved for third-years. We have eaten our share of the regular Songmark cuisine already, after all. Some of the junior years were looking on enviously as they tucked into their sweet potato mash. An army marches on its stomach as Napoleon famously said, and an Adventuress likewise. In the first year Alpha Rote has come up with an actually tasty and wholesome snack she is getting into commercial production, the “Songmark Bar”. Molly was rather envious about being beaten to it – but she had a year of working on foods here before Alpha arrived, and had her chance to think of it first.

    Thinking of our junior years, it looks as if the Tutors have selected a talented bunch again. Not just in the regular active skills one might expect in an Adventuress – there is our second Texan feline Lucy Ulrich, who is a published author! I have even seen her name on the front cover of a pulp magazine on sale on Casino Island; though I have not actually read “Astounding - so Astounding your mind just won’t cope with how Astounding they really are, Stories” it certainly sounds interesting. Molly occasionally buys pulp magazines though some of them have educational value. In the latest issue of that realist adventuring journal “Soldier of Misfortune” they caution “don’t join anything its own members call a “barmy army” no matter how relaxed their discipline, stylish their uniform or charismatic their leader may look on the newsreels.” Salutary advice for any soon-to-graduate Adventuress.


Thursday 29th April, 1937

A day for the Tourist Board to rub their paws over – the first boat of the season arrived at Pier Six. Not one of the “Classic” tour boats which are expected in about a month, but a round the world cruise that is staying for a few days. The tourists are well-heeled but less well-padded than most who waddle off the dock in search of beach parties and hula dancing – which is just as well as the islands are still working hard on painting the souvenir stalls and fish and chip booths and are not ready to handle hundreds on the Crazy Golf and Slightly Disturbed Croquet courses.
 
    We had a close-up view of the ship as we headed out to Casino Island for a morning at the main hospital. All of us are qualified as first-aiders and have been since the first year, but there are always new hints and tips to learn and things to practice.  Medical science keeps moving along – in the hospital they now have a few precious batches of the “sulpha drugs” we have read about, that are amazing against infection. They are very jealously guarded though – there are about a dozen treatments’ worth in stock, and a fur would have to be practically at death’s door to get any. Though not, of course, too far gone for the drugs to have a chance of helping. We were told of one Euro “beachcomber” out in the Kanim Islands who was brought in with blood poisoning from a foot-paw swollen the size of a football after treading on sea urchin spines – I wish that Brigit Mulvaney could have seen the rather unnerving photograph, she might have been less ungrateful for my treating the same injury back on our Albanian South Indies trip in August!

     A Native Spontoonie would have known how to treat such things (or have family nearby who would) but away from the bright lights of Spontoon there are a lot of assorted Euros wandering the Nimitz Sea area. This gentleman was a Czech who had been conscripted by Austro-Hungary in 1914, captured by the Tsarist Russians in 1915, released in late 1917 to join a White Russian “Foreign Legion” in Siberia, had a decade serving in Vostok till he argued with the Authorities and after surviving all that almost perished after stepping on a sea urchin while walking along a “paradise island beach” far from the wars. Which just shows, a fur who tries to run away from danger can find it waiting for him anywhere.

    A definitely educational morning. The second-years joined us after lunch for their own classes, and I was able to have a talk with Florence Farmington while we practiced diagnosing unpleasant things from the textbooks on the shelves. I mentioned having last seen her on Casino Island in a rather different fur pattern – and in rather different company. Some folk would say less respectable, except that we know Huntresses are as well respected here as doctors, and far more so than lawyers.

    Florence blushed and admitted she had been spending much time with Gilda in the holidays. Most of it was indeed respectable, with Gilda showing her round odd parts of the Spontoon isles acting as a Guide (which she has indeed trained as).  Florence changed her appearance for public walks as she is more worried about her own reputation, though I think it is rather late for that – besides, I doubt anyone here much cares. Not even Madeleine X would blow the whistle on whatever happens on Spontoon – as Songmark girls stick together, and the prospect of having a vengeful one on one’s tail is something to avoid. “Soppy” Forsythe denouncing me was another matter, in that she was (and presumably still is) a secret agent, and such things are her job. But Prudence and Beryl say that squirrel will be regretting it if she ever meets them back in England.

    Still, it is just as well Molly does not know a lot of the … details. It is rather too much information for me, but serves me right for asking. Florence says that whatever Gilda shows her and … educates her in, there is one thing she keeps thinking about. Gilda understandably has separate rooms for her own bedroom and entertaining her visitors, and Florence keeps wondering what it would be like to simply be invited in, and to wake up in that bed.

    I hate to think Molly might be right about Florence. I pointed out it is standard in any trade to never give absolutely everything (the crooner Mr. Thornton Throbby is quoted as saying “always leave ’em wanting one more song.”) Besides which, Gilda has said she wants to retire from being a Huntress and marry one day and probably will be keeping some things for herself to look forward to. Why Florence does not simply go to the Double Lotus like the rest of her dorm, now she knows what she likes, is a question I hardly liked to ask. According to Molly such tastes are as contagious as leprosy and as incurable – but that is just Molly for you. Molly is also of the opinion that an anti-tank rifle counts as a “self-defence precaution” even though we have seen no armoured vehicles nearer than Vostok.

    A rapid farewell to Florence and the rest as I headed down to Pier Four along with Madeleine X and Sophie D’Artagnan. Our big day is tomorrow, where on Class 1 and 2 sailing boats we are tested for our Master’s Certificate! That certainly counts with our Tutors and indeed they are paying for it unlike my “training” as Kim-Anh on Saturdays. Or indeed Florence’s Saturday “lessons” only a few hundred yards away.

    Out on the wide open waters! Captain Ruzkov is a traditionally stern, taciturn skipper except he is never slow to let a sailor know what they are doing wrong. But he sat back and seemed fairly relaxed as we headed up the central waters, tacked through the passage North of Eastern, came about and then tacked all the way South, keeping a good ten cables’ length from the reefs of Sacred Island. Madeleine turned her nose up at the sight of that island, but she is sensible enough not to try and “disprove the myths” by going there. Over the years I have heard tourists telling each other that the island is “really” off-limits because either (a) it is the island’s treasure-house (b) home of the eager harem of the High Priest (as if Spontoon had one) or (c) under the jungle cover the  Spontoonies are growing huge quantities of opium or other illegal drugs. The Tourist Board neither confirm nor deny anything, on principle. Whatever makes the area sound mysterious is good for business, and the locals manage to discourage anyone going to investigate.

    Our trip completed as we rounded the tip of South Fluke of South Island, then back up into the central waters in fine style, the sail as taut and crease-free as any of the hospital sheets we had seen earlier! With all sail set and the centreboard pulled up we must have been making fifteen knots running straight down the wind, a most respectable speed for a sailing vessel. I must have a word with that pair of English sisters who are working as pilots for the local hospital having arrived “on spec” to apply to Songmark having sailed their own ship all the way from home! From the Lake District and quite near Barrow-in-Furriness, as it happens.

    Although it is nothing like as strenuous as running round the sand dunes with a pack full of bricks, an afternoon hauling the ropes and straining at the helm in a lively breeze definitely boosts the appetite - as opposed to looking over grisly medical books all morning, which cut most of our appetites for lunch. Back to Songmark for a jolly fine vegetable curry with sliced hard-boiled eggs for those who wanted it – a “Jalfrezi” as I recall its name from our Goanese cook Mrs. Chaundrapal back at Saint Winifred’s who served it most Thursday evenings before prep. Definitely something to ginger one up on a chilly day, and unlike most of the food there it was not based on suet.

    Mealtimes are one of the rare occasions we get to flick through the newspapers, though indeed a rapid read is the best we usually manage and only Susan de Ruiz can do the crossword in the time available. There was one picture on the second page of the Spontoon Mirror with a dangerous mobster being led away by the police – being a formidable leonine gentleman he was not only paw-cuffed but sporting a regulation police adjustable multi-species muzzle. It seemed rather familiar.

    I confess my eyes somewhat crossed recalling last year on Krupmark Island – there was what looked like a perfectly sound idea at the time for Judy to suggest one, although I did wonder about such things being available on the shelves. Definitely not the sort of thing I will be mentioning if I get to talk as a Saint Winifred’s “old girl” to the junior classes about how I became Lady Allworthy! I fear a description of all I was wearing on my “engagement” would hardly thought of as an uplifting address to the lower school. Still, I have to admit I came to no lasting harm there unlike many folk who end up on Krupmark, or indeed Molly who would rather have done all I did than encounter Captain Granite as she did. She too escaped with no physical harm once she had rid herself of fleas picked up on the boat, but has never been quite the same again.

    Various folk who have come into contact with Molly over her time here would probably think of any change being an improvement – rather like losing one’s faith in religion is not necessarily a bad thing if one started off as a devout member of the Thuggee cult.


Friday 30th April, 1937

A big day for three of us – our second exam for a commercial license! Whether our Tutors were being ironic or not I hardly know and care less, as along with Madeleine X and Sophie D’Artagnan I was presented with a full “flight breakfast” of ham and eggs. I hardly liked to eat it with the rest of Songmark sniffing the air and trying not to drool at the delicious scent as they dutifully dug through the usual breadfruit mash. Next year there will probably be a lot more applicants for the Sailing Master Certificates, if only for the breakfast.
 
    Still, another thing we are taught is to make the most of all good fortune that comes our way – and indeed the breakfast was delicious and sets one up for the day. We certainly needed it and anyway it would have been less than a bite apiece had we shared it with the rest of our year. By half past eight the three of us were on Casino Island where Captain Ruzkov was awaiting us at the marina, one eye keenly on the ship’s chronometer.
 
              It was a hard, hard day. Six hours each as Captain, then six as helms-fur and six as general deckhand, eighteen hours of hard labour as Captain Ruzkov had us do everything with the ship but take off! It certainly felt like we were “on the step” as we nearly flew down the central waters with a Force Six wind behind us – which was exhilarating, but all too brief. Turning around in the teeth of the wind with barely half a fathom of water between the keel and the shifting sandbanks between Eastern and Main Island was hard, nerve-wracking work that needs a “nose for wind” some furs could try all their lives and not manage to acquire. I was glad of those years sailing in the Norfolk Broads in the school holidays, as Sophie D’Artagnan was of her summers helping on her Uncle’s oyster boats off Arcachon in the Bay of Biscay, and Madeleine of her sailing on the Seine!

               It was just my luck to be the last to be Captain, when the light was going and the tide going out for the second time today. The physical work was nothing we are unused to, and indeed one can haul a rope when bone-weary far easier than laying a precise course calculating tides and winds to get us straight into the channels without having to make any last-minute corrections. Very much as they told us in our first year engineering workshop classes, “measure twice and cut once.”

               At last it was over, and I had the thrill of captaining the forty-footer as it weaved past the stern of the docked cruise ship and came home to its berth in Casino Island’s Marina. Of course today was not the whole exam, Captain Ruzkov has been measuring our skills and “book-learning” for weeks – today was just the final test. And we all passed!

              Dear Diary: if the worst comes to the worst and I cannot afford an aircraft ticket back to England I can work my passage on a ship in a rather better way than Molly did – there are always berths around the world for someone with a Mariner’s Certificate and now I have one! Not stamped in Macao either.
 
    I felt decidedly like celebrating and yet tonight was hardly the time. Our Tutors let us know when we can head down to Mahanish’s or into Casino Island to Bow Thai, and I can scarcely slip off alone while Helen, Molly and Maria are still snout deep in their work. I had to get back and join them, plus if I vanished for an hour Madeleine X would be sure to squeal on me. She is a stickler for rules, and I cannot afford to lose a single point. As she has described the Tour De France cycle race, furs race for days and are sometimes defeated by seconds. It is possible to fail Songmark by one point, and we will never know which one till too late.

    Back to our dorm for congratulations and hot cocoa brewed on Maria’s primus stove – in the circumstances, no champagne ever tasted as good!


next