Spring forward, Fall back

(Being the twenty-second part of the diaries of Amelia Bourne-Phipps, studying in her final year at the Songmark Aeronautical Boarding-School for Young Ladies, on Spontoon’s Eastern Island. She’s just returned from an … Interesting mission to Macao and Tillamook, and now has to tell her Tutors all about it.)

Monday 22nd February, 1937

Dear Diary – it was good that we managed a few nights of relative relaxation on Tillamook with hotel beds or camps in the woods, as there seems no prospect of any more relaxation in the next month and a half. Last night we got in to Songmark, reported in to Miss Cardroy who was staffing the duty bungalow by the gate, and hurried up to our room to wash and put everything away. It would not have surprised us if we had been put on night gate guard right away to make up for lost time – as Madeleine X commented we should be, when we went in past her.
	Happily we got everything stowed away before lights-out and managed a standard night’s sleep. This morning we had a meeting with Miss Devinski where we gave a brief report on how everything had gone. She nodded and said she looked forward to reading our detailed write-ups. A Songmark first-year might have asked her if we would be given time off to work on them, but we are sadly better informed. Quite the contrary; she passed us individual folders with all the work we had to catch up on in addition to the usual timetables. There were five drooping sets of tails in the room; Adele might not be pathologically unlucky any more but that only means she gets it as bad as the rest of us.
	A busy day, starting with an extra course of the usual refresher we get at the start of every term. One might think that Songmark girls spend their holidays drinking extremely bad bootleg liquor and forget everything in a few weeks, to judge by the hoops they make us jump through. Almost literally; we joined the first-years over on Moon Island before luncheon to provide an example of how to get over their obstacle course with speed and style. I am glad I am not a Persian feline with massively fluffy fur; one of the first-years is and she looks rather like a dripping, muddy floor mop after slipping and falling snout-first in the water jump.
	I managed to drop postcards to Mrs. Hoele’toemi and Saimmi as we went past the docks; although we will be swamped with work we should manage to get away for Sunday and there is a lot to tell them. There was 
no need to tell Post Box Nine we were back; I am sure Mr. Sapohatan knows already and he will let us know when he wants to see us.	
	After lunch I had a surprising meeting – Miss Blande showed me what Maria’s telegram had done for the Direwolf, when we asked the first-year Alpha Zarahoff (or Rote as she calls herself) to work on a Torpedo Breaker. I had expected something amazingly complex and the size of a log canoe – but there was a shelf with ten neat, yard-long bright red mini torpedo interceptors that apparently work! It is rather as if I had asked for a better sort of postcard and Alpha had invented the Super-Iconoscope from scratch. Quite what they call a “Embarrassment of riches” as this rather changes naval warfare. Miss Blande told me firmly to keep my snout shut until local interested parties had decided what to make of the invention. Posting the plans off to Barrow-in-Furryness with instructions to set up an assembly line right away, is something that might not happen. Unlike the lash-up systems made with recycled Great War hardware we saw demonstrated in Macao, this is probably too good to share.
	Then – back to work! Songmark beds are notoriously hard (the deep pine needle forest floor of Tillamook forests were much springier and we did not have to do the laundry) but we will be spending all too little time in them for the next few weeks.

Thursday 25th February, 1937

As we expected, we have been run ragged this week – no time to write till today, as we have been working non-stop till lights-out when we are not on gate duty. Gate guard twice in a week! Definitely our Tutors are making us sweat off all the three-star hotel cuisine we enjoyed in Macao. If we did much sweating walking the fence in the rain in February, that is.
	I have heard about the fate of my Torpedo Breaker – the Direwolf is not getting them, and neither is the Allworthy estate. At least, they are not getting the manufacturing contracts but I should be able to pass on the royalties! Of course I have to pay for it first; Alpha did the job with an efficiency that is positively frightening to contemplate. Cranium Islanders may have what she calls “no prejudice towards Sanity” but judged by their achievements one can hardly complain.
	Having talked with her I looked through the folder of the Allworthy estates and their assets; as soon as I have sent enough money back to Barrow-in-Furryness I can keep my end of the bargain and make over to Alpha the deeds of a cottage and old mine workshop sheds up in the woods, which is currently untenanted. Effectively I am buying it from myself, then giving it to Alpha and Nancy Rote. I am doing my best to keep it all above-board, as when I stop being Lady Allworthy the proper claimant to the title deserves a full accounting as to how I have looked after the estate. Beryl says I should sell the whole estates off, and has various plausible-sounding reasons for it. She knows a lot of lawyers and “for a suitable fee” offers to introduce me to them. I think not.
	Having a title, however unwanted, does seem to make furs think I am better than they are. Quite wrong. Florence Farmington came over with a rather odd personal request last night when Molly and I were on gate guard. She is the leader of her dorm, but is rather the odd one out as the others regard the Double Lotus as the centre of island social life, to put it mildly. 
	Florence seemed somewhat down in the dumps, and began by commenting that the rest of her dorm have been enjoying what one could call an extremely busy time since their first term here. In fact, despite all the Precautions Mrs. Oelabe has taught us, nothing is a hundred percent reliable and Florence grumbled that if she had been as popular with canine gentlemen since arriving on Spontoon, she would probably have two pups already and be finding out about the third on the way shortly. And she is just a second-year!
	I saw Molly’s expression of horror and realised what Florence was leading up to – she asked if I thought it was a good idea to try what the rest of her dorm enjoy. I was rather puzzled as why she would ask me, as I am hardly qualified that way; Prudence is surely the one to ask.
	I was rather flabbergasted when she told me I had the reputation of having the most solid common-sense in my year! Given some of my misadventures I would never claim that. Plus, Florence said she was sure Prudence would automatically say yes so there would be little point in asking her opinion.
	It is somewhat common knowledge what happened to Molly with Captain Granite, though nobody talks much about it (Prudence hates that more than anyone; she wanted to be on the mission after New Year that ended up killing her)  so Florence was prepared for Molly’s rather forceful opinion. Molly says she is only lucky not to have picked up such tastes – she says Florence is like someone wanting to catch tuberculosis so they can have a nice stress-free holiday in a sanatorium.
	I shooed Florence off to talk to Prudence and her dorm, who can tell her anything she might want to know. This did not sit at all well with Molly, who was aghast that I did not discourage her strongly.  But Molly has had unfortunate experiences that way, and is hardly unprejudiced. Florence should come to no harm at least, and might get on rather better with the rest of her dorm. Not that she gets on badly as it is; they almost hero-worship her, but she is like a netball star being put as captain of a hockey team.
	It was rather an uncomfortable night shift, Molly walking around glowering with her ears and tail right down. If any intruder had dared come over the fence I doubt they would have got out alive! I suppose it is not amazing that all of us are changing. Helen is losing her fear of being “domesticated”, or rather she is seeing that having Marti, a longhouse and cubs is a distant future she quite likes. Maria is coming into her own at last, after being very quiet about her connections these past three years until her abilities grew to match. I have the uncomfortable job of both being as good a Lady Allworthy as I can, and getting rid of the title as soon as I can – if I can! Just refusing to answer letters and retiring to domestic bliss a longhouse with Jirry, is no sort of answer. I would be no better than the last holder of the title, and they at least had the excuse of being internationally wanted by the law and unable to look after their duties even had they wanted to. I wish I could have stayed a “Lady” as I tried to.
	Despite being on gate guard we were up well before breakfast, the only available time to start writing our reports on the Macao trip. Having a diary to refer to definitely helps; it was a case of fleshing out technical details and working out what embarrassing bits I could manage to leave out without leaving any obvious holes in the story. As Maria has said about journalism, getting a story often starts with finding one small loose thread – and our Tutors are expert at pulling them.
	We had a surprising “guest lecturer” with translator today, having gone over to Moon Island to the Syndic hall. I recall in our first year helping land that giant Soviet Kalinin K7 bomber, the pilot of which vanished (it being his duty to crash in mid-ocean rather than have the secrets of the aircraft revealed) and today we met him! Where he has been and what he has been doing recently was a forbidden subject, but his translator was wearing a Rain Island uniform. Furs escaping to political asylum paid for with state secrets is common enough, and is probably one of the things that gives Ioseph Starling sleepless nights, if anything does.
	Having a resident expert on paw was rather alarming as we were shown a newsreel the Tass news agency had put out of the record-breaking flights in the model. They also have a flying-boat tanker aircraft that works with them; the newsreel showed a non-stop flight from Leningrad to Vladivostok and back again with tankers coming up to meet it from the Caspian Sea, Lake Baikal and a river near Vladivostok respectively. Thirty hours in the air with five in-flight refuelling hook-ups is quite a feat – even considering that the K-7 has space for two shifts of crew onboard and can access all its engines in flight as they are conveniently within the wing. The Soviet Union has been testing the in-flight refuelling technique for ten years and more, and has finally got it working. Look out Vostok – and almost everywhere else!  *
	The pilot, a rather harried looking weasel, said the newsreel was showing it as a “special record-breaking aircraft of scientific interest” but the assembly lines at Voronzeh in the Ukraine were running day and night, turning the model out not quite like Model T Fnords in Detroit, but close enough. He added that they seemed to have deleted the No.7 pusher propeller that used to stand alone on the trailing edge, which had been a cause of much trouble with the buried engine overheating and the airflow causing vibration in the twin tail boom. 
	Quite an impressive, if alarming lecture! Maria was taking copious notes, and if Il Puce does not know already I think he will soon. Italy is a mere hop across the Black Sea from Voronzeh, a skip over the Balkans and a jump across the Adriatic; such a force would hardly even need refuelling on that trip. For that matter, Leningrad to London is about the same distance and especially at night I doubt the Scandinavian countries could even track them going over at eight thousand metres let alone stop them. The pilot added they can get off the ground with a full bomb load only if they fill the fuel tanks a quarter full, but that of course is where the in-flight refuelling comes in.
	Back to write everything up! It is alarming that Ioseph Starling is building up a long-range bomber force this size – but unlike other nations they do not have much of a navy. Last year we saw the French “Surcouf” class submarines, two squadrons of which are only six days on the surface away at their huge base on Clipperton Island off Mixteca. The world balance does keep changing with every new invention, and my Torpedo Breaker is yet another one that looks set to change things. Still, I might be wrong. We have all heard Madeleine X boast about the indestructible Maginot Line as the true future of conflict, and if any future dispute turns out to be like the last one but far more so in terms of giant trenches and dugouts, all bets will be off.

* Editor’s note: Amelia is quite right on most technical matters. The USSR was experimenting from as early as 1927 with in-flight refuelling.
	
Friday 26th February, 1937

Our first week over! We handed in our official reports of the Macao trip, and are rather sweating about how “acceptable” they turned out to be. At least I am; Helen, Molly and Maria did their parts very well. If we were allowed to give marks to each other, I think Molly deserves the highest for managing to stay in character as an efficient maid (and resisting temptation to throw the similarly dressed if more scantily clad hotel “maids” out of the window). She is nearly as disturbed at that as I am about whatever did happen to me – and too many things have happened in the past year and a bit for my comfort. 
	Checking my local bank account against my records and my diary, I found I am richer by one cowry. I almost expected this; it has happened in mysterious circumstances a few times before. Not that the cowry comes as part of any rounding-up by the bank itself, but that someone took the trouble to pay it in as a single anonymous transaction. There must be some significance here.
	I have heard from Saimmi; she made the odd request for me to bring with me everything I took to Macao, when I head over to South Island on Sunday. It is a good thing that Lady Allworthy travels light. I include items I own such as the Webley VI revolver that Helen actually carried, being the one with most pockets. Possibly Saimmi has some spiritual version of flea-hunting to do to try and see what bit me. 
	Thinking of embarrassing situations, Prudence had a few words with me about my sending Florence her direction. She can be very blunt at times (her family being hard-nosed owners of Lancashire cotton spinning and wool twirling mills) and was not entirely happy with Florence thinking of her dorm’s preference as a source of second-rate cheap and safe thrills. She told Florence what to do for that. Although she has relented and invited Florence to the swimming club practice tomorrow, she says if any of the more predacious ladies at the Double Lotus latch onto our second-year, it will serve her right. That dark-furred mare Nikki is not the only one who would jump on her on sight, nor (Prudence says) the worst.  We have heard what happened to Tatiana Bryzov, although that seems to have come out all right in the end.
	We are back on gate guard again tonight. Our Tutors certainly believe in making us pay for our first-class tickets to Macao! Miss Devinski has dropped a few words about silver-service meals and four-star restaurants. She has not mentioned (though she surely knows) that it was not all like that; Helen grumbles that as a reward for spending an evening in the Macao rain watching over me at the reception there, she gets to spend more evenings in the rain back at Songmark with no deep hot hotel bath to look forwards to after. Certainly our water heater is ingenious and the baths are very welcome but they are necessarily rather brief, and the third-paw tub is better sized to Beryl or Li Han than Maria or Missy K. 
	I managed to chat with Jasbir when we were on the way to Main Island to climb a few cliffs today, about the athletics challenge match from our rivals the Ave Argentum. Jasbir was on the team, and says it was quite a weekend. The main events that the Guides chose for us were fairly predictable given we are both establishments for Adventuresses – an open-sea swimming race, the cross-country race carrying a quarter of one’s bodyweight, and other such things. The “Mystery Event” turned out to be something that was probably staged for the cameras, a log-rolling match. That is, a big log was set up on bearings so it spun freely, and Susan de Ruiz was our contestant trying to stay on while spinning her opponent off, an Andalusian mare. Which unfortunately she failed at – the Ave Argentum do have some talent amongst them, and outnumbering us they have a bigger pool to draw on. Her opponent was a quarter again heavier and must have some mountain mustang blood in her to be that sure-hoofed. Seeing what the Ave Argentum are like about pedigrees, I expect she would keep very quiet about that if true.
	Still, Songmark won three contests to two, which is good. Had we chosen our own events based on our strengths it would have been five-nil, and I doubt the Ave Argentum could have done that themselves. The Guide’s School are a fine and neutral body, and nobody complained otherwise. Beryl’s old school chum Masie “Crusher” Thynne proved a radically dangerous opponent, but anyone who graduates from Saint T’s is expected to.
	The world really does move on. Jasbir and her sister Meera are excited about plans from London that will quite change how some of the Empire is run. There have been rumbles of discontent for years about India wanting to be a Dominion like Australia or Canada, and their National Congress want it to quit the Empire altogether! The new plans get around the problem that large parts of India are ruled by their traditional aristocracy who hardly fit with an otherwise elected Government. The solution is radical yet simple – the parts not currently ruled by Native princes and Maharajahs will get their own, with ranks such as the Duke of Delhi being created and local loyalists of good family elevated to the positions. 
	Jasbir says it is a master stroke; India will be ruled day-to-day by her own people and yet nothing significant will change. I doubt their Mr. Ghandi will like this idea much, but at a stroke it cuts a lot of his main support from under him. Just like the House of Lords at home there will be Life Peers as well as Hereditary Peers  so folk not born to the rank can aspire to be a Duke (a rank not previously used over there) if they work hard and loyally enough for the Empire. London will, naturally, be in charge of appointments.
	
Saturday 27th February, 1937

It is definitely getting lighter. Helen and I were in a position to notice, being roused by Molly and Maria at three and standing watch till seven. Spontoon is heading towards Spring, the second-years having already tackled the year’s land crab migrations last full moon on Main Island, and had their fun with the “invaders” in the Spontoon annual military exercises. By all accounts they made the invaders’ lives rather unhappy, despite exceeding orders. I doubt they lost any points for it, though.
	Dawn on the gates is better than the early shift on a good day; we see the first sunlight hitting the top of Mount Kiribatori away to the West, and creeping down its great cliffs. It is as good as a sundial, albeit one that “gains” about two minutes a day; this time of year by the time the light reaches the bottom of the cliff we know our gate guard is over.  Friday and Saturday dawn shifts are obviously the least popular evenings for this duty, as while everyone else gets extra sleep on Saturday and Sunday mornings we have to go without.
	The guard dogs are up and active all night, as they are only fed at breakfast time and are hungriest just when we are starting to droop. The female one is very strange; I recall her looking wistfully at one Sophie D’Artagnan and her latest date kissing goodbye outside the fence. One would not have thought a four-legger would have a romantic streak. Adele says she knows a similar one somewhere else, to whom she has read romantic fiction; anything by that rather slushy but enormously successful writer Bill Sandmoon goes down very well by her account.
	Just when we feel at our lowest ebb, there is none of our usual energetic but fun dance class on Casino Island, but a huge pile of work to catch up on! Off to the empty classrooms with many a book and our tails drooping. Jasbir and co are very happily heading out to dance classes just as we start to open our books and see the exercises in them make grim reading.
	(Later) With piles of completed exercises on the desks and our eyes threatening to close on their own, we “downed tools” for the day. There was the prospect of Poi for teatime, and indeed we could scent it being prepared to serve in an hour for students without passes.  Definitely time to be elsewhere. I called for a vote that we head out to Mahanish’s, which was carried unanimously – so ten minutes later we were out of our Songmark uniforms and out of the main gates, dressed in our comfortable clothes. There is little point in third-years having weekend passes and never using them – as Helen pointed out, they will be no use to us in six months time. 
	Mahanish’s is always a lively place, what with pilots and air crews of all types dropping in at any time as well as the airport staff coming off shift. It is very well equipped, having a bar and restaurant but also a lot of sleeping accommodation, all staffed round the clock. There most be two dozen or so rooms, very basic but containing a large and comfortable bed apiece – and they have showers, real baths and a big fur-drier. Exactly what a pilot coming in after ten hours over the Pacific wants, before having to get back again in the cockpit. This year they have even expanded, having extended their “tornado cellar” (All new Spontoonie buildings have a reinforced concrete Tornado Cellar by Althing decree) to put some rooms down there, which are cool and very quiet. I can imagine them going at a premium in the middle of summer, where an exhausted pilot arrives at dawn and wants somewhere with a cool bed far from the glare of the tropical sun.
	Our own needs were simpler; a fine meal of roasted meats (Mahanish’s is famous for accepting fresh imported foods from aircrew in lieu of money) and a Nootnops Blue apiece, then a real bath! Admittedly it is only a week since the hot springs of Tillamook, but after being awake and working hard since three in the morning it was most welcome. Molly says she is very glad to be out of that maid’s costume, which was jolly uncomfortable, and she is much happier crawling over the Moon Island obstacle course with a Fedorov Avtomat rifle.
	I made the mistake of pointing out she fulfilled her duties extremely well, and that I doubt anyone who met her on Macao thought she was anything but a genuine modest, hard-working maid. Her ears and tail went right down at that, and she swore she would never put that costume on again. It was rather disturbing to see her transformed, if one knew Molly in other circumstances. She tends to mutter and sharpen her latest bayonet, a 19th Century “Trowel” pattern one that looks indeed like a cross between a Zulu assegai and a builder’s trowel.
	Maria had whispered to me at the time that it was a radical experience for Molly, being a helpful, selfless servant. Then, Molly has always been fanatically “herself” and scorned any other way of living since the first day she got here, a few grass-skirted deceptions aside. If there is something deeper involved I hardly know. Beryl is the only one of us who has considered becoming an Alienist, because of the lucrative wages promised at the top of the profession as well as the power they can wield. As Beryl says, once qualified she could give wealthy patients the choice of continuing with her own expensively patented treatment or have them committed to some secure institution where they will doubtless discover the burly wardress has her own very special ideas on what constitutes “therapy”. Though I definitely did not mention this to Molly.
	It was a real treat to take turns in the full-body fur dryer, with a second glass of Nootnops Blue waiting outside. Compared with poi and the third-year showers we would otherwise have had, a wonderful treat! Although we all know that there are only so many weeks’ worth of (mostly uneaten) paid for Songmark poi dinners remaining for us, and Mahanish’s prices reflect the fact that pilots tend to be quite well paid. Fortunately none of us are short on money right now, with Molly receiving a rental fee from the Althing for the ship Captain Granite used to own, as well as her income from the “fish log.” There were a lot more land crabs caught and canned this year, though indeed the Spontoonies set aside more food for the rest of them. So this coming tourist season there is going to be quite a production run of Molly’s invention, and she has more ideas where that came from.
	Actually, Helen is now the poorest of us. Her late father’s fortune has mostly gone on the Songmark fees, and in fact if it had been one term longer she could not have afforded it. Still, it is an investment rather than a pure expense; if a Songmark graduate cannot make money nobody can! And not as Beryl keeps musing, with the right paper and a really good mimeograph machine. Still, Helen is the only one with a clear future as she will probably beat me to becoming a Mrs. Hoele’toemi. By tradition a Spontoonie girl is Tailfast twice in succession before she marries, and she qualified last year.
	Back to Songmark, so tired we could hardly think straight. The Nootnops Blue is hardly a factor; unlike wine it tends to make one lively rather than sleepy. I must say, although Napoleon famously managed on four hours sleep a night, I definitely need more. And as Molly pointed out, Napoleon lost at Waterloo and is dead now. Having six hours sleep would not have helped some of that (he would be about a hundred and eighty by now) but it would be worth a try.
	
Sunday 28th February, 1937

A rare thing last night – our dorm were all fast asleep an hour before lights out, and Maria could have snored like an engine testing range without waking us this morning before the alarm. The extra hour abed on Sunday morning felt very sweet after yesterday. 	
	A rapid check around the room and a packing of knapsacks secured everything I took with me to Macao, for Saimmi to look over. After some arguing I even took the case itself, as Saimmi wanted to be thorough. Just as aniseed oil can scent-mark items for weeks afterwards, if there is any sort of tainted item she should be able to spot it.
	Breakfast was a lively affair, with the first-year Crusader Dorm celebrating a “catch” as they solved one of their cases. It is a lot harder for them now they have lost their official protection after that scandal with Police Chief Pickering being sacked and imprisoned – but having proved successful the regular Police seem to be rather more tolerant to them than before. 
	Thinking of first-year sleuths, it was rather strange yesterday with Alpha Rote approaching Molly and wanting to subscribe to Criminal World! I had not realised how difficult that was; in an effort to keep it out of the paws of Detectives, every new subscriber must have the recommendation of an existing subscriber. Molly agreed, and is thinking of asking payment by having Alpha act as her own maid for a week – including having Madame Maxine train her first at Alpha’s own expense. The rest of us just smiled and shook our heads; perhaps this will help Molly get around her traumatic experiences in Macao.
	The trip to South Island laden with suitcases and such was harder than usual, and we were very glad to see the Hoele’toemi compound again. Unfortunately Jirry is away still, as is Marti! The oldest brother, Joni Hoele’toemi, was there with his fiancée. We have not seen him much this past year. His fiancée is a Euro by ancestry, a poodle beauty who was adopted by a Main Island family. She takes after her birth mother, a silent movie starlet who like several others returned to Hollywood after a winter “resting between films” here with Film Frolics and the other scandal sheets none the wiser.
	Saimmi was there, and was very interested to hear what Helen and I had to tell her about Macao and our trip in general. She went through our items like a Customs inspector sniffing for opium, and showed us the ritual she was using. Her ears went down as item after item failed to show anything. 
	Helen did ask what sort of influence would work on me, as I am hypnosis proofed and as even a trainee Priestess I should be able to detect something myself even if I could not throw it off. Saimmi has been thinking quite a lot about that and says it would have to be a development of something I had agreed to myself. The gold ring in my tail-fur is decidedly not it; she looked hard at that. Hopefully that really is what it claimed to be, an “insurance policy” against various predators. As for a Tailfast ring, Saimmi says that would definitely do it – but I only ever had one of those, and it “expired” a year and more ago when we were on Vostok. Actually I lost it, but it would have expired very soon after anyway.
	Saimmi cleared everything I carried, then went on with our training. Gha’ta has gone now; she is probably still swimming back to her home near Ponape. As Warrior Priestesses we are progressing well, she said, though we need to take a lot of care with our rituals. It is like that phrase Helen’s father brought back from the Great War; “there is nothing so dangerous as a determined second lieutenant with a map and compass.” Of course, he had never contemplated the idea of Molly as commandant of an arsenal. It is not unprecedented; by all accounts the Czech leader Field-Marshal Schweik was once sent to work in an ammunition dump, where his careless pipe-smoking had somewhat foreseeable results.
	While we were away, Eva Schiller has been politely asking to look around some of the Spontoon ritual sites. She always has a local Guide where required, and always asks the local Priestess first. Saimmi has a lot of questions for us to ask her – and she is not the only one. I know Irma Bundt drops her ears whenever we see Eva, who is a competent and rather fanatical representative of her nation. But Irma tells us strange things about her true beliefs that are not shown on the newsreels, and calls her “darkly illuminated” whatever that may mean. Eva is a strange one; I recall once she stated that she was not a member of some Tooler Society at all, because it never existed, and in any case did not admit girls. 
	Saimmi mentioned rather wryly that it makes a change – a lot of Euros look around local sacred sites only to scorn them as “primitive superstition” and “heathen nonsense”. But Eva is sure that it works, though her own system is rather different. It is like a hydraulics expert suddenly being confronted with their first electrical motor – the two are not plug-compatible at all. But she can tell engineers sat down and built it, so with enough reverse engineering it is always possible to discover what makes it run.
	By lunchtime we were all exhausted, and it was a great relief to sit down to one of Mrs. Hoele’toemi’s excellent meals. Songmark serves generous if plain ones, which are best enlivened by chilli sauce, anchovy essence and similar – but at the Hoele’toemi table nobody would need anything of the kind. Molly used to pour salt and pepper over everything before even tasting it, but that was only in the first-year and may say something about the usual cooking in Chicago.
	Saffina was here last week on her own, but her dorm is off in the Kanim islands all this week. Saimmi says she is a mine of information, having contributed various rituals from her home in Africa that work over here.  Possibly they had local equivalents five hundred years ago that were lost when the great experiment went so hideously wrong – certainly there are gaps in the knowledge that Saimmi is trying to patch from wherever she can. The idea of Eva and her uncle Professor Schiller discovering how such things work and trotting back to Germany is a disquieting thought. Helen says she once had a flash of nightmare involving seven suicidally dedicated secret agents in exactly spaced rooms surrounding a foreign city starting a chant that would rewrite the maps as well as the pages of history. 
	Still, there seems no immediate prospect of that happening, and we had a leisurely afternoon working on the longhouse and in the gardens. Moeli is getting definitely round now; she sees her husband most weeks and her first daughter is growing fast as well.  The Natives of No Island are folk we will definitely not be introducing Eva to! 
	Back in brilliant sunshine, our tails and ears picking up despite having a few more hours of catch-up work to do. Spring is almost here; the weeds are growing in the Hoele’toemi garden patch already and we have another three weeks of term to catch up with everything. 
	On the way back, Molly whispered an awful idea. We have always thought our missions were dangerous enough, but now Jirry is out at sea in the “import-export trade” he has rather more dangers than the usual island ones of falling off a surf plank. Apart from the regular hazards of the seas there is the matter of what he is (presumably) carrying, rather like our Parsifal trip with Lars where there is lethal rivalry in the trade. She asked what I would do if it is him, not us, who “fails to return” as they used to describe missing aviators in the Great War. 
	That is definitely not a prospect I like to think about. And yet it could happen; at Songmark the first-years are always expected to come up with a credible Plan A, B and C, which would mean we are somewhere half way into Japanese kanji symbols having worked through all the European alphabets. And we are taught to look hard at all our fears and face them down.
	One thing I am definitely not putting down as Plan Z (or some tricky Polish letter, even) is her idea of joining Lars in a “herd”. Definitely not my style - Lions may have extended families that way, but anyone who ever tried to herd cats soon gave up on the idea. Lars is a very good match for Molly, and as far as being handsome and healthy he would win any prizes going, as he does in Native dancing. But I turned down a “respectable” shared marriage as one of the Mrs. Johnson tribe in the alternative New South Zion last September (respectable according to local laws, anyway) and am no keener on Molly’s suggestion! 
	
Monday March 1st, 1937

A new month already, and the brilliant weather continues. Which was just as well, as this morning we were all out to Main Island to get our paws dirty on some “urban climbing”. That is, we were back to the old railway bridge just North of Mount Kiribatori, which according to the old iron plaque Mr. Hornby Doublo built for the British plantations some forty years ago. It seems rather a waste, building a whole railway that only ran for less than a decade. Still, the track exists in stockpile, the Althing have never allowed anyone to build on the old rail beds and if needed it could all be up and running in a year or so with little expense but off-season local labour.
	Thinking of labour, it was a decidedly hard slog up the ravine to get there carrying our equipment. One-inch Manila rope is the minimum that anyone really trusts, and a coil of a hundred feet is quite a burden. That, plus our usual packs with slater’s hammers and metal pegs to assist us up the sheer faces added up to about sixty pounds apiece. Though I noticed in Jasbir’s dorm Irma Bundt helping out with Li Han’s load, in Missy K’s bunch Beryl was almost driven into the ground by her pack. It is hard work having furs of all size and species working together; no wonder the Army divides into Light, Medium and Heavy infantry and cavalry. It makes tacticians’ jobs much simpler, and quartermasters at least know what uniforms to lay in stock.
	Adele seems to be far more cheerful, and small wonder. She was usually in need of first-aid by the end of the day, though mostly for painful rather than life-threatening mishaps. That is, she will be the one to put her paw into a climbing hold tenanted by angry white ants, though not deadly scorpions. Today she did rather well, swarming up the ropes with confidence they are not going to unexpectedly break, and that her new dorm-leader Madeleine has not tied the wrong knot in the rope. Madeleine is technically very qualified both in modern radios and electrics and on sailing boats.  Anyone who is sure-pawed enough to work out in the swaying rigging has little to fear from today’s scrambles up the old bridge pillars.
	The part of the trail crossed by the bridge is very little used, as the coast road handles the traffic and avoids climbing the hillside. The railway had to link to a plantation that is pretty much abandoned now, half way up Mount Kiribatori where furs were trying to take advantage of the cooler climate. It is the only place around here I have found where they are growing potatoes, and indeed some of these Spontoonies are of Irish descent (as much as Jirry is from Barsetshire that is; not for three generations.)
	A hard morning’s work climbing left us all with our paws feeling like they had been sanded down; definitely a Songmark girl would waste her money getting an expensive manicure. Then it was the turn of the rest of our systems to get worn out, as we were told to get to Main Village inside an hour! Straight along the old railway was the best route, past the sugar plantations and eventually we “steamed” into Main Village panting in the heat and being very thankful this is not July.  Running with sixty pounds of equipment is a strain, even on the steady gradients of a railway line. It is just as well we are not film stars or swimsuit models, as our backs are masses of bruises from the knapsacks bouncing around in a full speed run.  They were pulled tight as we could stand them but still the hard climbing gear inside bounced around. Jasbir’s dorm came off best; they had the idea of grabbing handfuls of big leaves from the trees as we passed and stuffing them into each others’ packs on the run, to pack them tight. Nobody else dared take the time, but we will be regretting it when we lie down tonight, tired or no.
	Thinking of swimming, I made sure Molly was out of earshot and asked Prudence how Florence got on at the weekend. The swimming club is full of hardy furs undeterred by the cool seas this time of year – and indeed if one can keep in formation in the open waters of a bay, doing so for film cameras indoors is almost easy. Prudence says she having an interesting time with that big mare Nikki and her friends, but that should be an education in its own right. And at least she will get plenty of exercise at the swimming club.
	On the way back we stopped in Casino Island where we were treated to a newsreel. Songmark do like to keep us up-to-date on how the world is faring beyond these small islands. There was a five minute reel about the upcoming American elections, where the “caretaker” president Mr. Huey Long goes to the polls to get the mandate to put his schemes into action. As they involve bleeding the extremely rich to help the poor, it is no surprise he has had three assassination attempts this year already! Considering if he gets elected anyone who owns more than a million dollars will effectively lose it as huge taxes, professional freelance assassins are probably sending magnates their price lists right now. As a populist he looks rather interesting – “The Kingfish” they call him which sounds more like a pulp magazine villain than a politician. Molly says she ought to dislike his policies on principle, but realises any fortune based on crime does not pay tax anyway.
	I would have voted for one of the other populist candidates for president, a pretty dark-headed East-coast poodle called Betty somebody (she has huge eyes almost like a tarsier, but is what Ada calls a “New York Jewish Princess” and Ada should know.) Being an actress is possibly a point against her though; a sensible population should be able to tell the difference between someone they want to see on screen and in power. I remember newsreels of her campaign about five years ago against a Mr. Nemo or suchlike where as an actress she promised free movies, cabarets and shows and sang a catchy jingle with bits something like – “What this country is in need of, is a lot of Hi-de-ho!  /  Boop-a--doop, and chocolate ice-cream!”  *  Certainly a vote-winner for all the furs standing in line for potato soup in the old “Hooverville” shanty towns, one would think. For some reason Maria says she is not recommending that economic policy to her Uncle, even though ice-cream would surely be welcome in an Italian summer. Gelato, I believe she calls it.
	Back to Songmark, though I managed to divert past the post office to pick up a “post restante” parcel I sent myself from Macao. I would hate to think of this as falling into the wrong paws, especially if they knew whose it was. Seeing what sort of “traditions” are practiced on Krupmark Island, not all furs are materialist and enemies could perform various effective rituals with Lars’ shed antler. I must return it to him sometime. Meanwhile it has its uses, which I have rather missed. I hate to keep anything from Helen, but she strongly dislikes anything to do with Lars, but as Helen is usually on gate guard with Maria, occasions may arise.
		
* Editor’s note: there is an amazing similarity with this and “Betty Boop for President”, the 1932 film by the Fleischer Brothers, currently out of copyright and highly recommended. Just one of those coincidences.	
	
Tuesday March 2nd, 1937

A fascinating idea landed on our tables today – we knew Molly and her financiers at the Temple of Continual Reward had been working on a follow-up to the “Fish Log”, but she has been keeping very close-mouthed about it. After a long day out on the waters in my small-boat handling class, I returned to find Molly pleading with Miss Devinski to let us have one of the new, bare metal unlabelled tins with our dessert. Evidently she put forward a good enough case, as after our regular meal (rice for a change, with fish and taro leaf) she pulled out the shiny tin with a can-opener and a flourish. She also had a large napkin handy; we found out why when she opened the somewhat pressurised tin.
	I had told her last year of the alcoholic “fizzy mango” the folk had invented on the (officially) teetotal Gilbert and Sullivan Islands, made by injecting a ripe mango with yeast and leaving it in the sun. Spontoon does not grow many mangoes but it does have a lot of pineapples to experiment with. The idea of fermenting pineapple slices, canning them un-sterilised, waiting a few days then heat-treating them, is certainly a new one on me. The results are tangy, fizzy, quite sparkling on the tongue and about eight percent alcohol! We were allowed the one tin between four of us, the first and probably the last time we have sat down with any “booze” at a Songmark table. Sparkling fruit is a rather novel idea. Having the cans ferment before bottling means none of the alcohol is lost in the canning, though they do need to put warning labels on the pressurised cans.
	It is nice to know Molly has interests beyond working out how to convert a battleship gun to illegal full-automatic fire. As with the crab flavoured fish log last year, the cannery is starting with a trial batch of a few hundred tins to be tried out on tourists. It is only two months till the official start of the tourist season, after all.
	Molly’s first customers will be a lot nearer to paw and more immediate; as we left I spotted half a dozen Songmark girls waiting to talk to her. No doubt it will join the list of proscribed items to be confiscated at the gate (and drunk later by the Tutors, as first-year gossip has it. Actually we get everything returned at the end of the year in July.) 	
	We were only happy that our Tutors did not make us demonstrate tightrope-walking just after, just for the fun of it. Their fun, not ours. Everyone keeps a grab bag of food, useful items and such handy in case we get grabbed ourselves at zero notice and sent on an exercise. Maria has written a few parodies where Miss Devinski plays “spin the bottle” to decide which dorm will get picked, then another round selects which of the various tricky and exhausting (but always educational) exercises we get put through. Our pockets are usually full, just in case we are not allowed to carry any sort of pack. We have seen dorms roused at three in the morning and having to make do in their sleeping slips! 
	As Helen has quoted one of her presidents, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Molly disagreed, saying if it was the Liberty in Red Dorm, her price for the night on Krupmark would hardly buy a round of drinks. True, she has a rather sour demeanour and unlike many mixed species girls manages to be non pedigree without looking at all exotic. (Mixed species folk can turn out either way – Miss Wildford and Nuala Rachorska are very pretty, but Kansas Smith is decidedly not. It is something I have thought a lot about; if my “encounter” in Macao had been right now rather than 2 weeks ago I would be left wondering what equine ears and tail would look like on a kitten expected for Christmas.)
	Red Dorm, like everyone else, seems to be going from strength to strength. We are always amazed that they have not been kicked out, but then again other folk have said the same about us. Despite everything one hears, the dropout rate including expulsions here is rather low. So far only “Soppy” Forsythe has left our year and that was her idea – though we do get reminded how close to the line we keep going. That line is rather well surveyed by now, and we have charted it as if with micrometers.
	From what we hear of the Ave Argentum, they really do kick out a couple a term – more for “moral failures” than for flunking exams. They have had no fatal accidents yet, but while we were in Macao they did crash one of their Potez fighters on the runway so badly it had to be scrapped. A good thing we can boast about our safety record! Even though it is surely a matter of time before a first-year like Maria was tries something silly. Maria says a favourite stunt was to “spin the wheels”, that is to fly so low over a building the undercarriage just brushes it lightly. Now, that is something that Songmark really might throw a girl out for. 
	After supper Helen and I had our homework to do from Saimmi, with our warrior priestess exercises. It is quite difficult, the “seeing through fire”, but I do get glimpses of what Saimmi has described. It is almost as if people were giving off plumes of heat, some more conspicuous than others. Our Tutors can be spotted all the way across the compound. So can Eva Schiller, Irma Bundt and quite a few of the junior years including Alpha Zarahoff. Definitely not the sort of “divinities” homework they set us at Saint Winifred’s, or my pre prep school of All Saints Except Saint Jerome! 
	Beryl has, of course, some interesting tales of her Religious Education at Saint T’s. For a change I almost believe her being taught in class “Jesus loves you – but Lucifer pays cash.”
	
Wednesday March 3rd, 1937

An interesting day for Maria; in the post she received her usual bundle of airmailed newspapers, mostly in Italian. They had some surprising pictures in there – Italy’s mostly Tankette armoured force on its first ever serious manoeuvres out in the Libyan Desert. Il Puce has now sent about a quarter of his army home to work the fields, build dams, roads and steel mills – and the cash saved is going into training and upgrading the best of those remaining, giving them all radios and a rather more reliable engine. Maria has complained that her Uncle spent all the money too soon – he would have beaten anyone in 1934 but is stuck with fleets of light L3/35 tankettes that are being rather left behind by events. Things have improved though; by giving enterprising young Captains engineering teams and a free licence to use anything in the armoury, there are now a dozen specialist vehicles or “funnies” as the Press call them. A tankette with a three-inch recoilless Davis Gun is not exactly funny! There were failures of course, such as the 47 mm anti-tank gun on the light tankette that smashed the suspension with the recoil of its first shot.
	Apparently tactics are going through rather a dramatic shift as well; the plain versions are giving up pretending to be tanks and behaving more like traditional cavalry. Great sweeping pincer movements across the empty desert are being practiced – not that anyone expects to fight out there, but it is a good place to manoeuvre without damaging any crops. Maria says her Uncle is finally taking advice and having all his colonies carefully surveyed for minerals. Ethiopia could be full of Radium, for all they know. He is trying to persuade restless furs to head out to their own colonies rather than across the Atlantic to Gnu York – for generations the chief export of Italy has been Italians, and the country has been bleeding talent.
	The news around the rest of the world continues to look gloomy. Europe looks as if it is heading out of the Depression, though. Maria has invited us all back after we graduate (or fail to, whichever) and we have pencilled it in our diaries. She can easily afford to pay our return fares, much to Helen’s relief. I will be trying my best to pass on the Allworthy title, if any decent claimants show up.
	I have written again to Judge Poynter, asking if there is any news. He is a dear old gentleman, and does like my company. Not for the first time I found myself wondering how it might have been if it had been him rather than Lord Leon. Not that I am marrying anyone except Jirry (I hope). In fact, that might have made things harder – when I did find out what Lord Leon was like I had no qualms about trying to forget him.
	(Later) We were just coming in for lunch when Miss Devinski handed us Afternoon passes to go straight out again, with a growl that we would certainly be making up the lost work in our free time. There was only a time and a place specified – and all thoughts of grabbing lunch vanished as we realised we had to be at the Northernmost tip of the island in ten minutes!
	A rapid jog brought us past Superior Engineering, past the bicycle factory and the sawmill, past the low cliffs currently empty of junior years struggling up and plummeting down,  and bang on time we reached the empty beach looking across to Vikingstown on Main Island. Molly first spotted the water-taxi heading towards us; there were several water taxis in sight but only one was heading to a spot without docks and jetties.
	We were not amazed to see Mr. Sapohatan step out onto the beach two minutes later, apologising for being late. He started by congratulating us on our reports, and mentioned dryly that Lady Allworthy had a successful trip to judge from the share prices of the Barrow-in-Furryness shipyards, who are investing in equipment. He was keen to quiz us on the Direwolf, its crew, its attitudes and what ideas we had about its plans. 
	Maria did a good deal of the talking; she is the best informed of us on Naval matters and is the only one who commonly uses the big illustrated “Jane’s Naval Review” books as anything but a heavy weight for pressing things with -much as she says that in Germany their chancellor’s dull political tract has replaced the Bible, as a big heavy thing that is handy to have around to impress visitors and press flowers with otherwise.
	Mr. Sapohatan was very keen to check that we had spoken to nobody about the “Torpedo Breaker”, which is being put into production somewhere in the Rain Island archipelago. Just because a prototype works perfectly, does not mean the design is perfect for mass production (see Italian aircraft for details; Maria has often fumed that the gap between their hand-built Schneider Trophy aircraft and their line fighters is three times that of other nations.) When we satisfied him on that account, he nodded and said in compensation for their losing the Torpedo Breaker deal he could offer some more contracts to the Allworthy yard, in terms of special components. Of course I jumped at the idea, being all too aware the Direwolf’s order will not keep the yard busy for long, and not having the time to look for customers on my own.
	It says something for how well-prepared a certain ferret is, that he had a roll of engineering blueprints with him. Actually it was only one component he wanted, and a strange one at that. The drawing reminded me at first of a chicken leg bone, a tubular shaft with bulges at both ends, though one end is a very heavy-duty pivot and the other end has a plate evidently designed to be bolted firmly to a main structure. The whole unit is just over six feet long, and specified as precision forged in one piece from extremely special high-tensile steel. None of us could guess just what it does, but three hundred of them are needed, with an option of more later.
	Well, a cheerful piece of news for Barrow-in-Furryness! I gratefully accepted the blueprints, and his assurance that payment will be made and collection arranged. I rather doubt the cheque will appear to come from this part of the world – and probably the finished parts will fly to Iceland to be picked up by a party of Swedes going to Jugoslavia, before it ever heads towards the Nimitz Sea. Of course, anything the Allworthy yards cannot make they can sub-contract out – there are a few very specialist mills, mostly in Sheffield that make things like gun barrels and armour plate that shipyards buy in as needed.
	Back via the Eastern Island post office, where a certain blueprint and covering letter was sent express Registered Airmail towards England. The mail sack was whisked away and hauled out a minute later, where by sheer good luck an aircraft was ready to take off. By the time we were back in Songmark it was already starting its four day trip.
	Thinking of trips, Eva Schiller was waiting for us with details of another mission Mr. Sapohatan wants us to accept, the Easter Holiday in New South Thule. It will be Autumn there, so we had better wrap up warmly, she reminded us. As if we needed it. Apparently all our travel visas have come through, very necessary as away from the tourist resorts the German colonists are rather cagy about letting travellers in. Maria’s name is a key that unlocks many doors, though.
	Helen was grumbling that we hardly have time to do our coursework at this rate; we are so busy being genuine Adventuresses that we are missing out on the training. And yet she had to agree that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of instruction – we were marked on our Macao trip as if it had been any other Songmark exercise. The first and second years need the classroom training, but we are getting ours rather in the “school of hard knocks.” Our self-defence classes taught us how to dodge and roll away from most hard knocks, years ago.
	Still, my tail and ears drooped at the prospect of another working “holiday”, our last ever holiday at Songmark! Last Easter we were busy enough on the Albert Island trip, and last Christmas was retrieving the Krupmark fragment – holidays are meant to be relaxing, and there is little chance of that. Though as our Tutors say, they never deduct points for grumbling, as long as we go ahead and do whatever it is.
	Just to cap it all, we are on Gate Guard again tonight. I will not be seeing the bed till three in the morning, when Molly and I swap over with Helen and Maria. We have our vacuum flasks of hot soup to fill (nothing wakes one like Vindaloo strength curry for breakfast!) and other preparations to make. This is one thing we all agree on – we will not miss this chore after we graduate. I know millions of troops have just the same dull and risky job in the cold and rain all around the world – but they get paid and we are paying to do this! If that is not adding insult to injury I’m sure I don’t know what is.

Thursday March 4th, 1937

Quite a day for Spontoon today, with Radio LONO reporting two film companies arriving on the same boat. One is a travel and Nature documentary team, and the other is someone we have heard quite a bit about – Miss Margot Melson, who makes various radical films that Prudence and her friends both watch and star in (well, as bit-part players, and whenever the plot needs any precision swimming or Native dancing.) 
	I have seen the lady in question, who I had expected to be some huge strappingly hearty bear or rhino but is a fairly conventional-looking rabbit. I have not actually seen any of the films but have heard Belle and Carmen enthuse wildly about them; “Jungle Queen’s White Bride” seems to be their favourite. One gets the impression they are not trying to compete with Walt Ditzy. No doubt we will hear all about the latest project, as all Prudence’s dorm and probably Florence’s now are very keen to get into the act. 
	One can see why the film companies like this time of year; apart from the lack of tourists to wander blithely into shot, the weather has some very fine spells between the showers. Even when the weather shuts down filming there is much to do, film editing and the like in preparation for the next “shoot.” The supporting facilities on Casino Island are getting better year by year, with Spontoonies coming back from Hollywood and Ealing with professional certificates in their luggage proclaiming them as qualified camera-furs, sound engineers and the like. All the companies have to do is send the stars and a nucleus of the production team over and they can rely on finding Spontoonies to do the rest – keeping the wages spent on the island rather than lighting up Sunset Boulevard.
	Alas, we got to see very little of the bright lights, cameras and action. A morning spent at Superior Engineering working on marine diesels was certainly instructive but extremely messy. Though we wear cotton overalls, when an oil pipe breaks and pours down one’s neck they are very little protection. Adele was astounded that she was not the one it happened to – and then went and barked her knuckles when her wrench slipped. She now knows that eternal vigilance is the price of a whole hide.
	Superior Engineering have a lot of different customers – everything from the big liners to tramp steamers and fishing boats. As with aircraft, the price a customer pays depends on its priority. That is, a tramp steamer that wants “just enough fixing to get to the next port” had best look elsewhere. All the work is complete, comprehensive and produced to the best possible standard. This time of year a lot of the poorer skippers put in for maintenance, as they can get in without much delay. So one sees the greasy engine-rooms with mostly worn-out machinery installed with brand new, certified components for whatever part needed fixing – not patched up with pieces salvaged from the scrapyard as the owner probably would have been happy with.
	As unpaid labour we do get plenty of practice, and naturally the engineers supervising us are watching like hawks (which one of them actually is.) Molly is very good with a welding torch or cutting torch, hardly surprising with her love of fires. It takes a lot for Superior Engineering to actually praise someone’s work, but she seam-welds and spot-welds spotlessly!
	After getting through a double ration of mechanic’s soap in the showers, we had an afternoon of swimming off the Eastern coast of Eastern Island. It is usually calm, sheltered from the prevailing winds, and even in Tourist season few furs seem to bathe here. Perhaps ordinary tourists dislike being flown over by the main approach path (from the East, in most wind conditions) but we avidly “Plane-spot” everything coming over on final approach.
	Amazingly enough, some preparations are already being made for this year’s Schneider Trophy. That is, we spotted a class of the S.I.T.H.S.  senior year of students practicing with brand new Askania kine-theodolites as they measured the speed of the airliners coming in. The class are our rivals at the Dance Classes, and are evidently practicing for what they will be doing just after graduation.
	It is rather galling that although most furs around the world have heard about Spontoon mostly through the Schneider Trophy, I have never seen the main races! And if I follow Maria back to Europe this year I may miss them again! I had a vision of me and Helen on South Island in a few years time, knee-deep in kittens and still never having seen the Speed Week. And there is such a lot to see; the first Schneider Trophy was awarded in 1913 for an aircraft that won averaging 45.75 miles an hour, but now the Italians hold the record at over 450. On scale, by the time we are Mrs. Hoele’toemi’s current age the aircraft will be cruising at 4500 mph probably using a Leduck “Tuyere thermodynamique” engine and the rest of the Pacific will be needed for their turning circle. Presumably the winning post will need one of those ultra-high speed flash cameras that take Molly’s favourite pictures (armour-piercing shells plunging through battleship armour or breaking up against the face-hardened plates.)
	One certainty was that after an afternoon’s hard swim we would descend on the Songmark evening meal like a swarm of hungry locusts. Sweet Potato is quite nice, and with a hot curried vegetable stew and a sprinkling of crisp fried fish pieces for those who wanted them, it was a big improvement on the average.
	Even so, on the off-chance we get served Poi for our sins (of which one would deduce there must be many) all three years now come prepared with their own “improvements”. Hunger may be the best sauce by repute, but there are a dozen other varieties that friends and rivals trade at the table. Jasbir’s sister Meera turned up with a bottle of very thin Thai fermented fish sauce that almost cleared the room with its pungency! Actually I quite liked the scent, but few of the herbivores seemed to share my opinion. At least it was not that Swedish “Surströmming” rotten fish that Angelica likes, which she once put to such good use in self-defence as a chemical weapon.
	Meera is a very jolly girl, having had a very good formative education at the grand old public school of Roedean in England. She quite reminds me of myself when I first arrived; it is refreshing to see someone else enthusing over the value of pluck and fair play. Her sister Jasbir did not have those valuable formative years, and though Jasbir is a jolly good friend of mine, Meera has had the better attitudes instilled in her. Unfortunately we have Beryl and her comrade in the Ave Argentum who probably undo all the work we do in advertising a proper public school education. Saint T’s is hardly that, though privately I have to admit that it is both competent and comprehensive – for the survivors.
	(Later) By dint of non-stop hard work we are finally making a dent in all the “catch-up” work our Tutors have given us! Social life is zero, and we are getting that haggard “third-year look” we noticed in our senior year a year ago.  A Songmark third-year by bystanders’ accounts projects the attitude of a starved four-legged attack dog straining at the leash – and this for the deer and bunnies as much as the carnivores amongst us. I don’t think we look quite that predacious, although some are just about avoiding scandal. I think Sophie D’Artagnan is the only one of us who has stated an ambition to “visit every cabin on the ark” as the saying is, and she has probably worked through a corridor or two already. Her near-neighbour Susan de Ruiz is about the same; one comes from Bearn in France and the other from Navarre in Spain, provinces that border each other in the Pyrenees Mountains. It must be all that fresh mountain air that does it.
	At last, we have a few days off gate guard and can work till lights-out. It amazes me that we can think of that as a luxury, but we do. We really have changed, without really noticing it. The first-years still moan occasionally about the hard beds and the food, but we have more experience of doing without either. They will take their turn on a windswept beach somewhere with raw clams to eat if they can catch them.
	Thinking of which, we have seen the new Songmark Prospectus that we helped to design, and indeed it is quite a piece of advertising. It is a strange feeling, realising we are not likely to meet the girls who it will be bringing in come September. Meera bought half a dozen copies to airmail back to her old school chums – unfortunately so did Beryl. The prospectus strikes just the right note, I think – enough straightforward pictures of the flying, wilderness survival and sporting achievements with enough hints of other adventures. There are no pictures of Molly on the Moon Islands firing range using her saw-backed bayonet on a hapless straw dummy while laughing her snout off, or Beryl leaving a Casino at four o’clock some June morning with a full purse, a smile and some dashingly handsome male company to while away the hours with.
	The prospectus does not mention any of its students by name, certainly not the rather infamous Air Pirates who are still at large and cleaning up in the  South China Seas with their leader Leticia Fosbury-Smythe. However, it does say that a Songmark graduate is capable of fending for herself in all walks of life, however extreme. Being an Air-Pirate is about as extreme as it gets. Still, I am hardly likely to forget our Tutor-approved trips such as the Krupmark fragment and ambushing the slavers in the Kanim Islands – let alone the trips they did not at all approve of such as the Parsifal voyage with Lars. Fighting off the Moro pirates with a pom-pom and lobbing explosive charges over the side of the ship at the boarders looks fine in the films but is hardly something our Tutors want in the prospectus.
	
Friday March 5th, 1937

It is weeks since we were called on to chase any junior years who had gone “over the top” and broken bounds, but when Miss Devinski called us just after breakfast we were sure that was the reason – being told to come ready to run, usually is. It was a surprise when we heard it was not a Songmark student who had gone missing, but a refugee girl who is being cared for by the authorities. Miss Devinski looked at Molly and announced it was someone called Megan, who Molly had met at New Year.
	Molly’s ears went right down, and she asked exactly why we would be chasing her. I was surprised that we got a clear answer; this Megan has been looked after by the furs in the special hospital on Meeting Island, but has apparently got bored and wandered off. Apparently there are some aspects of her condition that would alarm the general public.
	As we headed out at a trot towards the water-taxis, Molly explained that Megan was the name she had given to a snow leopard girl who had been rescued from Captain Granite’s ship. She had been reduced to a “ship’s cat”, much the same state as Henrika who lives under Songmark (not that Molly has met Henrika) and although perfectly healthy, cannot exactly be counted as a sentient fur. That is definitely something that would alarm the tourists! There is a lot that can happen to people that it is just as well the world at large does not know.
	We arrived at the Meeting Island hospital for the first time this year, and found it much as we had seen it before. Evidently we are being used rather than the general police, for some reason. This time the phrase we had been given was “we’re visiting old Mrs. Luakina” and we were passed through the tunnel to the “sanatorium” in the crater, shielded from prying eyes. There are notices on the outside warning that it is used as a fever hospital; any tourists who do wander into range turn right round again at the prospect of highly infectious Parvo Virus or Sarcoptic Mange patients ahead!
	This was the first time Molly and Maria have been here, which says something about how we are trusted now. We had a hurried meeting with Jirry’s Aunt Millini, trying our best not to look at her hideously half-burned face where the fur never will grow back since the Gunboat Wars. Aunt Millini is looking frailer than ever, and indeed there are fewer “veterans” here than the first time we visited. The Papeete Influenza knocked three quarters of Songmark flat on their tails, but we are young and extremely healthy, and we all got up again. Quite a few of the residents here never did.
	Apparently this “Megan” does not talk, and behaves rather like one of our wild ancestors. She needs very little, eats food off the ground without using her hands, and spent most of her time eating and sleeping. Aunt Millini commented that she has been getting very restless as Spring arrived, and was often found in a high tree looking out towards the other islands. This morning she had vanished, and folk are worried about her. All the more so since nobody has had any ideas of what to do with her – she is young and fit, and can neither live with the public outside or be locked away in here forever.
	Our first task was to find her – Aunt Millini is very observant, and says “Megan” was often looking from her treetop over towards Main and Eastern Island. She has not been found on Meeting Island, and could not have used a water-taxi. Stowing away on one is hardly possible, either.
	It was time to put our tracking skills to the test! Though we are no bloodhounds, we first visited the nest that Megan made for herself and memorised her scent. Then we started to check all around the outside of the fence, a big job as it must be five hundred paces in circumference.
	Molly spotted the first tracks – a heavily indented set of prints showing where someone jumped from a tree branch over the fence. Quite a leap indeed, not one I would care to make myself. The rest of the prints were faint, and where they met the grass of the undeveloped side of Meeting Island they faded completely. We picked them up again on the beach; the Spontoonies tend to wear sandals, rather than going bare-pawed this time of year. Plus leopard tracks are fairly distinctive, in that their claws do not retract but leave prints not unlike a canine.
	The prints on the beach were heading straight towards Main Island, but we have swum these waters and know what the currents are like. Unfortunately nobody knows just when “Megan” broke out – depending on the tides she could have been swept East or West of the direct line. It had been a fairly calm morning, but even so the wind would have erased the tracks had it been more than six or seven hours ago – which puts it as the falling tide, heading Westwards. Megan might have been pulled right past Main Village, into the central waters! We hope she is a good swimmer. It would have been dark when she started, we know that much.
	So – back to the docks, a quick telephone call to update Miss Devinski then a hurried negotiation with the water-taxi pilot to head “that-a-way” as well as asking him where he thinks a swimmer would end up. Fortunately it is away from the main tide-race – but the central waters are awfully wide, and anyone still in them when the tide turns again could be swept right out to sea.
	By the time we had got half-way across, Molly’s ears perked up and she pointed behind us. Songmark’s Tiger Moths were joining in the search, though who was flying them was impossible to tell. They surveyed the area in grid sweeps, flying just above the wave tops where any swimmer – or even a floating body – would be spotted by the observer. They were still at it as we made landfall, a little North of the main delta coming out of the Sacred Lake river.
	We spent the morning searching along the shore, but the tide was coming in and washing away whatever tracks there might have been – and if “Megan” had climbed out on the rocks there would not have been any in the first place. The nearest telephone was in the Taiwanese village, where the Spontoonies were busy planting out rice seedlings in their fields and had been since dawn. Any Chinese species such as snow leopards would have been noticed by them, clothed or otherwise. One compensation was that we had an excellent fish and rice luncheon in an eating-house; no time was lost on the search as Maria ordered the meal while I got on the telephone to Miss Devinski. It seems Prudence’s dorm are also on the search, starting at Main Village and heading West to link up with us.
	As it happened, neither of us were the first to find Megan. We were following the river back towards Sacred Lake, where there is a sand bank that looks a nice picnic spot. There were four female furs there – an obvious Spontoonie lady guide, an exotic black jaguar, a rabbit lady and a large and unclothed snow leopard, who was begging fish scraps from the picnic the rest were having on the beach!
	Oh dear. Maria was the one who put it all together, recalling how few unfamiliar Euros are liable to be on Main Island this time of year – the jaguar was certainly pretty and exotic enough to be a film star, and we have heard who is looking for locations to film. “Miss Melson, I presume” is a good line. Unfortunately “Megan” has been found not just by any tourist but one with cameras and public reputation, who can tell the world about things we were trying to avoid getting out.
	(Later). Things look as if they have turned out for the best after all! Prudence and co arrived, and with them came one of the doctors who had been looking after “Megan.” I hardly liked the idea of trying to truss the leopard up and cart her back to Meeting Island – she is not a criminal after all. We all sat down and tried to think of a plan. The one that emerged was breath-takingly simple, and even Miss Devinski approved when she heard of it.
	There is a “jungle girl” already on Spontoon, who we have seen the occasional flash of fur from in the trees. But she is not the sort to pose for pictures. The story will be that another has been found, someone who was raised on a remote island by the jungle animals, Tarzan style (one hears of this happening in India, and suchlike places.) Miss Melson says she always likes to film naturally staged rather than contrived action; having an actress with no lines to speak and unable to follow instructions will be a challenge but one she relishes. In fact, a few days of filming “Megan” should provide inspiration to produce a plot woven around the footage rather than filmed from a script. In return, “Megan” will be paid well, that is the locals will be paid to look after whatever needs she has.
	In one swoop we managed to remove the whole reason why she has to stay out of the public view – a real “wild-raised animal girl” is perfectly acceptable and exactly the sort of thing the Tourist Board would love to have! And she will be self-supporting, whether she knows it or not. Miss Melson could hardly wait to get the cameras rolling; the jaguar lady (Juanita, from Brazil) is to be cast as the conventional heroine, but they will just have to see how the plot develops.
	We were late back at Songmark, in fact it was almost dark and the supper was cleared away. Miss Devinski met us at the gate and somewhat grudgingly handed us passes for the evening and told us we had a reasonable tab set up for us at Mahanish’s – but if we ordered anything too unreasonable we would regret it.
	Hooray! A rapid bounce through the shower and change, and we were down the far end of the runway in twenty minutes, congratulating ourselves on our good luck. Our Tutor rarely praises anyone much, but I think today we made a good impression. 
	Carmen was in a good mood; apparently yesterday on gate guard they gave Red Dorm a thorough “searching”, although they did not find any contraband. She joked that it was a good thing Liberty Morgenstern was not here trying to avoid extravagance – the dearest things on the menu are King Crab and King Prawns, and as a dedicated anti-monarchist Liberty would have to order those just so she could tear the heads off, rip the insides out and so demonstrate the triumph of the proletariat.
	Although we tried not to put too big a hole in the Songmark budget, the eight of us were as hungry as ever after running around Meeting and Main Island all day. Twice this week we get to dine here, this time all paid for! Prudence was extremely happy to find tripe on the menu – then, she is from Lancashire. She tells me she has memorised the word in two dozen languages, so she can ask for ‘Trippa’ in Italy, “Caïos” in Spain and ‘Flaki’ in Poland. Molly wrinkled her nose and asked if there was anyone in the North who did not eat tripe – Prudence thought awhile, and remembered being told about three who disliked it. They turned out to be Enemy Agents, and finished up against a firing squad.
	I must say, if the chilli they served was a boxer, with that kind of punch it would knock all the competitors out of the ring. What Helen calls a “Five-alarm chilli” (though she spells it wrong – as I have pointed out to her, the Oxford English Dictionary says it has 2 ‘l’s, so there) is certainly one to set all the bells ringing. Molly moved upwind, complaining any splashes would eat holes in the table.
	One Nootnops Blue apiece (decidedly not on the tab) and we had to head back to Songmark before our passes expired – only at weekends are we free of such restrictions. Belle was saying Miss Melson was quite taken with me and my dorm, and had whispered that she could find us film roles. It is a good thing Molly did not hear that. Seeing my expression, Belle added that there were roles we could do perfectly well keeping true to our characters. I suppose it might be like that staid dowager Miss Murgatroyd who is frequently the butt of the Barx Brothers’ gags – she is not acting her bafflement, and when the Barx Brothers filmed here last year I heard her say she has never understood why people find them at all funny.
	We returned with about a minute to spare, and headed straight for bed being about twelve hours “overdrawn” on sleep this week. At least it is getting warmer now; the unheated rooms are comfortable now and the thin mattress feels as welcome as any feather-bed. Certainly, at Songmark one learns to appreciate the little luxuries in life – chiefly by not having any.
	
Saturday March 6th, 1937
A day of ordinary hard work seems like luxury in its own right now. We have put a major dent in the pile of catch-up work that awaited us after Macao, and Helen and I being fortified by last night’s industrial-strength chilli we woke up feeling ready to bounce out of bed. The first-years have evidently found out the delayed effects of that dish, as reportedly when we were away there were alarmed howls from their dorms’ bathroom first thing in the morning and a panicked runner sent to a (wholly unsympathetic) Mrs. Oelabe. Helen suggested Mahanish’s put up warning signs about that.
	After yesterday, Molly opened up somewhat about her meeting with “Megan” when Captain Granite’s ship was raided. Though by species folk assume she is Chinese or at least from that part of the world, there is no way to tell now. Molly shivered, reflecting that Megan’s fate might have been hers. Megan is named after a friend of Molly’s in Chicago, who was killed as a bystander in a gangland shootout the year before we all started Songmark. Though she rarely refers to it, Molly has calculated her odds of still surviving this far had she stayed in her old life rather than coming here, and they are no better than Maria’s.
	Remembering the snow-leopard grooming herself the natural way by the jungle stream, at least we can say she is in a better place than when Molly first found her. It might be interesting to see the film she stars in – if only to see how anyone weaves a plot around whatever “nature documentary” type footage Miss Melson gets of her in the wild. Molly will presumably not like the story or that film company’s idea of a happy ending.
	It was a great relief after nearly a month away to pack our dancing costumes and head over to Casino Island along with Jasbir’s dorm and two first-year dorms who have settled down to an interest. There are no second-years much interested, which I always found odd. Still, they do have a kilikiti team which is winning quite a few matches, so they take part in local sports that way. It was a definitely windy day, and Helen was trying with no more than usual success to hold onto her breakfast as the water taxi bounced across the choppy waters. I felt it quite exhilarating; just the day to be out in a sailing boat with the sun on the water and the wind in the sails.
	Actually, although the big tour-boats are presumably painting and refitting in their berths right now, some of the more exotic tourists are here already. There was a big new J-class sailing yacht beating its way into the central waters, and those hulls are absolutely the top end of the market; there are hardly a dozen of them afloat. One imagines that Shepherd’s Hotel will be having some guests tonight and not in its cheaper rooms. Not all travellers insist on the “roast pig in a bun” or “Popatohi and chips” as supplied by the tonne to the tour-boat crowds.
	The dance class was its usual lively self, with many familiar snouts. This is something we can hope to keep coming back to – furs from South and Main Island often attend, and it is only a few cowries. If we can afford the water-taxi here next year Helen and I plan to be here. All traditional Polynesians dance – it is just what they do, learning as soon as the kittens and pups can stand upright. Not everyone is good at it or particularly or keen but a Native who could not dance is about as unthinkable as one who could not swim.
	The S.I.T.H.S. have almost given up challenging us, as we have settled into being friends rather than rivals – much as one feels competing against a team within one’s own village, the thrill of winning is less than against distant visitors with honour to uphold. We see many of the same faces as before even though several are now graduated and working; this is a fine social venue regardless of tourist season. Not having a local University as such, many of the High School pupils are older than one might expect and indeed their education seems to blend into technical classes that are the same as for adults, run on Moon Island at the military base for technical matters or Casino Island for filming and suchlike.
	Three hours of vigorous local dance is a definitely healthy and demanding exercise! Our first-years were drooping at the end of it all, and even for us it was very welcome to get through the showers “on the bounce” and head out across the street to The Missing Coconut for luncheon. Molly was persuading the proprietor to have a sample of her “fizzy pineapple” which went down surprisingly well. As the tourists often hang around here with their cameras in the hope of snapping flying lava-lavas as the dancers run down the beach to sea-bathe after a vigorous dance, it is a good place to showcase this season’s exotic products.
	Molly has been thinking of good marketing slogans, one of her few activities that please Miss Devinski. 
As production will be starting small, she has an idea of keeping the prices high and describing it as “expensive only compared to cheaper substitutes.” I think she needs a little more work on that one.
	Despite our busy schedule we spared an hour looking around the Casino Island shops. Eriksson’s Outdoors has one of those “Kelly Kettles” I used in Tillamook, which is quite tempting. But they are bulky things and most of our trips start with whatever we can stuff into our pockets, so for the time being it had to stay in the window display. We had a chuckle over the big display of highly polished, horn-handled hunting knives that tourists buy to pose with at the edge of the jungle – for a quarter of the price a plain locally made machete made from recycled car leaf spring will do a far better job and not raise a crop of blisters in ten minutes’ hard work. Molly likes to carry a sharpened Great War vintage entrenching tool, but that is just Molly for you.
	Jasbir headed off with Molly to meet up with young Meera and the rest of her Goddard Club who are currently using the Northern tip of Moon Island for their firing range. One presumes that as most of the 1)settlements there are military, the prospect of loud bangs and the occasional descending hot motor-tube is less alarming than it would be in the gardens of the grand hotels. Meera has a lot to contribute having been one of the stars of the similar British Congreve Club that is trying to cross the English Channel with a postal delivery rocket. The Austrians already have a Rocket Post that mostly flies in the Winter, lofting mail packets over snow-bound or dangerously avalanching mountain ridges and saving a day or two against travelling around the lowland routes. The idea is that unlike an aircraft with large wings and surface area, a postal rocket has far less drag to be seized and thrown off course by the winds and flies so fast it is exposed for less time – plus it needs no runway either end. One imagines future postmen will be equipped with fire-engine type ladders to retrieve snagged postal rocket parachutes from trees and church steeples – plus a steel helmet if they predict too accurately where it will come down!
	Meera has mentioned that her Congreve Club is running liquid fuelled rockets, and that Roedean has tilted its sixth form science lessons accordingly to produce regular liquid oxygen supplies for the club. A decidedly enlightened place and quite deserving of its reputation, is Roedean. Beryl turned her nose up when she heard, and claimed that at Saint T’s her first year “stinks” class successfully made both phosgene and Lewisite. I have heard a lot of that school’s practical experiments – where other establishments have lab white mice to study, they have kraits and puff adders.
	Back to Songmark, hungry enough that a one-finger Poi supper went down quite well with enough sauce (Li Han has found a Casino Island shop selling bottles of black bean and Hoi Sin sauce – very exotic)  and a large bowl of non-fizzy pineapple.
	On the second-year table I spotted Florence, who was deep in conversation with the rest of her team. She looked rather worried. Prudence is still rather sniffy about Florence, and not best pleased with me for pushing the problem in her direction. I honestly thought Prudence would be pleased that I didn’t set Molly the task of persuading Florence she is contemplating a “fate worse than death” worse than the traditional one. Not that Prudence or her friends ever get evangelical about their preferences, formation swimming aside (and she is certainly recruiting for her dorm’s replacements in that respect.)
	(Later) by dint of getting back early we have finally cleared the catch-up work. So our timetable is just as light as the other Songmark third-years, which is like saying having a hill fall on you is lighter than a whole mountain. We feel flattened enough as it is. Rumiko in the second year quotes the Japanese saying “Duty is heavier than a mountain; death is lighter than a feather” and indeed she always takes things very seriously. Being the sole representative of her country is rather more important to her than, say, Reet from Estonia or Morag from Scottish Darien.
	I have heard back from Judge Poynter, and have arranged to see him tomorrow night. Hopefully he has heard back from his enquiries in England; it has been months now but law lords are not known for making snap decisions and presumably there are no mobs of claimants to the Allworthy Estates wandering around Barrow-in-Furryness frantically waving pedigrees and birth certificates. If we follow Maria across to Europe after graduation – at least, after leaving Songmark – that will only be four months away, and I have had the title Lady Allworthy longer than that already. In Helen’s case it will be something like an inverse honeymoon; she is planning on marrying Marti later this Summer, and is taking a long trip away from Spontoon before settling into South Island. Not that she will exactly take root there; the life of an Adventuress traditionally takes her to all sorts of places.

Sunday March 7th, 1937

It makes a nice change, to be able to lie in bed till breakfast at eight o’clock; some Sundays we have been trooping in from a night’s gate guard at that time – or more accurately, drooping in.  It is a shame about Maria’s snoring, but of course she has to lie on her back as her horns tend to shred pillows lying on her on her side, and her muzzle hardly lets her sleep nose down. That is one thing I am grateful for, having a fairly round head lets me sleep in any position.
	Out to South Island with Saffina after breakfast (breadfruits are back in season) and a welcome greeting with Mrs. H and the family. Jirry is still away at sea, worse luck – but we happily did our share of the household duties, Maria and Molly pitching in with a will. Saimmi has been called away elsewhere, but Helen, Saffina and I have much to practice. We tended two of the shrines, and practiced half a dozen of the rituals. A surprisingly draining morning, as energetic in its way as anything our Tutors put us through.
	Saffina has heard a lot about our adventures, and is planning what to do this Easter. With her ancestry I rather doubt she would be too well received down in New South Thule, and besides she is not keen on the climate. Still, she says she has already seen snow once, when she flew within sight of Mount Kenya on the way to Songmark for the first time from her homeland. It is frightening to think, she has the Aleutians or a similar trip ahead of her at the end of this year.
	Saffina is about the only Songmark girl who has brought useful information to Saimmi, in terms of the rituals and such she uses at home (her Mother being a “hougan”, which is something like a lady vicar.) She has been telling us of the various things they are called on to cope with – Africa being a land of ancient mysteries that were half forgotten when the first pyramids were raised in Egypt.
	After our trip to Krupmark last Winter solstice we have been practicing hard at defensive and containing rituals, though we know we would not have stood a chance on our own against what was found there. Saffina has been thinking a lot about that trip, and has tentatively identified the shadow that follows Kansas Smith around through that young pig henchman. She is rather worried what Kansas Smith will do given the book she got away with. The priestess Oharu was very keen to recover that book, and the idea of it falling into the wrong paws is an alarming one. Someday either Kansas Smith or whoever is behind her will be back for the two fragments that are deep in Crater Lake, and we will have to be ready for them.
	Luncheon was excellent as ever, even considering Molly and Maria largely helped to cook it (Moeli is off at sea with her husband’s family.) It was rather odd to see Molly serving up the food – we can all cook well enough to get by and have done since our first year, but one usually imagines Molly as eating bully beef out of a hacked-open tin with a saw-backed bayonet for cutlery. I tried to imagine her at a civilised family table with half a dozen eager young fawns to feed, and eventually gave up. I could certainly imagine her lobbing them a tin of Maconochie apiece and a can opener and telling them to get on with it.
	For a change, I had to tear myself away after cleaning up luncheon, and head back alone to Songmark. It all takes time, getting over there, changing into my nicest “Euro” outfit with necessary accessories and then back on a water taxi to Meeting Island. It was a rare event being all alone in the third-year building, and having the bath all to myself with plenty of hot water. I took full advantage of the treat, especially as Helen was not around to object to various things.
	Meeting Island is getting quite busy in the week as all the various Ministries get ready for the tourist season, but on Sunday once the church services have finished it is as quiet as December with few open facilities and most residents heading over to Main Island for the countryside or Casino Island for the town. Judge Poynter’s house is looking very spruce in a new coat of paint; the good Judge certainly keeps up appearances despite everything.
	Apparently his housekeeper has the afternoon off, as Judge Poynter greeted me at the door himself. I was glad I had made an effort to smarten up, as he was impeccably turned out in a new lightweight tweed suit of the latest cut. He greeted me warmly and seemed much taken with my own outfit, though it is only a simple knee-length white summer frock with white gloves and lace-trimmed hat that I bought in Macao for less than it would have cost to post from England.
	The sitting-room was the same as ever, a definite museum of Victorian and Edwardian good taste with hardly a modern item to be seen. There was a radio but it was styled in rich dark walnut, looking rather as if it had been the prize-winning radio for the Great Exhibition of the 1850’s, had such things existed then. The leather sofa is most comfy, though being so well polished a rayon frock tends to slide right off it.
	Judge Poynter brought out a sheaf of correspondence bearing the familiar shilling airmail stamps, and summarised what his colleagues had found out. The news is not encouraging; it seems the Allworthy family was not numerous and tended towards shady dealings. One of Lord Leon’s cousins was reported killed at sea in a gun-running expedition though his body was never recovered; another simply vanished in China. That was six years ago and it seems unlikely he will be returning to claim anything. But until nine years after their disappearance they are not legally proven as dead and are still theoretically in the running for the title.
	As to more certain Allworthy contestants, there is only one blood relative who claims the name; though about my age she is both illegitimate and decidedly lacking a pedigree being a wolf/sheep cross. I found myself wondering just what one of those would actually look like. She is barred (or possibly “baaaa’d”) two ways from inheriting anything, and indeed nobody is keen to establish precedent of a discarded chambermaid’s daughter getting the title. Rather unfair really; she is judged by Euro standards while my “marriage” to Lord Leon is accepted as binding since folk on Krupmark do so and that is where it was registered. Then, the Empire is full of Natives who are recognised as legally married under their own customs despite not exactly walking down the aisle at Westminster Abbey.
	Getting back to England this Summer to settle the claim will be difficult without a proper passport, and though doubtless I could get a convincing enough British one made in Macao, that would take a fair chunk of (Allworthy) money, something I am not prepared to do. My existing passport as Kim-Anh might get me there with the right fur dye, but that hardly helps as I would have to drop the disguise to clear my own name. Quite a problem, as the good judge admitted.
	It was very pleasant to relax with a glass of soda-water apiece, fresh from the venerable gasogene that has provided soda water for Harold for forty years, needing only crushed coral and acid to make the carbonic acid gas. One reads that Sherlock Hound had one in his rooms, but I have never seen another example still in service. Definitely Harold is the last of his kind in so many ways; the Empire is built on selfless service and not on loot and conquest as Brigit Mulvaney keeps harping on about. Well, possibly some loot and conquest on occasion, but most of the Native despots on the receiving end probably deserved it.
	I managed to repay Harold though not in the way I would have quite liked to – as before, all he most wanted was to have his tummy rubbed. Evidently a canine interest. Rather disappointing for me, having come prepared with specific Precautions for other canine interests. It was quite decorous as he waved me out at tea-time, leaving me to return alone to Songmark. I had an hour to spare, as I always allow that should I ever manage to repay Harold more thoroughly, and knowing various things from the encounters that made me Lady Allworthy in the first place. It is rather a pity that Harold never married, or (by repute) took an adaptable Native “housekeeper” as many colonial officer gentlemen do, or “chauffeur” if female.
	Poi again for evening meal! I had to set the junior years an example, and indeed only Madeleine X and Susan de Ruiz were in to dine from my year. Everyone else was dining elsewhere and presumably rather better. Still, I had enjoyed an excellent luncheon at Mrs. Hoele’toemi’s longhouse and can hardly complain.
	(Later) Molly, Maria and Helen arrived after a pleasantly full day on South Island, and I had to report the lack of real progress on losing the Allworthy burden. I am just going to have to get to England somehow. Maria is always intrigued by my “case” and indeed it almost reads like a Bill Sandmoon romantic drama plot. A far pleasanter plot to read about than to be trapped in.
	Just ten minutes before our lights-out, there was a quiet knock on the door and to our amazement Florence Farmington appeared. This is decidedly against the rules; junior years are not allowed in here even with permission let alone without it. Plus it is after second-year lights-out, and by rights we should have turned her in for points. Helen was all for throwing her out on her ear, but Florence having risked much to get here I thought it best to at least find out what she wanted so urgently that she is prepared to risk getting caught and lose serious points. If Madeleine X or Missy K spotted her they would have raised the alarm immediately and there would be nothing we could do about it, Florence being technically in the wrong.
	One would think that Florence is out to cause me the maximum possible embarrassment – that or she has somehow decided I qualify as a newspaper Agony Aunt, to sort out her emotional turmoil free of charge. When she mentioned a “hunting licence” my ears went down as I assumed she wanted one – but stranger still she wanted to meet a girl who has one! What our Tutors will think about this I can imagine all too clearly. Of the various occasions I have stood a whisker away from being thrown out of Songmark the time Miss Devinski waved my spurious application at me might have been the closest, and that was before the Ave Argentum arrived putting us doubly on watch for bad press.
	I promised to write her a letter of introduction to Nuala Rachorska, who will be able to tell her anything she needs to know, then shooed her out before Miss Devinski arrived to check we are all fast asleep. Hopefully nobody spotted Florence coming in here; the other dorms seem to have had full days and from next door I could already hear Irma Bundt snoring away at full throttle. It must be a bovine thing.
	
Monday March 8th, 1937
	
Back to hard work in flying classes, taking advantage of the fine weather to try things we would have come to grief at as first-years. Up in the Tiger Moths to five thousand feet till our Tutors announced we had engine failure – and from wherever we happened to be we had to contact the airport tower and come in for an emergency “dead stick” landing. Not for the first time I found myself wishing for a propeller that could be feathered in flight; this acts like the proverbial built-in headwind and knocks ten percent off one’s gliding range.
	Landing dead-stick in a stiff Southerly cross-wind was an alarming experience; fortunately I remembered my gliding days as to always making sure one has plenty of height – in a glider one can never get the altitude and energy back if it is lost too soon. Of course Miss Blande in the rear cockpit was watching with the dual controls ready to re-start the engine (and tally up major demerits) had I been too far off the runway to make it. Still, when we landed she had various questions about alternative sites I had considered. The flatter part of Eastern Island has too many buildings to make a good emergency landing field these days, but I correctly identified the beach on the Southern area as being the best of a poor set of choices. Chances are that the undercarriage would have dug in and the Tiger Moth ended up on its back – but better that than missing the runway and ending up coming through the roof of Mahanish’s or Superior Engineering!
	Although we fly at least three days a week, I notice I tend to fill in the details in my logbook rather than my Diary – except for celebrations such as my thousand hours of solo flight. It might be closer to two thousand by the time we graduate! The junior years are envious, but they will get their turn.
	Having come in “dead-stick” in the Tiger Moths in the morning, in the afternoon we took turns doing much the same in the Sea Osprey, starting with single engine landings. This time the target was a runway-sized strip of sea marked out by buoys to the East of Eastern Island, as if we were coming down with only a restricted lake or river channel to aim for. The Sea Osprey is of course a lot heavier and less forgiving of sharp last-second manoeuvres. Certainly an aircraft where one needs to think an extra step ahead.
	Most things went smoothly, but in the mid-afternoon the new Fokker float-plane the Ave Argentum bought last month, flew over where Susan de Ruiz had just landed in the Sea Osprey and dropped her a rubber life-raft! Susan recovered it and found it to be old and almost perished, with a taped-on note sympathising with her recurring engine trouble and recommending some “properly qualified mechanics” such as they use. Cheek!
	Although we have standing orders not to let ourselves be provoked, sometimes it is very hard. According to the Spontoonies, the Ave Argentum privately call us the “storm troopers in skirts” which is rather off the mark since none of our official outfits involve skirts, unlike theirs. Plus according to Eva Schiller storm troops were a hand-picked elite that out-performed twice their number of regulars. Molly is fuming; she has come up with a dozen dirty tricks to play, but admits that if she gets caught they will do us far more harm than our rivals. She does quote some Cowboy film “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us” which most Songmark girls agree with, and heartily wish Father Dominicus would go off and evangelise in New Tirana or somewhere. Aero-Iberia as they used to call themselves could just as well have relocated to Spanish Morocco. It is much nearer their original home, and until the price of sand increases a few hundredfold there is nothing much for anyone to fight about (although the native Berbers seem to think otherwise.)
	Thinking of travels, we have seen the first and second-years’ plans for Easter (they are meant to file them with our Tutors like flight-plans, and we get to comment.) Crusader Dorm are heading out to Vostok, which is not amazing as that wolverine girl is a Vostokite in good odour with the Grand Duchess. I hope they have a more relaxing time than we did being chased across the island on the trip Maria dubbed “Tsar Trek” after the famous Boer Trek across the Transvaal. Our juniors may be carrying on our tradition of adventure, being a Tsar Trek of the next generation.
	Third-years seem to be doing well in providing equipment for the rest of Songmark. Carmen is taking orders for her waterproof suits that did so well in the Aleutians, and in fact has enquiries from some of the Moon Island fliers who have heard about that. Although it is rather a waste of a Songmark graduate to devote her time to sewing, if Carmen can establish a company here with Spontoonie tailors making them off-season it will make our Tutors and the Althing happy, as well as help finance her dorm starting up as an Adventuress. There is so much one needs to start up these days; it is a lot harder than after the Great War when many furs started off with demobilisation pay in their pockets, a crated military surplus aircraft and a couple of friends with the same. The performance of the aircraft they could afford was not wonderful, but nobody else had anything much better. Apparently these days some “Air Pirates” can afford to buy and arm brand new Comet twin-engined racers, of the sort that run the England-Australia record attempts!
	Molly and Helen have made a few spares to sell of our climbing shorts, the ones with cargo-strapping sewn inconspicuously into the seams which makes falling on a climbing-rope so much less painful. We have seen the newsreels of the Germans climbing the Eiger, some of whom are still up there unrecoverable having perished from long falls despite the rope not breaking. Helen speculates that an Adventuring suit with built-in tape loops would be a great asset, especially making for rapid rescues in confined spaces where it is awfully difficult to tie a rope round one’s waist. We will not forget those ice crevasses of the Aleutians in a hurry.
	
Tuesday March 9th, 1937

The first really hot day of the year – our dear Tutors looked up at the sun and announced it was time for us to get our packs on and go for five laps of Eastern Island. Much grumbling, but in our hearts I think most of us expected something of the sort. In five minutes the whole third year was equipped and heading out of the main gate, cursing under their breaths in a dozen languages. 
	The easy bit is the West side of the island, which is mostly over gravel roads and pavements. Straight South of Songmark is that “bulge” where pleasant bungalows in well-tended gardens house some of the airport staff and our Tutors. It is after that where we hit the beach – and we start to sink into the dry, loose sand. This must be one of the few times we could wish for pouring rain, to pack down the dunes a little.
	Five laps left the fittest of us bone-tired and wishing we had gone to finishing schools instead where the main exercise is balancing books on one’s head to improve posture. But not for too long – as after a five minute rest we were heading out to Main Island. Miss Wildford led us on her cycle across from Main Village onto one of the ridges separating Chikloota from Vikingstown, to where we could see a crowd in the distance at the cliff top.
	There are worse sports than jogging around sand dunes with a pack on. Cliff-diving is something is hardly likely to figure in any Olympic Games, as few athletes would live long enough to get that practiced. The cliffs were just right, a slight overhang at the top and the water plummeting down twenty feet and more just off shore – but we know a lot about wind gusts and their hazards.
	The Spontoonies were practicing for the tourist season, a risky way of making a living but I suppose not much worse than going out fishing all Winter in an open canoe. Apparently furs do this in Acapulco which is well known as an exotic place Abroad, so when tourists pay good money to go to an exotic place Abroad they think they should see some. Much the same way that Spontoon is the only place in the Pacific that does Limbo Dancing, I suppose.
	We had a long talk with some of the Spontoonies who were queuing up to dive; there are two techniques they use depending on just how deep the water is. The “Olympic” style is a head-first dive that depends on angling one’s body to pull out of the underwater dive and is liable to be fatal if there is an unexpected rock in the way. The way we are recommended is to go in feet first and pressed close together – and to brake by spreading arms and then legs, once underwater. We are warned that keeping one’s feet tight together is extremely important when diving from over thirty feet, especially in a skirt or lavalava. Diving off cliffs is never a wholly safe pastime, and the sort of thing one risks a broken leg or worse if anything goes wrong. Nobody is recommended to take this up as a sport, but if one gets in a situation where jumping off is less dangerous than staying put, it is just as well to know the technique. It certainly worked for “Soppy” Forsythe, and she did it as just a first-year.
	Still, this is the place to practice with known deep water and a nearby rescue water-taxi handy. Miss Wildford called for volunteers – this is not a test involving points in the usual way. I could believe one could gain points for common-sense for refusing the offer, in fact.
	Missy K volunteered first, though as a Spontoonie it would look odd if she failed to. She may live in Main Village but has never been keen on “traditional” pastimes, and regards performing for tourists as a pain in the tail. Probably this is why she goes to Songmark rather than shaking a grass skirt for the cameras. At Miss Wildford’s suggestion she went first, and definitely made a splash. Susan de Ruiz was next; being a Pyrenean Desman she is well used to much colder water and performed a swan-dive as elegantly as any avian.
	I recall  in our first year we jumped into the sea from one of those old Barling bombers that Rain Island bought off the Americans – and discovered that from a height the difference between hitting water and solid land is far less than one might expect. The books say one has more chance of surviving over land if a parachute fails – providing there is a thick pine forest and preferably a ten foot snowdrift underneath.
	 The locals were either wearing bathing suits or jumping entirely in their fur, grass skirts and the like not being expected to survive hitting the water at any speed. Of course, if there was a crowd of paying tourists around today that would be one of the attractions. And the tourists rarely realise the Spontoonies are not really surprised at such “accidents”. One vixen was giving a rather ham performance, with her “oh no my lei has broken, whatever shall I do?” Tourist Custom needs practice like anything else, as her laughing friends were telling her when she climbed back up to the cliff top.
	After five laps of Eastern Island I could use a dip, so volunteered myself. It was something Miss Wildford let us make our minds up about, diving in with boots on or bare-pawed. Swimming with boots is extraordinarily difficult, but I was glad of their protection when I hit the water from forty feet up! Despite following advice and braking with arms and legs, it felt like I was heading to the bottom of the Nimmitz Sea before I started to come back towards the surface. As the impact rather knocks the breath out of a diver, I was very glad I had been hyperventilating well beforehand.
	Half an hour was enough time for us all to dive and recover, then to dry our soaked clothes we were not at all surprised to trot over the hill into Vikingstown. The place was quiet, apart from the bustle of carts around Professor Kurt von Mecklenburg und Soweiter’s composting power plant. Considering there was a covered cart laden with fish waste from the cannery coming in, the operation is remarkably free of odours. Quite an achievement, given its ingredients.
	I remember back in Saint Winifred’s Nature classes being taught from the standard gardening textbook * “Everyone knows that manure is revolting, but it is also true that almost anything revolting is manure. There is nothing in a tannery that could not be profitably mulched-in to the general benefit of the soil, probably including the beastly old Board of Directors.” The Spontoonies have certainly taken the advice to heart – but considering any other fertilisers have to be imported, it is a wise move.
	Back via Main Village, where we cast longing glances at the big public baths which by coincidence are heated off-peak by the compost power plant. Having salt soaked fur is bad enough, but having salted clothing dry and stick to it is far more uncomfortable. But Miss Wildford chivvied us back to the water-taxi, with the cheerful promise that we had a nice meal of Poi awaiting us. Morale plummeted faster than any cliff diver, except for Missy K and Jasbir, the only ones in our year who actually like the stuff.
	
* Editor’s note: “Garden Rubbish and other country bumps”, © Sellars and Yeatman. A classic work, being the first one to cater not only for the traditional garden lovers, but garden haters too. Introduced the concept of the Unpleasaunce to a world still reeling from the Depression, causing some parts of it to collapse utterly...

Thursday March 11th, 1937

Two incredibly busy days in the air! The Tiger Moths have hardly stopped moving let alone had time to cool off, and even my little Sand Flea was pressed into service. My dorm is still twenty hours flying time down from our Macao trip – and I could have told Molly there was no point in even asking if our cycling time on Tillamook could be used as an equivalent.
	We have been so busy in the last month that we have scarcely kept up with the local news – hence I was surprised to see a party of climbers half way up the main face of Mount Kiribatori. The locals do not miss a trick; last year with Professor Schiller and G-U-U depriving the postcard writers of a local “unassailable peak” the main face is now an asset for climbers and film crews. Unlike most mountains it is sheer enough to have a chance at using a parachute, supposing one could climb carrying that weight. Regular cliff diving is bad enough, and I am sure we will never see furs parachuting off cliffs just for the sake of it.
	Given some imitation Edelweiss, Maria says they could shoot Alpine epics here if they carefully chose the camera angles to miss out on the coral reefs and palm trees below. Though the local cinemas only show them as exotics, there are plenty of ripping mountain yarns being screened with do-or-die struggles to reach icy inaccessible peaks. Then, it is not too surprising given the fame that such conquerors get – our own Archbishop Crowley was the first and so far only fur to climb Kanchenjunga and he did that entirely on his own. Some people think he was fibbing, but they may be biased.
	One thing my Sand Flea is better at than the Tiger Moths, is very low speed flying, especially hedge-hopping. Spontoon having few hedges, today that translated as dune dodging where I made my approach to the runway not over but weaving between tops of the thirty foot dunes that shield the Eastern coast. Definitely an approach where one of those autogiros would do well – I recall seeing them working in Vostok out of forest clearings, and indeed they could work off a very modest piece of flat ground or ship’s deck.
	Thinking of autogiros, that is exactly what the Ave Argentum have now got, a brand new Cierva machine that they were showing off today. A lot of envious eyes were following its first flights, almost hovering against the stiff wind. That is something I cannot match – unless there is a full gale blowing, in which case it is likely to be too turbulent to risk it.
	Beryl was the next to take my Sand Flea for a flight – she is actually a careful and meticulous flier, and though I hate to say it I trust her in the cockpit more than Molly or Maria. After half an hour of reconnaissance she came in for a beautiful three-point landing, pulling the top wing right down to brake as only a Flying Flea can do. Flaps are nice but there is nothing like turning a whole upper wing into an air-brake. If the structure could take the strain a Flea could almost stop dead in the air, a useful trick if streams of cannon shells were whipping past one’s snout. Sadly, with an engine like mine the lost speed would be very hard to regain without going into a vertical dive for a few hundred feet. Not a manoeuvre to try when threading through sand dunes.
	While I handed over the Sand Flea to Susan de Ruiz for her turn, Beryl offered to introduce me to one of her old school chums whom she had spotted at the far end of the runway. I have heard something of this Masie “Crusher” Thynne, and we have been taught time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted. So five minutes later I found myself shaking paws with a slender and quite respectable-looking vixen while trying to reassure myself this is probably safe, not being Krupmark Island. There are plenty of furs with whom one is advised to count one’s fingers after shaking paws – but on Krupmark if a recount shows all to be in order, one starts to worry as to why.
	Miss Thynne was outwardly a perfectly nice-looking young lady, well-spoken and polite as Beryl can be. Her Ave Argentum uniform had the usual silver crucifix nestling in her décolletage, her shirt being open as befits a hot day and no gentlemen around. I did notice one odd thing about it; the cross had an extra hole at the bottom, as if it could be worn in more than one position. Beryl has reminisced happily a few times about her extraordinary Divinities and Scripture classes at Saint T’s, and I hate to think she was telling the truth.
	Anyway, Miss Thynne seems pleased to be here and surrounded by so many wealthy and respectable furs – she cheerfully admitted she is one of the “penitents”, whom (quote) Father Dominicus has rescued from a life of sin and firmly set upon the road to righteousness (unquote.) I have not met their leader, but either Masie or Fr. Dominicus has a tongue firmly in cheek saying that. Likely both do. At least, Masie had a well-practiced pious expression as she confessed that should any rough work need doing in the cause of duty, she is one of the ones who will volunteer and keep their friends’ consciences and reputations unsullied. 
	As Molly would say, she is a torpedo in a sharp suit, and is not afraid to let the world know it.
(Later) We had just returned to Songmark when Ada and Belle came in, rather out of breath, with a surprising request for our Tutors and for me as well. All the previous day’s flying had attracted attention across the islands, and given some folk ideas. Apparently Miss Margot Melson had enquired of some locals who the Tiger Moths belonged to, and had just managed to catch the one dorm of us she has worked with before. 
	We have worked with the Barx Brothers filming before, but they are a perfectly respectable film company despite their zany antics (which are not all in front of the camera; I used to read such things of Blotto, Wino, Stinko and Dipso when Molly subscribed to Film Frolics). I was rather expecting Miss Devinski to dismiss the request out of paw, but she nodded and said she would talk with the other Tutors about it.
	I recall a year ago when we went to Albert Island, the film crew there were taking hours of “stock footage” of generic shots of the sailing ship to be used in a whole series. Miss Melson said she was improvising the current project around whatever she could film of the “Jungle Girl” Megan, and presumably she can use some stock of aircraft for this and the next few of her rather peculiar films. Though I can imagine our Tutors would not want to be too publicly linked to such a controversial director, Tiger Moths are not exactly rare and it is not as if the aircraft will be towing Songmark advertising banners, after all. My Sand Flea has attracted some attention, being the only one of its kind around the Nimmitz Sea. Having such a short range and no floats, it is arguably not the perfect aircraft for this part of the world – very handy around Europe where one is never too far from an airstrip or at least a hundred yards of flat grass to put down on, but as it would be pushed to make it to Orpington or Albert Island in a stiff headwind, nobody else seems to have invested. Just the ticket for an adventure film though, should the plot call for the heroine to escape in a hundred yards of clifftop turf with pursuit close behind. From what I hear of Miss Melson’s films, the pursuers are likely to be screaming hordes from the Hays Office. 
	
Friday March 12th, 1937	

Definitely not a day to be flying. We woke up and were extremely glad not to have been on gate guard, with rain hammering on the roof and windows. Though the Songmark dorms are solid enough, there are still only two layers of wood and tar-paper above us between us and the drumming rain. The sound quite drowned out Maria, and woke us up a good half hour before our alarm clocks. In Songmark sleep is precious.
	Maria has gained the useful habit of being able to go back to sleep for just ten minutes if needs be, but it seemed fairly hopeless for me to try. I dressed and went downstairs just in time to see Madeleine X and Adele Beasley coming in off dawn gate guard, absolutely soaked to the skin. Adele may have lost her excess bad luck, but sometimes a normal portion can be hard enough to live with.
	At least they had time to fire up the water heater and warm up with a bath apiece before breakfast. Madeleine has been fascinated for months by the water heater that Alpha Zarahoff built; Madeleine is a radio and electrical expert and the more she examines the compact solid-state pump the more frustrated she gets as according to her it should not work. Madeleine is not the most open-minded of folk, and still believes that anything not recorded (or better still, invented) by the Academy de Science in Paris is not real knowledge. Then, she has never been to Cranium Island.
	Just as we predicted, our Tutors cancelled the scheduled indoor lessons to take us out in the rain, back to the cliff faces to the North. We thought we had climbed everything here in all conditions the Spontoon climate can throw at us – but our Tutors do keep thinking of ways to enliven a dull morning.
	Today we were told that half of the group had become casualties, and had to be evacuated. Evidently Saint T’s had come over for an Australian Rules hockey match, as Prudence whispered. So half of us were designated as “casualties” with genuine groans as we threw ourselves down on the soaking ground while the rest scattered in search of materials to improvise sledges and lifting harnesses. Despite her soaking earlier on today is the day Adele is finally in luck, as having changed dorms she no longer has to haul Missy K around when it is the bear’s turn to play injured. Having been in with only Beryl, our second lightest and Missy K our heaviest, it was even betting as to when Adele would strain something having to pull her dorm around on our usual rescue drills.
	Not my idea of fun, being strapped into a makeshift stretcher made of driftwood and corrugated iron, then being hauled up the cliff face. We could have done nearly as well by putting the equivalent weight of rocks on the stretcher – but knowing one’s friends are depending on you to tie the right knots is a great incentive to do everything right first time.
	A morning of improvising winches, pulleys and lifting harnesses in the pouring rain certainly put both our wits and our muscles to the test. Then, everything had to be dismantled and returned whence it came – or in the case of actual litter, carried back with us. A lunch of breadfruit mash has rarely tasted so good.
	I had a surprise at lunchtime; Miss Devinski announced that we will be supporting the filming after all! Her argument was that we are encouraging the local filming industry, which is true enough – but we will not be asking any publicity on the films. Helen muttered that it probably means we have “plausible deniability” as long as we get left off the film credits. Nobody has objected to Prudence and co. appearing in the films with the South Island Formation Swimming Team, but that is not organised by our Tutors unlike our flying schedule. One supposes the idea is to protect Songmark’s reputation, but anyone who stays watching one of Miss Melson’s distinctive productions to the end is hardly likely to be shocked by us providing stock footage. Carmen was happily reminiscing about some of the scenes in “Daughters of the Dragon Queen” which she took part in as an extra.
	After lunch, we split up to head out to our various classes; I resigned myself to staying soaked as I went down to the docks and carried on my boating lessons with a water-taxi. There are half a dozen young Spontoonies practicing for their licence this year; though not as physical as small boat sailing this is quite tricky enough as it is. Interestingly, Songmark appears to be the only “Euro” organisation that has been allowed to handle water taxis. They are as basic a technology as can be imagined being usually a glorified ship’s cutter with an outboard motor, but we have seen some strange things associated with them. Only last year did Saimmi tell me and Helen the significance of the small bronze tiki statue that some carry at the bow, and Tourists blithely photograph as a “Quaint good-luck charm.”
	Something that taxi drivers need to know is to judge time and distance – unlike in London the traffic is not the problem but the tides and currents are, and unlike in aircraft one does not have a navigator sitting behind with map, compasses and divided rulers working it out against the weather forecast. I fear it will be a few months before I qualify! It is all useful experience in taking our “day boat mariner” sailing license which we are due to do next week. After that, I will have the first stage of my Master’s Ticket, and if any tourist wants to sail to the Kanim Islands I can hire out to take them under Spontoon law. That will make two ways I can legally make a living on Spontoon having gained my Class B Pilot’s license last year – I am trying hard to forget the “hunting license” with my name on it that is secure (I hope) in Nuala Rachorska’s safe.
	Thinking of which, Florence has heard back from her and has a Pass tomorrow, something I found hard to believe. But I have seen it; Miss Wildford signed off for her to return by gate closing time, purpose “investigate island professional standards” which could mean anything. Now, there is something we really hope the Ave Argentum do not get wind of.
	
Saturday March 13th, 1937	

An alarming day, looking at Maria’s calendar – we have only twenty Saturdays left as Songmark students! Some of those will be spent down in Neue Suden Thule (whose advertising poster translates as “It’s SO Bracing!”) and some of them will be spent in the last desperate weeks heading up towards our final tests. Our free Saturdays will be few indeed.
	Having realised that, we squared our shoulders and got on with making the most of an excellent Spring day, tempered a little by knowing we are on Gate Guard tonight. A full breakfast (there is never anything remotely edible left uneaten when a Songmark third-year class leaves the table) and a change into our Summer day-wear of local Ulaul cloth shirt and shorts, then we were out in the fresh air and sunshine to the water-taxis. Molly suggested I ask for a discount if I drive the water taxi myself. 
	This time of year the islands are starting to fill up with folk who will be supporting the tourist rush, including entertainers of all sorts. Every fishing boat from the Kanim Islands or as far as Mildendo seems to bring a few extra passengers who will be staying till September. The dance classes are crowded, as folk show off their local island styles and join in good-natured competitions. Spotting a Mildendo or Orpington Island dance would be to an average “Euro” about as difficult as telling two different Chinese dialects apart if one could not understand a word of the language. We are getting fairly fluent, so to speak.
	It was quite a privilege today; there was a Basic Dance class with various folk in it who had not grown up wearing grass skirts and leis. When they started floundering, Mrs. Motorabhe called on us to demonstrate – pointing out that as we had learned from scratch, so could they. We finished off with the full-power version of the Orpington Island dance we won the last dance contest with; quite a few ears went up in amazement then drooped as their owners imagined just what it takes to dance with that energy. It took us three years of hard work at Songmark, but we did not like to tell them that.
	There were even some furs there who the Spontoonies think of as exotic; I recognised Pring the oriental girl who works at the kitchens at Bow Thai, who presumably is out for some fresh air compared to the usual kitchen atmosphere of stir-fried vegetables and chillies. She was a very graceful dancer, and I spent an hour chatting with her and trading hints. I would dearly like to take my other pattern Kim-Anh Soosay out for some fresh air, given the chance. But I need more training in that role. At least I can answer some questions about Macao from first-paw knowledge, having been there – assuming the questioner has not.
	Siamese subjects have definitely exotic names to “Euro” ears, as I discovered when talking to Pring. The only other fur I knew well from that part of the world was Prad Phao who was a Khmer rather than a Thai. Thinking about that encounter definitely had my ears blushing – though I often think of Kim-Anh as a different person, one could say it is me who pays her bills – and not just for fur dye. Kim-Anh came happily back from the French Sandwich Islands with a kitten on the way, but it would have been me as Amelia who was thrown out of Songmark for it and would have to write a rather embarrassing letter to Father.
	Certainly I know I need better “background” if Kim-Anh is going to be useful. Pring said there are few Siamese stock girls here on Songmark, but she has met one called Malou who actually is from Macao. It would be useful to meet her – and Pring promised to mention it when they next spoke.
	Fur dye is useful as a disguise, but of course the trouble arises when folk spot you are wearing it. I remember Molly’s enthusiasm in the first-year for disguises such as reversible uniforms – from what I have heard since, no professional Agent would be caught dead in one, though many amateurs have been.
	Thinking of overly keen first-years, Meera Sind was dancing very well. All her dorm has come along to the dance classes, much as her sister Jasbir’s do. Getting involved with local customs and sports really opens doors here on Spontoon; one meets so many people. I have not seen the Ave Argentum show their snouts here, but grass skirts and flower leis are probably not in their respectable dress code.
	An excellent luncheon at the Missing Coconut! They have Molly’s “Fizzy pineapple” now on sale here, and one half-pound tin per dorm of four is about right for lunchtime. Plus we are advertising it by eating it, and Molly’s bank balance can always use boosting. She has gone from riches to rags and back towards riches again – but this time she has earned it legally. When I pointed that out to her she seemed rather upset; “going legit” seems to be looked down on by her family as a last resort, much like folk who fail in other enterprises traditionally join the military. Her Father’s legitimate business selling PAMS, “Pressed Animal Minced Stuff” did not end happily – possibly because he was unused to paying taxes, and never found a convenient time to start. Molly says she ought to vote for Mr. Long, whose “Share the wealth” policies will leave criminals as the richest folk by far in the USA – Henry Fnord and the Carneagle family will be whittled down to mere millionaires, while the bootleg-based fortunes of such old family friends as Giuseppe “Three guns” Bomparini will be safe.
	I noticed Eva Schiller at the dance club talking with some of the girls newly arrived from the outer islands; these were “classical” Polynesians and not Spontoonies. In fact, some of them had that feature Euros either find incredibly alluring or off-putting; one might say that if I need one flower lei for coverage, they need several. Eva’s Uncle told me last year about there being prehistoric statuettes and cave paintings of European ladies equipped to match, but with the exception of some throwbacks every few generations in ancient enclaves (the Basque territories and some mountainous corners of Eastern Europe) it has entirely gone from the bloodlines. And the Schiller family is always very keen on finding evidence of ancient days.
	One of the Guides who comes to the dance classes says there is a new offering for tourists this coming season – for the more modern and energetic there will be cycle tours around Main Island, using the Eastern-Island made cycles. As the Vostok magnesium framed cycles will be lighter and handier than most cycles furs are likely to have at home, there will even be a scheme to buy the cycle one tours with and have it cleaned, packed and shipped home! As Molly says, it is not just does who look forward to the chance of getting an extra buck. Yesterday’s cycle club was quite fun, and Molly only fell off twice albeit straight over the handlebars onto the gravel road. The military green field dressing over her forehead should be able to come off on Monday, Miss Oelabe tells her, and in the meantime it adds a piratical air that she seems not to mind. Maria jokes that she needs a head like an armadillo; possibly the film costume department can help her buy a big synthetic forehead she can wear upon her real head.
 	Of course, the routes will only cover the established trails such as the old railway lines. Most of the areas that are “off limits” without a guide are far from easy access, and a fur on a bicycle is somewhat conspicuous if any rebellious tourists decided to strike out on their own as soon as the Guide stopped to change a flat tyre. Apparently in previous years tourists have complained that the Native villages are very nice but too far apart to take in several given the limited time they have between hotel breakfast and luncheon; trudging miles along coral tracks on foot is admittedly a strain for some furs.
	Back via our usual shops, including that fine new delicatessen on Aloha Avenue. They have foods in there I have never heard of; of course we all enjoy the nice Scandinavian “Hakarl” fermented shark they make in Vikingstown, but I had never seen it on sale in a public shop before. I am sure Prudence is a big customer for the tinned tripe, which indeed is available in English, French and Spanish versions. Delicious!
	I was not so sure about the Kuo Han specialities such as Grass Jelly, the dried jellyfish or the “rice birds” that seem to consist of a whole nest full of newly hatched fledglings killed and deep-fried whole.  I happily eat eggs but this is taking “whole foods” a little too far. *	
	We stocked up on less controversial foods for our next trip – metal tubes of honey, condensed milk and the like that nowhere else on the island is selling, not even Eriksson’s Outdoors. I could see Molly’s ears go right up; in the cartoons one would have seen a light bulb flash on over her head. She started to muse about producing an Adventurer’s Meal that was actually edible and not something designed to stimulate one’s interest in eating seaweed and lichens off the rocks rather than having to tackle the “Iron Ration.” Spontoon is a perfect place to sell such, being the transport and resupply point for the whole North Pacific, and Adventurers do talk to each other about the pros and cons of the equipment that keeps them going, providing free advertising. I suggested she try a canned version of the classic rural “Bedfordshire Clanger”, but she just grimaced and pointed out she was not planning to enter the ship’s ballast market.
	Helen mentioned there was a military Aviator’s ration being sold as surplus a few years ago consisting of a sealed tin of biscuits with pressed dried powdered beef tablets (nuts for the non-carnivores) designed to fit in a shirt pocket. I have seen one of them myself, labelled “Armor ration.” I hope the pilots were better at navigating than spelling or they would end up out of fuel on the ground somewhere miles from nowhere and having to dine on it. But Molly wants something that furs would pay to eat and could live on for a week without being too tempted to invite the supplies officer round for dinner in the traditional Albert Island style. What they call a nice trick if you can do it.
	(Later) For a change we had a half decent rice dish at the weekend, as some of the first-years without Passes were “volunteered” for kitchen duty and told to get on with it given a shelf of ingredients to choose from. Having the customers judge the results and hand them over to Miss Blande was no doubt a good incentive for them to excel. That Persian feline Seria may not be the keenest at crawling through swamps but she is a very decent cook in her local style. The “Peas Pilau” was interesting but I would never have thought of raiding the Maconochie supply, salvaging the soggy meat chunks and grilling them separately as kebabs on bamboo skewers. Rather decent, and as for the mostly vegetable soup left over – it is a fact that almost anything can be made edible given enough curry powder.
	It is light now till well past teatime, which is most encouraging. Molly and I were on first gate guard, having filled our vacuum flasks with surplus ersatz Mulligatawny for our small hours supper and Helen and Maria’s early breakfast. It was the usual thing, checking in the returning girls against the Pass list, and hoping everyone would be back on time. Florence Farmington was the last in – I spotted her approaching and suggested Molly take a tour round the far side of the fence. Molly has been honing her M1873 Trowel Pattern bayonet most alarmingly enthusiastically, of late. Her earlier suggestion that we make Florence scrub all over tonight with a scrubbing brush and floor soap before letting her into Songmark was one of her milder ideas.
	Actually I had a few minutes to chat with Florence after signing her in and closing the gates behind her; she decidedly scented of vixen rather than her own canine scent. By her blushing account she had spent about her week’s allowance on an afternoon where she had at least no complaints about value – having perhaps incautiously asked to try everything. I hope the Ave Argentum never get to hear about this! One might think it unlikely they would deign to know any “huntresses” but I recall that missionary Mrs. Critchley who first got me into Krupmark running a mission for “fallen” girls.
	Anyway, I made sure Florence was safely back in her second-year hut before Molly returned and “accidentally” mistook her for an intruder. Molly is sometimes not the easiest fur to live with, and this year she has had a lot of shocks. Finding out about the Priestess Oharu’s hopeless love for her was bad enough, then there was her cherished revenge against Captain Granite not turning out to be at all satisfying. Getting dressed up and trained as a maid was humiliating, she says, and the Macao trip was more of a strain on her in some ways than the rest of us. Now I am helping Florence, Molly sometimes looks at me rather oddly as if wondering if our second-year is not the only one getting curious (decidedly not. I have absolutely no interest in playing golf either, but if Florence had wanted to take the sport up I would have done my best to point her in the right direction for that as well). 
	Not a relaxing evening! At least I can report that the first-years can cook up a rather fine curry soup from the most unlikely materials. This is just the sort of practical skill an Adventuress needs to know; definitely deserving a few points and gate passes.

*Editor’s note: canned Chinese “Rice Birds” were on sale in England in the mid 1980’s, and Amelia’s description is all too accurate. The Editor ate none, but the editor’s non-sentient canine proved less squeamish.

Sunday March 14th, 1937

Rather a shame to have Gate Guard on the one night of the week we would have had extra sleep, but at least Molly and I had the early shift and could relax till breakfast at eight. Breadfruit and pineapple (tinned, non-fizzy) for breakfast, then out in very fine sunlight to South Island.
	Being early onto South Island for a change, we stopped to investigate that solid grove of bamboo where the Chapel of the Sacred Heart used to stand. Someone had tried to clear a track into the bamboo, but it would be like trying to tunnel into the main face of Mount Kiribatori – more so in that even normal bamboo can grow an inch a day, and this is twice as energetic.
	Maria has become a very irregular church-goer of late; one expects Miss Devinski to have words with her about it but as long as Maria and Molly join us nothing is said. Not that either of them have shown interest in the Spontoonie religion – but our experiences on Cranium and Krupmark have somewhat demolished their old argument that there is nothing in it. Having seen the local Priestesses in action they had little choice but to accept the facts – which does not mean they have to be happy with the knowledge.
	It is rather like last week when I noticed Eva Schiller poring over some Archaeological magazines she had air-freighted over from her homeland, and she was pointing the “unknown and indecipherable” ancient script on some pottery that was found in a surprising location. Ada was with me and identified it as a form of very early Hebrew, which she cannot exactly read but recognised from school. Eva cast as dirty look at her as she could get away with to a third-year, and loudly and clearly repeated that it was “Unknown And Wholly Indecipherable.” Some knowledge can be to one’s disadvantage.
	While Molly and Maria sloped off to get about a pint apiece of coffee at the nearby Pie-Shop of the Sacred Steak and Kidney, Helen and I cleared our minds and concentrated to see what had been done. The plants are greatly helped by being rooted not only in the earth but the energy of the islands – Helen speculated that the same could be done on fruit trees and similar, in a few very well chosen places. A century ago it might have made for an effective miracle, but tourists today would just nudge each other and whisper that the priestesses must be running up quite a bill in artificial fertilisers.
	Half an hour later Molly and Maria had rejoined us full of praises for a far superior brew of coffee than anything Songmark ever provides. The proprietor is a crafty civet cat of East Indies extraction, a “luak” to be exact. Exactly how he gets such distinctive top-quality coffee beans is something that many furs have tried to find out over the years, to no avail. Molly tried to worm it out of him, offering him a lucrative deal if he can export a tonne a month – oddly enough he said he could never provide her that sort of quantity.
	At the Hoele’toemi compound Helen was delighted to find Marti home safe and sound – they immediately vanished to “pick flowers” for the luncheon table. Alas, Jirry is still at sea, and in a tramp steamer trying to avoid looking suspicious (such as being spotted heading across the sea lanes at thirty knots when most average ten on a good day) he may be out there awhile. 
	The news from Mrs. H was that one of their neighbours at Haio Beach has a daughter who is getting married tomorrow, and as many furs are busy in the week working to get Casino Island ready, the family is holding the celebration and feast today. So although we were busy cooking in the morning it was then packed up in baskets ready to take down to the village on the coast. Our “Euro” costumes were rapidly replaced by grass skirts and flower leis as we tried to look our best for the occasion. Helen and Marti turned up just as we were about to head out – they did have some flowers but not many considering how long they were gone for. Molly whispered that Helen looked rather smug and full of herself, but that is probably an understatement.
	It is only about five hundred yards down the forest trails to the beach, where in a few months loud gramophones will be playing to loud-shirted tourists queuing up to buy exotic ice-creams and demanding hot dogs. Today there was a smaller but more select crowd, everyone’s noses twitching with the scent of a fire-pit being opened that must have been roasting all night. Roast pork, a Polynesian tradition but a rare sight on a Spontoonie plate! 
	We handed over our food baskets to the bride’s mother, a very rounded and cheerful badger lady who was in charge of the festivities, and were introduced to various relatives who had come from afar. On the beach were drawn up two actual ocean-going outrigger canoes, a very traditional transport but not common any more except for the tourists. The bride-to-be and the groom were decked in their finest with fresh palm skirts, bright leis and traditional shell head-dresses; she wore a rather fine string of pearls that any European jeweller would have drooled over (and being one of the multiply equipped Polynesians of ancestral stock, she had other assets that they would drool at too.)
	I could see Helen mentally taking notes, and squeeze Marti’s paw as she looked over the wedding preparations. It seems the couple will actually be wed on Sacred Island, something that is quite rarely done now but they are both from old Spontoonie families who were amongst the first to resettle from Orpington when the “Euros” arrived. That is another reason why the feast is being held early; only the happy couple and the Priestess will be setting paw on Sacred Island, and usually the festivities and the ceremony are on the same spot. All told there must have been a hundred and twenty furs there, from as far as Dioon Island. The proprietor of the Pie-shop was there dressed appropriately; a luak in a lei at a luau. 
	Though we were only really friends of neighbours, everyone was glad to see us and thanked us for coming. I felt my ears droop though, missing Jirry. The feast was excellent, the roast pork as fine as I have ever eaten back in England from restaurants with far more lavishly equipped kitchens, and the rest of the food was certainly of wedding quality. Helen made sure to get the recipes, and I will copy her notes. She whispered that inside six months she hoped to be inviting me to just such an occasion. Six months! It is only that long since the new First-years arrived, and Beryl tricked them into singing that very memorable spoof anthem, “Althing Bright and Beautiful.”
	It was a splendid afternoon, although I felt a little guilty for not having done much Warrior Priestess training today. All too soon we had to say farewell, leaving Marti and Mrs. Hoele’toemi to enjoy the evening celebrations we returned via her house, dropping off the baskets and getting changed back into our Songmark outfits. The compound seemed rather sad with just us hurriedly bouncing through it as if it was a school locker room; it is truly people that make a place. No wonder the Songmark prospectus emphasises its achievements rather than the facilities; a critical observer would only see half a dozen second-paw wooden huts with their inhabitants crammed in four to a room. The only new furniture this year is bunk beds for the first years, which at least eases the desperate lack of floor space. There was hardly room for a skunk or a squirrel girl to turn round whilst dressing without her tail knocking things over – and both those species are represented in our current junior year. It is a good thing Molly and Maria have smallish tails.
	Back after a rather different Sunday without Saimmi or Saffina who are away busy elsewhere, but we had an excellent luau and Helen now knows better how to arrange her big day. Maria was joking that if she carries on with Marti at the current rate the wedding might have to be brought forwards. Not that Polynesians worry about such things as the bride needing an extra-large wedding dress, but in theory Helen could be thrown out of Songmark penniless and the next beach she sets paw on would be near Corpus Christi in Texas,  having been returned whence she came as our Songmark contract promises. I doubt our Tutors would actually do that, but it is not something to risk.
  	We returned to Songmark well fed and still scented of roasting meats, as Prudence and Ada hungrily noticed as they signed us in (“sniffing for contraband”). They had millet mash for the Songmark Sunday meal. Helen had a lot to say about the wedding feast, and indeed Prudence was keen to get a copy of her notes being in much the same situation with a happy day to plan this Summer. Then, Helen and Tahni have both been Tailfast more than twice to their fiancés and could marry any time they want. I keep thinking of Tahni as a fiancé rather than a fiancée; with spotted hyenas the difference is rather less than most folk would expect. If Prudence decides to have pups they will probably look as much like her mate’s as with any mixed couple – Tahni has brothers who look much like her and can pass on much the same in terms of family features. 
	(Later) Talking with Carmen and Belle as they prepared to turn in early for their three a.m. alarm call, I discover we are starting to film on Tuesday. Our Tutors have been talking with Miss Melson, and agreed some of the shots she wants of takeoffs, landings, aerobatics and such. Doing this in Hollywood hiring Union-approved stunt pilots, aircraft and ground crews would surely cost a fortune.  The Spontoon film industry is doing very nicely on providing cheap but well qualified services such as this, and cares nothing for what Hollywood thinks. Maria says the Union bosses are all communists anyway, though I doubt it.
	I expected Molly to throw a fit over the idea of working with Miss Melson, as Madeleine X already has done by report. But she just gritted her teeth and nodded, commenting that it was all going towards helping “Megan”.  So she does not join Madeleine with a shovel on the sanitation squad those days, although she insists she is well out of even accidental camera shot. I suppose it is like the standard Native belief that being photographed captures a piece of one’s soul. If true it could explain much about what Film Frolics’ gossip pages say film stars get up to!
	
Tuesday March 16th, 1937

The big day! Yesterday was spent servicing and preparing the aircraft; my little Sand Flea is cleaned, the engine tuned and has a free oil change, courtesy of Melson Productions. We have various scenes that can be stitched into three or four films. The Sea Flea taking off then the four Tiger Moths heading out in pursuit is a useful generic piece of action that hardly needs a director the class of Cecil B. de Mole to work out a plot “hook” for it. Similarly, the Sand Flea landing on a beach and the pilot running for cover into trees or sand dunes while the Tiger Moths swoop overhead – shooting a dramatic chase is harder than working up to why it happened. It is not too warm yet to wear full flight suits and helmets, so from fifty yards the camera will be hard pressed to tell us from suitably dressed actresses who will be making up the rest of the footage.
	Actually, finding a suitable piece of beach was much harder than it looked – as the tide goes in and out various otherwise suitable flat sand areas either flood or dry out too much. But I brought the Sand Flea down in front of the cameras for three three-point landings on various parts of Eastern Island beaches, the landing run mercifully shortened by its unique ability to slam the whole top wing down as an airbrake once the wheels are on the ground.
	Of course, not everything went smoothly. I could tell Molly was in a bad mood as she was practicing with those “weighted sleeves” that she got in Hong Kong, flicking them out of the sheaths at her wrist cuffs and hammering bundles of brushwood. She was the nearest in stature to Juanita, the Brazilian jaguar who is the dark heroine of the film, and Miss Devinski ordered her to lend Juanita her flying kit to film some close-ups by the parked aircraft. Molly says she would have wanted to boil wash the suit but has to wear it afterwards all day, and shuddered as if contemplating being infected by mange. We keep telling her various tastes are not contagious - as Helen pointed out, she had as much chance of her Maid’s costume giving her housemaid’s knee.
	Maria did not improve matters by coming in with a piece of paper and announcing Molly had been chosen to play the part of the heroine’s maid due to her experience with the costume – it was a joke, but the cameras should have caught Molly’s expression as her ears and tail went down in horror. Some things a fur cannot entirely fake no matter how good they are at acting. Prudence has said that the only time she has seen a fur’s tail actually go sideways on film is in those Miss Melson produces.
	We had some drama with one of the Tiger Moths as it was filmed landing on the Eastern beach where a good strip of beach was exposed. Things change very quickly as the tide changes, and after two “wave-offs” delaying it till the cameras were ready, Susan de Ruiz made a fine landing twenty minutes late. The landing was fine, but as she taxied to turn into the wind she ran into a soft patch of sand and the Tiger Moth was suddenly stuck up to its axles, with half an hour before the tide was due to turn. A case of “all paws to the pump” or at least to shovels and tow-ropes. There were a dozen of us working flat-out with lengths of timber and sheets of corrugated iron under the wheels, while the Tiger Moth was unloaded of the back seat, emergency supplies and such to leave it a hundred pounds lighter. 
	Though four furs can paw-handle it easily enough along a smooth runway, it was desperately slow going. We had moved it about twenty yards before the tide began to turn, and suddenly the wide sandbank it had landed on began to get damp again. A quick “Chinese parliament” had us agreeing that by the time we had reached the sand bar it would be too soft to take off on, so we turned the Tiger Moth’s nose towards shore and started to really race the tide. A half hour of desperate work followed, where we all wished for wider tyres or quick-conversion float kits! On an amphibian we would have just waited till the tide came in and flown straight off.
	The camera crew helped out, but there were times when only so many paws could get to work in the available space, and they shot off some fairly dramatic footage. By the end of an hour we were resting above high tide line, while their “gopher” (actually a prairie-dog) ran the quarter mile to Mahanish’s and back to return with a dozen bottles of Nootnops Red. We definitely appreciated them.
	Of course, that left us with an aircraft on the dry sand beach three hundred yards away from the end of the runway. There are no walls or fences in the way, but neither are there any roads. So it was another two hours work paw-handling the Tiger Moth across the rough ground between the sand dunes laying a “track” of timbers under the wheels on soft spots before we finally had the aircraft back on the runway perimeter track. We had had to run the engine to push it over some of the trickier spots on the way, so most of us were quite sand-blasted and caked with dust having been downwind helping to push. 
	Miss Devinski was watching us all the time, but left us to the job while she made copious notes. I suppose that is what third-years have to expect; we had studied this in theory in the first year and have hauled all sorts of things over every surface imaginable every term since then. Susan had the idea of salvaging enough empty fuel drums from the airport to lash under the wings and convert the Tiger Moth into an improvised floatplane – it could not have taken off, but neither would it have sunk. We might have managed to tow it just offshore around the tip of the island to the nearest seaplane jetty and winched it ashore on its wheels from there – which was our plan B. The empty drums exist, we have seen a pile of them at the hangar side and there would have been time to roll two apiece down to the beach before the tide reached the aircraft. Had we been in imminent danger of losing the aircraft we might have had some assistance from our Tutors and the airport staff – at the cost of great bleeding chunks of points, without a doubt.
	Having brushed ourselves down we amazed the film crew by asking what was next on their schedule. They had expected us to take the rest of the day off and have a drink to celebrate; evidently they have not worked with Songmark before. While we serviced and inspected Song 3, the other Tiger Moths and the Sea Osprey did some low-level passes, one of them dropping a paper-filled parcel onto the sand dunes. No doubt there will be a good plot reason for this to happen; Miss Melson is filming the flying sequences for perhaps two or three films right now.
	By four o’clock I think the Songmark aircraft had notched up about thirty hours of logged flying time, which will probably boil down to thirty minutes of usable film. And I recall when a small kitten thinking films were just like school plays where one got the cast together and did it, except for having cameras on! Molly says that on some film projects they have changed directors half-way and the new arrival threw out every minute of film selected by his predecessor. No wonder Hollywood prides itself on “million dollar epics”; they probably waste half of what they spend on pointing a camera at.
	(Later) Just as I thought, Miss Devinski called in the ten of us who helped salvage Song 3 and asked for a full report on it, by tomorrow breakfast time. She wants Plans B, C and D in some detail, too. Ouch!

Wednesday March 17th, 1937

A decidedly full day, starting with my handing in the report about yesterday’s salvage operations to Miss Devinski before breakfast. Plan D had been a desperate use of the oil drums as rollers under the fuselage, which would have needed us to first take the undercarriage right off (a half hour job with everyone helping but the necessary tools were carried onboard.) Sometimes our Tutors make us demonstrate our Plan C or D, to stop us coming up with schemes that have more imagination than practicality.
	Then it was the big day; along with Jasbir and Madeleine X I headed out to Casino Island and that “Pirate’s Cove” to the East of the Casino where various small boats are berthed. The main piers are busy with tour-boats in season and supply boats year-round, which makes a twenty-foot wooden sailing boat rather uncomfortable between a jetty and twenty thousand tonnes of possibly mishandled liner.
	Although it was not such an ordeal as our three days aircraft piloting exams last year, the Day Master’s Ticket is a long and hard day where some particularly old and caustic salts try to get us lost or running ourselves aground. The wind was decidedly squally, which had the boom swinging just when one least wanted it to; getting knocked unconscious, overboard or both would not have been a “pass” mark! There was a rare Northerly wind today so we went out to the South-West between South and Main Island, and tacked our way up the Westerly coast while following a strict course that the gruff pipe-smoking otter called out. The little flotilla of three ships kept in quite good formation without any collisions, even when rounding the point near the new short-wave towers where there is a nasty tangle of currents.
	The really tricky bit was getting in and out of the North-facing harbour at Chikloota, which is narrow and edged with sharp coral. Sailing in was just a matter of aiming steady, but tacking and beating out with the wind on the starboard quarter and very little room to manoeuvre – well, it certainly made me respect still more the Noenoke fisher clan whom we shared our first Easter holiday with. Native catamarans have a quite different sail arrangement, so I could use little of what I recalled from those weeks. 
	Fortunately we have the year’s updated charts, issued fresh for the tourist season to guide us through the shallows between Eastern and Main Island. The tide was almost out just as we threaded between the sand bars, watching a dredger at work on the tour-boat channel. The excavated coral sand is put to good use making sand-lime bricks; Spontoon is doing a lot of building these days but it is a small and scenic place that can hardly open up gaping rock quarries for building material. The only real quarry is that one on the North coast where the sculptor Mr. Tikitavi works on those distinctive bowl-shaped statues. I could have sworn that one of them turned to follow me when we went past.
	With a following wind we were instructed to go for a full-speed run into Casino Island. I raised and wetted every stitch of sail, pulled up the centreboard to cut the drag and soon we were foaming forwards at twelve knots. A quick tack round the Eastern side of Casino Island past the old Pier One, and ten minutes later I was dropping anchor in Pirate’s Cove again, a full minute ahead of Madeleine and three ahead of Jasbir. A very bracing trip, made all the more worthwhile by being told I had passed my Certificate and it would be in my letter-box at the weekend. That should make our Tutors happy, unlike most things I have done this year.
	An excellent day, indeed. I shared a water taxi with Susan de Ruiz on the way back to Eastern Island; she has been asked by the Althing to look over some of their fishery statistics. She was able to reassure them that the apparently strange variants in fish yields were entirely normal, and statistically fitted a “Poisson curve”.  
	There was just time to dive into the dining room before they stopped serving; it was sweet potato again but after a day of hauling ropes in the fresh air it went down very nicely. Looking back over the past weeks I realise my diary is looking rather like a recipe book – we are all working flat-out and food is something constantly in our thoughts. Sleep is another heartfelt desire but it is less variable. We only have one sort around here, to collapse on one’s bed wholly exhausted and sleep deeply till the alarm clock goes. Missy K lost a couple of points this week having been found by Miss Devinski flat out on her bed at lights-out, fully clothed and snoring loudly with her boots on (not that snoring as such is a problem, else Maria would have cost us dearly by now.)
	Molly was looking pleased; the first commercial batch of fizzy pineapple is leaving the cannery tomorrow heading to the shops, and she stands to make quite a few shells out of the cans. She dipped her ears and admitted that there might be some advantages in “going legit” after all, though her idea of respectable commerce might not suit everyone. Her family connections were somewhat involved with the gangster company Murder Incorporated ™ and she would not have balked at buying shares had anyone but Beryl been selling them. I suppose that is one company fairly resistant to hostile takeovers.
	
Thursday March 18th, 1937

Just ten days before the end of term, and twelve till we head South to Neue Suden Thule. I certainly hope Jirry will be back before then; it has been an awfully long time. Still, a trip around the Pacific on a tramp steamer is no express service and it would be unrealistic if they always had a cargo ready to load. From what we hear, a tramp steamer that can average getting in and out of port in a week is doing well, and a deceptively complex “import-export” operation might call at half a dozen ports. 
	It is more embarrassing that one might say I have seen a lot more of Lars. Well, some of him. Molly says he is working and surviving on Krupmark, where she plans to join him after she graduates. It might make Krupmark a safer place, in that the more trigger-happy denizens tend to “bump each other off” or get squashed by the rulers living on the hill, and if anyone can survive that sort of life Molly can. 
	Beryl is selling her latest investment scam, claiming someone is planning to discreetly advertise Krupmark as an exclusive holiday destination, small tours heavily guarded with permission from those up on the Hill. Presumably the bars and less reputable establishments will appreciate the custom. I am not buying any shares from Beryl, though one has to admire her pluck and persistence. There is a girl who could profitably run a refrigerator showroom on New South Thule. If she declared herself as a money-making company it might be a worthy one to invest in – I trust in her ability to generate wealth by the barrel, but not the investments she sells to others! Managing to squeeze any actual dividend out of her could be a problem. Possibly the direct squeezing method might work, with Missy K sitting on her till she pays up.
	Out today to shoot more film footage, now Miss Melson has looked over the first batch and decided what else she needs. This time the Songmark Junkers 86 was aloft, and with Missy K at the controls it jettisoned a “stick” of what were actually sour coconuts. They landed on the beach harmlessly, but with clever camera angles it looked very like they were light bombs aimed at my Sea Flea parked at the Eastern end of the runway. It is no great editing feat to splice in stock footage of explosions, coconuts not being particularly destructive in their own right. The “sour coconut pop-skull” I remember Brigit Mulvaney over-indulging in last September on Hawaii is another matter entirely.
Thinking of such, Molly was chatting with one of the crew over the somewhat controversial raid on Guernica in Spain – the camera-fur was taking the Nationalist side and saying the raid was aimed at the legitimate military target of a nearby bridge and simply missed and hit the town by accident. Molly poured scorn on that, having read that the bombs used were light-case fragmentation and incendiaries, absolutely useless for smashing up masonry and reinforced concrete bridges (whenever folk come in with new horror tales of air raids, Molly immediately wants to know what ordnance was used, how the fuses were set and if the bombardier laid down a good pattern on the target. Compassion is not her strong suit.) She concedes that from what Maria has admitted, the Italian air force is full of furs who joined for the glamour and the uniform rather than any actual ability to hit a target.
When we got back from lunch, I had an unexpected local letter in my post box. I had asked Pring the Siamese cook from Bow Thai about getting “deportment” lessons appropriate to my other face as Kim-Anh. It seems she has spoken with this Malou, a fur I have not met, who is willing to give me lessons for what sounds like a quite modest sum. I shall certainly write back and try to arrange a time – as if we had time to spare these days.
	There was no time to write till evening – we scattered to our various classes, Molly happily leaping on the water-taxi to Moon Island for her field engineering courses. She says that although being able to build bridges and suchlike structures is handy, demolishing them is far more fun. She has been demonstrating a silver-grey “fire starting gel” which she has got from somewhere – I have seen her start a camp fire with it, and about a tablespoon full is all it needs. Whatever is in it, the flame is incandescently white and burns as hot as thermite, but a spark will ignite it! Definitely not something one wants to have any accidents with. We have been trained to have a healthy respect for thermite, which is usually ignited with a strip of magnesium ribbon.
	There was good news from the Allworthy yards today; that strange precision component Mr. Sapohatan wanted, has gone into production. It is some sort of structural member, made out of a high-strength alloy that few companies in the world can handle (they are sub-contracting most of the heavy forging to Brown Bailey’s in Sheffield) and has to be made to exact tolerances including weight. They have been paid, and I can relax for a little till next time I need to find the yard more work. The expanded dry-dock is well under way at the shipyard, too. Whatever orders the shipyard wins after I pass over the title to its proper owner, at least I will have left the place more capable than I found it.
	
Friday March 19th, 1937

Another day flying for the cameras! This is the last one, and indeed it has been useful experience working on schedule and “on cue” to a commercial company. I flew our Junkers 86 for half an hour, making several passes of the main runway. Not something we will be allowed to do when the schedules get more crowded in a couple of months. I am sure Pan-Nimitz would object to being kept circling with two dozen tourists onboard and ready to riot while the camera crews debate over whether they got the lighting just right or need another “take.”
 	 Well, now we have worked for the Barx Brothers and for Miss Melson – any of us can put that on their resume in a few months time. Though I would try to be vague about Miss Melson to most prospective employers; one never knows how they would take that. As Helen says, what goes down well in Papeete might not in Peoria. 
	The afternoon was spent servicing the aircraft and putting them away in the hangars. It was very good to fly my little Sand Flea, which has now gained some fame in the films, or will when they are released. If only it had twice the range it would be so useful in these islands, being able to use cheap boat petrol and land on the beach without sinking like the Tiger Moth did. But the engine is barely powerful to lift the fully fuelled aircraft off the ground from a rough strip, and the paved Eastern Island runway is the only one of its kind this side of Hawaii. I have sketched additional fuel tanks in the structure, but unless I add air to air refuelling like the Soviets have, it will not get off the ground.
	Thinking of such, it is two years since we saw those strange fighter versions in the lava tube caves of Main Island. I wonder what happened to them. We used to see them far out to sea practicing; possibly they moved out to less accessible island bases after we inadvertently blew their cover and Soppy Forsythe got away to tell about it. I have not asked Mr. Sapohatan, and doubt there is much point in doing so. As to what that lava tube base is used for now – I would guess that it is a tangle of traps for anyone trying to follow up on Soppy Forsythe’s reports.  Definitely I will not be swimming in through that tunnel to find out. It is a great shame that we did find the place – I doubt there is anywhere as good on Spontoon, and even if so, folk will be looking for them. That is probably what happened to all the “cultural attaches” from Vostok and such places who get washed ashore having supposedly gone fishing.
	On return to Songmark I found the local post service efficient as ever, with a reply back from Malou who agrees to teach me various style hints and tips. I wondered whether I should go there in my Kim-Anh fur pattern, but decided against it. If I really did look like that I would presumably have no need for such tuition. Besides, walking out of Songmark as Kim-Anh might be noticed by the wrong people; as far as I know only my dorm know who she is. Life is getting complicated – it is not generally known that I am Lady Allworthy, and indeed only my dorm and Lars on the Macao trip knew it. I certainly hope so; it would be awfully embarrassing if Mr. M’wede turned up at the Songmark gates with a bunch of flowers.
	Busy indeed with our coursework all evening, revising what I could call Useful Geography. That is, if my Adventures take me to (say) South America next year we are expected to know what towns have ports and transport, where can one expect to find aircraft servicing facilities and so on. As our Tutors have repeatedly told us, the only guide book one can rely on having when wanted, is the one already memorised.  Possibly we can add to the book when we get back from New South Thule; according to the brochures there are at least facilities for sledge hire and ski repair. Some of the previous year’s graduates send in postcards of where they have been and what to find there; there is a sort of condensed “telegraphese” language which can fit onto a square inch of postcard and tell the basics. So when we tour  Europe this Summer, we can help Saffina and the rest still in Songmark with our updated reports. “Barrow-in-Furryness: good dry dock facilities and marine spares at reasonable rates; see proprietor for details. Discounts available for Songmark graduates.” Something like that, anyway. 
	
Saturday March 20th, 1937

Last Saturday of term! And a decidedly eventful one it was. Getting up for breakfast at half past seven was a luxury we appreciated and made the most of, and indeed these days we can wake up just on the final tick before the alarm goes. Sleep is a strange thing; the only pleasure one never really notices when doing it. But it is such a treat to actually get one’s head on the pillow, it is surprising our Tutors bother to enforce a lights-out time. Hardly anyone in the third-year is up to see it. But I suppose that dome folk would be tempted to revise or work far into the night, just hoping they could make it through the next enormously strenuous day somehow. 
	Off to Casino Island, noting the Lufthansa Dornier X Model D coming in to touch down on the main water path. That should be an interesting experience, flying down to Neue Suden Thule in one. Only the biggest aircraft are economic on such a long run – and when flying in the Antarctic the more engines one has the better, for safety reasons. I read that the original models are still flying down there – on most routes they had problems with the rear-facing engines overheating, but not on that run. 
	The dance classes were packed with entertainers picking up new moves and honing their skills for Easter and afterwards. Though no big tour-boats tend to arrive until May, independent travellers are already starting to show up in increasing numbers and the Althing wants them entertained. Spontoon “off-season” is getting a more popular destination now that aircraft are bigger and more reliable; Pan-Nimitz and the other airlines bring the early birds rather than the shipping lines. Though the weather in April here is unreliable, there are some very fine days and it is a huge improvement over places like Rain Island.
	Thinking of “entertainers” I heard Molly give a snort of disgust and she pointed out to where Florence Farmington was walking by talking with a decidedly statuesque vixen – and I recalled she had been scented by vixen musk last week. Actually scent-marked. It was a good thing our Tutors did not scent her (although they DID give her a Pass, and presumably know what to expect. Florence can have a Pass to Casino Island and as to what she does there, if our Tutors disapprove I am sure they will tell her.) I resolved not to ask Florence about it – there are some things one is better off not knowing. Though not in the same way as that Mad Scientist shrew in the first year, who actually takes a monthly journal “Transactions of the Standing Committee on what furkind is meant to know.” It is one of the things I glance at in the Post room. Presumably Cranium Island sends in experimental reports that get turned down more often than not. 
	I had a surprising “date” myself after dance classes finished, but not quite the same as Florence. Leaving the rest to enjoy a long lunch at the Missing Coconut, I headed to the address given by Pring, which turned out to be a small house on the Eastern side of the island near Ferry Square Market. 
	Malou (I do not know her other name) turned out to be a full Siamese feline, not far off my age and maybe an inch or so shorter. She was dressed in a most respectable Chinese robe, and having checked through the door and read my letter from Pring, she let me in.
	It took some time to explain exactly what I wanted. Possibly it is an unusual request, as although furs from all round the world go to Finishing Schools to behave like a polished Euro lady, very few want the opposite. We can spot tourists in Spontoonie costume, even costumes put on them by Spontoonies, as they simply do not move, stand or behave the same, even if they keep their snouts shut. What I wanted was to avoid the same sort of thing for Kim-Anh, so any casual observer will not immediately spot I am as authentically Oriental as Chop Suey. I know I am hardly likely to fool any professional Agent or observer, but that is not the idea anyway. Kim-Anh is half Siamese with one English parent, which can excuse quite a bit.
	Malou agreed, asking me the very reasonable rate of a shell per week – the week to be Saturday afternoons and whatever evenings I am free (jolly few, I should think. Good value for Malou, then.)  She is a married woman with a new kitten to look after, and seems eminently respectable. 
	I had brought with me that silken cheongsam dress that I was given at the Allworthy house on Krupmark Island (the only “souvenir” from that trip I was happy to retain) but Malou waved it aside saying I was to learn what would work whether I was in a boiler suit or bare fur. Costumes, perfumes and such are the first thing that people look to for disguises, so I should not rely on them.
	Although every culture has people who study what their friends and neighbours do, not many actually understand it enough to teach it. I remember what my school chum Mabel told me about her finishing school in Switzerland; she spent a year learning to act and move with grace, poise and style. That was on top of what she had learned at Saint Winifred’s, where like all schools we had elocution classes from the first week onwards and the dear teachers were always models of deportment (except possibly Miss Lemmon the extremely rugged Gym teacher, but that is quite another story. We would have been slaughtered going up against the Australian Rules Hockey penal squads of Saint T’s or St. Herod’s Reformatory without her uncompromising leadership.)  Happily I will not need most of the social training, and indeed as I speak hardly a word of Chinese or Thai it would be quite impossible. My Spontoonie still has a definite accent, and I have been nearly three years speaking it.
	After learning Spontoonie dance for three years one gets to know how things look to an observer. That is, I have learned to concentrate on every move and step as they all have a meaning especially in Satirical Hula. Learning one body language makes it easier to learn another, even a markedly different one. Though not as strenuous as the morning’s dance lesson, it takes hard concentration and I was very glad when at four o’clock Malou suggested a break for tea. That was educational in its own right; I watched exactly how she did it, and did my best to memorise the style rather than the exact moves. 
	As I appreciated the tea (Oolong in a handle-less cup served without milk or sugar; very strange) I put my other training into practice. Saimmi has taught us how to expand our senses to read a fur’s spirit – it is not exactly like that first-year mole’s natural lie-detection talent, but not far off. One sees the most disturbing things looking at Beryl with it. I asked Malou about herself, and was quite relieved at the clear answers. She is from Dalian in China, but has been in Macao – and was rescued in China from the Japanese by her husband, a stallion. I had not noticed any equine traits in her kitten, but with a mixed breed it is anyone’s guess how a kitten will turn out. Our feline ex-Tutor Mrs. Voboele (nee Pelton) has an equine husband and her kitten is more of a foal, albeit with claws that might surprise folk someday.
	It is a good thing I did not mention the Japanese, as I was about to watching the tea ceremony! The Chinese say they had everything first, anyway. I think it is quite a romantic story, though I only know the bones of it – rescued from an occupying army by her one true love, and now happily safe with their kitten. I did not ask any details, but with my spirit sight I had no doubt she was telling the truth.
	Another two hours of instruction followed, and I was quite pleased to hear Malou telling me I was learning well. Any instruction is better than none, and I have all next term to learn, in whatever free time if any a third-year Songmark girl gets. Malou said her husband would soon be home, so I gratefully paid the agreed Shell and took my leave. 
	Time definitely flies when one is concentrating hard. It was half past six and supper would be over by the time I got back to Songmark. Still, that would be no great loss considering the usual weekend meals. Instead there is a rather decent restaurant on Ferry Market Square that mostly serves the nautical types and has prices more geared to an able seaman rather than a none-too-able Tour-boat tourist. Popatohi with taro leaves and manioc is a jolly good nutritious meal, and cheap enough as everything is Spontoon grown. Anyone ordering steak will be paying as much for transport as raw ingredients; though we did dine on roast meat last weekend that was at a wedding feast and not on the everyday “native” menu.
	I noticed there were posters for Molly’s “Fizzy Pineapple” already up; apparently there are hundred-gallon vats of fermenting pineapple bubbling away on Main Island and the cannery has been giving some free samples away to various hotels and the like. If the product sells well she expects Hawaii to copy it in a year or two, but hopefully will have made enough of a killing on the deal to satisfy her backers – and Molly says that her backers at the Temple of Continual Reward can do interesting things with tax losses. Everyone hears of Criminal Lawyers but nobody exactly advertises as a Criminal Accountant.
	Back to Songmark, well-fed and quite pleased with my day. I found Helen, Molly and Maria looking through a selection of rather bulkier costume than my cheongsam; the Antarctic issue kit had arrived and soon we were testing its fit. Not for long though; Spring in Spontoon is rather warm this year and encased in windproof quilted garments one is soon panting in the heat. This should not be a problem in Neue Suden Thule.
	Molly was looking through the catalogues that came with the equipment, with technical specifications and endorsements from various sporting champions. The goggles are recommended by Hans Wuffner the bobsled winner of the Berlin Winter Olympics, who is described as a “bobsled Ace”. Molly was wondering out loud if that meant he had shot down five enemy bobsleds to become an Ace in the usual way, and how he got around what she thinks of as the unfair and restrictive sporting rules against that sort of thing.

Sunday March 21st, 1937

A busy day indeed, and not quite what we expected. We certainly got our ration of sleep, waking up right on the alarm and down for breakfast; happily it was the rare but always popular Kedgeree, made from all local ingredients including the rice from Main Island. Smoked fish, peas, onions and turmeric-hued rice make a most excellent start to the day.
	As it turned out we needed it. The trip to South Island with Saffina was uneventful, but at the Hoele’toemi compound we saw two guests who we had never seen there before at the same time – Saimmi and Mr. Sapohatan. Saimmi as Great Mother is in charge of one side of Spontoon’s defences, and Mr. Sapohatan does the same in other aspects, so it is no real surprise they seem to know each other well.
	Saimmi had a lot of things to say about our trip South next week; she wanted to know us what Eva Schiller had been asking about our training and such. As we owe our trip to Eva and her uncle, we had needed to tell her something – but not that we were trained as Warrior Priestesses. If Eva asks other Spontoonies they are not likely to mention the existence of such, as we are the first these islands have trained in many centuries.
	Molly and Maria did not have their usual leisurely morning hoeing the Taro patch or helping with hut repairs; Mr. Sapohatan took them off for a discussion while we trained hard in our rituals. I asked if the Priestess Oharu would be coming, but apparently not – we will have to handle this on our own. It seems that Priestess Oharu has been forbidden to meet with any Songmark girls till we graduate, something I am sure Molly will shed no tears over. Whatever is in the Antarctic is not liable to be an immediate threat to Spontoon, unlike the Fragments on Cranium and Krupmark Islands.
	Saimmi certainly tested us hard, as hard as she had before our Krupmark Island trip at the Solstice! There might not be a Fragment as such down there, but there must be something or Professor Schiller would not spend time down there. He is an archaeologist, not a geologist or a glaciologist. According to the books we have read, there should be nothing in Antarctica for an archaeologist to study. Exactly what is down there should be interesting – though Saimmi stressed the need for caution. After all, she would rather we returned with a pawfull of evidence and alive and sane to tell her, rather than going for the whole thing and “fail to return.” We reassured her that we will be careful; the Antarctic is dangerous enough without antagonising one’s hosts or what they have dug up.
	Although Saffina is not going, she was tested as hard as we were – Saimmi has to be sure there is at least one Warrior Priestess at paw while we are gone. So it was four definitely tired felines who returned to the Hoele’toemi compound for luncheon. I was glad to see Molly and Maria helping out with the meal; Mr. Sapohatan is an honoured guest and took precedence over everyone but Saimmi.
	Actually, it is a wonder that Mrs. H holds up as well as she does. Most Spontoon ladies with five children expect to have the hut ankle-deep in grand-children by now, and though Moeli has one (and another due soon) it is not the sort one expects to see this far inland. True, Jonni is engaged and Marti Tailfast – but Saimmi has left the family to serve all Spontoon, and if it was not for me I expect Jirry would be married or at least Tailfast to a local girl who would probably not keep vanishing into danger all the time. Her husband is out in the “import-export trade” with Jirry right now and that is always a risky business.
	An excellent lunch of clay-roasted fish, cassava and taro leaf was cut short by Mr. Sapohatan apologising for dragging the rest of us off for briefing. At least he waited till we had finished dessert. We went off to the shrine at the edge of the three-yard jungle as he congratulated us again on our Macao trip and asked if we could do much the same further South. 
	I did point out that we would be going to the sporting complex, and that Antarctica is not Vostok where one can live off the land or find sympathetic Native settlements. There will be no question of us “getting lost” to look for interesting sites off the tourist trail; anyone getting lost down there tends not to be found.  He quite agreed, noting that he does not expect us to come back with the long-term plans neatly wrapped up in ribbon. The Direwolf was a potential threat as it could reach Spontoon, but there does not seem to be anything threatening in a “Health through happiness” sporting centre. If there is an air base producing twin Dornier X assault landing flying boats destined to conquer the Pacific, it will be miles away across the ice and we are not too likely to get near it.
	So: our briefing is basically to go and look, and if the German sporting complex is secretly training divisions of surfboard-riding Marines to invade the beaches of the Albanian South Indies, that is the sort of thing Mr. Sapohatan needs to know. 
	Back after an excellent meal, spotting Prudence and co with their swimming team dining at that small café behind the Topotabo Hotel. I noticed Miss Melson, the Brazilian jaguar starlet Juanita and some of the film crew there as well – certainly there is a lot to film in these islands without paying too much. I suppose that as a skilled chef can put together a tasty dish with whatever ingredients come to paw, Miss Melson is collating a film or two with a “Jungle Girl”, a swimming team, our aircraft footage and assembling a plot that can use them all. We were invited to join them, but I had to decline – Helen and Molly are never happy in such company, to put it mildly. I have dined and swam with them on several occasions, and any girl is totally safe with them.
	Molly has somewhat mixed feelings about the trip South. On the one paw, unlike Cranium or Krupmark Island, she will not be going armed. This is always depressing for her – though perhaps the “weighted sleeves” might make it through Customs if she can think of an alternative explanation as to what they are. On the other paw, she is not wearing the maid uniform any more – and by all accounts the Reich have about the same opinion of Prudence and her tastes as Molly has. Definitely I know one dorm who will not be following us South! With Ada Cronstein of course there is another problem; apart from not being a Bolshevik, with her ancestry she just about ticks all their “undesirables” boxes. Her and Liberty Morgenstern certainly do between them – Liberty being a Bolshevik and a mixed breed too. 
	
Monday March 22nd, 1937

Last week of term! At last we have caught up on our flying schedule after Macao; I took up the Junkers 86 for two hours open-ocean flying with Jasbir’s dorm acting as crew. Jasbir is a superb navigator; she explains that in Utterly Pradesh one has to be. The terrain is either intensive rice fields or untouched jungle, with few places to land in emergency except for “pukka” well-made roads which might not appreciate an aircraft dropping in on the traffic.
	On open-water crossings there is time to relax somewhat between waypoints; just keep the aircraft well trimmed and the engine revs steady, and concentrate on holding a course (easy enough using Radio LONO with the big directional aerial the Junkers carries. There was little traffic on the sea or in the air, and indeed the Pacific looks decidedly lonely out of sight of land. At twelve thousand feet we were above the lowest layer of clouds, and felt rather isolated with neither sea or sun in sight.
	Jasbir is full of news from home; it seems folk are going ahead full-speed with the plans to “Ennoble” the Indian Government. I would guess that London thought the scheme through and worked out all the details before releasing the idea. Five locally born Dukes are being created, along with a dozen Margraves (a rank that never has existed in Britain, being entirely Continental) and scores of lesser nobility. The ruling Maharajahs of Native States are extremely pleased with the idea; the last thing they wanted was elections everywhere. 
	Still, some folk will not be happy with it. I was reminded of that oil painting I saw in the saloon of Mr. M’wede’s yacht. There is a classical Victorian painting one sees prints of in schools and churches allegorical of defeating the Indian Mutiny with Britannia slaying a four-legged Bengal Tiger over the bodies of a mother and cub it had savaged. The parody on the yacht was subtly done in exactly the same style with similar figures – though the scene was different and not one a Victorian would put on the wall. Few furs would. One hopes allegorical house-cats and such tigers are not interfertile. Anyone who would commission such a picture is decidedly not going to approve a measure that looks likely to defuse tensions in the Empire for decades to come.
	The last leg of the navigational exercise brought us in over Albert Island, where we had a grand view through a break in the clouds. I could see the central jungles very well, and the bright green swamp that we explored to our cost. One hopes the Natives keep that area Taboo permanently; though I hardly take seriously Beryl’s plan for establishing an Institute for Topical Diseases (not a misspelling of “Tropical”, but focussing on fashionable ones) one could well imagine perhaps Vostok or Ioseph Starling sending in teams to bring the local plagues home for breeding and later release on their enemies. They have the idea already; the month we left Vostok the Government were claiming the Bolsheviks were infecting their water supply with germs spread by saboteurs (typhoid) and dropped from aircraft (Para-typhoid).
	Another ten minutes at cruising speed and Mount Kiribatori was clearly in sight, a great streamer of cloud hanging downwind off its summit. Definitely Spontoon weather is the child of its hills; Orpington is just as big in terms of land area but with only a low plateau it does not “breed” rain clouds and is a lot dryer. Those little islands in the Albanian South Indies that I helped colonise last Summer are even worse off; I hope the Johnsons prosper well but would not bet money on it. Anywhere the Polynesians never colonised was probably left empty for a good reason.
	Back to Spontoon, managing to pull off the smoothest landing in the Junkers so far. Sophie D’Artagnan and Li Han have been examining the mysterious fitments it was installed with between the Japanese factory license-building it and Songmark acquiring it. There was a heavy release loop like a bomb shackle, an electrical cable and a fuel line. Something was carried underneath and dropped or jettisoned; a bomb would not have needed the fuel line and a fuel tank would not have needed the electrical connector.  Very odd.
	Of all our dorms, I think mine and Prudence’s are the only ones to have “gone Native” in that we are not planning on returning to our homelands immediately. Not permanently, anyway. Jasbir’s is rather in the middle ground, followed by Missy K and Madeleine’s dorm (who I think the Spontoonies would just about trust with a burned-out match. In the middle of a tropical downpour.) 
 	The second-years were awaiting us with the toolkit and fuel bowser ready, and the first-years with brooms and other cleaning supplies. I took the chance for a chat with Eva Schiller, the first occasion since yesterday. I know she has strenuously denied being in some Thule Society or other, but since nobody claimed she was in the first place, that rings a little hollow. As we are going to New South Thule, I asked her where the original was.
	Well! It was quite a story that I heard; although folk accuse Eva’s people of lacking a sense of humour one can hardly say they are short of imagination. Eva says that nobody has yet proved where Thule was, but a better question is to ask what it was. According to her, in the most ancient of times, there were no sentient furs at all (something that fossils do seem to confirm.) At some place on a high, cold plateau or mountain pass, something happened – rather like the Garden of Eden but resolutely without a God in her version. The species that came out of Thule are the “true” ones in her philosophies; others are some way further down the list and she hinted they probably gained their intelligence and shape by accident, or some sort of awful error.
Eva added that for decades Germans have been wandering the world searching for evidence of Thule; she quite discounts all the fossils in Africa since in cold, icy climes mountains are being eroded right now and there is little chance of anything getting fossilised except under the ice. I can see some kind of logic, in that if no fossils are being made in the genuine area nobody should worry about not finding them. Her Uncle’s Department has made startling discoveries on the Tibetan Plateaux but the Berlin jury is still out; many favour Greenland as their favoured candidate. 
	I had heard myself that the first thinking furs were wandering around the savannah or out of the jungle; certainly there are some very old fossils to point that way. But she quite pooh-poohed that idea, pointing out that plain common-sense suggests furs in hot climates have less need for fire, clothing or built shelter, so are hardly likely to be first in the queue to develop anything. She is an Arctic Fox herself, and may not be wholly unbiased. I know some classical philosophies were based on logical deductions rather than tiresome gathering evidence of facts, but that is why they were classical and not modern ones. Eva has some jolly odd beliefs considering she keeps campaigning for “common-sense” ideas; she has turned up her nose at anything Albert Beerstein has come up with about the nature of things, and yet the idea of ice moons habitually crashing seems not to bother her. So long as it is invented by the right people with proper pedigrees, she seems happy enough to believe anything. I must see if Beryl wants to sell her the Sword of Siegfried, and think of a good reason it looks so like a Spontoonie machete.
	I refrained from asking if Thule might have been knocked completely off the map by a falling moon; according to Professor Schiller, the orthodoxy over in Germany these days is the “World Ice Theory” which tells of the moon being made of ice, and that a succession of former Moons have crashed on Earth. We are trying to keep on Eva’s good side, at least till we get back from Antarctica. That is a place where a fur could certainly have an “accident” and never be found – and most people would not be at all surprised if a Songmark girl wandered away from a tour party.

Wednesday 24th March, 1937

It is getting warm in Spontoon; the temperature was in the high seventies as we joined the first-years for a brisk run across Main Island. There was some work going on in the villages under Mount Kiribatori; after the success of the big composting power station over by Vikingstown, the village elders have decided they want one as well. Professor Kurt von Mecklenburg und Soweiter will be pleased. 
	Molly is not so pleased; this part of the island has Spontoon’s sugar cane fields, and after harvest every year the dried fields were put to the torch in a wall of fire hundreds of yards across. A spectacular sight for the newsreels, and one to warm Molly’s heart – but rather wasteful now there is a better use for all that “Bio-humic material” as Professor Kurt calls it. Keeping the fires in check was always a problem, and over the years more than one longhouse has caught light from sparks carried surprising distances on the wind.
	Still, it should be quite a benefit to the local economy as well as benefiting the fields. Part of the project involves restoring an old water-mill that will be used for grinding the tough crop wastes down before the digester gets to work – and the digester (the size of a single-decker bus, on the blueprints) will be turned by the same mill. Miss Cardroy had us all sit down with our notebooks and slide-rules to work out the gear ratio they will need to turn it once an hour with the available power. Certainly our Tutors never miss a chance to get us some practical experience!
	Looking up at the Southern slopes of Mount Kiribatori, I rather wondered how the Priestess Oharu was getting on – of course, with her skills she could be standing in the forest watching us and none of us would spot her. We could use help in Neue Suden Thule if things down there are as Saimmi suspects, but apart from the difficulty with Molly, Priestess Oharu is perhaps not the one to send on that trip. I have heard from Saimmi the story of that boxed German sniper rifle that Molly received with delight (till she discovered who sent it) and Priestess Oharu has had a run-in with some Germans before. That was on Hawaii, not Antarctica, but she may be somewhat leery of them since then.
	Still, as with our Vostok trip we are being invited over as honoured guests and if we behave ourselves and do not irritate the locals we should be back with plenty of tourist snaps promoting “Health Through Happiness” as the organisation calls itself. Anything we find out for Saimmi or Mr. Sapohatan will be a bonus.

Thursday 25th March, 1937

A rather nautical day today, starting with my heading down to Pirate’s Cove along with Madeleine and Jasbir, our freshly minted Day Master’s Tickets carefully packed. Our Tutors asked us to register for work, even though none of us are staying on Spontoon this Easter. It is quite like the aircrew Union Hall that I am also registered with – though I hope any sailing job turns out better than my first commercial flying one that introduced me to the Allworthies. Definitely I am not going to take on any crossings to Krupmark, no matter what money they offer. The “Essential humanitarian supplies” listed in the ship’s cargo manifest would turn out to be munitions or opium, no doubt.
	Although nobody is going to trust us to ferry their J-class racing yacht to meet them in Hawaii, we can apply for crew jobs and be trusted to take the rudder or navigate through less hazardous waters. Sadly, with the coral reefs and currents around the Nimitz Sea, that rather cuts down the possibilities. There are hazards all over.
	For the new season a lot of Spontoonies are getting ready to handle tourists and their various needs. The fast rescue craft made from a crashed flying-boat was going through its paces; though it has cropped wings and cannot leave the water, at top speed it barely draws a foot, very useful at low tide when some tourist sailor has misread the charts again and is stuck on the sandbanks to the North of Eastern Island. Our first-years were all over it, some of them getting very friendly with the (rather handsome) Spontoonie brothers who own it and might be persuaded to take them out on high-speed trips. Helen muttered “A ride for a ride”, whatever that means. Our Tutors would never approve of us taking passengers up in the Tiger Moths, even if they are Spontoonies.
	It is hard to believe looking across the empty central waters that in three months time there will be tour-boats docked at every pier, with their tourist passengers peering at every dock. There will be hot-dog stalls, fish and chip vans, and enough ice-cream and iced drinks on sale to lower the average beach temperature a degree or so. It is quite peaceful still, and the only tourists tend to be independent-minded travellers who would rather sample the local cuisine than insist on egg and chips. Rather than the blindingly colourful shirts the Hawaiians sell as a subtle revenge to the tour-boat denizens, many of the Euros passing through at this time of year wear severely practical Jaeger or loden-cloth costumes not unlike our own. Then, they are more likely to be prospectors or anthropomorphologists than sunbathers or Casino card-sharks.
	It is a fact that our Tutors keep learning new tricks. Evidently inspired by our adventures getting the Tiger Moth unstuck from the sandbank, we spent the morning on one of the long sand-spits near Vikingstown. Our Tutors had borrowed us a motor bicycle, one of those heavy despatch-riders machines, and one of those Vostok-built lorries the Ministry of Works uses for road maintenance and such.  Our mission – to drive them out onto the mudflats till they stuck, them rescue them.
	We have certainly been soaked to the skin under the fur in more unpleasant mud than the fine beach spot, but after two hours it was a shambling crowd of earth-hued shapes that staggered up the beach quite unrecognisable as a Songmark party. If Miss Melson was doing any science-fiction films, “Invasion of the Mud Maids” would be a suitable title for something involving footage of us. The motor bicycle and lorry were carefully hosed down and checked over, before we could do more than scrape the worst of the beach off us. Ada Cronstein noted that the beaches are cleaner this year since Professor Kurt started to make “bio-humic material” of all kinds valuable. On Casino Island his great rival might manage to do something about Pebble Beach (where tourists avoid beachcombing) but the Ministry of Works will have to re-route all the hotel and residential drains to a greatly enlarged methane digester. Not something to do in the middle of a tourist season.
	A trip back via Meeting Island and the public baths there, hurrah! There is a definitely powerful shower in the outer part, useful for anyone who has worked a full shift at the fish canning factory in Summer. It was definitely in demand today – first on us fully clothed, then in the fur. There was enough mud washed off to fill a few window-boxes or provide an indoor sand beach for the big public baths had the owners wanted such.
	I must say, it was a treat to soak in deep, hot water even without thinking where will be this time next week. Whatever strange discoveries we make down South, I will be surprised if luxurious heated swimming pools are included on the list. Molly lets only me, Helen or Maria scrub her back, or indeed get particularly close. She was less edgy in the first year, despite us getting quite used to shared showers and such since then. 
	New for this season there is an open-air section of the baths opened up, facing South and very nice to dry one’s fur off in the sunshine. One thing Spontoon does not have is a “Lido” but with such beaches perhaps the Althing doubt there would be enough demand. It was sheer luxury to have half an hour in the sun relaxing, and chatting with the Spontoonies getting ready to don far more clothing to run the Hotels and such.
	Susan de Ruiz and Sophie D’Artagnan were talking with a very nice young equine gentleman we have seen at the dance club from the S.I.T.H.S. team – from what I overheard he will be wearing a bell-hop uniform from next month at the Marleybone, and spend his days hauling suitcases around. Sophie speculated that he will be getting a lot of extra “duties” and some very appreciative tips from lady tourists. According to various pulp magazines, hotels have a fair percentage of  wealthy businesswomen on trips far from home, holidaying widows and the occasional highly disappointed honeymooning bride who have the same general idea of “room service” that we found in Macao.
	The young gent’s ears blushed somewhat and he admitted that some of the Euro guests were rather over-friendly. Thinking about what a lot of the tourists actually look like (rather than the svelte minkess on the pulp cover I saw last week), one can sympathise. Being able to drop the guest’s baggage and scoot before they lock the door in front of one and put up the “Do Not Disturb” sign may be the more usual test of athletic prowess.
	Although we had dried our fur tolerably well, our clothes were still damp and it was a tousled bunch of us who arrived back at Songmark for teatime. Decidedly a hungry bunch as well – happily it was a rather punchy fish curry that may well have been Pastefish but nobody complained. Just as one could probably fly a bedstead or a barn door with enough engine power (so Eva Schiller says, but she has ten years gliding experience and often says that when you know gliding, you know flight) with enough spicing anything chemically digestible will go down well enough. We have tried curried lugworm on our Survival trips, and at least one can say it is a huge improvement to eating it without.
	
Friday 26th March, 1937

Last day of term, hurrah! And this is the start of our final holiday – next time we finish a term at Songmark we will not be coming back. It looks as if it will be our usual (lack of) holiday with very little rest and relaxation involved. Of course, despite that our Tutors never let up for a minute, as if trying to cram in enough work to make up for the “wasted time” till next term starts. Back at Saint Winifred’s we often got a half-holiday with walks, Nature class and suchlike – Prudence reports much the same. Her old school was a respectable country public school, All Saint’s Preparatory * in the Pennine hills above her family’s wool spinning and cotton twirling factories.
	After a morning’s flying we were back over to Main Island for the term’s final lesson on two wheels. Molly managed to stay on without a crash, for a change. She grumbles that bicycles have left more bruises on her than any of our self-defence classes, and it is galling that she cannot strike back the same way. Maria did point out that by mastering her cycle she is bending it to her will (hopefully it will not get too bent in the process.)
	I managed to stay on the big despatch-rider’s machine for an hour, the one that Maria definitely prefers. She has ridden similar ones back in Italy she says – and in five months time may be doing so again. It is a machine to take care of; crashing off the road and having it roll over you would decidedly hurt. 
	So – by now we have really managed to drive or pilot just about anything with wheels, wings or a hull. And I could make a good stab at piloting a Vostok “Balalaika” given a translated pilot’s manual or a friendly and bilingual local to guide my paw away from the self-destruct switch (which Balalaikas actually have, linked to a thermite charge somewhere in the magnesium hull.) Madeleine X has even taken a ride in that strange mono-wheel that is still swaying and occasionally “hamstering” around Casino Island, its French owner claiming it is the shape of the future. Helen’s comment is that is the future and always will be.
	A final hour’s cleaning and servicing the bikes for their owners and we were back on Eastern Island, checking our watches and scarcely believing that term was actually over! One or two of us will be on aircraft leaving tonight – there is only one commercial flight at nine heading to Hawaii and Points East, but a Songmark third-year tends to have a lot of friends and contacts in aeronautical circles.
	One last meal and the party began to break up; Beryl was first out of the door heading over to Casino Island – Prudence’s dorm were about five minutes behind, as they have a party tonight and expect to be back at Songmark breakfast time to pick up their clothes and such for the holiday. By seven, most folk who are staying elsewhere on Spontoon for the holidays was either gone or busy packing. I think more than half of us will be gone by tonight – Adele is officially heading over to Orpington but I fear she is planning to go to Krupmark. We hope she will not need rescuing.
	As we were staying overnight, someone had to go on gate guard. This is outside the regular term-time roster so Miss Devinski had each pair of us remaining overnight draw straws. Bad luck to Helen and Maria, plus Jasbir and Li Han! At least Helen and Maria got the early shift, and do not have to be up tomorrow early. In fact they could stay abed till noon if they wanted to – a first for us at Songmark, apart from the day we returned from the Aleutians. This time we are not seeing treble with fatigue and holding each other up for support either.
	Molly did suggest we head over to Mahanish’s and see how much Nootnops Blue they have in stock. The idea was tempting, but I thought of Helen and Maria tramping around the fence line in their official holiday time, and thought it hardly fair. We decided on a leisurely evening instead – a rare experience to have a bath without someone else banging on the door demanding how long we were going to be. We are due at the Hoele’toemi household tomorrow night, but it has to be said that longhouses are rather short on plumbing.
	
•	Editor’s note: research has proved the full title was “All Saints except Saint John of Neppomuk or any of those dodgy Cornish Dark Ages “Saints” only approved by local bishops and never vetted by the Vatican, Preparatory School.” Presumably the name was abbreviated to fit on the school blazer.)

Saturday 27th March, 1937

A full day of holiday. I had a most restful night having deliberately not set the alarm clock, which again is a first. Molly and Helen were still fast asleep at eight, Maria making the windows rattle though I hardly notice these days. It is surprising what one can get used to; one hears tales from the Great War of troops sleeping through a barrage yet waking to complain of their comrades talking in the trench outside. 
	I fully expected the kitchens to be shut at that time, but there was a table laid out with “cold collation” with boiled eggs, bread and jam and the like. First and second-years were dropping by to grab breakfast (and lunch; the Songmark jacket has deep pockets and even the first-years know by now to seize all the free food available.)
	Breakfast in bed, an amazing experience! It seemed somehow wrong to be relaxing in our dorm, rather like playing cards in church. You could do it, but nobody ever does. Well, it was breakfast on my bed anyway with a sheet of redundant parachute silk as a tablecloth. Most beds are too hard to serve well as tables; alas that was one thing that had not changed overnight. There had to be some advantage to those mattresses; in all fairness I cannot say a sandbag would be softer, but the difference is not too obvious.
	While Molly and Maria went down to check for post one final time, Helen whispered that she had had a very disturbing time last night around eleven. She had been putting the time to good use practicing her Priestess skills of perception, and noticed a burst of power somewhere very close, probably in Songmark itself – she asked if I had noticed anything then. She added that she had felt it happen a few times before, usually when she was on night shift – but with so many people around Songmark it was very hard to get any idea of distance and direction.
	I did not exactly like to tell her what I had been doing then – but I could truthfully say I had not noticed anything amiss. Not that I was concentrating at the time, being somewhat occupied - I had to air the rooms out somewhat afterwards as Molly was likewise making the most of her opportunity. Helen wants no part of anything to do with Lars, and hopefully I shall be able to return his cast antler to him soon. Jirry should be back soon, equally hopefully.
	By ten we had tidied our room, picked up our Native costume (the winter wear for Neue Suden Thule having been sent ahead to the seaplane dock yesterday to await us) and were happily heading out to Casino Island, arriving just in time for our dance class. A decidedly energetic morning! Even more seasonal workers have arrived and are limbering up for authentic Native dances in front of the tourists soon to arrive. It is ironic that a lot of native-born Spontoonies spend Summer wearing “Euro” waiter, maid and receptionist costumes while a lot of the Polynesian Dancers come hundreds of miles to put a grass skirt on!
	Thinking of furs learning to be authentic, it was an interesting afternoon across the island where I, or rather Kim-Anh studied under Malou. A lot of it was as last week, practicing how to stand and move, as Chinese furs would do it. Some of the “resting” positions hardly seemed very restful, including a sort of squat that was very tough on the tendons. We talked over a believable story for Kim-Anh, whom we decided has been away from Macao for a year or two. That should help if I am quizzed about details. 
	Malou brought her kitten in to be near while we worked; it is a very well-behaved and quiet child who hardly ever cries. Looking at her it is not obvious that Malou’s husband is an equine gentleman, though the kitten will never pass for pedigree. 
	I must confess my ears blushed as I thought about that; Malou is shorter and looks much more delicately built that I am, yet she seems very contentedly married with a kitten and says one day she hopes for more. It just goes to show what you can do if you try. Even that first-year squirrel Nancy Rote has a zebra boyfriend that I saw her with at Christmas.
	Anyway, Malou certainly earned her one shell wages today – I explained that I would be elsewhere for some weeks, but she just nodded and said she expects to be here when I return. That is one side of a regular life I could quite use, some stability. I had been contemplating settling here with Jirry after graduating, but first I must resolve the Allworthy problems and that means a European tour – to England and with Maria to Italy, for starters.
	Back to South Island, and on with the grass skirt for twenty-four hours. It is not much of a holiday but better than I usually get. Helen had already left for the guest longhouse with Marti, and I doubt we will see much of them. Jirry is still away, alas, though there is news that he and the ship are alive and well. Tramp steamers are very prone to breaking down, and it is part of the “cover” that they be seen to do so.
	Apart from Jirry, his father and Saimmi it was a full house – Jonni and Moeli were in, Moeli looking forwards to her new kitten arriving next month. Unlike most Euro advice I have heard (there are various medical books in the Songmark library that the most unlikely girls have sneaked peeks at) she is not “eating for two” but eating twice as well, not that there is much wrong with the Spontoonie diet anyway. Maria usually bemoans the shortage of bacon, salami and chocolate but Moeli is better off with fresh fish, Poi and fruit which make a decidedly square meal, and right now hers is positively bulging at the corners.
	An early night for us, as in longhouses one more or less sleeps with the sun. A sheer luxury, to live without alarm clocks. Helen has often said she will throw hers away after she graduates and becomes Mrs. Helen Hoele’toemi. Everything improves with practice and unlike most traditional Euro brides she will have no worries about the honeymoon.

Sunday 28th March, 1937

A splendid day to appreciate Spontoon – rather a shame we were leaving it. Helen and I were up for Morning Song, which we celebrated in the shrine at the edge of the family taro patch. Helen was in a very good mood, which might be somewhat related to the rather bitten state of her neck-fur. Other species find it an odd instinct for felines, but really it is a matter of trusting one’s instincts. Still, anyone can learn to be accommodating – my ears blushed recalling a few mornings where I have woken with nipped neck-fur but Molly has not. Stags do not seem to do that by instinct though I know one who has learned to, where appreciated.
	Anyway, it was good to work through our Warrior Priestess rituals with Helen and Saffina (who has been here since Friday night), then put in an hour of equally hard physical work with Molly, Maria and the Hoele’toemis on their garden patch. Everything is growing at top speed, the taro already tail-high on me and Spring is well advanced. I doubt we will be seeing much greenery where we are going next, so I took time to appreciate South Island before we head out to what one might call the South Continent.
	Moeli was busy indoors preparing luncheon, and by noon we were all back helping her, with baskets of vegetables from the garden and water from the well. That is the trouble with South Island; the Tourists come here to see traditional longhouses with thatched roofs and at best oil lamps in the evenings. Living there all year round is another matter – mains water and electric makes life so much more convenient, but it would hardly fit with the postcard image the island’s economy rests on. I know in places such as Albert Island they carefully hide the radios and gramophones when a Tourist ship docks but in Spontoon there are always Tourists of one sort or another. So the weeds and taro peelings will go to a compost heap in the corner of the garden; it seems hardly likely that Professor Kurt will be getting them for a local “bio-reaktor” unless it only powers the hotels and shops around the Topotabo Hotel where folk expect electric lighting.
	All too soon we were hanging up our grass skirts and putting our “off-duty” Euro costumes on, ready to cut a respectable figure on Eastern Island. Molly is used to snowy conditions in Chicago, she says, and is grimly happy she will not be going dressed as anybody’s maid this time. 
	(Later) Well, here we are! Sitting on the top passenger deck of a Model C Dornier X, with Lufthansa markings on the wings. It is half full of keen tourists from tropical climes – not quite the same types as a Spontoon tour-boat crowd, being folk who are looking forward to an energetic fortnight in the People’s Winter Sporting Wonderland as the travel brochures call it. 
	The Dornier X is definitely the most amazing passenger aircraft! Although the American DC3s are far sleeker and faster, this can carry a hundred furs plus mail and a few tons of freight, and carry it all the way down to the Antarctic. The prototypes flew in 1929 and even they crossed the Atlantic to South America, Gnu York and back to Europe despite the original engines being underpowered and overheating; the maximum altitude was about six thousand feet laden on a cold day! Not an aircraft to try and fly across the Andes. This model has certainly solved the problems, and we were even given a tour of the ten engines that sit on top of the main wing linked by a support strut that has more wing area in its own right than a Tiger Moth. The Flight Engineers have been known to belay themselves against the slipstream, walk out and fix engines while in flight – not something one can do on a DC-3, but an essential feature of a modern passenger aircraft. One can well imagine DC-3s being an evolutionary dead end, just for in-flight safety reasons.
	Our Antarctic kit is in the special lockers under our reclining seats that double as beds; there is a canvas screen system that provides darkness and privacy. The prime Tourist season is Antarctic Summer, where it is twenty-four hour daylight and special measures need to be taken to get to sleep. According to my old school textbook by Messrs Sellers and Yeatman, “in the Arctic it is light all night and dark all day for six months, and the Antarctic is visa versa.” This time of year is their Autumn, so that should not be too much of a problem.
	Anyway – it has been an interesting and decidedly full term, and it seems an awfully long time since we saw in the New Year onboard the decks of a Rain Island naval “trawler” hunting Captain Granite. It would be nice if our holiday turned out to be as refreshing as the brochures promise!

(And she found out, in “Pole Starlets”, coming shortly …)