The passengers she saw very little of: they were a rather self-involved bunch who seemed to think little of the crew of a mere passenger-freighter. But there was one man, a hard-bitten fellow Kara didn't particularly like the look of, who apparently had a broad knowledge of travel by sea. After seeming to consider what sort of place she said that she was hoping to find, he told Kara of an ideal location in the Spanish Caribbean called Secret Island. All she had to do was take a ship from New York to the Bahamas, and from there could purchase a plane ticket and be flown to Secret Island, an exotic tropical island paradise like no other. He told her that he was willing to travel with her all the way there, but something about the manner of his attentions and his looks made her cool towards him, and she assured the fellow that she was going to stay in New York for a time with relatives until she'd made her mind up about any future plans.
She kept this knowledge about Secret Island to herself, however, and decided, based upon the name alone, that she would go there, and hopefully be and remain safely out of reach of her father.
Kara Savalas was born in Athens, Greece, in the spring of 1910, and spoke the English language with an accent that from the beginning had made life difficult. The move to England had been an attempt to get away from the meddling ways of her family. Ever since then she'd had the unwanted attention of strangers attracted by her looks and by the way she spoke, which in its way was just as bad. So far she'd fled the arranged marriage by her father to a rich man old enough to be her grandfather; her subsequent life forced to live in a convent to scotch her family's shame at her refusal to marry against her wishes; her homeland when her family came looking for her, thinking to break her . . . and now she was on the run yet again.
She was nineteen years of age and felt as though she'd spent an entire tired and empty lifetime on the run from people that had some use for her or other, regardless of her own wants, needs or desires. 'My own wants,' she mused after waking and going out on the small deck of the ship and staring at the darkling sky, the stars appearing at once as glittering and false as the façade she showed the world. 'What is it that I want? I've spent so much time trying to get out from under the thumb of life that I've not been able to discover if there is any more to it. Wouldn't that be a cruel irony! To discover that living under the thumb is what life is really all about!' She took a deep breath and tried to calm her rattled nerves. And chuckled to herself without humour. 'And once again, despite the fact that I'm away and on the run once more, I feel trapped!' Ired, she turned her thoughts once more to Secret Island and the Caribbean, and felt something like hope.