To her disappointment, the first man she approached, an American pilot, shook his head emphatically "No!" at the mere mention of Secret Island. 'Not for one lone passenger, Miss. It's a fair ways out. You should've taken the missionary boat this morning when you had the chance.'
'I've only just arrived here, and didn't have the chance,' she told him, feeling despondent.
'That's tough, I'm afraid. The missionary boat won't be back until next week.'
'Next week!'
Kara felt like crying as she found a place to sit, clutching her bag. Her money had almost run out. How on earth was she going to get by here for a whole entire week?
At that moment she was approached by a tall, thin, nervous-looking young man in a once-white cloth suit, clutching a soiled wide-brimmed white hat, who said in a quiet, somehow evasive voice, 'Excuse me, Señorita, but I understand that you are looking for a plane to take you to Secret Island.'
'If I can afford it,' she said without much hope, knowing that she would probably be the only passenger, and would therefore have to pay dearly for the expense.
The young man smiled, showing large yellowed-ivory teeth. 'How much money do you have?'
She almost balked when she spied the rickety twin-engine bi-plane listing on its battered pontoons. 'Isn't that plane a bit . . . well . . . decrepit?'
The young man laughed out loud as he relieved her of her carpetbag. 'What, Dura? She is not so old- maybe ten years.'
'I don't know,' Kara said with doubtful apprehension. 'Perhaps I should just take the other pilot's advice and wait for the boat.'
'A boat, Señorita? A boat would get you there, surely, but you would have to be a bird to ascend the high cliffs of Secret Island.'
Kara took a deep breath and gave herself into the hands of Fate once more. 'Well, if there is no other way. Lead on.'
The moment the Dura's twin engines stuttered and vibrated into life in a cacophony of backfiring and oily blue smoke, Kara's resolve suddenly deserted her. She left her seat and tried to navigate her way towards the pilot, but the buck and heave of the plane as it rolled with the chop of the water threw her off-balance from side to side, turning the aisle into an obstacle course of seat backs.
'Stop! Stop the plane! Please . . . let me off this death-trap . . .'
But her cries were drowned out as the engines' noise crescendoed to a deafening roar, and she could feel through the soles of her feet the rush and acceleration of the plane, until at once the floating sensation dropped away altogether and the old aeroplane took to the wing with all the grace of a Sopwith Camel hauling a shifting load of anvils.