The imaginations of the Hottentots did the rest, although the fellow admitted that to lend colour to his masquerade he had uncovered some of the graves and flung the bones about. During the daytime there was no difficulty about finding a hiding place in the caves. In fact, an army might have looked for him for months without finding him.
Poor old Donald was bitterly disappointed that there was no real caveman, that the whole thing had turned out to be a fraud, but it was some consolation to get a letter from the South African Government, thanking us for putting an end to the career of the abominable apparition. The Hottentots are back again now.
Ginger glanced at the clock. "Great Scott ! " he ejaculated. "It's time we were on parade."
III
THE ADVENTURE OF THE HORTICULTURAL
HERMITS
THE officers of No. 666 (Fighter) Squadron squatted outside the camouflaged hangar of"
A" Flight, waiting for the morning mist to lift.
"It's hanging about a long time," remarked Angus Mackail, peering into the grey vapour that enveloped the aerodrome.
"I wish it would either go up or 'come down," snorted Tug Carrington. "I'm getting fed up sitting around looking at nothing. Hey, Ginger, how about telling us another tale to pass the time—you know, about that funny old fossil, Dr. Duck ? "
"You mean Donald," smiled Ginger.
"You said he hired you regularly, so you must have made several trips."
Ginger nodded reminiscently. "As a matter of fact, he came to see us the very day after we got back from Labyrinth Island. He had had another brain-wave. We were to start right away on a sort of glorified tour, checking up on all the queer things nobody had ever properly investigated. The snag was, most of the places were off the map. On the other hand, it was this very fact that made them exciting, although Biggles, who had to do most of the flying, swore that these jungle trips made an old man of him."
"One more and I should have had grey hair," put in Biggles, who was sitting on an empty oil-drum. He laughed suddenly. "Tell them about the Horticultural Hermits, Ginger," he suggested.
Lord Bertie Lissie nearly dropped his eyeglass. "The what?" he gasped.
"The Horticultural Hermits, otherwise the Balmy Botanists," answered Ginger. "But I'll tell you the tale then you can call them what you like." And this is the story he told : You may remember reading in the papers, not very long ago,. of the death of an explorer named Wedson— Bertram Wedson. He died in a lunatic asylum, of a disease no doctor could diagnose. Apparently a sort of fungus into on his head, and the roots eventually pene- trated his brain. Everyone thought he was mad—and, indeed, he may have been at the finish. But one man believed his story, and that was Dr. Augustus Duck, otherwise Donald. It was he who told us about it.
According to Wedson, tucked away in a valley on the eastern slope of the Andes there dwelt a strange tribe of white men. The original members were Jesuits who had fled from the wrath of the King of Spain rather than give up some gold they had discovered. They dis- appeared into the mountains and no one ever saw them again. It was assumed that they had been killed by Indians or died of disease. But this, apparently, was not the case.
They got lost in a desert, and in the desert there was a plateau. On this plateau they built a monastery and settled down for life. This, by the way, happened about three hundred years ago.
As you probably know, right through the ages the cleverest cultivators have been monks.
Years ago they grew medicinal herbs, and generally improved fruit, vegetables and flowers. They discovered grafting, hybridization, and things like that. I don't know much about it myself—this is what Donald told us. Well, according to Wedson, this particular party of monks, possibly because they had nothing else to do, had gone farther in the gardening business than anyone else had ever thought of going. They had discovered the most amazing things. They had all the vitamins labelled long before European doctors realized that there were such things. By taking these in certain proportions they could arrest the advance of age, or, conversely, expedite it. Mind you, I'm not saying that I believe this. I'm just telling you what Wedson told Donald.
It seems that Wedson had been prospecting for gold in the Andes, and was trying to reach the Amazon when he came upon the desert. There was nothing remarkable about it except that the cacti were extraordinary
both in shape and size. He spotted the plateau. There was nothing singular about that, either, because if you care to read books on the subject you'll learn that this formation is common in South America, due to the subsidence of the land at some time in the remote past. That is to say, the soft earth sank, or was washed away by rain leaving the rocks sticking up, like islands in the sea. rain, of course, had native porters carrying his kit.
There had been some uneasy muttering among them when he had started to cross the desert, but the moment he announced that he was going to survey the plateau for gold-bearing quartz, they dropped their loads and fled. They never came back. For Wedson this was a serious matter, but he was not the sort of man to let a bunch of natives stop him from doing what he wanted to do. So up the plateau he went. Bear in mind that he knew nothing about the lost Jesuits at this time.
He didn't get far before he was grabbed by a party of the most amazing men he'd ever seen. They were white—not ordinary white, but dead white. Their skins were like snow, and this, they afterwards told him, was due to a special vegetarian diet. Well, they took him to the top of the plateau, where he caused a bit of a sensation. The poor chap tried them in all the languages he knew, and ultimately managed to strike the right one. His captors spoke a queer old form of Spanish. Presently a sort of high priest arrived.
Wedson was put on a table and his skin was scratched with a thorn. The instant the point pierced his flesh he fainted—or at any rate, he lost consciousness. When he came round the priest told him that he was a prisoner on the plateau for life. He could depart if he wished, but if he went away he would die most horribly because a seed had been planted under his skin, and the only thing that would prevent it from germinating, or growing, was a special fruit lotion obtainable only on the plateau. In other words, if poor Wedson couldn't get the fruit juice the seed would grow and kill him.
So he stayed. He was on the plateau, he reckoned, for a year. He had no complaint to make about the way the people treated him, and for a time he amused himself by examining the extraordinary plants that grew, or had been developed by the people on the plateau. Then he got fed up, and decided that he might AS well be dead as go on living as he was. He thought perhaps the seed story was a bluff to frighten him into staying; or maybe the seed wouldn't germinate after all. Anyway, to make a long story short, he bolted, and after suffering incredible hardships got to the coast, where he took ship for England.
Before he landed he knew that the seed had germinated. It was in his head. He could feel it burning under his skull. He went to doctors, to specialists, but they could do nothing for him. Upon this he decided to go back to the plateau as the only means of saving his life, but before he could start he was clapped into a mental home. As a result of telling the doctors the story of the delayed-action seed they decided that his sufferings in the jungle had turned his brain. They put him in an asylum. Unable to get back to the plateau, the poor fellow died.
What I have told you so far is what Wedson told Donald, up to the point of his death.
Donald could do nothing about it at the time, but now that he had discovered that an aeroplane will take you a long way in a short time, in reasonable comfort and safety, nothing would satisfy him but that he must go and have a look at the plateau—or rather, the people on it. He wanted to see these weird and wonderful plants. Also, he said, he was anxious to study the mental development of white men who had never heard of such things as engines, radio, telephones, and all the rest of the clutter which we call civilization.
Well, we went. Frankly, although Biggles said he had an open mind about it, I don't think any of us really belie
ved Wedson's stories about the horrific plants. Still, we were all interested. For my own part, if I was afraid of anything, it was that the whole thing might turn out to be a flop. In that case, Donald pointed out, we should at least prove that the doctors were right in declaring Wedson insane.
i
There s no need for me to go into all the details of how we got to the desert. It wasn't an easy trip, for not knowing how long we should be away we were loaded down with stores and all the gubbms Donald insisted on taking with him on his travels. How he stood the heat in a top hat and frock coat I don't know. Wedson had given him the position of the desert, and •
from the air we could see it long before we reached it. And there sticking up in the middle of it, just as Wedson had described, was the plateau, its base buried in a belt of the greenest jungle you ever saw in your life. I shall never forget the colour of that jungle belt. It was dazzling, vivid, poisonous green.
We flew low over the plateau, and, sure enough, there was a little town with a sort of temple in the middle. That settled it. Part, if not all, of Wedson's story was true. All that remained for us to do was to check up on the horticultural side of it.
We found a place to land in the desert, on the sand, close against the green belt, through which, according to Wedson, a path went up to the top of the plateau. We couldn't see the path from the air. In fact, I couldn't imagine how we were going to get to the top, for the sides of the plateau were pretty nearly sheer. There was no question of landing on the plateau itself, for where there were no houses the land was under cultivation.
As soon as we were out of the machine I started thinking about that seed which had been planted in Wedson's head, for if the plants which we could now see were anything to judge by, his story was true. You never saw such growths in your life, and Donald, pale with excitement, soon had his notebook out. As a matter of detail, this was only a beginning. So far we had seen only the cacti, which seemed to form a sort of advance guard to the main belt of vegetation. There are many sorts of cacti, some of them pretty big, and while the flowers may be gorgeous colours, the growths themselves are not what you could call beautiful. Many of them are monstrous, bloated masses of fleshy substance. Nearly all of them are covered with needle-like spines. But I'm sure nobody had ever seen anything like these particular specimens. They were enormous. They were fantastic. Some were like huge barrels; some stood in rows of fluted columns; some had no shape at all—just great unwieldly masses of greenstuff, like pre-historic monsters.
They were all spiny. I don't mean ordinary prickles. I mean needles two feet long. Some threw out trailers, like brambles, but instead of thorns they had on them bunches of spikes like glorified barbed wire.
I had started to walk towards the green belt when Donald came racing after me.
"Take care ! " he shouted. "Where do you think you're going?"
I said I was going to look at the green belt, whereupon he pointed at the ground, just in front, and I saw something that I hadn't previously noticed. It was a barri- cade of spikes.
I don't know if you've ever seen that stuff that grows in Mexico called Spanish Bayonet?
It's really a leaf, but it looks like a dagger, and feels like a dagger-and is one, in fact. It will pierce leather as though it were tissue paper. If you accidentally put your foot on one of these fiendish spikes you get a painful wound that may take months to heal. Well, this stuff was like Spanish Bayonet, only worse. It grew in a twenty foot wide band all round the bottom of the plateau. Looking at it, I realized that it was no accident. It had been planted there. Donald told us that Wedson had warned him about it.
But," I said, "only a tank could get through that stuff."
He agreed, but said there was a path through it, if only we could find it.
It took some time to find because it was very narrow, and didn't run straight. It zigzagged all over the place. Of all the military contrivances I've ever seen, that was the best.
Without tanks, no army could cross this belt of bayonets. You see, no matter how many men there were, they would have to advance in single file.
Biggles had a few things to say about it.
"You know," he said, "these people have developed a first line of defence that no civilized nation seems to
have thought of. This stuff would stop troops more effectively than machine guns." Then Donald had a word to say. Turning to Biggles he remarked, "When you said first line of defence you may not have meant it literally, but that is what it is. The green jungle behind it must be the nettles."
Then he told us that Wedson had mentioned stinging nettles—not ordinary ones, but huge brutes, so poisonous that one sting was enough to make a man die in agony. The people up above had been three hundred years perfecting it. He pointed out that all the energy civilized nations had put into mec anical devices, had been directed by these people to b tany and horticulture.
"Just a minute," said Biggles. "Are there any more horrors? If there are you'd better tell us about them."
"Yes," answered Donald. "There are the poppies. Wedson called them the poppies of death. Their colour is a rich glowing gold—and unless I am mistaken I see a flash of gold in the jungle."
I started to back away. "How do they kill you?" I asked.
"From the description Wedson gave, these poppies must be a cross between the opium poppy and the sensitive plant. As you may know, the drug opium is derived from the seed vessel of the opium poppy. If you scratch one a milky juice exudes. That, when dry, is opium. Otherwise the plant is harmless. The sensitive plant responds instantly to the slightest vibration. It quivers, recoils, or collapses. By crossing the two plants, these wonderful people have so arranged it that the slightest vibration causes the poppies to fill the air with fragrance. That fragrance is a gas, and once you fall under its influence you sleep—and never wake up. Mind you, Wedson only told me of the existence of the poppies, and their deadly properties. The rest is supposition, not an unreasonable explanation, I hope."
Biggles said, sarcastically, "I'm glad you mentioned it, Doctor. Unless we all wish to commit suicide—and I certainly do not—there would appear to be no point in going on. I suggest that we all return to the machine, have some supper and a good night's sleep, and try to get in touch with these people in the morning. It will soon be dark, anyway. If we can make them understand that we wish them no harm, that our interest is purely scientific, they may show us round their botanical gardens. If they grow this sort of stuff on the outside, the gardens inside should be fascinating." The Doctor agreed.
Well, we had a stroll round the outside of the dagger belt, looking up at the rim of the plateau, but there was no sign of life. Actually, the people must have been watching us all the time, as we were to discover later on. We had a council of war over supper, and then went to bed. When I say bed, I mean we unrolled our blankets on the warm sand under the wings of the aircraft and went to sleep. Naturally, we kept watch. Algy took the first spell, from eight until twelve.
Just before midnight he woke us up and said he had an uncomfortable feeling that something was going on, but he couldn't make out what it was. When Biggles questioned him, he admitted that the only sound he had heard was a pattering noise, like hail—which was absurd, because the sky was clear. Biggles said he was suffering from nerves. Algy denied it, and swore something had hit him on the nose. We had a look round, but everything was the same as when we had gone to bed—or appeared to be.
Biggles took the second spell of four hours, and then woke me up to take my turn. He had nothing to report. He had neither seen or heard anything. So he curled up under the wing and I carried on. An hour passed, and nothing happened. You know how it is on these night watches. I walked up and down for a long time, but eventually squatted on one of the wheels of the machine.
It was just before dawn that I first heard the rustling sound. It was no more than a faint whisper, as when a light breeze moves the leaves of a tree. The funny part was, the sound seemed to come from
all directions at once. Then something wriggled under my foot, and looking down I saw a little thing like a worm coming out of the ground. In fact, I thought it was a worm..
It didn't alarm me in the least. Not for a moment did I connect it with the people on the plateau.
Then, looking round, in the faint light that was now coming from the east, I saw that it wasn't a matter of ono worm, but thousands. They were coming up everywhere, all round the machine. Bending down to have a look at the nearest one, I saw something that made me wonder for a minute if I were dreaming. The thing wasn't a worm at all. It was a plant, a tiny runner, with two little leaves on the tip. Even as I watched, it threw out two little side shoots.
As you probably know, in the tropics certain plants grow at amazing speed. I remember seeing one—in Malaya it was—that grew at the rate of two feet a day. You could almost watch it grow. But these plants round the Wanderer sprouted in front of your eyes, twisting and turning as they came out of the ground, more like reptiles than vegetables.
If you don't believe me I can't blame you. I couldn't believe it myself, although I saw it happening.
For a minute I just sat and stared like a fool, and by that time some of these infernal weeds were two or three feet long. Some were climbing over the machine, like scarlet runners gone crazy. If you can imagine a scarlet runner growing at the rate of six inches a minute you'll have a pretty good idea of what this stuff was like. Then, in a flash, I understood. The pattering noise Algy had heard were seeds being thrown down by the plant experts up above. They had germinated within a few hours of touching the ground, and were now growing at lightning speed. In a few more minutes they would be all over the aircraft, anchoring it to the ground. There would be no runway to take off.
I let out a yell that brought the others to their feet with a rush. It was now fairly light, and it was possible to see that the desert in the region of the aircraft was a desert no longer.
27 Biggles - Charter Pilot Page 3
