This told us that the ship—or at any rate, a ship—had been there, and Biggles took the view that as it had come into the bay the chances were that it had been brought in under control. If it had been wrecked it might have gone ashore anywhere, but under control the sailors would be certain to make for the best anchorage. The point was, where was the ship? As the cannon was on the bottom there seemed to be a good chance that the ship was there, too—or what remained of it. We decided to have a look.
Launching our collapsible canoe, we hunted until sundown without finding a sign of it.
We paddled slowly over the entire bay; we could see the sandy bottom everywhere; there were plenty of fish, but no ship. So we went ashore and made camp. Biggles sent me to collect some firewood, so I wandered along the high-water mark collecting pieces of driftwood, and in doing this I came upon a tiny cove—a bay within a bay, if you see what I mean? And there, sticking up out of the sand, was the very thing we'd been looking for—the skeleton of an old wooden ship. My yell brought the others along at the double, and we all agreed that we were getting along fine. As it turned out, we were getting on a bit too fine, had we but realized it. Don't ask me why, but we completely forgot the gents who wore the golden shirts. Maybe we were thinking too much about the treasure.
Maybe Biggles assumed that because the people were white they would be tame. I don't know. We didn't even mention them. We had supper in the light of the camp fire and made ready to turn in.
I was just putting down my bed under the old Wanderer's wing when, happening to glance in the direction of the vegetation, which came down to the edge of the sand, I noticed a curious sort of yellow gleam. It was obviously the firelight shining on something, and I couldn't imagine what it could be. Then it moved. Looking hard, I saw several queer gleams in the shadows; and then, in a flash, I realized what I was looking at. I slipped over to Biggles, who was talking to Donald at the door of the machine, and told him that the goldie-shirts were watching us from the bushes. Biggles dived into the machine and came back with four revolvers.
"Don't appear to notice anything unusual, but take cover," he ordered. "Keep something between you and the bushes in case they make a rush."
We moved into our places and waited. Nothing happened. Nothing moved. It was a nasty, tense moment. It wasn't for us to start the argument, if there was going to be one, but it was a bit grim just waiting there for something to happen. We stuck it for about five minutes, and then apparently Biggles got fed up, for he shouted, "Does anyone there speak English ? " There was no reply. He tried them in all the languages he knew, but there was still no sound from the bushes.
I'd begun to wonder if I hadn't made a mistake after all when there was a definite metallic jingle. There was no mistake about that. It was the discs of a golden shirt rattling.
Biggles had just said that we should have to try something else, and had half turned towards the machine, when there was a streak of yellow light as an enormous fellow broke cover. Biggles has had some close squeaks in his time, but he'll never have a closer one than he had then. I said he had half turned, and I mean that, literally. A split second later and his back would have been turned, and nothing could have saved him. His life hung in that split second, because, having only half turned, he could still see the jungle out of the corner of his eye. He ducked like lightning, and even then I thought he was too late.
The fellow who jumped out of the bushes was swinging an enormous cutlass. He must have started swinging it even as he jumped. It flashed like a metal prop starting up. Had it caught Biggles it must have cut him in halves. As it was, it swished over his head, missing his scalp by a couple of inches. I went cold all over. There had been no time to do anything. It had all happened in the twinkling of an eye.
Before we could move the affair had ended as quickly as it had begun ; and it ended in Biggles's favour.The very weight of the fellow's blow was his undoing. The cutlass carried him with it, swinging him round, and before he could recover his balance Biggles had stepped in and clouted him on the back of the skull with the thick end of his gun. The bloke gave a sort of grunt and went down in a heap. Biggles grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him towards the machine, by which time we had got our .preath and were covering him with our weapons. As he dragged the limp prisoner past the fire it was pretty clear that he was a chief, for he was nearly encased in home-made armour—
of gold plates. We discovered later that he was, in fact, the local Big Bug, a sort of dictator. We also learned that he was no more loved than any other dictator, which probably accounts for the fact that no attempt was made to rescue him, although there was a good deal of talking in the bushes.
Biggles said, "Let's get out of this before there's a free fight. We don't want to hurt them, and we don't want to get hurt."
So we hauled the prisoner on board and taxied well out into the bay, followed by a load of old nails and pebbles, fired, evidently, from a blunderbuss. At the first streak of dawn we took off and set a course for Batavia. The prisoner had come round by this time, and you should have seen his face when we left the water. No doubt he thought he was on an ordinary ship.
Well, we told the story to the Dutch authorities, and there was gold shirt Number One with us to support it. We went back the next day taking three of the Dutchmen with us.
Speaking Dutch, they managed to establish contact with the castaways, and by nightfall we had the complete explanation.
It was very much as you'd expect. The gold-shirts
weren't the original sailors, of course, but they had a legend which told us everything.
Their forefathers had bolted with the ship, but foolishly ran aground in the bay where it became a total wreck. They'd salved everything worth having, including the gold, and then, fearing pursuit, had taken to the hills And there the little colony, men and women, had lived ever since. The only use they could find for the gold was to make armour out of it, to protect themselves from attacks by cannibals from other islands. No cannibals had been seen for many years, but they wore the suits on state occasions. They were quite happy, but some years previous to our arrival they had decided to try to establish contact with the outside world. Three fellows had gone off in canoes, with long intervals between them, but none had managed to reach the mainland. We knew that one had been eaten by a shark, and another had died in his canoe. We didn't know what became of the other, but no doubt he had been drowned. Yet, although they never knew it, these explorers had succeeded in their quest for help, in that the golden shirts had reached civilization and were directly responsible for taking us to the spot.
Well, that's about all there is to tell. The castaways had never mixed with savages so they were still pure Dutch. We filed a claim for a percentage of the gold—which didn't belong to us, of course—and I must say the Dutch authorities behaved generously. They were still dealing with the islanders when we left. We heard later that some of them had gone over to the mainland ; others preferred to remain where they were, and started a proper colony under the direction of the Dutch Government, who sent out a lot of equipment, and put in a resident expert to advise on coconut and vanilla production. As a matter of fact, we looked in, in passing, a couple of years later and found quite a thriving colony.
You wouldn't have known the place—proper houses, and all that sort of thing. It was queer to think that had it not been for Donald's system of filing, years might have elapsed before these castaways were discovered. That's the end of the yarn. Now you know why I've started a
little reference library of my own. It may come in useful when the war's over, and we're wondering what to do next. But that sounds like dinner—I shall have to pack up.
XIII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE INQUISITIVE
DODOS
IT seems to me," lamented Flying-Officer Henry Harcourt, "that chivalry in war is as dead as the dodo!'
Flying-Officer Ginger Habblethwaite, without looking up from the book he was reading, answered, "W
ho said the dodo was dead, anyway ? "
Henry looked indignant. "Why, everybody knows that the dodo is extinct," he declared scornfully.
"Who do you mean by everybody?" inquired Ginger evenly.
"Well, the books say so. The extinction of the dodo is an accepted fact. No one has seen a dodo for a hundred years or more."
"When you smart guys have finished arguing," put in Tex O'Hara, "perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me, what is a dodo?"
"The dodo is a bird," replied Ginger.
"You mean, the dodo was a bird," corrected Henry. "I said is," growled Ginger.
"Whether it is, or was, what sort of bird are you talking about? " snarled Tug Carrington.
"How did it get that silly name, anyhow ? "
Ginger grinned. "Because the dodo is a silly bird, that's why. The name is derived from the Portuguese word doudo, meaning simpleton."
"Ha! Hark at the walking encyclopaedia," sneered Tug. "Tell us more."
Ginger frowned. "Since you choose to be rude about it I have no more to say," he answered. "And talking of encyclopaedias, you'll find one in the library. I suggest it might be a good thing if you turned up the account of the creature under discussion, and enriched you poor poverty-stricken minds with a spot of information."
"I'll get it," declared Henry.
"I don't believe you know what a dodo is yourself," jibed Ginger.
Henry laughed. "To tell the truth, although I've often used the expression, as dead as a dodo, I don't know whether the blessed thing was the size of a tom-tit or a pelican. Just a minute . . ." He hurried off, and presently returned with the heavy book under his arm.
Putting it on the table, he skipped through the pages to the appropriate letter.
"Here we are," he announced. "Dodo." He read on, aloud. "Dodo, a bird, now extinct, once found on the island of Mauritius, a semi-tropical island in the Southern Indian Ocean, 9,500 miles from England and 550 miles from Madagascar. The island, then uninhabited, was discovered by a Portuguese navigator in 1505. On it was found immense colonies of a remarkable bird, seen nowhere else on earth. This grotesque creature, larger than a turkey, could not fly. It was ugly, bald, clumsy, with thick scaly legs, an enormous bulbous beak, and an idiotic expression. It started to die out as soon as the first settlers appeared on the island, and about the year 1700 it disappeared completely. One was sent to England in 1677 by Sir Herbert Thomas, who was travelling in those parts. One or two other living specimens were brought to Europe ; these were stuffed and mounted after death, but in some curious way even these seemed to have become extinct. All that is known of the bird is from early drawings and written descriptions, for, so far as is known, no specimen exists today, stuffed or living."
Henry closed the book. "That's all," he said. "What a queer thing that a bird should be found in only one place, and that it should die out so suddenly. I wonder if it was really like the description given in the book?"
"It was," answered Ginger calmly.
Lord Bertie Lissie, who had been listening to the conversation, started. "Here, I say, young feller, how do you know ? "
"Because I happen to have seen the creature," replied Ginger airly.
"But the book says it's extinct."
"That's what everyone thought, except Dr. Duck," declared Ginger. You see, Donald had a curious mind, and he was perhaps the only person to ask himself seriously, why should a bird become extinct? The bird couldn't fly, but was it not possible that the whole colony, when people settled on the island, had swum away to another, less noisy spot? If anyone else thought that, he didn't think the idea worth exploring. Donald did. He had a feeling that considering the thousands of uninhabited islands in the Indian Ocean, there was a chance of a few dodos remaining, hidden away on some lonely isle. That wasn't a question that could be answered by sitting at home in an arm-chair, guessing. Having studied the atlas, at no small expense he decided to make a protracted cruise over a few dozen islands which he had selected as the most likely spots to find a surviving dodo.
"The project held promise of being a glorified picnic. I mean, what better holiday could you think of than an aerial tour round the Indian Ocean? Who cared about dodos? I thought it was going to be good fun. And so it was—up to a point. But having gone so far I might as well tell you the whole story—you won't be satisfied, I suppose, until I do."
Ginger leaned back on the settee, put his feet on a chair, and continued : I needn't go into the course we plotted ; it would take too long. I forget the names of most of the islands we visited, anyway. We just cruised from isle to isle, landed, had a look round, and went on again. For several weeks we had no luck at all, but we had some good fun. We saw plenty of birds, sea-birds by the million—but no dodos. Not one. Only Donald's enthusiasm kept the quest going. I think the rest of us felt that a dodo-hunt was just a few degrees worse than a wild goose chase.
Still, we didn't care. Donald was paying the bill, the weather was fine, so everything in the garden was lovely.
Then one day we were making a fairly long hop back to Madagascar to refuel, when the weather turned nasty. I could see Biggles was getting worried. The ceiling clouded up ; it dropped lower and lower, so we couldn't get a sight of the sun to check our position. The sea was still dead calm, that oily sort of calm that you so often get before a big blow. The trouble was, we hadn't a big margin of petrol, and it wouldn't do to miss Madagascar. If we got off our course and missed the island, we shouldn't strike land until we got to Africa—and we certainly hadn't enough petrol to do that.
Suddenly an island showed up on the horizon. I call it an island, but islet would probably be a more accurate description. It wasn't much more than a mile long, two or three hundred yards wide, and not much more than ten or twelve feet above sea level at the highest point. There was nothing on it. It appeared to be just a flat slab of rock, worn so smooth that it was reasonable to suppose that through the centuries heavy seas had swept right over it.
The appearance of this reef threw Biggles into a flat spin. According to the chart we didn t pass near an island, or anything like one. The obvious deduction was, therefore, that we were off our course. That wouldn't do at all. It was one of the few occasions that I've seen Biggles really upset. A good workman doesn't blame his tools, but he told me that he could only conclude that something had gone wrong with the compass. After all, he'd had a tremendous amount of experience and it hardly seemed likely that he could make a blunder over a simple compass course.
"There's only one thing to do," he decided. "I daren't risk using any more fuel. We shall have to go down and wait for the sky to clear. If the cloud breaks and we can get a shot at the sun, we should be able to check our position and plot a new course for Madagascar. We can't do anything until we know where we are." Algy agreed that it seemed the only sensible thing to do.
Donald, who was concerned only with his precious dodos, didn't care two hoots what we did. At that juncture, the last thing Biggles was thinking about was dodos. In any case, had there been any birds of any sort on the rock we should have seen them, because it was as bare as a billiard table. So down we went.
Biggles didn't actually land on the rock. With the sea like glass, there was no need. He landed on the water, and finding a sort of natural slipway, dropped his wheels and then taxied up on to dry ground. We were just getting out to stretch our legs when something happened for which none of us was prepared. It may have been a sudden change of temperature ; I don't know what it was; all I know is that the atmosphere thickened and in less than five minutes we were in a thick white fog. You don't often get fogs in those waters, and that, of course, is the danger : you don't think of them. When they come they come quickly, and usually find you unprepared.
Biggles stared at the murk. "Just look at that," he said. "I'm jolly glad I came down. I'd rather be here than up topsides in that pea soup. All the same, I don't like it. Fog usually means something. If a sea gets up we shall have the choice of staying here and being wash
ed away, or making a blind take-off. Still, we'll talk about that if it happens. I think it's more likely that the stuff will clear off presently and give us a glimpse of the sun. We may as well make ourselves comfortable and brew a dish of tea."
Well, we all got out, and after a cup of tea, as there was absolutely nothing to do, I had a stroll round. There was nothing to see. There wasn't so much as a loose pebble, or an odd shell ; and this all went to confirm that the islet was swept clean by seas at high water.
There was this about it, however: the rock was smooth, and taking off would be a simple matter as soon as the fog lifted. But it didn't lift. Instead visibility got steadily worse, and by dusk the stuff was like a grey blanket. We had no means of finding out how thick it was or how far it extended ; but one thing was certain : we were grounded until the vapour shifted. We pulled the aircraft to the middle of the rock, in a position from which it would be possible to take-off when the stuff lifted, and that was all we could do.
Night fell and found us still there'
when I say
night I mean just that. I've never seen such utter darkness. The fog just hemmed us in like black ink. I said to Biggles, "If a sea gets up now we shall be in a nice mess.'
" I wouldn't worry about that," he answered. "It's unlikely that the sea will get up without a breeze, and a wind will blow this confounded stuff away." It turned out that he was right.
About ten o'clock, as there seemed to be no point in staring at the darkness any longer, we turned in. That is to say, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible in the machine, having arranged for turns of keeping watch. At sea you never know what is going to happen next, so, naturally, we fixed watches. Biggles took the first watch. All remained calm and he had nothing to report. Algy followed, and about four in the morning he woke me for my turn of duty. He was a bit worried, he said when he handed over, because the sea appeared to be moving. From time to time he had heard waves, or what he took to be waves, surging on the rock. What he couldn't understand was that the sound was intermittent. It seemed reasonable to suppose that if the sea started moving it would keep on moving. We had a short discussion about it, wondering if we ought to report to Biggles, but in the end we decided against this. After all, if the sea did start to get up it would be a simple matter for me to wake him. The fog still enveloped us like a shroud, so there was nothing we could do, anyway.
27 Biggles - Charter Pilot Page 12
