by W E Johns
CONTENTS
BIGGLES GETS A LETTER
FORT BEAVER
A SATISFACTORY TRIP
AT THE THREE STAR SALOON
GINGER GOES SCOUTING
A STAGGERING BLOW
THE JUPITER HEADS NORTHWARD
A GRIM ENCOUNTER
DOWN IN A FROZEN WORLD
A DESPERATE MEETING
AN UNPLEASANT SHOCK
A ONE-SIDED DUEL
SOUTHWARD AGAIN
AN UNEXPECTED LANDING
UNDER ARREST
GINGER ACTS
A NEW PERIL
TRAPPED!
A LIFE OR DEATH STRUGGLE
LOST
THE PRISONER SPEAKS
AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR
CONCLUSION
Biggles Gets a Letter
BIGGLES was whistling softly as he walked into the breakfast-room of his flat in Mount Street, but he broke off as he reached for the letters lying beside his plate. With the exception of one they all bore halfpenny stamps, suggesting that they contained nothing more interesting than circulars, but the exception was a bulky package with Canadian stamps, while across the top was printed in block letters, ‘CONFIDENTIAL. IF AWAY, PLEASE FORWARD.’
‘What’s Wilks doing in Canada, I wonder?’ murmured Algy, from the other side of the table.
Biggles glanced up. ‘Been doing a bit of Sherlock Holmes stuff with my correspondence, eh?’
‘As I happen to know Wilks’s fist, and am able to recognize a Canadian stamp when I see one, I put two and two together,’ replied Algy casually.
‘Smart work,’ Biggles congratulated him, with cheerful sarcasm, as he tore open the flap of the envelope.
‘Wilks? Who’s Wilks?’ Ginger asked Algy. He had finished his breakfast and was sitting by the fire.
‘Wilks—or rather, Captain Wilkinson—was a flight commander in 187 Squadron, in France,’ answered Algy. ‘He was in South America, an officer in the Bolivian Air Force to be precise, when we last saw him,’ he added. ‘I wonder what sent him up north?’ He said no more but winked at Ginger significantly as a frown settled on Biggles’s face, a frown that grew deeper as he turned over the pages of the letter.
There was silence for several minutes. ‘Your coffee will be stone cold,’ observed Algy at last.
Biggles read the letter to the end before laying it on the table beside him and reaching for the toast. ‘Poor old Wilks is in a jam,’ he said quietly.
‘I suspected it from your expression,’ returned Algy. ‘What’s the trouble?’
Biggles drank some coffee and picked up his letter again. ‘I’ll read it to you, then you’ll know as much as I do,’ he said. ‘Listen to this. He writes on paper headed “Arctic Airways, Fort Beaver, Mackenzie. North-West Territories, Canada.”
‘“My dear Biggles,
‘“I am writing this on the off-chance of it reaching you, but knowing all about your nomadic habits I shall be surprised if it does. As you probably remember, letter-writing is not in my line, so you no doubt guessed before you opened this (if ever you do) that things must be pretty sticky. Believe me, they are all that, and more. To come to the point right away, having heard odd rumours of your adventures from time to time in one part of the world or another, it has just struck me that you might not be averse to starting on a fresh one. I do not know whether it is for fun or for profit that you go roaring round the globe; possibly both; but if you hunt adventure for the sake of it, well, old boy, right here I can supply you with the genuine article in unlimited quantities. But make no mistake. This isn’t a kid-glove game for the parlour; it’s knuckle-dusters in the wide open spaces; and I don’t mind telling you that out here the wide open spaces are so wide that you have to fly for a long, long time to get to the other side of them.
‘Before I start on the real story I may as well say that the odds seem to be against my being alive by the time you get this. If I just disappear, or get wiped out in what looks like a genuine crash, find a fellow named McBain— ‘Brindle’ Jake he is called around these parts—and hand him a bunch of slugs from me, as a last service for an old pal.”’
‘By gosh! Things must be pretty grim for old Wilks to write in that strain,’ broke in Algy.
‘Grim is the right word for it,’ broke in Biggles shortly. ‘But don’t interrupt—just listen to this.
‘“You remember I was in Bolivia a few years ago. Well, there was a change of government, and as I didn’t like the new one—or maybe the new one didn’t like me—I packed my valise and headed north, thinking that the most likely point of the compass where I should find a concern in need of a pilot who had learned to fly by the seat of his pants, and not by these new-fangled instruments. I knocked about the States for a bit without getting fixed up with anything permanent, and ultimately drifted over the border into Canada, which is, I may say, a great country, although I have little to thank it for as yet.
‘“One day I struck lucky—at least, it looked that way to me at the time, although I am not so sure about it now. I got a charter job flying a mining engineer up to some new gold-fields which were then being surveyed. The concern has since been put over in a big way under the title of Moose Creek Gold-fields Corporation—Moose Creek being the name of the locality. You may have heard tell of the ‘last place on earth’. Well, I can tell you just where it is. Moose Creek. It is well inside the Arctic circle. Why they call it Moose Creek I do not know, for no moose in its right mind—or any other animal, for that matter—would go within a hundred miles of the perishing place. But that’s by the way.
‘“Having got the low-down about these gold-fields, I had one of my rare inspirations. Moose Creek is eight hundred miles north of the nearest rail-head, and the journey, made by canoe in summer and dog-sled during the freeze-up, takes about six weeks’ heavy going. I had saved a bit of money while I was in Bolivia, and it struck me that since there was certain to be a fair amount of traffic to and from the gold-fields, an air line might be worked up into a paying proposition. I counted on flying up staff, stores, mails, machinery, and so on, and bringing back the gold and the people who would rather ride home than walk eight hundred miles. In an aircraft the journey could be done in a day instead of six weeks. To make a long story as short as possible, I put all my savings into the venture, opening up my own landing-field and shed at Fort Beaver, which is the rail-head. I called it Arctic Airways.
‘“For a year or so it was touch and go. I was just about broke and preparing to pack up when real gold was struck at the Creek. That sent the balloon up. Traffic jumped. Things began to hum, and it looked at last as if all I had ever hoped for had come to pass. I got into the money, and with my profits I bought a second machine. Then, out of the blue—literally, as it happened came the smack in the eye; one which, I must admit, I wasn’t expecting. Another fellow jumped my claim—the same Brindle Jake that I have already mentioned. It seemed a bit thick after all I had been through, blazing the trail and all that, for some one else to step in and start reaping my harvest. However, it couldn’t be helped, and I decided to make the best of a bad show. I figured it out that there ought to be enough money in the game for two of us, anyway; as it happened, Brindle had his own ideas about that. He decided that two in the game was one too many —and he wasn’t going to be the one to go. From that moment I learned that the gloves were off.
‘“I must explain the position in regard to Fort Beaver Aerodrome. (The one at the other end of my run, Moose Creek, belongs to the gold company, so I have nothing to do with that.) There is only one possible landing-ground within fifty miles of Fort Beaver, and that’s mine. I bought the land off a fellow named Angus Stirling, who had decided that he preferred prospecting for gold to farming. I paid him ca
sh, whereupon he headed north with his traps and hasn’t been seen since. I cleared the ground, put up a shed, and the land became Fort Beaver landing-field. There was never any question about the title of the land until recently; every one in Fort Beaver regarded it as mine until one day a bunch of toughs rolled up, and, in spite of my protests, without paying a cent, or so much as a by-your-leave, built a larger shed than mine on the edge of my field. A couple of days later two Weinkel Twelve transport planes landed, and out stepped Brindle Jake and his two pilots, Joe Sarton, a tall chap, good-looking in a rugged sort of way, and ‘Tex’ Ferroni, a slim, dark little fellow who looks—as, indeed, his name suggests —as if he came from one of the Latin states. McBain himself is a big, broad-shouldered bloke, with odd patches of grey in his hair and beard. That’s how he gets his nickname, I am told. A half-breed French-Canadian named Jean Chicot trails about after him like a dog, and I’ve got my own idea as to his real job. I reckon he’s McBain’s bodyguard. Naturally, I asked Brindle what was the big idea, and you can guess my surprise when he calmly told me to clear off the land. I can’t go into details now, but for the first time I learned that there was some doubt as to the title of the land I had bought off Stirling. For some extraordinary reason which I don’t understand there seems to be no record of his having paid the Government for it. Anyway, the record has not yet been found, although, being so far away from the Record Office, correspondence is a slow business. He—that is, Stirling—told me that he got the land for a nominal figure under a settler’s grant, but it looks to me as if he forgot to register it—or forgot to collect the transfer. The fact remains he didn’t give it to me, which was, I suppose, my own fault, for it went clean out of my head. I’m afraid I’m a bit careless in these matters. I took his word for it that it was O.K. There is this about it, though. If I don’t own the land, neither does Brindle, although he tries to bluff me that he does.
‘“He started operating to Moose Creek right away. I flew up and saw the traffic manager of the gold-fields company, a decent little fellow named Canwell, and lodged a complaint, but it did not get me very far. Canwell’s point is—and I suppose he is right—he is only concerned with getting his stuff to the rail-head, and he doesn’t care two hoots who takes it as long as it goes, or as long as he gets efficient service. He was born and bred in the north, and he as good as told me that in this country it is up to a fellow to work out his own salvation. If he hasn’t the gumption to do that—well, it’s his own funeral. That was that.
‘“I got my first ideas of Brindle’s methods when, a day or two later, one of my machines shed its wing just after it had taken off; yet I’d stake my life that that machine was airworthy the night before because I went over it myself. Brindle or his men tampered with it, I’m certain, but of course I can’t prove anything. The pilot, a nice chap named Walter Graves, was killed. I bought another machine and hired another pilot. Two days after taking delivery the machine went up in flames during the night. My new pilot was ‘got at’ by the other side, and had the wind put up him so much that he packed up. I’ve no money to buy another machine. The one I have left is a Rockheed freighter which I fly myself. I sleep in it—with a gun in my hand—but I can’t stand the strain much longer. One by one my boys have left me, scared by Brindle’s threats, so that I have to do my own repairs. That’s how things stand at present. Brindle is operating two machines and is gradually wearing me down. I’ve been nearly killed two or three times by ‘accident’. Brindle wants the aerodrome and my shed. I’ve told him he’ll only get ‘em over my dead body—and that isn’t bluff.
‘“The fact is, old lad, it goes against the grain to be run out of the territory by a low-down grafter. I’m fighting a lone hand, for the ‘Mounties’1 have other things to do besides interfering in what, to them, is a business squabble. With one man whom I could rely on absolutely, to take turn and turn about with me, I believe I could still beat Brindle and his toughs. The trouble is, I daren’t leave the place; if I did, I’d never get back; Brindle would see to that. Meanwhile, I’m hanging on. I’m in this up to the neck and I’m going to see it through to the last turn of the prop. It isn’t just the money that matters now; I won’t be jumped out by a crooked skunk. That’s all. If you want a spot of real flying, flying with the lid off, step right across and give me a hand to keep the old flag flying. We did a job or two together in the old days. Let’s do one more.
‘“All the best to Algy (remember that first E.A. he shot down? The laugh was certainly on you that time).
Yours ever,
WILKS.”’
Biggles’s face was set in hard lines as he tossed the letter on the table and picked up the envelope to examine the postmark.
‘How long ago was it posted?’ asked Algy.
‘Nine days.’
‘Anything could have happened in that time.’
‘I was just thinking the same thing.’
‘What are you going to do?’ put in Ginger, looking from one to the other.
‘That remains to be seen,’ replied Biggles curtly. ‘For the moment we are just going to Fort Beaver as fast as we can get there. Algy, ring up and find out when the next boat sails. Ginger, pass me that directory. I’ll send a few cables. We shall want a machine waiting for us when we land—with the props ticking over. If I can get the machine I want we’ll show that blighter McBain how to shift freight. Get your bags packed, everybody, and put in plenty of woollen kit. I’ve never been to Canada, but I seem to have heard that the winters there are inclined to be chilly.’
‘Then let’s go and see if we can warm things up,’ murmured Algy.
* * *
1 North-West Mounted Police.
Fort Beaver
A LITTLE before two o’clock, sixteen days after Wilks’s SOS had been received in London, a Bluewing ‘Jupiter’ airliner circled low over the cluster of log huts which comprised Fort Beaver, preparatory to landing.
Biggles sat at the controls, Algy beside him, with Ginger braced in the narrow corridor that connected the pilot’s control cabin—it could hardly be called a cockpit—with what normally would have been the main passenger saloon. Behind, amongst the luggage in the rear compartment, sat Flight-Sergeant Smyth, Biggles’s old fitter and sharer of many adventures.
The ‘Jupe’—as Ginger had already nicknamed the machine—was Biggles’s first choice, and he accounted himself fortunate in being able to get a commercial transport machine with such a fine reputation. American built, the Jupiter, latest model of the Bluewing Company, was a twin-engined cantilever high-wing monoplane fitted with two 850 h.p. ‘Cyclone’ engines, one power unit being built into the leading edge of the wing on either side of the fuselage. The undercarriage was retractable. In the standard model there were four mail compartments forward of the main cabin, which normally provided accommodation for eighteen passengers. but Biggles, realizing that eighteen seats would rarely, if ever, be required, had had this number reduced to six, the space thus made available being cleared for freight. As he pointed out to the others, extra passengers, if any, could always travel in the freight compartments. The manufacturer’s figures gave the maximum speed of the machine as 230 miles an hour, with normal cruising speed 205 miles an hour.
Negotiations for the aircraft had been carried on by wireless while they were on board ship. Not for a moment did Biggles contemplate taking a machine out with him, although, from choice, he would have preferred a British aeroplane, but that would have meant crating it for an ocean voyage, which is a very expensive business. The result of the negotiations was that when the party had landed at Quebec they had found the machine awaiting them, it having been flown up from the United States by a delivery pilot.
Three long hops had seen the Jupe at Fort McMurray, the base aerodrome of northern fliers, and another long journey northward over the ‘bad lands’ had brought the airmen to Fort Beaver, which lies mid-way between the north-east arm of Great Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River, some fifty miles south-east of Bear
Lake. They all wore heavy flying kit, with the fur outside, for although it was not yet winter it was already cold, and the annual freeze-up could be expected in the near future.
Behind the pilot’s cabin, in the mail compartment, was piled their luggage—valises and suitcases. Stacked in the freight cabin were bales and bundles of spare parts, chiefly engine components; but perhaps the most striking item was an enormous pair of skis, so long that the ends projected into the doorway of the lavatory, which was situated in the tail. It had been left open for that purpose. These would, of course, be needed when the snow came.1 Until that time the ordinary retractable-wheel undercarriage would be used.
Biggles regarded the landing-ground dispassionately as he throttled back and prepared to glide in. Since it was the only level piece of ground within view it was unmistakable, although two blocks of wooden buildings on the edge of the field provided confirmation, were it needed.
‘What do you think of it?’ asked Algy.
‘Not much,’ returned Biggles briefly.
‘I never saw a more desolate-looking spot in all my life.’
‘What did you expect to find—concrete runways?’ inquired Biggles sarcastically. ‘This isn’t a European terminus.’
‘No, I can see that,’ declared Algy warmly. Wilks was certainly right about the wide open spaces—although he needn’t have used the plural. From what I’ve seen of this country from topsides, it’s just one big, wide open space, and nothing else.’
‘I fancy we shall find something else when we get on the carpet,’ observed Biggles, smiling faintly. ‘Is that old Wilks I can see, mending his hut?’
Algy peered through the side window. ‘That fellow is too tall for Wilks,’ he declared. ‘And he seems to be tearing the place down, not mending it, anyway.’
Biggles glanced across quickly. ‘The dickens he does. That doesn’t look too good. However, we shall soon learn what we came to learn.’
