by W E Johns
CAPTAIN W.E. JOHNS
RED FOX
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781407050966
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Red Fox would like to express their grateful thanks
for help given in the preparation of these editions to Jennifer Schofield,
author of By Jove, Biggles, Linda Shaughnessy of A. P. Watt Ltd
and especially to the late John Trendler.
BIGGLES FLIES WEST
A RED FOX BOOK 1 86 230222 7
First published in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, 1937
This Red Fox edition published 2004
Copyright © W E Johns (Publications) Ltd, 1937
The right of W E Johns to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox and Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire,
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
About the Author
Biggles Books Published in this Edition
Prologue
1 An Ugly Customer
2 The Doubloon
3 The Letter
4 Biggles Makes a Proposition
5 Unexpected Difficulties
6 Tragic Events
7 The Hurricane
8 Wrecked
9 What Happened to Dick
10 What Happened to Biggles
11 The Rescue
12 A Lucky Fall
13 Revelations
14 Dick Goes Ashore
15 The Attack
16 Warm Work
17 Explanations
Out of the corner of his eyes Biggles saw Dick go overboard and disappear under the foam, but he could do nothing to help him. Indeed, as he fought to keep the flying-boat under control, it seemed certain that during the next minute or two the others must join him. Ashen, he looked at Algy. Jump when she hits!’ he cried, in a shrill, strangled voice, and dived deliberately at the rocks.
He did not quite reach them. The machine struck the sea a few yards short, but the result of the impact was almost the same as if she’d struck solid earth. There was a rending crash as the wings tore off at the roots, and the bows crumpled like a crushed eggshell.
Captain W. E. Johns was born in Hertfordshire in 1893. He flew with the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and made a daring escape from a German prison camp in 1918. Between the wars he edited Flying and Popular Flying and became a writer for the Ministry of Defence. The first Biggles story, Biggles the Camels are Coming was published in 1932, and W. E. Johns went on to write a staggering 102 Biggles titles before his death in 1968.
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BIGGLES BOOKS
PUBLISHED IN THIS EDITION
FIRST WORLD WAR:
Biggles Learns to Fly
Biggles Flies East
Biggles the Camels are Coming
Biggles of the Fighter Squadron
Biggles in France
Biggles and the Rescue Flight
BETWEEN THE WARS:
Biggles and the Cruise of the Condor
Biggles and Co.
Biggles Flies West
Biggles Goes to War
Biggles and the Black Peril
Biggles in Spain
SECOND WORLD WAR:
Biggles Defies the Swastika
Biggles Delivers the Goods
Biggles Defends the Desert
Biggles Fails to Return
The moon is up, the stars are bright,
The wind is fresh and free;
We’re out to seek for gold to-night
Across the silver sea.
The world was growing grey and old;
Break out the sails again!
We’re out to seek a realm of gold
Beyond the Spanish Main.
ALFRED NOYES: Drake
Prologue
I. Murder on the Main
There was a soft creaking of blocks and tackle as the two ships, Rose of Bristol and Santa Anna, stirred uneasily on the gently heaving ocean. The ropes of the grappling irons that held them in a fast embrace grew taut, slackened, and grew taut again; it was almost as if the Rose shrank from the contact and strove to escape. But the steel hooks in her gunwales held her fast.
Overhead, from horizon to horizon, the sky was the deep azure blue of the tropics, unbroken except in the distant west, where, high above the misty peaks of Hispaniola,* a fleecy cloud was sailing slowly eastward. Nearer, a snow-white albatross swung low on rigid wings, its shadow sweeping the limpid surface of the sea, clear aquamarine, with little purple shadows here and there between the ripples that lapped gently at the Santa’s stern, or broke when a school of dolphins hurried by.
This scene of grace and colour was well matched by the splendour of the Spanish ship, a stately galleon, her counter red and silver, her towering poop all gold-encrusted, her sails, now loosely furled, rich cream and crimson, bright pennants streaming from her mastheads to the coats of arms that lined her sides above the bristling guns.
Only the Rose, belying her name, looked out of place, as out of place as a tramp on the threshold of a palace. Her sea-stained canvas, torn and shot-holed, lay in piles about the foot of her broken and splintered mainmast, or trailed with twisted skeins of cordage over her sides. From her bluff, Bristol-built bows to her sweeping stern she was painted black, a fitting colour, for about her well-scrubbed decks, in a welter of fast congealing blood, lay her crew, their glazing eyes upturned to the grim emblem of piracy that hung limply from the galleon’s peak – a sable flag with a white device: the dreaded skull and crossbones.
The scene was all too common in the days when Charles the Second was king. The Rose of Bristol, a barque of two hundred and fifty tons, homeward bound from the Spanish Main, had fallen in with the Santa Anna, lately captured by the most notorious pirate on the coast: Louis Dakeyne, leader of the Brethren, half French, half Dutch, half man, half devil, whose name was execrated wherever sailors met between the Old World and the New; for he spared neither man nor maid, or old or young of any nationality. His latest exploit, so it was rumoured, had been the capture, off Cartagena, of the ga
lleon Santa Anna, to which, after subjecting her captain to unspeakable tortures, he had transferred his cut-throat crew. So when at dawn the foretop of the Spaniard had appeared above the clear horizon, John Chandler, Master of the Rose, had clapped on sail and fled, knowing that, outmanned and outgunned, he stood no chance against the monster with its heavy metal and swarming crowd of villains. And for a time it seemed as if he would escape, for the barque was the better sailer of the two; but then the breeze that could have saved him passed him by, and while he had lain becalmed the bigger vessel with its enormous spread of canvas had crept slowly nearer, and with sinking heart the English captain knew his hour had come. With steady voice he had called his crew to prayer, then bade them die like men.
He had fought to the end, refusing to strike his colours, firing his one small piece of ordnance until the pirates poured aboard. Then, with his loyal crew around him, he had made his last stand near the mainmast, neither asking nor giving quarter. Cutlass in hand, the name of his God on his lips, he had done all that one man could do while his gallant hands were beaten down and slain, and only he remained, to fall at length under a foul blow from behind.
But not to die at once. Sorely wounded, he was dragged aboard the galleon while his ship was looted. This done, he was questioned by Dakeyne about other ships in harbour, soon to sail for England; but he set his lips in an obstinate line and not a word came from them. At that they flogged him until he swooned, but they could not make him speak. And now, the pirate’s patience soon exhausted, he stood upon the fatal plank, looking death in the face, with his hands tied behind his back.
A sudden silence fell, a hush broken only by the plaintive cry of the seabird, now circling very near, and the gentle murmur of the water far below.
Well might it have been for Louis Dakeyne, Louis le Grande, self-styled, or Louis the Exterminator, as many called him, had he dispatched his prisoner there and then, for the English mariner had still one card to play, and he played it with such deadly calm that those who heard his words turned pale, knowing that one on the point of death must speak the truth.
Turning from the end of the plank that hung far over the limpid sea so that he faced his ship, he regarded the grinning mob, his captors, with steadfast eyes that held not fear, nor hate, but scorn and triumph. For a moment he stood thus while a bead of blood crept down his ashen brow, crossing a cut so that a cross of red was formed.
The omen did not pass unseen, and a low mutter, like breakers on a distant beach, ran through the mob. It died away to silence as the stricken captain spoke.
‘Harken unto me, black hounds of hell,’ he cried, in a clear, ringing voice. ‘Harken at these my words, for they will be in the ears of each and all of you when your hour comes, as it will, before another moon shall wax and wane.’
A howl of derision rose into the sun-soaked air.
‘Shoot him,’ screamed one.
‘Perro! Vamos a ver,*’ snarled a renegade Spaniard.
‘Swing him by the heels,’ roared a one-eyed monster.
‘Woodle him,**’ bawled another.
‘Silence!’ At the pirate captain’s sharp command the imprecations ceased. He was watching the doomed man with a peculiar expression, not far removed from fear, upon his face.
‘Amongst the gold that you have taken from my ship and put with yours,’ went on the English captain dispassionately, ‘there is one coin, a gold doubloon, that carries all your fates, for it is cursed. When Joseph Bawn, a red-haired thief whom some of you may know, was brought to the scaffold at Port Royal this day last week, that coin was in his pocket. And there, within the shadow of the gallows, he spat upon it thrice. And as he spat he cursed the God who made him, and everyone into whose hands the gold should fall.’
A shudder, like the sound of the wind in leafless trees, ran through the superstitious audience.
‘That piece was put upon my ship because it was the king’s and had to go to England,’ continued the captain relentlessly. ‘Mark well my fate, and see how true the curse is working; then contemplate your own that soon must follow. For you can not escape. The piece is in your hoard, and to disown it you must throw your treasure overboard, which you have not the heart to do.’
There was no more laughing. Upon the faces of the pirates were frowns and scowls; upon their lips were oaths, but in their hearts cold fear.
John Chandler lifted his blue eyes to the blue sky. ‘With my last breath I beseech my God to strengthen now that curse until—’
He got no farther. Dakeyne’s pistol blazed. A stream of flame and sparks leapt from its gaping muzzle and ended at the sailor’s breast.
For an instant he remained standing, eyes upturned, lips moving. Then his knees bent; his body sagged limply and plunged down into the void.
At the sound of the splash the pirates rushed to the side of their ship, eyes seeking the corpse. But all they saw was an ever-spreading ring of ripples that circled slowly outwards from a crimson stain. And as they stared aghast an icy slant of wind moaned through the rigging.
‘What’s that?’ muttered Dakeyne, white-faced.
‘The bird! It was the albatross!’ cried Jamaica Joe, his quartermaster.
The pirate’s eyes flashed round the sky. ‘The bird has gone!’ he gasped. ‘Look!’
There was a sudden hush as all eyes followed his quivering forefinger.
Far to the west, from north to south, across the sky, an indigo belt was racing low towards them, blotting out the blue.
The pirate’s voice scarce rose above the hubbub. ‘All hands aloft,’ he croaked through lips that were suddenly dry.
II. The Curse
In setting down the disasters that befell the Santa Anna following immediately after the murder of Captain John Chandler, it is not suggested that these were caused directly by the sacrilegious words of a drunken buccaneer on the scaffold at Port Royal, but that they were the indirect cause is certain.
There is no question about the incident happening. We know from the famous chronicles of Exquemelin, the surgeon who served under the most notorious pirate captains, including the celebrated Morgan, and who afterwards wrote an account of his adventures, that Joseph Bawn was a pirate of the most villainous type. We know that he was turned off* at Port Royal in January 1689, for the foul murder of a comrade whose rations he had tried to steal, and Sir John Modyford, Governor of Jamaica at that time, refers to the condemned pirate’s frightful curse in a letter to Lord Arlington, Secretary of State to Charles II’s ‘Cabal’ Cabinet. But to presume that the last wish of a red-handed murderer was fulfilled by his Maker would be going too far. As far as the Santa Anna was concerned, the truth is probably to be found in four perfectly natural causes.
In the first place there was the incident itself, which distracted the attention of every soul on board, including the watch, so that the hurricane caught them unprepared. Secondly, there was the ship. Like all Spanish ships of the period she was unseaworthy; the high poop and short keel were so opposed to all natural laws that one marvels that they sailed at all. Thirdly, the firmly ingrained superstitions of the crew – notwithstanding their professed godlessness – must be taken into account. And lastly, but by no means least, their lack of discipline or control.
From the years 1680 to 1720, when piracy was in its heyday, it would be no exaggeration to say that the Brethren of the Coast – as they called themselves – were virtually in command of the West Indies and the Spanish Mainland. Morgan was probably more powerful in Jamaica than the Governor; he certainly had more men at his beck and call. That he was superior to the Spanish colonists is proved by his exploits, which included the taking and sacking of such cities as Panama, Porto Bello, and Maracaibo; Panama was the most strongly fortified city on the Main. At Tortuga, the Brethren had practically established a colony of their own, and that they did not, in fact, do so, was due to the weakness already referred to – lack of discipline.
Their commanders were appointed by themselves and held their posts
only by the goodwill of the crews. Such orders as they gave, except in the heat of battle, were, in fact, only suggestions, for if they did not meet with the approval of the ship’s companies they were not carried out. If the captain dared to insist, more often than not he was deposed, sometimes by the simple expedient of being thrown overboard. Admittedly, in times of success, orders were, on the whole, obeyed, but when things started going wrong the officers had to look to the priming of their pistols. It is on record that one pirate ship had no less than thirteen captains in a few months. Bartholomew Roberts, who maintained his command for four years, probably held the record for duration of office – popular fiction notwithstanding.
At the time of the capture of the Rose of Bristol the popularity of Louis Dakeyne ran high, for a very good reason. The Santa Anna, which he had waylaid, had proved to be a veritable treasure ship, laden with such minted coins as doubloons, golden moidores, pieces of eight, and cross money, to say nothing of plate, silks, lace, and other rare fabrics that would fetch good money at Port Royal, where unscrupulous traders were making fortunes. In their minds, Dakeyne’s matelots* – as the pirates sometimes called themselves – were already spending their ill-gotten gains in the iniquitous and pestilential drinking booths that lined the waterfront, so it may be safely assumed that the bare possibility of this depraved ambition being frustrated soon set them grumbling.
When the hurricane struck the galleon she heeled over until the grapnels tore the side clean out of the English ship. The foresail, carelessly stowed, burst like a paper bag, flinging overboard two men, who soon disappeared astern in the smother of foam whipped up from the surface of the sea. By an odd coincidence they were two of the very men who had clamoured for the English captain’s instant death as he stood on the plank, a fact that was not overlooked by the rest of the crew, who saw in the disaster the direct hand of God. Meanwhile the Santa Anna heeled away before a wind of such violence as no man on board had ever before experienced. It beat up terrific seas that poured over the poop and splashed half way up the mainmast.