Biggles Flies West

by W E Johns

  ‘Read it, sir, by all means,’ invited Dick.

  ‘Not here. Our seafaring friend might be hanging about. We’ll go to my rooms, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘It’s all the same to me – better, in fact,’ declared Dick. ‘But for you I shouldn’t have had it.’

  ‘Well, let’s finish our sausages and go home,’ suggested Ginger. ‘I’m fairly aching to see that letter. All my life I’ve wanted to find a bag of doubloons.’

  ‘A lot of people feel that way,’ murmured Biggles.

  ‘Just now you said buccaneers and pirates,’ ventured Dick, as they resumed their meal with renewed interest. ‘What was the difference – was there any?’

  ‘Yes, and no,’ answered Biggles. ‘The buccaneers came first. When there were more sailors than could find employment, some of them took to a life ashore in the West Indies, where they made a living by killing the animals that had been left behind by the Spaniards on such islands as Hispaniola – the place we now call Haiti. You see, when gold was discovered on the mainland, in Mexico and Peru, the Spaniards who had settled on the island sailed away to see if they could get hold of some of it, and having no means of transporting them, they left their domestic animals behind – cows, pigs, and the like. These ran wild and soon increased in numbers. The out-of-work English and French sailors hunted them, killed them, dried the meat and sold it to the ships that called. They called the stuff boucan, which was really the French word for cured beef. So they became known as boucaniers, or, in our language, buccaneers, and buccaneers they would have stayed if the Spaniards had had any sense. But they objected to anyone else trading in the New World, and tried to drive the buccaneers, who at that time were perfectly harmless people, out of Hispaniola. They did, in fact, kill a lot of them. Naturally, the buccaneers resented this treatment, to say the least of it; they fought back, and there were some nasty goings-on. In the end the Spaniards won – or it looked that way to them at the time. The buccaneers were driven out, but they didn’t go far. They pulled up at a rocky island not far away called Tortuga, where they started thinking about revenge. Not only thinking. They built boats and began making raids against the Spaniards. From that they went to attacking Spanish ships at sea. They fought like fury, and taking the guns from the ships they captured, soon made Tortuga a pretty impregnable fortress. They also constructed forts at other points about the islands.

  ‘What happened after that was a pretty natural consequence,’ continued Biggles. ‘Rumours of the great quantities of gold being captured from the Spanish galleons got abroad, and the toughest toughs in the world headed for Tortuga to join in the fun. Another colony sprang up at Port Royal, in Jamaica, which must have been a pretty hot spot. The Spaniards now began to get what they’d asked for. The old buccaneering business was forgotten and the one-time buccaneers became pirates pure and simple. They attacked anything and everything anywhere and anyhow. Knowing that if the Spanish caught them they’d be burned, and if the English caught them they’d be hanged, they fought like devils, neither giving nor asking quarter. The Spanish government couldn’t shift them, and neither, for that matter, could the British. In the end they were strong enough to take and sack even the largest Spanish cities on the Main. Morgan had eighteen hundred men behind him when he went to Panama.’

  ‘What happened to them at the finish?’ asked Dick breathlessly.

  ‘The English government did the only thing it could do. It offered them all a free pardon if they’d turn from their wicked ways. Most of them accepted and either settled down or joined the navy. Morgan, probably the biggest cutthroat of the lot, was knighted by the king and made governor of Jamaica. Knowing all the tricks of the trade, he rounded up and hanged all his old pals who had not accepted the free pardon, so in the course of time the business of piracy fizzled out. The coming of steamships finally put the tin hat on it.’

  ‘Pity,’ murmured Dick, with genuine regret.

  Biggles smiled. ‘So you’d like to be a pirate, you bloodthirsty young rascal, would you?’

  ‘There must have been a lot more fun in it than selling papers at three-ha’pence a dozen.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ agreed Biggles, ‘although there was nothing funny in swinging on a yard-arm or a gibbet But if everyone has finished we might as well get along.’

  He paid the bill and they passed out into the dreary, lamp-lit street.

  Dick opened his mouth to speak, and stepped into the gutter to get beside Biggles just as a heavy lorry swung round the corner.

  Algy saw his danger and dragged him aside just in time. The lorry whirled past, missing him by inches.

  Biggles eyed Dick seriously. ‘My goodness! That was a close squeak,’ he breathed. ‘You ought to know better than to wander in the road like that.’

  Dick turned up a startled face. ‘Yes,’ he said, thoroughly shaken. ‘I can’t think what came over me; I never did a thing like that before in my life.’

  ‘Well, don’t do it again, or your doubloon won’t bring you much luck,’ admonished Biggles as, reaching a broad street, he beckoned a cruising taxi.

  They got in, and the driver, possibly because he had a long journey before him, set off at high speed. From his position in the rear seat of the cab Biggles regarded the back of the driver’s head with strong disapproval. This fellow is either mad or drunk,’ he declared. ‘He has no business to go at this rate; we shall bump into something in a minute, the silly ass.’

  ‘That would be a shame, just as I’ve come into some money,’ protested Dick.

  ‘As far as I can make out, you’re going to be lucky if you live long enough to spend it,’ muttered Biggles angrily as the taxi skidded round the corner, narrowly missing a stationary dray. ‘Open the window, Algy, and tell that fool at the wheel that we didn’t ask him to set up a record.’

  Algy did as he was asked, but the driver merely laughed as though the whole thing was a joke.

  Biggles muttered savagely, and regarded the oncoming traffic with increasing anxiety.

  The end came suddenly, at the corner of Mount Street, not far from Biggles’s rooms, where the driver swerved to miss a private car that was creeping out of a side street. There was a scream of brakes, and an instant later a sickening crash as the cab struck a traffic signal. Fortunately, it did not turn over.

  Biggles was white with anger as he extricated himself from the others on the floor and kicked open the buckled door. ‘Anybody hurt?’ he asked quickly.

  Receiving assurances that no-one was injured, he turned to the driver who, looking thoroughly frightened and ashamed, was wiping the blood from a cut on his forehead with his handkerchief. But before he could speak a policeman appeared, notebook in hand, thrusting his way through the rapidly forming crowd. ‘Who did this?’ he asked menacingly, pointing to the smashed traffic light.

  Biggles nodded in the direction of the driver. ‘He did. He drove like a lunatic. He must be drunk,’ declared Biggles bitterly.

  The driver denied the charge indignantly. ‘That ain’t true, sir. I ain’t ‘ad a drink all day, and that’s the ’onest truth, strike me dead if it ain’t. You smell my breath if you don’t believe me.’

  Biggles shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I’ll do that, thank you. The constable might like to,’ he added. There was something in the man’s attitude that led him to think that the driver was speaking the truth. ‘What on earth made you drive as you did?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, s’welp me,’ declared the wretched man, regarding the ruins of his cab. ‘It just seemed as if I couldn’t ’elp meself. The funny thing was, I knew I was going too fast, yet I didn’t seem able to stop. It was almost as if some one was sitting on the seat beside me saying, “Go on, put your foot down and let her rip.” I—’

  ‘All right, that’ll do,’ put in the constable heavily. ‘You come along with me; I’ll get the doctor to have a look at you.’

  Still protesting volubly, the driver was led away. The others we
re left standing on the pavement.

  ‘Come on,’ muttered Biggles disgustedly. ‘We might as well walk the rest of the way. And we’d better insure our lives before we do anything else, I think. That’s two narrow escapes inside half an hour. If this sort of thing goes on I shall soon begin to think you’re a hoodoo, Dick.’

  However, they reached Biggles’s flat without further incident, beyond the fact that they all got wet, for it was now raining steadily. They changed their jackets, Ginger lending Dick one of his, and then settled round the fire. Biggles lit a cigarette ‘Go ahead, Dick,’ he invited. ‘Let’s hear what your father has to say about the doubloon.’

  ‘I’d rather you read the letter yourself, sir,’ suggested Dick nervously. ‘My dad didn’t write much of a hand, and it always took me a long time to make out the words.’

  ‘All right.’ Biggles took the proffered letter. ‘I’ll read it aloud,’ he said, ‘then we shall all hear what there is to hear at the same time.’ He unfolded several sheets of flimsy paper and smoothed them out on his knee. ‘Now then, pay attention, everybody,’ he said. ‘I’m going to start.’

  Chapter 3

  The Letter

  Dear Dick,

  I don’t suppose you’ll ever get this, but if you do I want you to read it very carefully, and likewise take care of it, because one day it may help you to find a fortune. Yes, a fortune. But don’t say nothing to nobody, see, or belike you’ll get your throat cut afore you can get yer hands on the dibs. Now then; I’ll start at the beginning.

  As you know, a finer ship’s company you couldn’t find than we had in the old Seadream, bless her rusty sides. She was a good ‘un if ever there was one, and now gone to Davy Jones with most of the good shipmates on her because of that drunken villain Dooch, or Deutch. however he spells his name. A nasty looking man with a round scar at the end of his mouth what don’t make him no prettier. But I can’t talk about him now because I must get on, having a lot to say.

  On this last trip I knew we was in for trouble the minute I clapped eyes on Deutch, who was our new first mate in place of poor Sam Hankin, who was as fine a sailor as ever handled a rope, and knew us all down in the fo’castle like we were his own boys. Sam was sick and Deutch took his place. That was the way of it. And we hadn’t sighted the Nab Light when I knew we was in for a dirty trip. Bound for Rio, we was, in ballast, and rolling in a middling north-west gale, we runs down a ketch, making close reefed for port. All because Deutch, who was on the bridge, wouldn’t give way, like he ought to have done, us being a steamer. What was worse, we didn’t stop. And why? I’ll tell you. Deutch was drunk. I needn’t say no more about that, but I can tell you there was some funny talk in the fo’castle, as you might guess. In the morning someone tells the skipper, and then the fat was in the fire. Deutch had it in for the lot of us. That was the start.

  I needn’t tell you about the next fortnight. Deutch made all our lives a hell, and I began to see that if we got to Rio without bloodshed we should be lucky. To make matters worse, the Old Man* slips down the fore companion and lays himself out by knocking his head on a block. And that was how things was when the big blow hits us. Skipper sick, mate drunk, hands grumbling and nothing shipshape. And this, Dick, is where the story really begins.

  It ain’t no manner of use me trying to tell you just where we was when the hurricane struck us. It ain’t for the likes of me to know. But the blow come from the south-east’ard and it tore up such waves as I never see in my life afore. The seas turned into hollow breakers which made the Seadream stick her nose into the air, and we began to ship water faster than we could pump it out. The water doused the fires and the mainmast went by the board, taking with it a lot of gear including the wireless, and before long we was drifting as helpless as an old barrel.

  For four days we drifted without sighting a ship, and all the time we was leaking like a sieve and getting lower and lower in the water. I tell you, son, me and my shipmates was a pretty miserable lot, what with not having no sleep and exhausted working the hand pumps and knowing as how we couldn’t keep afloat much longer.

  Presently it was clear that the old Seadream would founder any minute, and we see about getting the boats out. None of us would go without the skipper, so we carries him up and puts him in the first boat. Pity Deutch hadn’t been in her, too. There was still a big sea running, and the boat, swinging on the davits as we lurched, smashed to bits, and every soul in her fell into the water and was drowned. Deutch was hanging on a rope just getting into the boat when it happened, but he managed to hold on and claw his way back on deck. There was five of us left all told; me, Deutch, Tom Allen from Pompey, Joe Stevens, the cook, and Charlie Bender, the same Charlie as come ‘ome with me once. You remember Charlie, a little fellow with a fair moustache? He come from Gillingham.

  Now it ain’t no use wasting time telling you about our voyage in the last boat. About a fortnight it was before we sighted land, and how we kept alive, only the Almighty knows. I can’t make it out nohow. No, nor how we got to where we did, for our first landfall was an island called Providence in the Caribbean Sea. Deutch and me both knew it by the funny shaped hill at the end, both of us having watered there in the old sailing days. A caution it was how we got there. But before we could set foot on shore a current carried us out to sea again on a new course to the south-west. We hadn’t no strength left to pull on the oars, so we had to put up with it. A bitter sight it was to see the land disappearing again, I can tell you, after all we had been through, and us half dead with hunger and thirst. I forgot to tell you that Tom Allen was already dead. Poor Joe died that night. But at last the current took us to another island; and when me, Charlie, and Deutch lands on it, it looks like our troubles was about over, for there was coconuts to eat and milk to drink. I don’t know the name of this island. I wish I did, as you will see. But my worst troubles was yet to come.

  Deutch’s temper now that he couldn’t get liquor was awful, and while we was waiting for a boat to pick us up I used to go off by myself looking for grub or watching for a ship. Our island wasn’t by any means a little place. As some islands go it might be, but I reckon it was best part of ten miles long by five wide at the widest part, narrowing down at the ends like a new moon. And now there comes a surprise that will sound like a story in a book, but it’s true, as you will see from what I enclose in this letter.

  One morning, after we had been on the island about a month, Deutch wakes up and curses me for not having water handy. I like a fool ups and tells him that I ain’t no lackey, whereupon he comes at me with his knife, and I, not having nothing to defend myself with, runs off with him after me. Soon I comes to a place what I’d seen afore, a sort of dip, or dell-hole, a mossy place filled with bushes and creepers and things, and thinking as how it would make a good hiding place, I jumps into it. I jumped into more than I bargained for, by a long shot, for the ground seemed to open and swallow me up, as they say, and I lands slap in another world. When I opens my eyes I sees as I’m in the saloon of an old fashioned ship like they’ve got models of in the Museum at Greenwich. I thought for a minute I was dead, or knocked unconscious, with my spirit wandering about in some other place. You see, son, I couldn’t make sense of it nohow, because here I was some way from the shore, and how could a ship get there? A ship can’t sail over land. So, as I say, I thought as how I’d got knocked silly, and I just lay there waiting to see what was going to happen next. After a time, when nothing does happen, I gets up and begins to wonder if I’m dreaming after all. The things all seemed solid enough, but so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Well, I thinks, this is a rum go, and starts to have a look round. Then I see the hole in the roof where I’d tumbled in, and that sort of gave me an idea of what was what. And now I’ll tell you what I saw.

  The first thing I claps eyes on give me a rare fright, I can tell you. It was a dead man, although I see at a glance that he’d been dead a long time. It wasn’t so much a corpse as a skellington, with the old-fashioned clothes
still hanging on the bones, and it fair gave me the creeps to see him sitting there at a big desk grinning out of empty eye-holes at something what lay in front of him.

  Presently I plucks up courage to go closer and look at what he was grinning at. There was several things on the desk, and I reckon they are still there, because I didn’t touch nothing except what – p’raps you can guess. But I’m going too fast. On the desk there was a big candlestick what looks as if might be silver. Beside it there was an old-fashioned pistol like those you see decorating the walls at the Tower of London. Likewise there was a bit of paper and an old feather sharpened to a point, what I believe the dead man had been using as a pen to write with, because there was writing on the paper, which is the yellow piece I am putting in this letter. But what the pore dead feller seemed to be grinning at was a queer sort of foreign-looking medal. By the weight of it I thinks it’s gold. Anyway, thinking as how it might be handy, I slips it in my pocket. Likewise I am sending it to you with the paper, which I can’t make head nor tail of, but it struck me it might be a sort of chart marking where there is some money, being as how I couldn’t find none, which seemed a bit funny considering the other things I found when I looked round.

  I ain’t got time to tell you everything I seen in this ramshackle old hulk, but I can tell you I was fair amazed, as you will be if ever you claps eyes on it. There was all sorts of things stored in chests: clothes and silks and satins. Maybe this is what the pore feller was going to hide when he died. As I say, I couldn’t work it out nohow, but it’s a fair knockout.

  When I comes to go I find as I’m in a rare mess, because I couldn’t get back up to the hole I’d fell in. You’ll laugh when I tell you how I got out. I stove a hole through the bows of the hulk. Rotten they was, like sawdust, but I got out, and had a good look round so as I’d know the place again. And now I’ll tell you how to find it if ever you go looking for it, although my bit of a chart what I’ve made to put in this letter ought to give you the general direction.