THE CRUISE OF THE CONDOR

A BIGGLES STORY

 

by W. E. Johns

 

First published August 1933

 

 

CONTENTS – Page 5

 

List of illustrations – Page 6 (Frontispiece and four plates all by Howard Leigh.  The plates are facing pages 86, 136, 150 and 236)

 

I.      BIGGLES GETS A SHOCK  (Pages 7 – 23)

 

“The trouble about civil life is that nothing ever seems to happen.  What interest people got out of it before the War I can’t imagine; it must have been deadly dull.  Even peace-time flying is so tame that I can’t get a kick out of it.  No Archie, no Huns, no nothing – just fly from here to there, and there you are” say Biggles in the opening lines of the book.  He is speaking to Algy and is introduced as “Major James Bigglesworth, D.S.O., M.C., popularly known as Biggles, who in October 1918 had commanded No. 266 Squadron in France.  Victor of thirty-five confirmed combats and many others unclaimed, he was known, at least by reputation, from Belgium to the Swiss frontier”. (Johns has got this wrong as Biggles never commanded 266 Squadron.  Major Mullen commanded the Squadron and it is only in the last story of “The Camels are Coming” that Biggles is promoted to Major and given the command of his own Squadron, 319, Home Establishment – a command he never takes up as the war ends).  Biggles and Algy are on the way to visit Biggles’ Uncle Dickpa, following receipt of a telegram that he is back in the country.  Biggles explains that “I used to call my guvnor ‘Pa’ when I was a toddler, and when his brother Dick came down to see him I just naturally called him Dickpa.  I’ve never called him anything else”.  Dickpa is an explorer and seldom in the country.  As Biggles and Algy walk up the long drive of his old, red-bricked Elizabethan house, they are held up at gunpoint by a man with an American accent.  Biggles deals with him by throwing a large piece of stone in his face.  When Algy says he hopes Biggles hasn’t killed him, Biggles replies “If, after spending my precious youth fighting the King’s enemies, I can’t fight one of my own, it’s a pity”.  Coming under fire, Biggles and Algy make it into Dickpa’s house and discover he is a man under siege, all alone, in his own home.  Dickpa explains that he has been exploring the Matto Grosso in Brazil and thinks he has found Atahuallpha’s treasure.  Atahuallpha was the last Inca King captured and murdered by Pizarro, the Spaniard.  Dickpa shows Biggles and Algy some gold he has found and says he had four porters, “a negro, two half-breed negro-Brazilians, and a half-breed Indian-Brazilian named Philippe Nunez.  He was the worst of the lot; a coward, a thief, and a liar.  He is outside in the park somewhere at this moment”.  Biggles wants to go and shoot him but Dickpa tells him it would be murder.  Dickpa explains that his porters abandoned him, leaving him to die of starvation, until he was found by a rubber collector and taken to Manaos where he found a new expedition about to set off to look for the treasure led by Philippe Nunez and an American wastrel named Silas Blattner.  Whilst Dickpa was recovering, the expedition returned unsuccessful, and then they tried to kidnap Dickpa to force him to divulge his secret.  Dickpa had to flee Brazil to save his life.  Back at home, Dickpa was astonished to see Blattner and Nunez in the park and now he finds himself under siege in his own home.  “I can only say I am glad we’ve rolled up to lend a hand.  We shall even things up a bit, I hope” says Biggles although he cautions Dickpa against going to look for the treasure.  “I should feel inclined to leave it alone if I were you,” advised Biggles.  “After all, you have plenty of money.  Why risk a knife in the back to get more?”  Dickpa says “It isn’t altogether the monetary value of the treasure that appeals to me; it is the historical value of what I know exists there”.  Biggles asks him if he has thought about flying?  They take their coffees into the smoke-room to discuss the matter further.