THE CRUISE OF THE CONDOR

by W. E. Johns

II. DICKPA EXPLAINS (Pages 24 – 40)

Dickpa explains his story in more detail and tells Biggles and Algy about Brazil and the Matto Grosso. “The area of England is just over 50,000 square miles; Brazil covers 3 ¼ million square miles. The Matto Grosso is nearly a million square miles in extent, which means that it is nearly twenty times as large as England, and except for a few insignificant places it is unexplored”. Dickpa talks about the deadly wildlife which include the jaguar, crocodiles and pirhanas (that is how Johns spells ‘Piranhas’ here). Then there are the insects and ants. Biggles is interested in the terrain and they talk about the possibility of using an Amphibian aircraft. Dickpa explains how he stumbled upon, what he thinks is, the location of the treasure whilst exploring a tributary of the Madeira River. Wandering away from camp and passing the side of a steep gorge, Dickpa saw a rock carving by a big fissure or crack in the rock. Inside the cleft, Dickpa found a piece of Inca pottery and a small lump of solid gold, the gold he showed to Biggles and Algy earlier. The cleft gave way to a cave which came to an abrupt end with a man-made wall. “It was formed of great blocks of stone morticed together without mortar, and fitting so tightly that you couldn’t get a knife-blade between them. Only one race in the world could do that. Incas!” When Dickpa returns to camp, the gold bar falls out of the pocket of his coat, which is rotten with damp and heat, and is seen by Philippe Nunez. He soon tells the others and Dickpa has to fend them off in the night with his gun. The next morning Dickpa finds that they have abandoned him. It took Dickpa nearly six months to get back to civilisation and he was eventually discovered by a rubber collector and taken to Manaos. That was where he found out about the expedition being organised by his former porters and two Americans called Blattner and Steinburg. Dickpa agrees to fund an aeroplane for Biggles to take them back to Brazil. “I’ll buy a four-seater amphibian and the rest of the equipment we are likely to require. I’ll look up Smyth – he was my mechanic in France – and get him to come with us,” says Biggles. The plan is to ship the plane to New York (rather than risk flying the Atlantic). Biggles intends to escape from the house to make all the arrangements and then return in a hired plane at sunrise in a weeks’ time to collect Algy and Dickpa.