THE CRUISE OF THE CONDOR

by W. E. Johns

VI. ESCAPE (Pages 67 - 76)

Carter drops Biggles and Smyth off and they use some oil from the axle of the car to darken their faces, so they are less conspicuous. They follow directions to the jail and then find the nearby river where they seek out a boat that they could take to enable them to get away. “If I could speak their beastly language I should try bribing the guards; I’ve plenty of money on me,” muttered Biggles. “Well, as we can’t that isn’t much use,” observed Smyth shortly (in his first line of dialogue). “You don’t often speak, but when you do you say something,” grinned Biggles. Biggles gets Smyth to take a spare tin of petrol from a parked Ford car then splashes it around a yard with some wooden cases. “Did you bring your nerve with you, Smyth?” asks Biggles. The old flight-sergeant chuckled. “Never left it behind yet, sir,” he smiled. Biggles asks Smyth to take the car and then drive it through the gate into the yard and then set the petrol on fire. This will create a diversion that will bring the police out of the jail opposite. The result of this “sounded like the end of the world”. Biggles turned pale. “Strewth,” he whispered, “he must have killed himself”. Gendarmes rush out of the jail and Biggles is able to slip in and find Dickpa locked behind an iron grilled cell. Using a spike bought for the purpose, Biggles tries to lever open the door and he is almost hit by “a truncheon wielded by a gigantic negro policeman”. Biggles ducks out of the way just in time and hits the man over the head with his spike. Biggles gives Dickpa his revolver and tells him to use it if he has to. “We might as well be hung for sheep as lambs”. The cell door is forced open and Biggles and Dickpa escape to the river where Smyth is waiting in a canoe they had selected earlier. Ten minutes paddling takes them down to where Algy is waiting with the aircraft. Biggles doesn’t want to take off until dawn and so they decide to drift out into midstream where they have a better view of anyone coming down the river.