THE CRUISE OF THE CONDOR

by W. E. Johns

XIII. MAROONED (Pages 181 – 196)

Our heroes doze until the light of dawn reveals that they have come to an opening with an incredible view of minarets of red rock and billows of mist hanging motionless. Above and to one side, Biggles sees some steps. “Steps!” said Biggles tensely. “This is a way out after all, but, by the anti-clockwise propeller of my sainted aunt, it is a staircase that I, for one, am not anxious to tread. I don’t mind looking down when I’ve got a couple of wings each side of me, but it is going to be heady work scaling that crazy gangway”. Biggles ropes up and climbs out and up the staircase. Finding it reasonably safe, he calls the others up after him. They all reach the top of an open plateau about two miles long by a mile wide. “It was clear that they were on the summit of one of the huge flat-topped masses of rock that are such a common feature in the Matto Grosso”. “There was not a single place where there was a remote hope of getting down; no living creature could descent the precipitous wall”. However, they do find a giant buttress, where there is a bridge about thirty feet wide spanning a chasm. “It was formed of two whole, roughly squared up trees, laid side by side, without handrails or anything to prevent a careless traveller from stepping straight off into space”. One tree has slipped so it rests just lightly on the other side. Biggles suspects there must be something on the top of the plateau for the bridge and the way up that they found, to be here. “Since we started I’ve been shot at, shaken, scared stiff, bitten, stung, hung, buried alive, and goodness knows what else, so I for one am going to have a last look for what we came for” he says. They set off to the centre of the plateau along what appears to be an old path. It leads to a pyramid-like mass of rock. Trailing up to the top of this, inside, our heroes discover a town! It is inside the crater of a long-extinct volcano. They work their way down and find ruined houses. Inside are half mummified remains. People who seem to have died whilst just going about their daily lives. Some of the people appear to be goldsmiths and jewellers by what they have in front of them. All the bodies are men. Dickpa concludes they were all priests. “It must have been a colony of religious devotees or something of the sort”. They find a temple and climb a majestic stairway to the top. Here there is a sacrificial stone ominously stained. Inside the temple it is dark and dusty and there are further bodies.