BIGGLES FLIES NORTH

by Captain W. E. Johns

XXI. THE PRISONER SPEAKS (Pages 232 – 242)

Twice the Indian slips and makes the effort to climb back up onto the roof. Ginger shouts to him and asks if he can hold out until morning. The answer is that he can’t, as it is too cold. It takes Ginger nearly ten minutes to start the cold engines of the aircraft and taxi over to the cabin. The noise of the engines scares the wolves away. Ginger sees that the Indian has dropped the rifle off the roof and Ginger is able to recover it before calling the Indian to come down. The Indian has been wounded and is freezing cold, all the fight has gone out of him. Ginger takes the Indian into the cabin and with various threats and bribes; he gets the Indian to talk about the murder of Mose Jacobs. The Indian says McBain did it and that he himself was not involved. He only knows as he saw McBain cleaning blood and hair off his gun afterwards – he had hit Mose with the butt end of it. Ginger tells the Indian he could turn King’s evidence and testify against McBain. Ginger assures him that McBain will be hanged. Eventually, the Indian is persuaded to reveal the whereabouts of the gold. It is buried under the stove in the cabin. Ginger recovers it – eight sacks, each tied and sealed. On the side of each one is printed in black letters MOOSE CREEK GOLDFIELDS INC. There is also a spare seal in the cache, showing how the gang used them to reseal the original shipment once they had replaced the gold with lead. Ginger examines the Indian’s wound, in his arm. It is only a flesh wound but the Indian has a lost a good deal of blood leaving him very weak. Ginger goes to get McBain’s fur coat to give to the Indian and finds in the turn-up of the sleeve an object of interest (we are not told what). As daylight arrives, Ginger compels his prisoner to help him load the gold into the aircraft. With the Indian sitting beside him, Ginger reasons he won’t do anything to cause a crash as he will kill them both “which hardly seems likely”. Ginger flies the Jupiter aircraft back to Fort Beaver.