BIGGLES IN THE SOUTH SEAS

by Captain W. E. Johns

VI. ‘TILL THE ROPE BREAKS’ (Pages 91 – 109)

The next morning Biggles taxies the flying-boat out, under Sandy’s guidance for a quarter of an hour and gets to roughly the right position. They then have to hunt around to find the exact place. As there is no sea swell, Full Moon swims down and disappears from sight. She then returns with a huge oyster in her hand. She says the bottom slopes like a hill and it is shallower over in a direction she indicates. They move to the location where they can see the bottom. Sandy thinks it is six or seven fathoms (a fathom being six feet, so 36 to 42 feet or around 11 to 12 metres). Sandy begins to get into his diving-suit. He says diving is a dangerous business. “There isn’t an insurance company in the world that will insure a diver”. One of the worst dangers is the big clams, as big as a bath and weighing over half a ton. If a diver steps in one then he is down there for good unless somebody comes down and cuts his leg off. Sandy has already trained Algy and Ginger in the business of fastening up the diving-suit. He tells them to remember the signals. The one he hopes never to use is four tugs. “That means pull till the rope breaks” because he is stuck fast on the bottom. The nuts are tightened on Sandy’s suit and Algy turns the handle of the air pump as Sandy goes down under the water. Ginger pays out the life-line. A large wire basket is lowered down. After several minutes there is one tug on the line and they haul up the basket with twenty or thirty huge oysters in it. This was repeated several times so that after an hour there is a considerable pile of oysters in the cabin. They get the signal that Sandy is coming up and when he does, they unscrew his helmet. He has come up for “a wee bit of a rest”. Sandy says he has to be careful that his life-line and air-tube don’t get tangled on a lump of coral. Sandy returns to the sea bed and the shells continue to come up, the ‘Scud’ noticeably settling deeper in the water under their weight. A long time passes before any shells come up and Full Moon dives down to see what is happening. She returns to say “Big feke!” meaning Octopus. Sandy is fighting an octopus and there is little they can do to help. Full Moon is frightened of getting caught in the life-line. Ginger then gets the signal - four pulls on the rope! They start pulling with all their might. Biggles, Ginger, Shell-Breaker and Full Moon all pull on the rope to no avail. Biggles starts the engines and the flying-boat goes over on her side with her wing-tip in the water under the terrific pressure. Biggles increases from half-throttle and Ginger tells him it is coming and they strain to heave the rope in. “We’ve got more than Sandy at the end of this rope,” declared Biggles grimly. “Thank God it’s a brand-new one. Stand by with that chopper, Shell-Breaker”. Full Moon says “He come with feke!” “Knife in hand, her lips parted, showing her teeth, she looked what she was, a savage, but ready to fight against something she knew and understood only too well”. A long tentacle breaks the surface. Another one curled itself around the fuselage of the ship. Biggles severs it with a blow from Shell-Breaker’s hatchet, the blade sinking into the plywood. Shell-Breaker and Full Moon slash away with their knives. Ginger sees two great eyes, as large as saucers, and Biggles whips out his automatic and blazes away between them until his weapon is empty. (Biggles whipped out his automatic and fired shot after shot until the weapon was empty - is the illustration on page 105). Ginger falls backwards at the recoil as the weight falls away and they are then able to drag Sandy up. He falls motionless across the hull. Ginger removes Sandy’s helmet and sees his ashen face. “He’s dead!” he cries. As sharks finish the octopus off, Algy pours some brandy between Sandy’s pallid lips. Biggles races the ‘Scud’ towards the entrance of their lagoon and they lay Sandy on the beach. He opens his eyes. “Ye saved the shell all right, I hope?” he said, weakly. “Why, you old skinflint, of course we did” answers Biggles with a catch in his voice. “We’ve got you, that’s all that really matters”. Sandy says he is a “wee bit bruised, nothing more”. Vivid red bands showed where the creature had gripped him with its tentacles. Ginger is astonished when Sandy says he will go back down. The octopus would have been king of the roost over a big area and it should be safer now. Sandy explains what happened, he was searching in a deep dell-hole in the coral as there were some big shells there. He was grabbed by a tentacle but managed to put his arms straight up so they were not pinned to his sides. The octopus grabbed him with four tentacles and used the other four to anchor himself. Sandy couldn’t signal to be pulled up at that stage as they would never have broken the grip of the holding tentacles. He cut off two tentacles and they were replaced by two more, so weakening the grip of the octopus on the coral. As Sandy started to lose the fight, he gave the four tugs then passed out. Sandy says he will be as right as rain after a day’s rest and he gives instructions for the shell drawn up to be spread on the beach on the west side of the island above the high-water mark. In a day or two, they will be able to see if they have had any luck with any pearls.