BIGGLES - CHARTER PILOT

by Captain W. E. Johns

II THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABOMINABLE CAVEMAN (Pages 16 - 25)

“Lunch over, the members of Biggles’s squadron had passed into the ante-room, there to amuse themselves according to individual taste until two o’clock, when the squadron was scheduled for gunnery practice”. Lord Bertie Lissie flips through a picture magazine and stops at a photograph taken in Abyssinia. “I say, you know,” he remarked, adjusting his monocle, “the jolly old Abyssinians look a wild and woolly lot, don’t they? I mean to say – look at their mops of fuzzy hair. Pretty ferocious, what?” Ginger says they remind him of …….. then stops. Biggles says “I should say they remind him of the Abominable Caveman”. “Was he another one of the weird and wonderful animals you encountered during your tour with Dr. Augustus Duck?” inquired Tug Carrington, a trifle sarcastically. “Yes, but he wasn’t an animal,” returned Biggles. “Bishimbi was a man”. That was the name the natives called him. Algy says Biggles had better tell the story but he says “Ginger can tell it”. “He’s better at this sort of thing than I am”. And this is the story Ginger told.

They were in Africa and Dr. Duck kept a register of rare events. Walleroo Island,

which really means Labyrinth Island, is a British island, roughly twenty miles off the coast of South Africa in the South Atlantic. Previously, Portuguese settlers had been there some five centuries ago but they had long since gone, leaving an abandoned village of tiny stone houses. Some native Hottentots from the mainland had gone to Labyrinth Island at the request of the Government to collect penguin eggs which had a ready market in South Africa “and in swagger London hotels”. They fetch a shilling apiece. The natives had been scared off by an "Abominable Caveman". “They described it as a hairy giant in human form who made the night hideous with his howlings and amused himself by disinterring the corpses from the graveyard and gnawing the bones”. He had been seen leaping from rock to rock swinging a mighty club at night, but never during the day. Doctor Duck gets Biggles, Algy and Ginger to fly out to investigate in the Wanderer and explore the now empty island. On one beach they find the scene of a blood bath. Blood is everywhere and the sea is crimson and filled with scores of sharks. “It looks as if the Abominable Caveman has been behaving abominably” said Biggles. Biggles gets Algy to fly the Wanderer down to Cape Town and the others hide up in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Caveman. "It must have been about twelve o'clock when I felt Biggles stiffen" says Ginger. They see, silhouetted against the skyline, a huge hairy figure, holding in its hand an enormous club. Following the figure to a cliff top, our heroes wait for daylight and then see seven men on the beach. They are seal skin poachers. The island is also a seal sanctuary. They have come across from a nearby island in a small boat - which Biggles goes down and sinks by smashing a rock through the floorboards. Algy returns and brings with him four police officers and a coastal patrol boat. The poachers are caught, literally 'red-handed' and in due course all get long terms of imprisonment. “The caveman, of course, was one of the gang, a big negro with two or three goat skins tied round him. The imaginations of the Hottentots did the rest, although the fellow admitted that to lend colour to his masquerade he had uncovered some of the graves and flung the bones about”. Ginger glances at the clock. “Great Scott!” he ejaculated. “It’s time we were on parade”.