BIGGLES - CHARTER PILOT

by Captain W. E. Johns

III THE ADVENTURE OF THE HORTICULTURAL HERMITS (Pages 26 - 35)

“The officers of No. 666 (Fighter) Squadron squatted outside the camouflaged hangar of “A” Flight, waiting for the morning mist to lift”. Tug Carrington asks Ginger to tell another tale about Dr. Duck. Ginger says the very day after they got back from Labyrinth Island, he came to see them. Biggles, who was sitting on an empty oil-drum said “Tell them about the Horticultural Hermits, Ginger”. This is the story Ginger told.

“You may remember reading in the papers, not very long ago, of the death of an explorer named Wedson – Bertram Wedson. He died in a lunatic asylum, of a disease no doctor could diagnose. Apparently a sort of fungus grew on his head, and the roots eventually penetrated into his brain”. Before he died, he told of finding a plateau on the eastern slope of the Andes where descendants of Jesuits fleeing from the King of Spain, had built a monastery and spent centuries perfecting the art of cultivation, grafting, hybridization and using medicinal herbs. Wedson wanted to travel to the plateau looking for gold-bearing quartz, but as soon as his native bearers heard this, they dropped their loads and fled. Wedson was later grabbed by a party of white men. “They were white – not ordinary white, but dead white. Their skins were like snow, and this, they afterwards told him, was due to a special vegetarian diet”. His captors spoke an old form of Spanish. They took Wedson to the top of the plateau and kept him a prisoner there. A seed was planted in his head to stop him escaping. The only thing that would prevent it germinating was a special fruit lotion obtainable only on the plateau. After a year, he got fed up and decided that he might as well be dead as go on living as he was. He thought perhaps the seed story was a bluff. He escaped and got back to England. The seed germinated and although he went to doctors and specialists, they could do nothing for him. He decided to go back to the plateau as the only means of saving his life, but was clapped in a mental home due to telling his story and he died in an asylum. Dr. Duck believed his story and wanted to fly out to try and find this mysterious plateau. Our heroes fly out and locate it but are not able to land on the plateau itself, they are only able to land below the plateau and they find it defended by the most incredible plants, cacti, with needle like spines that can penetrate footwear. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that stuff that grows in Mexico called Spanish Bayonet? It’s really a leaf, but it looks like a dagger, and feels like a dagger – and is one, in fact. It will pierce leather as though it were tissue paper” says Ginger. Wedson had said there was a path through this, but other deadly vegetation awaits, including stinging nettles so poisonous that one sting was enough to make a man die in agony. There are also poppies that give off a fragrance that is really a gas. It kills you as you fall asleep and never wake up. Ginger says that Biggles had said, sarcastically, “I’m glad you mentioned it, Doctor. Unless we all wish to commit suicide – and I certainly do not – there would appear to be no point in going on. I suggest that we all return to the machine, have some supper and a good night’s sleep, and try to get in touch with these people in the morning”. They all agree and set a person to keep watch. Algy takes the first watch from eight to twelve. Just before midnight he wakes the others as he can hear a pattering noise, like hail. Seeing nothing, Biggles takes the next shift of four hours and Ginger takes the last shift. Ginger doesn’t yet know it, but they have been showered by seeds from above. With the coming of dawn, these seeds germinate and are incredibly fast growing, sprouting in front of your eyes and growing at six inches a minute. “In a few more minutes they would be all over the aircraft, anchoring it to the ground. There would be no runway to take off”. Biggles yells “Get aboard everybody – it’s our only chance!” Biggles manages to get the plane off as the growth is “no tougher than any other weed, and they couldn’t stand the strain of a five hundred horse-power engine”. As they fly away home, they see the population of the plateau lined up watching them. When Ginger had finished his story, Biggles stood up and said “Come on, chaps, the fog’s lifting. Let’s get into the air”.