BIGGLES - CHARTER PILOT

by Captain W. E. Johns

V THE ADVENTURE OF THE OXIDIZED GROTTO (Pages 45 - 53)

“Flight-Lieutenant Angus MacKail took the piece of duralumin from the vice at which he had been working, fitted it to the cigarette case that he had been repairing, and dropped it into his pocket”. “Queer stuff, duralumin,” he observed addressing in general, the officers who were watching him. As it is five o’clock the officers go down to the mess for a cup of tea. Algy remarks that he once saw a specimen of “what must be the most uncommon metal in the world”, called Orichalcum. Algy says that Biggles, Ginger, Dr. Duck and himself rediscovered it in Borneo. Algy then gets Ginger to tell the men in the squadron the story. “And this is the narrative as he gave it:”

Dr. Augustus Duck had read about a white cave in Borneo, where all the creatures and plants were all white. He read this in an old Victorian magazine called The Family Entertainer, dated 1880 (a fictional magazine invented by Johns, it would appear). It was written by Tuan Sommers, a planter in Borneo with an estate in the Leelong Mountains. “It was hardly to be expected that Tuan Sommers, who had written the article some sixty years ago, was still there – or, for that matter, still alive”. (This would place the writing of this story around 1940. It was first published in the February 1942 edition of Boy’s Own Paper. I believe it was written in 1941). Dr. Duck cables Government House at Sarawak and from there gets in touch with Tuan's son, Tuan Sommers Junior, and gets permission to go and stay with him. With one thing and another, it takes Biggles & Co. a month to get to Mojok, the name of Sommers estate. In due course, they land on a river and meet Sommers who is “a very charming fellow”. The cave is a twelve mile trek away and at an altitude of ten thousand feet, quite a climb. Sommers can’t go with them due to business commitments, so he sends one of his Punan headmen, called Ulu to show them most of the way. He won’t go all the way as no native will actually go near the cave. “Donald” Duck does the journey wearing his usual top hat and frock coat and it is very hard going in the tropical heat. “Pitcher plants hung everywhere, like enormous bowls of putrid water. It you touched one you got a pint of stinking fluid, all mixed up with dead flies, down your neck. Still, we accepted all this as a matter of course” says Ginger. It takes them six hours to travel the twelve miles and when they get within five hundred feet of the cave, Ulu waits for them. If they don’t come back, he will know that the “devil-devils” had got them and he would return alone. Arriving at the cave, the moss outside is dirty white and as dry as tinder. Inside, everything is sickly white, the cave and all the creatures within. “Everything being white, we could see nothing but shadows. I bumped into a white bush without seeing it, and Algy nearly put his foot on a fair-sized snake. It was as white as the floor, so it’s not surprising that he didn’t see it”. They find white flowers, white flies, white bats and enormous white butterflies inside the cave. Dr. Duck discovers the white stuff comes off, like a fine powder. He thinks it is metallic. Dr. Duck chips some rock off inside the cave and notices that the new exposed face glows crimson and when Ginger takes it out of the cave, exposure to light causes it to heat up and smoke. “Once, when Biggles was running a transport company, (a reference to Biggles & Co. published in 1936) I helped him to carry some gold, and that’s pretty heavy stuff. As a mater of detail, a cubic foot of it weighs eleven hundred pounds – say, half a ton (Google tells me that a cubic foot of gold actually weighs 1206 pounds. There are three types of ton, a US ton, 2000 pounds, a UK ton, 2240 pounds and a metric tonne 1000 kg or 2204 pounds). But this stuff … well, I had only to lift a small piece, but it took me all my time to drag is outside”. Dr. Duck identifies this as orichalcum. Outside the cave, Biggles asks Ginger why he is looking so scared. Their faces are all chalky white. Dr. Duck realises that the stuff is oxidizing on them. The metal that Ginger has dragged outside starts to glow scarlet and soon causes the dry moss and undergrowth to catch fire. In a few minutes the whole area is a sheet of flame and our heroes have to flee. Ulu has already gone and they have to make their own way back. We are told by Ginger that future expeditions only found a melted solid glassy-looking mass of rock, the cave had completely disappeared. Ginger got up. “Well, chaps, that’s all. I’m going up to have a look at my machine; she’s flying a bit tail heavy”.