BIGGLES IN BORNEO

By Captain W. E. Johns

IV. THE WAR-DRUMS SPEAK (Pages 33 - 44)

More reconnaissance flights are made without combat. Tug teaches the natives to box. Ginger listens to the war drums, which Rex refers to as "bush telegraph". The drums says three white men are travelling up river in a boat being pursued by yellow men. They are two days march away. Biggles gets Rex to send Suba and some warriors to help them and Rex goes with them. The next morning the Liberator returns with information that an American General named Barton has escaped from Mindanao, the largest of the Philippine Islands and can then keep a look out for him. Biggles and Ginger go out looking for the three white men in the boat and find them stranded on a bend in the river, their boat has been sunk. Ginger parachutes out with the emergency box (and this is the picture in the frontispiece of the book). Ginger meets the three men, Jackson, from the British Consulate in Manila and two Americans, a naval pilot and gunner named Bill Gray and Pat Flannagan. Now it is a case of who arrives first, Rex with his relief party or the Japanese.