BIGGLES’ CHINESE PUZZLE

AND OTHER BIGGLES’ ADVENTURES

by Captain W. E. Johns

II. THE CASE OF THE MODERN PIRATE (Pages 58 – 87)

I have not yet been able to establish if this story was originally published elsewhere. It is quite lengthy and I suspect it may have been published in the Australian “Chuckler’s Weekly” in more than one part but I do not know that for sure. It may have been written purely as an additional story for BIGGLES’ CHINESE PUZZLE.

Air Commodore Raymond walks into the Ops Room and wishes “Happy New Year to you all”. Biggles asks “Have you come here merely to offer seasonal felicitations?” The answer is “No”. Raymond wants to talk about the theft of an object weighing three thousand tons, a steamship. He tells the team about a man called John Sebastian Blake, who wanted to be a pirate. Biggles laughed aloud. “That’s delicious. No doubt a lot of fellows would rather steer a ship on the briny than push a pen in an office, but it would take an uncommon amount of nerve to-day to hoist the Jolly Roger”. Raymond explains that Blake was born and bought up on the coast of Devon. He loved the sea and was a fearless sailor. He entered the mercantile marine and did well. When he was twenty six, his father died and left him twelve thousand pounds. With this money he opened an office as a ship-broker and with a crooked American called Nicolas Diaz, he chartered a ship called the Cygnet. “While Blake was attending to insurance, stocks of provisions, cargo and so on, Diaz was collecting his crew. Most of them were coloured men, lascars and the like, who had served in P. and O. liners. The cargo included a lot of paint, for reasons which will presently become apparent. There was also a small printing press. Payment for all this stuff was only made in part”. “Somewhere off the African coast Blake called his crew together, in the old pirate tradition, and told them what he intended to do. If they would join him in this adventure, he said, they would all get treble pay and a handsome bonus. To this attractive proposition all fell in line except two, one an Englishman named Farrow, and a Scotch engineer named Macalister. These two took no part in what followed. Diaz wanted to kill them, but Blake wouldn’t have that. They were merely put in irons when the ship was in port”. Biggles asks how Raymond knows all of this and Raymond replies “From Farrow, who was one of the few survivors of this fantastic adventure”. The Cygnet was stopped at sea and everything with the name of the ship on was thrown overboard. She was then repainted black instead of grey and the funnel became orange instead of white. She was renamed Pauline and new papers printed. In Cape Town the cargo was sold for cash and then another cargo taken onboard without payment. The Pauline was then changed to Corinthia and the ship sailed to Brisbane, Australia, where again the cargo was sold for cash. However, some of the cargo sold in Cape Town found its way back to England where the question was asked “How did these goods get to Cape Town if the Cygnet was wrecked?” Enquiries were made and soon the game was up. At Brisbane, gold bars had been loaded and when Blake picked up radio signals alerting him, the Corinthia left port only to be wrecked by a tidal wave on the coast of North-East Guinea. The tidal wave had left her high and dry on the edge of a mangrove swamp. Blake gave every man five hundred pounds to keep their mouths shut and then set fire to the ship. “The crew, forming parties as it suited them, dispersed. Farrow and Macalister, who had refused to accept the silence money, managed to slip away, and from cover watched Blake and Diaz bury their ill-gotten gains, which of course they couldn’t carry with them”. The men were faced with a dangerous journey to get to Port Moresby in Papua. “As the crow flies the island is fifteen hundred miles long and four hundred wide. But a man can’t travel as the crow flies. He is faced with crocodile-infested rivers, swamps, virgin jungle and warlike tribes of head-hunting cannibals”. Farrow got through but Macalister died of fever on the way. “The fate of the rest remains a mystery, but as they haven’t shown up anywhere it seems likely that they are all dead, and their heads now decorate some native village”. The wreck lies somewhere along the two hundred mile stretch of coast between Karbar Island and Wewak. Buried within fifty yards of it, is £200,000 in bar gold and nearly £100,000 in notes. Farrow has now died at the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Biggles is asked to go and locate the wreck. If he can pick up any information about Blake or Diaz, so much the better.

There is then a new chapter following an asterix *.

“Nearly a month elapsed before the Air Police amphibian aircraft, Sea Otter, arrived at Madang, the base selected for the operation”. They fly the coast searching the mangrove swamps. “From above, these looked harmless enough, but none of those in the aircraft needed to be told how different would be the picture presented from ground level; for if there is one place on earth where slime and beastliness have combined to breed creatures of horror, it is a tropic mangrove swamp”. “For five consecutive days the Otter cruised up and down the coast” and on the sixth day, near the mouth of the Sepik River, they spot smoke and land on the sea after seeing two white men, waving frantically. They are in poor shape, thin, clothes in ribbons and one is shaking with fever. They are gold prospectors, one, a New Zealander and the other an Australian. They have had trouble with the natives and lost all their equipment and were lucky to get away with their lives. The Australian, who is named Thompson (the only name we are given) says they have seen half a dozen wrecks, but a big metal ship was “about twenty miles west of here, on the far side of a sizeable creek. She was lying on the mud on the edge of a mangrove swamp”. Thompson warns “the blacks are in a nasty mood. They’re Kobes”. He says he was told they had been attacked by Gilkiks, the next tribe “led by a white man with a rifle”. Thompson doubts the story as the only white man in the area is a French priest called Father Antoinne. Biggles says he will fly the two men down to Medang and come back tomorrow.

There is then a new chapter following an asterix *.

Shortly after dawn the next day, they find the creek described by the prospectors. Thompson had, overnight, drawn Biggles a rough map. “Without any means of identification Biggles was by no means convinced that this was the ship they sought, but as he averred, they could only work on the assumption that it was”. Biggles lands the Otter and leaves it afloat as the foreshore is all mud. “Followed by Ginger he floundered ashore”. (This is the illustration on the cover of the book, where they are watched by a native holding a spear). Biggles says they would need a squad of natives to probe the mud (meaning if they wanted to find buried treasure). “Hold hard,” protested Ginger. “I’m all against ending up in a Irish stew” (should that be “an Irish stew”?). Biggles says natives must have come there often to carry away as much as they have and there should be a track leading to their village. He then sees that there is a track. Ginger spots a native. “He was a tall, well-built man, with an unbelievably ugly face topped by a great mop of brushed up hair. A small tusk was stuck through his nose and string of teeth hung round his neck”. Ginger warns Biggles that they are being watched. “I can see him,” returned Biggles. “Quite a lad, isn’t he?”. “The figure vanished, noiselessly, like a wraith”. Ginger and Biggles agree to leave, as they fear for their safety. In the cabin of the aircraft, Algy is of the opinion that the Air Commodore should be satisfied they have found the wreck. “Let the people who want the gold make their own arrangements for fetching it. That’s what I say”. Bertie agrees with him. Biggles suggest they wait. “We’ll brew a dish of tea and nibble a biscuit while we wait”. He thinks the Village Constable (a native appointed as such) may come along to see what they are doing. In due course, a white man appears; it is Father Antoinne. Leaving Algy in charge of the aircraft, the others go and meet the priest. He tells them what he knows about the wreck, although he was not present when the shipwreck occurred. The crew were “mostly coloured men” and they passed through Kobe country unmolested, but against advice entered the territory of the Gilkiks. “I imagine they did not get far. The Gilkiks are a bad tribe. I don’t know a single man who has survived a passage through their country”. The priest says that two white men were in the Kobe village where they spent most of their time drinking and arguing. They had a fist fight and the loser shot the victor dead with a pistol. The dead man had letters addressed to “Blake” in his pockets. The surviving white man had got away and joined the Gilkiks, later attacking the Kobe village with them. Biggles says that must be Diaz and as he no doubt wants to return for the gold, they can expect more attacks. Father Antoinne replies “The Kobes seem to know that, for they are in their war-paint and the drums talk constantly. In that mood they are beyond my control. Indeed, they cannot control themselves”. The priest hears the drums and says they are announcing the arrival of the white men. Biggles says that when word gets to Diaz, he will know why they are there and make a last desperate attempt to get the gold.

There is then a new chapter following an asterix *.

With the priest, Biggles, Bertie and Ginger make the arduous journey to the Kobe village, taking guns and ammunition for self-defence with them. “In spite of their efforts the assault on the village had been launched before they could reach it, an uproar of yells, howls and a noise like the barking of dogs announcing the onset. Through the din came the vicious twang of bowstrings and an occasional rifle shot”. Suddenly confronted by “a pack of shrieking savages” Biggles doesn’t know if they are Kobes or Gilkiks. “The blacks, seeing them, stopped dead, huddling, crouching, staring. Their great mops of hair, their faces and bodies daubed with white clay, their mouths stained scarlet with betel-nut, and with boars’ tusks thrust through their nostrils, they presented a picture of bestial savagery not easily forgotten. Some of the men carried spears, others heavy six-foot bows”. Father Antoinne says they are his people. They all return to the village where the Kobes are clearly getting the worst of it, outnumbered by their enemies, “easily distinguished by having red-smeared bodies”. Ginger’s first thought is that they will be lucky to get out of this alive. Firing rifles and shot gun pellets from a twelve-bore shot gun, Biggles, Bertie and Ginger soon drive the attackers off. Ginger sees Diaz be hit between the shoulders by an arrow fired by a Kobe. Father Antoinne goes to the stricken man. He administers the last rites. Antoinne returns to say that knowing he was dying, the man confessed everything. “The gold is still where it was buried. Standing alone at the end of the mangroves are three sago palms. You will find everything just under the ground at the foot of the largest”. Biggles thanks the priest and says it can remain there for the time being. He will return home and report it and a vessel can be sent to fetch it. Biggles agrees to leave food and medical supplies for the priest and our heroes return to Algy, who they say must be worried after hearing all the shooting.