BIGGLES AND THE LITTLE GREEN GOD

It looked like a lump of polished stone carved into the shape of an ugly little man, with a piece of red glass stuck in his forehead. But to the expert the idol became an exquisitely carved piece of jade, its single red eye consisting of a large ruby. Was the disappearance of the aircraft carrying its precious package to Santiago a normal accident, and why did Seňor Pallimo suspect foul play? Biggles and Algy have to fly 5,000 miles and face many hazards before they have the answer to this conundrum.

by Captain W. E. Johns

First published August 1969

TITLE PAGE – Page 3

CONTENTS – Page 5

DISCLAIMER – Page 7 – The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any living person.

I. NOT LOST BUT FAR FROM HOME (Pages 9 – 13)

Unusually, the book opens with Biggles and Algy flying towards the Andes in South America. They are in “a twin-engined Merlin on the establishment of the Air Police at Scotland Yard, London, England. With its altimeter registering 24,000 feet”. (There is a real twin engined Merlin aircraft, first produced by Swearingen and later by Fairchild, in Texas, U.S.A. It first flew in April 1965 and it accommodated two crew and up to nine passengers). Below is the “hinterland (the remote areas of a country away from the coast or the banks of major rivers) of Argentina”. “Ahead, looming across the aircraft’s course like the end of the earth was the formidable chain of snow-capped giants that form the mighty Andes, their icy flanks glittering like broken glass, blue, green and crystal white, their lower slopes merging into a purple fantasy of deep shadows marked here and there by the vertical stripe of a torrent of melting snow that plunged down from the frozen world above. At one point a volcano announced its present in solemn but spectacular majesty. Every twenty seconds, with the punctuality of a chronometer it belched a plume of yellow sulphurous smoke towards the stratosphere”. Inside the aircraft are “Air Detective-Inspector ‘Biggles’ Bigglesworth and Sergeant-Pilot Algy Lacey” as they head towards “the machine’s destination, the long, narrow strip of the Republic of Chile, nearly three thousand miles from the north to south yet only just over a hundred miles wide”. (Chile is actually 2,670 miles north to south (4,300 km) and at its widest point 217 miles (350 km) and at its narrowest point, 40 miles (64 km). The average width is 109 miles (175 km) so Johns is roughly right). They are heading for Los Cerrilos airport, in Santiago, the capital of Chile, some seventeen hundred feet above sea level. “Both pilots looked often and long at the ground below as if they were searching for something, as in fact they were”. “By this time the reader will no doubt be wondering for what possible reason an aircraft of the British Air Police could be operating over foreign territory so far from its base. To discover this it will be necessary to turn back the clock for six weeks and begin the operation where it really started, in London, at Police Headquarters, Scotland Yard.