BIGGLES AND THE LITTLE GREEN GOD

by Captain W. E. Johns

10. ASTONISHING NEWS (Pages 100 – 111)

“It was nearly half an hour, using the restoratives carried in the Merlin’s emergency medical kit, before the girl was brought to a condition of consciousness; or to be more accurate, semi-consciousness, for even after her eyes had opened she seemed dazed, and unable to talk, at any rate, coherently”. Whilst waiting, the sun drops behind the peaks and daylight begins to fade. Biggles tests her limbs for broken bones and tells Algy that he doesn’t think there is anything seriously wrong with her and “She looks to me as if she’s suffering from shock and exhaustion. From the pallor of her face I’d say it’s some time since she had anything to eat. We can put that right. Get the Primus going and we’ll see what some hot meat extract will do. Wretched girl. She must have been through one hell of a time. However, she’s still alive, that’s the important thing”. “Algy had been right when he remarked she was a ‘good-looker’, or had been before her present predicament. Biggles was “spoon-feeding the patient, a sip at a time, from a cup of Marmite Algy had produced”. (For some reason, in the 1971 paperback edition and thereafter in paperback editions, this line is changed to “from a cup of Bovril Algy had produced”). Algy wonders if they should fly her down to Santiago straight away, but Biggles does want to move her yet. He also wants to hear what she has to say as there may be other survivors not far away. Algy asks “What if she can’t speak English? Will your Spanish be good enough?” (Biggles speaks good Spanish when this book was written in 1967/68. In Biggles in Spain, written some 30 years beforehand and published in 1939 he says “I know only about a dozen words of Spanish”). “She’s bound to speak English. One of the languages all air hostesses have to be able to speak is English, no matter what line they work for” says Biggles. The girl struggles to sit up and in reply to Biggles query if she is hungry, she says “Very hungry. No food for long time. How do you come here?” Biggles says they have come by plane. The girl says her plane has crashed. Her name is Conchita Gonzales and she was air hostess on a Caravana going from Buenos Aires to Santiago. She says the plane is in the trees about a kilometre away. She saw their plane yesterday and came here where she could be seen in case they came back. Algy gives her a bar of chocolate and Biggles asks if she is ready to answer questions. “I am ready,” Conchita answered. “I feel better for the food and now I can think”. Her pronunciation of English had just sufficient accent to make it attractive”. Conchita explains there was an explosion in the cabin or the luggage compartment of the plane. “Capitan Ibenez” fought with the controls and they crashed into the forest down the slope on the other side. The second officer was trapped, but they get him free and Pepe, the navigator was unconscious. “I find my face is cut and my leg hurts, so that I cannot walk properly. It was terrible”. Luckily the plane did not catch fire as there was plenty of petrol on board. They had taken on extra petrol at El Lobitos, near the boundary of Argentina. Conchita says the passenger, Senor O’Higgins, was not with them as he got out at El Lobitos, saying he was feeling ill. Biggles says if there were no passengers, there could be no luggage and Conchita explains there was a bag of mail onboard. After the crash, they waited for three days for rescue, then running out of food, the Captain decides that he and Alfredo, the second officer must go for help. Conchita stays with her bad leg, looking after Pepe, who is sick, wounded in the head, as the two of them are clearly unable to travel. They see no more of the two men who have left and no help comes. Many days ago, Pepe says he will go off to find food and Conchita has not seen him since. Two days ago, some Indians came. “They looked like wild men from the mountains. But they did no harm to me. They took no notice”. They didn’t give Conchita any food, they just took as many things as they could carry from the plane crash site and left. Conchita says it could only have been a bomb that caused the crash. Biggles says they will have to spend another night there, but they will try to make it as comfortable as possible in the cabin. In the morning, Conchita can show them the crash site. Biggles shows her the miniature toilet where she could wash and make herself as tidy as the circumstances allowed. Algy went to the kitchenette to prepare a meal and Biggles enters to discuss the situation with him. “Only three people knew about this dangerous little god being on board. They were Pallimo, O’Higgins and Barrendo”. Would Pallimo pay so much money for a thing to go out of his way to destroy it? They think not. O’Higgins was a trusted friend of Pallimo. He may has kept the parcel but what possible reason could he have for preventing the Caravana from reaching Santiago? The same with Barrendo, he may have wanted the idol, but that wasn’t the way to get it. Algy says there is one factor Biggles may have overlooked. “You’re assuming that this nasty little one-eyed god, Atu-Hua, was the reason for blowing up the aircraft”. Biggles says that if Atu-Hua is still in that wreck “it’ll surprise me more than anything else so far”. Biggles thinks Conchita has torn the muscle in her calf and only time can put that right. She may be limping for weeks. Algy says “Holy mackerel and all the other little fishes! What a way we’ve chosen to make a living. Serving soup to lost women in a perishing jungle”. Biggles grinned. “Pipe down. We haven’t finished yet, not by a long chalk. If I know anything this lark has only just began”.