Biggles Flies Again Part 4

"Still pining for Consuelo?" he bantered.

"As a matter of fact," replied Algy coldly, "I was just thinking what a good thing it was we didn't roll up here a few days ago, or the 'Vandal' might have been comman deered. It seems that Colombia has been writhing in the throes of one of its periodical revolutions, but it's all over now. The rebels have been badly bent, or, rather, busted, and the President's O.C. troops, Generalissimo Pedro da Alligante, is now pursuing the popular pastime of reducing the survivors to produce* by the simple expedient of lining them up against a wall and mowing them down with a machine-gun."

"Nice feller."

"Charming. It seems that he's peeved because the leader of the insurrection, young Jose Oliviera, has so far escaped his blood-stained vengeance."

"I can't understand why people have to squabble in a * Service expression, meaning "broken up".

country like this," observed Biggles disinterestedly, turning once more to the contemplation of the black yet soft latticework shadows of the palms.

"Bah! If you lived here you'd have half a dozen revolutions running at the same time,"

sneered Algy, "but what about a spot of shut-eye, it's getting latish-h.e.l.lo-"

He sprang to his feet in puzzled astonishment, as a girl, dressed in a dark clinging gown, with the inevitable mantilla draped around her shoulders, ran swiftly up the steps from the shadows and stood panting before them, her breast rising and falling spasmodically from exertion or agitation, her southern beauty in no way marred by the tears that hung on the lashes of her dark, appealing eyes, now turning from one to the other in tremulous hesitation. Then, with a swift Latin gesture she turned to Biggles and held out her hands.

"Senor," she faltered.

"Gently, lady, gently," muttered Biggles uncomfortably, as the girl's body shook with a convulsive, uncontrollable sob, and then, turning to Algy, "Come and do your stuff, laddie ; this is more in your line."

Algy needed no second invitation. "Que tiente va, senorita ?" he asked anxiously, in his best Spanish.

"Tomorrow I am to be married," cried the girl in tones of anguish.

"Why weep about it?" said Biggles, raising his eyebrows.

"My father has given me to the hateful-" she looked around furtively-"Don Pedro da Alligante. But I will not; I will die by my own hand first," she whispered fiercely.

"Oh, don't do that," replied Biggles awkwardly. "What can we do about it, anyway?"

"Help me to escape, senor-take me with you-" "You shall come with me, senorita,"

declared Algy.

"Not so fast, laddie, not so fast," broke in Biggles, and then to the girl: "Why not run away? I mean, there are horses and railways and things?"

"They would catch me, only you can save me-" "But you don't know where we're going!"

"It matters not-anywhere-"

"But what is Don Pedro going to say when he discovers I have run away with his beautiful bride?" protested Biggles. "We don't want to be involved in trouble with "Rot!" snapped Algy. "Let the girl come if she wants to; no one's likely to know, anyway." He turned to the girl."We are going to Panama; we may land at Cristobal."

"I have friends in Cristobal who will protect me!" cried the girl eagerly.

Biggles shrugged his shoulders. "All right," he said slowly, "but for heaven's sake keep quiet about it. I don't want to get tangled up with domestic affairs-"

"Domestic my eye!' snorted Algy. "You can't throw the girl into the blood-stained paws of that-"

"Careful," warned Biggles, glancing around, and then to the girl, "You run along now, senorita. Look, there is our aeroplane, over there," he went on, pointing to the amphibian.

"You hide yourself in the cabin and then we shall know nothing about it, sabe? By the way, I didn't catch your name."

"Juanita."

"All right, Juanita; you trot along and do as you're told."

The girl nodded, her lips parted with eagerness and grat.i.tude. "Gracias, senor, gracias; I will do anything ",.

"Yes, I know," interrupted Biggles coldly, "but you go along and get some more clothes on; we start early in the morning and it may be cold."

The girl seized his hand, pressed it to her lips, and then, turning, vanished into the shadows whence she came.

III.

The sky became pale and lifeless as the moon's silver gleam grew dim in a pallid twilight. It was five o'clock, and the sun, on its upward course, stabbed its first flickering beam into the heavens as Biggles, with Algy at his side, crossed over to the amphibian standing in the shade of the Pan-American Airways hangar, and nodded to Smyth, their mechanic, who was standing by the engine.

"Everything all right?" he asked shortly.

"O.K., sir," was the crisp reply.

"Has-er-anyone arrived?"

Smyth, with the pardonable familiarity of long service, flickered his eyelid and jabbed his thumb in the direction of the cabin. "She's inside, sir," he murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

Biggles climbed into the cabin, followed by Algy and Smyth.

The engine split the silence with its powerful bellow, which faded away to a rhythmic murmur as the pilot throttled back to allow it to warm up. For five minutes they sat thus. The aerodrome was deserted except for a couple of American mechanics who stood by the door of their hangar watching the "Vandal"

curiously. Then, from the distance, came the sound of voices, shouting. Biggles turned his head casually in the direction of the sound, and stiffened into an att.i.tude of tense expectancy as his eye fell on a troop of cavalry, led by an officer, galloping towards them.

"The troops are on parade early," observed Algy, with interest.

"Yes; I should say it's our friend of the blood-stained hands, looking for his little sweetheart," replied Biggles sternly. "We'd better be moving or we may find ourselves in one of his shooting parties." He thrust the throttle open in a series of jerks that swung the "Vandal" round in its own length, and then swept across the sun-scorched aerodrome, leaving a swirling trail of dust in his wake.

At a thousand feet they circled and looked down. The soldiers had reined in their horses and were staring upwards; the officer was shaking his drawn sabre.

"Look; he's waving us goodbye," grinned Algy.

Five hours later the "Vandal" ran to a b.u.mpy stand still on the aerodrome at Cristobal.

Slowly the pilot taxied along the boundary hedge of p.r.i.c.kly pear to the offices of the American Air Line Company, and then turned to the low door leading to the cabin.

"Picture of a knight-errant collecting ransom," jeered Algy.

"Don't be coa.r.s.e," returned Biggles reproachfully. "h.e.l.lo; where's the lady, Smyth?"

"She's gone, sir."

"Gone!"

"Yes, she opened the door and stepped out while you were taxi-ing in and hurried off round the back there somewhere."

"Well, I'm blowed! Women for grat.i.tude!" He grinned as he saw Algy's crestfallen face looking in the cabin door.

"Fancy her pushing off like that without so much as a gracias," muttered Algy bitterly.

"What else did you expect?" asked Biggles.

Algy eyed him coldly, but said nothing.

"Never mind," laughed Biggles; "come and have a drink-something less intoxicating than Spanish senoritas."

They were still puzzled about Juanita when, an hour later, a north-bound Pan-American plane landed and taxied up to discharge its pa.s.sengers. As the door opened and the first pa.s.senger alighted Biggles dropped the gla.s.s he was holding with a crash, his jaw sagging foolishly. It was Juanita. - At the same moment a handsome olive-complexioned young man detached himself from the small group of spectators and hurried to meet her. Regardless of the stares and smiles of the onlookers they flung their arms about each other in a fervent embrace; words of endearment, in liquid Spanish, floated to the ears of the two pilots. Slowly, with eyes for no one but themselves, the lovers walked towards the exit; as they drew abreast of the spellbound pilots, a rose that the girl wore on her gown became detached acid fell to the ground. Biggles watched them disappear round the corner before he stooped and picked it up.

"Tell me," he asked the pilot of the plane, who had just entered, "who are they?"

"Those two? That's the famous senora Juanita Oliviera and young Don Jose, her husband, though how he got up here I don't know. He was mixed up in that last revolution in Colombia and they're searching for him high and low down there. Smart dame, isn't she?

"Yes-she is," replied Biggles absently, with a curious smile, as he dropped the rose in his pocket.

CHAPTER 5.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

"YOU'LL probably think I'm crazy," said Sandy, after greetings had been exchanged and they had settled themselves on the veranda of the Baltimore Hotel in Panama, and with iced drinks before them prepared to listen to Sandy's tale.

"In the first place I had better tell you that after leaving the Service I went to Malaya, rubber-planting. Things went wrong and I drifted about until I got a job at one of the trading posts of the North Equatorial Company. I made a bit of money in copra and sh.e.l.l, and a couple of years ago started off on my own. I now have a nice little place at Rarotayo.

"About eighteen months ago I happened to mention pearls to my head boy, who, by the way, is a real old Polynesian. He told me quite casually that he knew where there were plenty, but it was impossible to get them. You may be sure I wasn't long asking him where they were. He told me they were at the Kaisiora; that made me laugh, and I'll tell you why. The Kaisiora is a big circular reef about forty miles from my place. It's an almost perfect atoll. Try and imagine an island about three miles long and a mile wide, and not more than four or five feet high at the highest place. As a matter of fact, you can't see the island because the rollers sweep right over it, or appear to. All you can see, even on a calm day, is a great white patch of boiling surf nearly hidden under a cloud of spray; you can hear the boom of the breakers miles away. In short, it is a thing to give a sailor the horrors, and I don't suppose a ship has been near it in years. Actually the place is shown on the chart as British, but goodness knows why, as it is quite certain n.o.body ever landed there.

"Well, this is the story Tauri-that's the name of my boy-told me. I've been good to him, and I believe he was telling the truth. Many years ago, when he was a young man, he set out from Tahiti as one of the crew of a big war-canoe. The old Polynesians used to travel hundreds of miles in them. They got caught in a typhoon and were driven into the Kaisiora, and he meant it literally. The island isn't an island in the real sense of the word.

He says it is a huge oval-shaped coral reef, or atoll, with a perfectly calm lagoon in the middle. Apparently, by an amazing stroke of luck, the canoe was picked up bodily by a comber and thrown clean over the top of the reef into the lagoon. A tremendous sea was running, and I must say that it does not seem impossible. Inside they were sheltered from the wind and were able to ride out the storm. When the wind went down they looked for a way out. There was no way. They were penned up inside. On all sides huge seas pounded up over rows of jagged coral teeth. They sat there for a month, living on sh.e.l.l fish from the floor of the lagoon, which is quite -shallow, not more than thirty feet deep, but shelving down into a deep hole at one end. It sounds rather as if the place was the crater of an extinct volcano. Now you, begin to get the hang of things."

He paused dramatically to light a fresh cigarette.

"The floor of the lagoon is a solid bed of sh.e.l.l, untouched, the sort of thing pearlers dream about, but never find. The oysters get thrown in and they can't get out, and that's been going on for I don't know how many years. Just imagine it! Well, they're there for the getting.

"Ultimately the crew of the war-canoe tried to get out. Twenty-four out of twenty-eight were drowned in the surf; the other four found themselves outside, hanging on to a broken, capsized canoe, with no paddles. Sharks got two of them; one went crazy. Tauri was picked up by a schooner and the skipper put him before the mast and beat h.e.l.l out of him before he could get away. He told me he had quite a number of splendid pearls, but lost them in the struggle getting out of the lagoon.

"Well, I've got a motor-boat, and when Tauri pitched me this yarn I couldn't get to the Kaisiora fast enough. I had decided that if there was a fortune in pearls waiting to be picked up nothing would keep me out, but I was wrong. There is no break in the reef, and no one but a madman would try and get through the surf. I nearly went mad trying to work out how to get inside, yet, strangely enough, I never thought of an aeroplane till I read about your show in Bolivia, and then it struck me like an inspiration that with a flying-boat, or an amphibian; like yours, the thing was simplicity itself."

"How do you suggest we should go to work?" interrupted Biggles.

"I suggest that you ship your machine to Raratonga by the next boat, which I shall have to go on, anyway. From there we can fly to my place. Using my own lagoon, as a base, all we have to do is to fly to the Kaisiora, land on the lagoon, load up with sh.e.l.l and bring it back. Tauri will do the diving. We can keep that up till we've cleared the whole bed.

My boat can patrol between the islands and pick us up, or tow the machine in, if we have a forced landing," he concluded enthusiastically.

"It sounds pretty good to me," acknowledged Biggles. "How about you, Algy?"

"Let's see about getting the wings off the 'Vandal'," was the quick reply; "that's all that should be necessary. We can ship her as deck-cargo, I should think."

II.

The "Vandal", her engine purring sweetly, sat on the quiet water of Sandy's lagoon at Rarotayo, ready for the first trip to the Kaisiora. The weather was perfect for the expedition, and the early-morning sunshine poured down from a sky of cloudless blue on to the little group outside a palm-thatched bungalow on the beach, near to where the "

Vandal" was moored. A pyramid of red-painted petrol-cans, just delivered by a trading schooner, made a vivid spot of colour against the deep shade of the plantation behind.

The three white men were dressed only in shorts, shirts, and canvas shoes, for the weather was warm. Tauri, who was accompanying the expedition as a diver, was clad only in a thick layer of coconut oil, under which his brown skin gleamed like satin. Smyth, the mechanic, had been given charge of the motor-boat which was to patrol the intervening stretch of water.

Their only equipment was a large stone attached to a rope, and a basket to raise the sh.e.l.l to the surface. At the last moment Sandy picked up a small axe.

"We had better take this in case Tauri gets anch.o.r.ed to the bottom by a big clam," he observed. "They are more dangerous to divers than sharks," he added, throwing the instrument aboard, little dreaming that within the next few hours it was to be the means of saving all their lives.

They took their places in the machine, and the pilot taxied into position for the take-off.

The engine roared as he opened the throttle, and a moment later the island, with its palm-fringed beach of coral sand, lay below. They circled for a few minutes, climbing for height, and then headed out over the open sea on a compa.s.s course to their destination, which, in the crystal-clear atmosphere, was soon visible ahead.

Twice the pilot circled low over the steaming reef, examining the lagoon closely for rocks or other obstructions which might damage the fragile hull ofthe amphibian. Seen from the air it presented an extraordinary appearance, and it was at once obvious that Tauri had spoken the truth, at least as far as his description of the place was concerned.

Set in a sea of the deepest ultramarine was an almost perfect oval of snow-white surf through which the jagged coral here and there showed its teeth. Within it was the still, emerald-green lagoon, shading down to a deeper green and finally merging into purple-black at one end. Like an emerald set in diamonds on a velvet robe, thought the pilot, as he throttled back and glided on to the perfect anchorage. The "Vandal" finished its run as the pilot switched off, and floated motionless on the green water, while the airmen stood lost in wonderment at the exquisite beauty of the scene around them. They were in the centre of one of Nature's masterpieces.

Every colour of the artist's palette was represented, each one a patch of brilliancy, but the whole blending, as though seen through the ground-gla.s.s screen of a camera out of focus, into tones of unimaginable softness, and forms of incomparable loveliness. Deep violet roots of coral thrust long, delicate rose-pink antennae into the sun-soaked spray. Cones of pale blue and mauve lifted themselves into curious regular groups from symmetrical, amethyst-tinted, sponge-like foundations beneath a cream and lemon tracery of inconceivable delicacy. Fans of old gold and ivory, some open, some closed, stood side by side with jewel-encrusted combs more beautiful than those of old Madrid.

It was hard to see where the coral ended and the floor of the lagoon began; of ethereal purity and as transparent as the air about them, the water was only visible where it lapped gently against the hull of the machine. Beneath them, fish of incredible colours and unbelievable designs, singly, and in little shoals, floated, seemingly in s.p.a.ce, aimlessly, and with effortless ease.

"Great Scott!" The words, spoken in an awe-stricken whisper, came from Sandy, who, with parted lips, was staring downwards. His face was pale and the hands that rested lightly on the edge of the c.o.c.kpit were trembling. "Look!" he said in an unnatural high-pitched voice, and then burst into a peal of hysterical laughter. Biggles, looking eagerly below, could see ghostly luminous white spots shining on the floor of the lagoon.

"What is it?" he asked "Sh.e.l.l-tons of it," replied Sandy, recovering himself with an effort.

"You mean they're oysters-open, down there?"

But Sandy was not listening. He had the weighted line over the side in an instant. Tauri, goggled, his teeth flashing a broad smile of eagerness, had seized the rope with one hand and the prehensile toes of one foot and was dropping with the stone into the depths.

The watchers on the boat could see every movement distinctly, how he tore the molluscs from their hold and piled them into the basket. He shot up to the surface for air; the basket was emptied in the cabin, and he plunged down again. For half an hour he worked steadily, and by that time they had as heavy a load of sh.e.l.l as they dared risk carrying.

"We'll get this home and come back for more," declared Biggles, winding the self-starter.

"Take it quietly," Sandy told him, leaning over the side of the hull. "Taxi slowly down to the far end; we might as well see how far the sh.e.l.l-bed stretches . . . Tauri was right; it gets deeper here," he shouted a few moments later.