BIGGLES FLIES AGAIN

by W. E. Johns

V. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Pages 78 – 94)

Meeting Sandy on the veranda of the Baltimore Hotel in Panama, he tells Biggles and Algy that he has a nice little place at Rarotayo (a fictional South Pacific Island). He also tells them the story of how his “head boy”, a real old Polynesian, had discovered a big bed of shell at a place called the Kaisiora, a big circular reef, that is very difficult to get into. Tauri, the Polynesian, was washed in via a freak wave in a war canoe and was the sole survivor. It’s “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 God knows how many years. Just imagine it! Well, they’re there for the getting” says Sandy. The way to get in would be via an amphibious aircraft. The plane would have to be shipped to Raratonga (there is a real South Pacific island called Rarotonga) and from there they could fly to Sandy’s own lagoon (at Rarotayo, so Johns hasn’t just got the island name wrong) and using that as a base, on up to the Kaisiora. Tauri would do the diving. Biggles and Algy agree and make arrangement to get the wings off the Vandal and ship her as deck cargo. For the next chapter of the story, we start at Sandy’s lagoon and our heroes are about to set off to the Kaisiora. “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 diver, was clad only in a thick layer of coco-nut 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”. They fly to the incredibly beautiful Kaisiora, “like an emerald set in diamonds on a velvet robe” and land on the lagoon, where in the lovely clear waters, which shelve down into darker depths, they see tons and tons of shells. Tauri goes down with a stone on a rope and in half an hour they have as heavy a load as they think they can carry on the aircraft. Biggles goes to take off and they pass over the deeper part of the lagoon. Algy sees a shape coming up and “he realized he was looking at an octopus, a monstrous horror of the deep far exceeding in size anything he had ever imagined. For a moment he stared spellbound, stunned into tongue-tied silence … and then he screamed”. The creature grabs the airplane by the tail and starts pulling it down. Tauri axes off its tentacle but is thrown into the water. In trying to rescue him, Algy finds himself in the water as well. They scramble for the reef. Biggles is forced to take off and finds himself unable to land to rescue his companions due to the giant squid (as Johns refers to it). He flies off and a tense hour passes for Algy and Tauri on the reef as the octopus (as Johns now refers to it) tries to reach them. The Vandal returns Biggles drops dynamite on the octopus (this is the picture on the cover of the John Hamilton book). “Hell”, gasps Algy as he was flung down heavily by the force of the explosion (but not in the Boys’ Friend Library version of the story or in the Thames Publishing or Dean & Son versions). The octopus returns to the deep end of the lagoon. Biggles is able to land and collect Algy and Tauri before taking off again. Later, looking at seven fine pearls and a number of smaller ones, Sandy speculates what the entire lagoon must be worth but they won’t risk landing there or diving there again.

(This story clearly gave Johns the idea for Biggles in the South Seas (published in September 1940) – he even uses a character called Sandy, but in the book it is Sandy Macaster of 266 Squadron (who served with Biggles) rather than Sandy Wyndham of 207 Squadron in this story, that tells them where to find the pearls. There are many similarities between the stories).