Biggles at World's End Read online

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER 1: A MATTER OF HISTORY

  CHAPTER 2: AN UNCIVIL RECEPTION

  CHAPTER 3: DISTURBING NEWS

  CHAPTER 4: A FLIMSY CLUE

  CHAPTER 5: SMOKE

  CHAPTER 6: THE CASTAWAYS

  CHAPTER 7: MR CARTER TELLS HIS TALE

  CHAPTER 8: GONTERMANN SHOWS HIS HAND

  CHAPTER 9: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

  CHAPTER 10: THWARTED

  CHAPTER 11: RISKY WORK

  CHAPTER 12: GONTERMANN PULLS A FAST ONE

  CHAPTER 13: THE WEATHER TAKES A HAND

  CHAPTER 14: BATTLE OF WITS

  CHAPTER 15: STALEMATE

  CHAPTER 16: HOW IT ENDED

  FOREWORD

  TIERRA DEL FUEGO—LAND OF FIRE

  To obviate breaks in the following narrative here are some facts the reader should know about the southernmost tip of the continent of South America which Ferdinand Magellan, the great Portuguese navigator and discoverer of the sixteenth century, named Tierra del Fuego, by reason of the signal fires he saw burning ashore as he made his celebrated and hazardous voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Strait that bears his name. He was the first man to make the passage.

  Before the completion of the Panama Canal in 1920 a ship moving from one ocean to the other had to make the dangerous trip round ‘The Horn’, and a sailor having done this had something to boast about. Between the mainland and the maze of islands that lie south of it runs the Strait discovered by Magellan in 1520, three hundred and fifty miles long and between two and seventeen miles wide. The names of some of the jigsaw pattern of islands and channels speak for themselves: The Furies; Famine Reach; Mount Misery; Desolation Island; Gulf of Sorrows.

  Far from being a Land of Fire, this place where the two oceans meet is a land of ice, of savage mountains, gale-lashed cliffs, mighty fjords and terrifying glaciers which crunch and crackle under their weight of ice and cast great masses of it into the sea. In a word, this is the supreme desolation, with the worst climate in the world. Nearly every day of the year it rains, icy rain lashed by furious gales. It is no matter for wonder that much of this inhospitable area has still to be explored. And no wonder this bleak and lonely land has sometimes been called the End of the World. As far as civilization is concerned, it is. Certainly it has been the graveyard of more ships than any other place on earth. One can travel for weeks through the gloomy channels between the islands without seeing any sign of life. Animals are rare, for even in ‘summer’ the ice never entirely disappears. When Magellan went through, his famished crew finished by eating the brine-soaked leather parts of their equipment.

  When Charles Darwin, the famous English naturalist, went through the Strait in the ship Beagle, in 1831, he found a few wretched natives, called Alakalufs, eking out a precarious existence on the islands, living on mussels and carrion washed up by the waves. Practically naked, sleeping on the wet ground like animals, always on the move in an endless search for food, he thought they were the lowest type of humanity on earth. Compared with them the Eskimo lived a life of luxury. He wrote: ‘These poor wretches are stunted in growth, their faces hideous, their skins filthy and greasy, their voices discordant and their actions violent.’ He also said: ‘One sight of this dreadful coast is enough to make a man dream for a week of shipwreck, peril and death.’ In his journal we find: ‘The distant channels between the mountains appeared from their gloominess to lead beyond the confines of this world.’

  In the Hydrography Records we read: ‘Nowhere does the weather change more quickly or more violently. In no part of the world, the whole year round, is there worse weather. Winter and summer alike, rain, hail, snow and wind are absent only for brief periods. Ice is always present.’

  It is not surprising that tourists are rare, although at least there are no flies or mosquitoes. The weather, it seems, is too much even for them!

  However, between March and May there may be brief periods of clear skies; and the islands are not entirely destitute of vegetation. There are forests of Antarctic birch, pines, willows, moss and lichens.

  The territory, both the mainland and the islands, belongs partly to Chile and partly to the Argentine. Magellanes, until recently called Punta Arenas (and as it still appears as such on most maps we shall use that name) is the chief town, with a population of about twenty-five thousand. It is in Chile, and is the most southerly town in the world. It is the centre of the great Patagonian sheep and wool industry. Flocks of forty thousand are not uncommon. This business is chiefly in the hands of a mixed community of Europeans, including British.

  With the opening of the Panama Canal the prosperity of Punta Arenas as a store depot and coaling station declined. Fewer ships call now. They nearly all take the shorter and easier route through the Canal.

  It was to these inhospitable shores that Biggles was sent on a mission which, while perhaps not resulting in the most spectacular of his adventures, called for more than ordinary skill in airmanship and produced natural hazards that—as he himself put it—were enough to drive any pilot round the bend.

  CHAPTER 1

  A MATTER OF HISTORY

  AIR COMMODORE RAYMOND, chief of the Air Police based on Scotland Yard, leaned back in the chair behind his desk and with the tips of his fingers together regarded his senior operational pilot with the faint smile which Biggles had come to associate with a difficult question and perhaps an even more difficult assignment.

  Biggles, who had been sent for, pulled up a chair, sat in it and reached for a cigarette from the box which had been pushed towards him. ‘All right, sir, tell me the worst,’ he requested sadly. ‘I can take it.’

  ‘How would you like to go on a treasure hunt?’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You seem definite about it. Why not?’

  ‘Because more often than not it means a lot of hard work for nothing.’

  ‘I see. In that case I’d like to ask you another question. You probably know Erich von Stalhein better than anyone.’

  ‘I should,’ confirmed Biggles, grimly.

  ‘If he made a statement supported by nothing but his bare word would you believe him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘In spite of his record?’

  ‘If he gave me his word I’d take it in spite of anything. As for his record, mine through German eyes would look just as questionable.’

  ‘Your confidence in a man whom we know has spent most of his life as a spy would surprise most of the people who know how often you’ve nearly killed each other.’

  ‘Which means they’re not judges of character. I know von Stalhein. What may be even more to the point, I know his type.’

  ‘He has on occasion pulled some murky tricks.’

  ‘So have I if it comes to that, although it could depend on what you mean by murky. It’s all a matter of which side you happen to be on and the methods you’ve been taught to employ.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Hauptmann von Stalhein is a Prussian, which means that by nature and by training he believes in ruthlessness plus efficiency as the best means of getting what he wants. But that doesn’t make him a liar. As an officer coming from an old military family his pride wouldn’t allow him to sink as low as that, which is why he was bound eventually to come to loggerheads with his late employers on the other side of the Iron Curtain whose clocks are set to tick on lies and hypocrisy. I knew he wouldn’t be able to stomach that for long; in fact I told him so. If he gave me his word I’d accept it, just as he would, I’m sure, accept mine. In that respect our codes are pretty much alike. But what is all this about? Do I understand he’s made a
confession of some sort?’

  ‘Not a confession. Call it a statement.’

  ‘Voluntarily?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He came to this country on the understanding that he wouldn’t be asked to rat on his previous associates. That, considering what they did to him, is a fair indication of the sort of man he is.’

  ‘He hasn’t ratted on anyone. What he told us came out of the blue. He just thought we might be interested.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘We most certainly are.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the Iron Curtain?’

  ‘Possibly indirectly, but that’s only surmise. Actually, as the information he has given us dates back to the first world war it’s really a matter of history.’

  ‘Does this in some way hook up with me?’

  ‘It might. Or let us say you might be involved. That’s for you to decide.’

  Biggles nodded sombrely. ‘Ah! Now we’re getting there. Carry on, sir. What’s the job?’

  ‘It’s a long story, but you’ll have to be patient and listen if you’re to get a grasp on the set-up. Help yourself to cigarettes.’

  ‘Thanks. Where do we go?’

  ‘To one of the few parts of the world over which you have not, so far I know, flown. Tell me. Do you remember a German battleship that made front page news for some time in 1914-15?’

  ‘The Emden?’

  ‘No. A sister ship. The Dresden.’

  Biggles shook his head. ‘If I knew the name I’ve forgotten it. It means nothing to me.’

  ‘In that case I shall have to refresh your memory. You must remember the sea battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile, where a German squadron under Admiral Graf von Spee gave us a nasty smack in the eye by wiping out an inferior British fleet under Admiral Cradock.’

  Biggles nodded. ‘That rings a bell. And shortly afterwards von Spee’s lot was wiped out at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. Von Spee went there to mop up our naval base and coaling station at Port Stanley. He found some of our boys in blue waiting for him. Right?’

  ‘Correct. The Admiralty had anticipated the move and rushed out two of our latest battleships, the Invincible and Inflexible. Actually they would have arrived too late had not von Spee stopped to fill his coal bunkers from a British collier. The coal had to be man-handled and it took him three days. That’s the luck of war. When he got to the Falklands he found, as you say, the boys in blue waiting. Outgunned and outclassed for speed he hadn’t a hope. His fleet was blown out of the water with the exception of one ship, the Dresden, which managed to get away by having the good fortune to find a bank of fog. Even so, with the Navy hunting for her she hadn’t much hope of getting back to Germany, wherefore her captain dived into the labyrinth of islands round Tierra del Fuego, and there remained in hiding for three months in spite of the efforts of our ships to find her. We knew she was there.’

  ‘Did they ever find her?’

  ‘Not while she was there, which should give you an idea of what a fantastic maze of islands and creeks and narrow channels it is. Eventually shortage of stores, particularly coal, caused her to leave. She slipped out and managed to reach Juan Fernandez, in the Pacific—Robinson Crusoe’s island—before our cruisers, Kent and Glasgow, caught up with her. Then it was all over bar the shouting. That was the end of the last German warship left on the high seas.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ murmured Biggles. ‘But what has this to do with me?’

  ‘I’m coming to that if you’ll bear with me a little longer. It was known that the Dresden had sunk some British merchant shipping although not as much as the more famous Emden, which was sunk in the Cocos Islands by the Sydney. What was not known at the time, and is not generally known even now, was that one of the merchant ships sunk by Captain Ludecke of the Dresden was the Wyndham Star, out of Fremantle, Australia, bound for England with a valuable cargo under her hatches. Captain Ludecke couldn’t have known that. What he really wanted was her coal, he having no other means of refuelling except from ships at sea. The question was, had he found and taken the more valuable stuff? Nothing was said about it and it has always been the general belief that he didn’t find it.’

  ‘What exactly was this valuable cargo?’ interposed Biggles.

  ‘About a ton and a half of bar gold and nearly half a ton of platinum from the Australian mines.’

  A slightly supercilious smile crept over Biggles’ face. ‘Now I get the drift. Would I guess right if I said it now turns out that the Dresden did in fact lift the boodle?’

  The Air Commodore returned the smile. ‘You would. You night also guess, without putting any great strain on your brain, what he did with it. He knew his chances of getting home were remote. In fact, his chances of survival were about the same as an ice-cream dropped in a bucket of boiling water. So rather than take the risk of the gold falling back into our hands what did he do with it?’

  ‘He hid it.’

  ‘Right again. I see you’re keeping pace with the story. During his enforced stay in the uncharted channels round the islands of Tierra del Fuego he unloaded the stuff. It may well be that he hoped, when Germany had won the war, to retrieve it; but things didn’t work out that way. That gold, of course, is our property—if it is still there and can be found.’

  ‘And this, I take it, is the fascinating piece of information von Stalhein has handed you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not known definitely that the gold is still where Captain Ludecke put it?’

  ‘Von Stalhein has never heard of its recovery and he’d be in a position to know if it had ever reached Germany.’

  ‘How did he learn about this, anyway?’

  ‘The story was told to him in the first place by an officer of the Dresden who survived. His luck was in, for having been wounded in the Falklands battle he had been put ashore at Juan Fernandez. From his sick bed he watched the Dresden shot to pieces. After the war von Stalhein lost touch with this officer, but quite recently he learned that he was one of the many still being held prisoner by the Russians. He tried to make contact with him but failed. It has now occurred to him that this officer, in order to secure his release, might tell the Russians about the gold. Indeed, just before he himself was thrown into prison he heard a whisper of an expedition being fitted out to fetch some gold from somewhere, and he thinks it may be a part of the same story.’

  ‘What made von Stalhein decide to tell us about this?’

  ‘As you know, since he has been here we have kept the wolf from his door by giving him translation work to do; so he may have spilled the beans out of some spirit of gratitude. From the casual way he mentioned the business he didn’t attach any particular importance to it. The thing being outside politics he said he felt free to speak.’ The Air Commodore smiled. ‘What he actually said was, “Bigglesworth might like to know about this. It offers a job that might be right up his street”.’

  ‘Very kind of him, I’m sure,’ said Biggles, cynically. ‘Did he ask for any reward for this captivating piece of information?’

  ‘No. But he may have hoped that if the gold was recovered he’d get something out of it.’

  ‘Does he know exactly where the gold was hidden?’

  ‘No. He was given only a rough description of the place.’

  ‘Why wasn’t he told the precise spot?’

  ‘For the simple reason that having been weaving about in uncharted channels not much wider than his ship Captain Ludecke himself had only a rough idea of where he was. It’s doubtful if he would ever have found his way out had it not been for a German ex-sailor who happened to be working in Punta Arenas and knew those storm-torn waters.’

  Biggles nodded. ‘I see. Well, what does all this add up to? Are you suggesting that I go to this ungodly spot in the wild hope of finding myself tripping over a pile of yellow ingots?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I should think not. Surely this is a job for the Navy. What would I do with two tons of
metal if I did find it? Put it in an aircraft and knock the bottom out of it?’

  ‘Just a minute. There’s no need to get in a flap.’

  ‘I’m not getting in a flap; but if half a dozen cruisers couldn’t find the Dresden in this uncomfortable glory hole what chance would I have of finding a few lumps of gold probably tucked in a hole in the ground?’

  ‘It isn’t intended you should look for the gold—anyhow, in the first place. The first thing would be to ascertain if a Russian ship is already there on the same job. I admit that our cruisers couldn’t find the Dresden, but they were looking with a limited view, from sea level. A search from the air would be a very different matter.’

  ‘I’ll grant you that,’ agreed Biggles.

  ‘There is also the question of speed. It wouldn’t take you long to get there. It may be a case of the early bird catching the golden worm.’

  ‘So the idea is, I go down and park myself amongst the ice and snow and rocks to watch that no one uncovers the cache before one of our ships gets there?’

  ‘That, broadly speaking, is the scheme.’

  ‘How do I get there?’

  ‘Fly down the eastern seaboard of South America. There’s an air route all the way with landing grounds when you get there, even on Tierra del Fuego itself. You’ll find them shown on the latest maps.’

  ‘And what excuse do I give for flying the length of Argentina? People are getting sticky about foreign aircraft waffling about over their territory.’

  ‘It isn’t like you to be stuck for an excuse.’

  ‘To say I was going to Cape Horn merely for a joy ride would, I suspect, produce only a long coarse laugh. I’m not pining to see the inside of a South American gaol.’

  ‘All right. In case you were unable to think of a reasonable excuse I’ve turned up a genuine reason for the trip. Some months ago an English botanist named Carter, under the patronage of the Royal Horticultural Society, went with a friend to the islands to collect specimens of the flora. Nothing has been heard of them since they left Punta Arenas in a small craft which they hired there as the best way—indeed, the only way—of getting about. Foolishly, you may think, they went off without taking with them a local man who knew his way around. It would not be unreasonable if we sent an aircraft down to look for them, or find out, if possible, what has become of them.’