Читать книгу Biggles Flies West - W E Johns - Страница 12
ОглавлениеDick led the way jubilantly, for it was not often that he was treated to a free meal, and in a few minutes they were all seated round a marble-topped table with their feet on a newly sawdusted floor. The place was fairly full, sailors and water-men forming the bulk of the customers, and the air was blue with tobacco smoke, but no one paid any attention to them as they took their places in a quiet corner.
A pale-faced youth in a white apron waited on them.
‘Sausage and mash for four, a pot of tea and plenty of bread,’ ordered Biggles.
‘While we are waiting, just to satisfy my curiosity, you might cast your eye over your father’s letter,’ suggested Algy to Dick. ‘I’ve got an idea that that ugly-looking swab of a sailor had a reason for wanting to get hold of it—in fact, he must have had, and a very good one, too, or he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to get it.’
‘All the same, my dad never had any money, so I don’t see how it could be anything worth pinching,’ replied Dick, taking the letter from his pocket. ‘I dunno, though, it feels a bit heavy,’ he went on quickly, with a sudden flash of interest. ‘I believe there’s something in it besides paper.’
As he spoke he slit the top of the envelope, rather carelessly. Instantly there was a yellow gleam as something fell out and rang musically on the marble top of the table.
In a flash Biggles’s hand had shot out and covered it, just as the waiter hurried up with the four plates. Not until he had departed did Biggles lift his hand, disclosing what lay underneath. A low whistle left his lips. ‘Oh-ho! Oh-ho!’ he ejaculated quickly, and then cast a swift glance around. ‘You’d better put that in your pocket, Dick,’ he said in a low voice. ‘This is no place to throw that sort of stuff about.’
‘What sort of stuff?’ asked Dick, agape, eyes on a roughly circular disk that lay on the table.
‘Gold,’ breathed Biggles.
Dick caught his breath. ‘Gold!’ he cried incredulously.
‘Ssh, not so loud. There’s no need to tell the world about it.’
‘Go on, you’re kidding,’ muttered Dick unbelievingly.
Biggles shook his head. ‘There’s no kidding about that particular metal,’ he murmured.
‘But that isn’t a sovereign, is it?’ whispered Dick. ‘I never saw one but once,’ he added, by way of explanation.
‘No, it isn’t a sovereign,’ agreed Biggles, ‘but it’s worth a good deal more. I fancy any numismatist would give you several sovereigns for it.’
‘Numis—thingamajig—who’s he?’
‘A man who buys and sells old coins.’
‘That’s enough of the highbrow stuff. What is it, anyway?’ demanded Algy shortly.
‘I’ve only seen one once before, and that was in a museum, but I believe I am right in saying that it is a doubloon,’ answered Biggles quietly.
Ginger leaned forward, eyes sparkling. ‘Great Scott! Those are the things the pirates used to collect, aren’t they?’
Biggles nodded. ‘The reason being that doubloons were Spanish currency in the days when buccaneers and pirates sailed the seas. Put it in your pocket, Dick—and the letter. I’ve got an idea that your father’s message is going to prove more interesting than you imagined—a lot more. And, to be quite honest, I’d like to have a look at it myself,’ he added, as Dick put the coin, and the letter, out of sight.
‘Read it, sir, by all means,’ invited Dick.
‘Not here. Our seafaring friend might be hanging about. We’ll go to my rooms, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘It’s all the same to me—better, in fact,’ declared Dick. ‘But for you I shouldn’t have had it.’
‘Well, let’s finish our sausages and go home,’ suggested Ginger. ‘I’m fairly aching to see that letter. All my life I’ve wanted to find a bag of doubloons.’
‘A lot of people feel that way,’ murmured Biggles.
‘Just now you said buccaneers and pirates,’ ventured Dick, as they resumed their meal with renewed interest. ‘What was the difference—was there any?’
‘Yes, and no,’ answered Biggles. ‘The buccaneers came first. When there were more sailors than could find employment, some of them took to a life ashore in the West Indies, where they made a living by killing the animals that had been left behind by the Spaniards on such islands as Hispaniola—the place we now call Haiti. You see, when gold was discovered on the mainland, in Mexico and Peru, the Spaniards who had settled on the island sailed away to see if they could get hold of some of it, and having no means of transporting them, they left their domestic animals behind—cows, pigs, and the like. These ran wild and soon increased in numbers. The out-of-work English and French sailors hunted them, killed them, dried the meat and sold it to the ships that called. They called the stuff boucan, which was really the French word for cured beef. So they became known as boucaniers, or, in our language, buccaneers, and buccaneers they would have stayed if the Spaniards had had any sense. But they objected to any one else trading in the New World, and tried to drive the buccaneers, who at that time were perfectly harmless people, out of Hispaniola. They did, in fact, kill a lot of them. Naturally, the buccaneers resented this treatment, to say the least of it; they fought back, and there were some nasty goings-on. In the end the Spaniards won—or it looked that way to them at the time. The buccaneers were driven out, but they didn’t go far. They pulled up at a rocky island not far away called Tortuga, where they started thinking about revenge. Not only thinking. They built boats and began making raids against the Spaniards. From that they went to attacking Spanish ships at sea. They fought like fury, and taking the guns from the ships they captured, soon made Tortuga a pretty impregnable fortress. They also constructed forts at other points about the islands.
‘What happened after that was a pretty natural consequence,’ continued Biggles. ‘Rumours of the great quantities of gold being captured from the Spanish galleons got abroad, and the toughest toughs in the world headed for Tortuga to join in the fun. Another colony sprang up at Port Royal, in Jamaica, which must have been a pretty hot spot. The Spaniards now began to get what they’d asked for. The old buccaneering business was forgotten and the one-time buccaneers became pirates pure and simple. They attacked anything and everything anywhere and anyhow. Knowing that if the Spanish caught them they’d be burned, and if the English caught them they’d be hanged, they fought like devils, neither giving nor asking quarter. The Spanish government couldn’t shift them, and neither, for that matter, could the British. In the end they were strong enough to take and sack even the largest Spanish cities on the Main. Morgan had eighteen hundred men behind him when he went to Panama.’
‘What happened to them at the finish?’ asked Dick breathlessly.
‘The English government did the only thing it could do. It offered them all a free pardon if they’d turn from their wicked ways. Most of them accepted and either settled down or joined the navy. Morgan, probably the biggest cut-throat of the lot, was knighted by the king and made governor of Jamaica. Knowing all the tricks of the trade, he rounded up and hanged all his old pals who had not accepted the free pardon, so in the course of time the business of piracy fizzled out. The coming of steamships finally put the tin hat on it.’
‘Pity,’ murmured Dick, with genuine regret.
Biggles smiled. ‘So you’d like to be a pirate, you bloodthirsty young rascal, would you?’
‘There must have been a lot more fun in it than selling papers at three-ha’pence a dozen.’
‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ agreed Biggles, ‘although there was nothing funny in swinging on a yard-arm or a gibbet. But if every one has finished we might as well get along.’
He paid the bill and they passed out into the dreary, lamp-lit street.
Dick opened his mouth to speak, and stepped into the gutter to get beside Biggles just as a heavy lorry swung round the corner.
Algy saw his danger and dragged him aside just in time. The lorry whirled past, missing him by inches.
Biggles eyed Dick seriously. ‘My goodness! That was a close squeak,’ he breathed. ‘You ought to know better than to wander in the road like that.’
Dick turned up a startled face. ‘Yes,’ he said, thoroughly shaken. ‘I can’t think what came over me; I never did a thing like that before in my life.’
‘Well, don’t do it again, or your doubloon won’t bring you much luck,’ admonished Biggles as, reaching a broad street, he beckoned a cruising taxi.
They got in, and the driver, possibly because he had a long journey before him, set off at high speed. From his position in the rear seat of the cab Biggles regarded the back of the driver’s head with strong disapproval. ‘This fellow is either mad or drunk,’ he declared. ‘He has no business to go at this rate; we shall bump into something in a minute, the silly ass.’
‘That would be a shame, just as I’ve come into some money,’ protested Dick.
‘As far as I can make out, you’re going to be lucky if you live long enough to spend it,’ muttered Biggles angrily as the taxi skidded round the corner, narrowly missing a stationary dray. ‘Open the window, Algy, and tell that fool at the wheel that we didn’t ask him to set up a record.’
Algy did as he was asked, but the driver merely laughed as though the whole thing was a joke.
Biggles muttered savagely, and regarded the oncoming traffic with increasing anxiety.
The end came suddenly, at the corner of Mount Street, not far from Biggles’s rooms, where the driver swerved to miss a private car that was creeping out of a side street. There was a scream of brakes, and an instant later a sickening crash as the cab struck a traffic signal. Fortunately, it did not turn over.
Biggles was white with anger as he extricated himself from the others on the floor and kicked open the buckled door. ‘Anybody hurt?’ he asked quickly.
Receiving assurances that no one was injured, he turned to the driver who, looking thoroughly frightened and ashamed, was wiping the blood from a cut on his forehead with his handkerchief. But before he could speak a policeman appeared, notebook in hand, thrusting his way through the rapidly forming crowd. ‘Who did this?’ he asked menacingly, pointing to the smashed traffic light.
Biggles nodded in the direction of the driver. ‘He did. He drove like a lunatic. He must be drunk,’ declared Biggles bitterly.
The driver denied the charge indignantly. ‘That ain’t true, sir. I ain’t ’ad a drink all day, and that’s the ’onest truth, strike me dead if it ain’t. You smell my breff if you don’t believe me.’
Biggles shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I’ll do that, thank you. The constable might like to,’ he added. There was something in the man’s attitude that led him to think that the driver was speaking the truth. ‘What on earth made you drive as you did?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, s’welp me,’ declared the wretched man, regarding the ruins of his cab. ‘It just seemed as if I couldn’t ’elp meself. The funny thing was, I knew I was going too fast, yet I didn’t seem able to stop. It was almost as if someone was sitting on the seat beside me saying, “Go on, put your foot down and let her rip.” I——’
‘All right, that’ll do,’ put in the constable heavily. ‘You come along with me; I’ll get the doctor to have a look at you.’
Still protesting volubly, the driver was led away. The others were left standing on the pavement.
‘Come on,’ muttered Biggles disgustedly. ‘We might as well walk the rest of the way. And we’d better insure our lives before we do anything else, I think. That’s two narrow escapes inside half an hour. If this sort of thing goes on I shall soon begin to think you’re a hoodoo, Dick.’
However, they reached Biggles’s flat without further incident, beyond the fact that they all got wet, for it was now raining steadily. They changed their jackets, Ginger lending Dick one of his, and then settled round the fire. Biggles lit a cigarette. ‘Go ahead, Dick,’ he invited. ‘Let’s hear what your father has to say about the doubloon.’
‘I’d rather you read the letter yourself, sir,’ suggested Dick nervously. ‘My dad didn’t write much of a hand, and it always took me a long time to make out the words.’
‘All right.’ Biggles took the proffered letter. ‘I’ll read it aloud,’ he said, ‘then we shall all hear what there is to hear at the same time.’ He unfolded several sheets of flimsy paper and smoothed them out on his knee. ‘Now then, pay attention, everybody,’ he said. ‘I’m going to start.’
