Part of Series

Biggles

Series · 103 books

By Johns W E, W. E. Johns, Capt. W.E. Johns, and more

Biggles is asked to help a Chinese resident of Malaysia, called Lin Seng, move his unique pearl collection to London. Amongst this priceless collection is a superb pearl known as "the Blue Moon of Asia". Flying out to Malaysia and over Taihan, Seng's fantastic home, Biggles finds no suitable landing place. Going to Kuala Lumpur, Biggles makes contact with one of Seng's business managers called Tong. He tells Biggles that telephone contact has been lost with Taihan. Biggles and Algy hire a car and drive out to investigate. Finding a break in the telegraph lines, Biggles discovers the body of a Post Office worker sent out to repair the fault. The lines have been cut and when Biggles fetches the local police, the body has disappeared. Pressing on to Lin Seng's home at Taihan, Biggles finds he is under siege from thieves who want to steal his pearl collection. Twenty loyal workers defend Seng. Algy uses these workers to start to clear an overgrown golf course to turn it into a makeshift landing strip. The situation takes a turn for the worse when news is received that fifty Indonesian guerrillas have landed and are suspected to be making for Taihan. Biggles decides to try to break out, to get to Kuala Lumpur whilst Algy finishes the airstrip. Here he can alert the Malaysian Government to the Indonesian incursion and bring the plane to Taihan to land and collect Lin Seng and his pearls. Leaving by car with Ayart, one of Seng's servants, Biggles is brought to a halt and captured by the thieves in the jungle. Algy decides to block the entrance to the golf course by destroying a fallen tree over a crocodile infested ditch. Using gelignite, he blows the tree to pieces and this helps facilitate Biggles' escape because the thieves were taking Biggles to the golf course and they are caught in the explosion. Finishing the airstrip, Algy and Lin Seng are preparing for evacuation when the Indonesian troops attack. Biggles arrives by plane and with him come Malaysian Government soldiers. Algy saves Lin Seng from a murderous attack in an effort to steal his pearls and he is finally flown to safety. The picture on the dust cover shows Algy about to blow-up the tree bridge under a watching moon.

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Author

W. E. Johns

Author · 119 books

Invariably known as Captain W.E. Johns, William Earl Johns was born in Bengeo, Hertfordshire, England. He was the son of Richard Eastman Johns, a tailor, and Elizabeth Johns (née Earl), the daughter of a master butcher. He had a younger brother, Russell Ernest Johns, who was born on 24 October 1895. He went to Hertford Grammar School where he was no great scholar but he did develop into a crack shot with a rifle. This fired his early ambition to be a soldier. He also attended evening classes at the local art school. In the summer of 1907 he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor where he remained for four years and then in 1912 he became a sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk. Soon after taking up this appointment, his father died of tuberculosis at the age of 47. On 6 October 1914 he married Maude Penelope Hunt (1882–1961), the daughter of the Reverend John Hunt, the vicar at Little Dunham in Norfolk. The couple had one son, William Earl Carmichael Johns, who was born in March 1916. With war looming he joined the Territorial Army as a Private in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry), a cavalry regiment. In August 1914 his regiment was mobilised and was in training and on home defence duties until September 1915 when they received embarkation orders for duty overseas. He fought at Gallipoli and in the Suez Canal area and, after moving to the Machine gun Corps, he took part in the spring offensive in Salonika in April 1917. He contracted malaria and whilst in hospital he put in for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and on 26 September 1917, he was given a temporary commission as a Second Lieutenant and posted back to England to learn to fly, which he did at No. 1 School of Aeronautics at Reading, where he was taught by a Captain Ashton. He was posted to No. 25 Flying Training School at Thetford where he had a charmed existence, once writing off three planes in three days. He moved to Yorkshire and was then posted to France and while on a bombing raid to Mannheim his plane was shot down and he was wounded. Captured by the Germans, he later escaped before being reincarcerated where he remained until the war ended.