by W E Johns
Wilkinson nodded. “You won’t have to go so far as that, Biggles,” he said. “Go within a mile of that kite and you’ll see Old Man Death waiting with the door wide open.”
“In that case it doesn’t matter,” said the Colonel, preparing to enter the estaminet.
“Just a moment, sir! What about the balloon?” cried Biggles anxiously.
“Well, what I was going to suggest was this,” replied the Colonel. “Strictly between ourselves, the infantry are doing a show in the morning. We are moving a lot of troops, and that observation balloon has got to come down and stay down. I’m willing to hand over six bottles of lemonade, free, gratis and for nothing, to the officer who does most to keep that balloon on the floor for the next few hours. Today is Sunday. Time expires twelve noon tomorrow. We’ll score like this. Forcing the ground-crew to haul the balloon down counts three points; shooting it down in flames, five points. My observers will have their glasses on the balloon all day. You know as well as I do that if you shoot the balloon down there will be another one up within a few hours. Duneville is an important observation post for the Boche.”
“Did you say just now that you would be fair, sir?” asked Biggles incredulously.
Colonel Raymond ignored the thrust. “Pulled down—a try—three points; down in flames—goal—five points; don’t forget.” In the doorway of the estaminet he turned and a broad smile spread over his face. “Any officer taking the balloon prisoner scores a grand slam and gets the other six bottles. Goodbye.”
For a full minute the two Flight-Commanders stood staring at the closed door as if fascinated; then Biggles started towards his car. With his foot on the running-board he turned to Wilkinson.
“You keep your glasshouse out of my way,” he said curtly, referring to the S.E.5, which was, at that time, fitted with a semi-cabin windscreen.
“And you keep your oil-swilling ‘hump’ where it belongs,” snapped Wilkinson, referring to Biggles’s Camel.
Inside the estaminet Colonel Raymond was sipping a drink. Albert was packing twelve bottles into a case. “Unless I am very much mistaken,” mused the Colonel, “that Boche balloon is in for a trying time—a very trying time.”
II
An hour later, Biggles, clad in a leather coat, made his way to the hangars. In his pocket he carried written orders to strafe the Duneville Balloon; these orders permitted him to carry Buckingham (incendiary) bullets, forbidden on pain of death for any other purpose by the rules of war.
Rules were seldom observed during the great struggle, but the order would, at least, protect him from trouble at the hands of the enemy, should he be forced to land on the wrong side of the lines. He halted before a Camel upon which a squad of ack-emmas were working feverishly.
“What are you doing, Flight?” he asked the Flight-Sergeant in charge.
“Just a top overhaul, sir, while you were away,” replied the Flight-Sergeant. “She’ll be ready in an hour.”
Biggles frowned but said nothing. He was disappointed to find his machine wasn’t ready, but he would not say anything to discourage the mechanics.
“Fill the belts with tracer and Buckingham right through in that order,” he said, presently, as he seated himself and prepared to wait.
“Going balloon-strafing, sir?”
Biggles nodded.
The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders and said no more.
The machine was ready at last. Biggles, fretting with impatience, took off and headed for the line, climbing all the time in the direction of Duneville. It did not take him many minutes to spot his objective. There it was, the misshapen beast, four miles away and five thousand feet below him. Circling cautiously towards it he examined the air and ground in its vicinity carefully. He could see nothing, but he knew perfectly well that once let him venture within a mile of that sausage floating so placidly in the blue vault, the air about it would be a maelstrom of fire and hurtling metal. He started. Far above the balloon appeared a tiny black speck surrounded by a halo of black smoke and little darting jabs of flame. Biggles whistled and raced towards the scene, watching the machine, which he now recognised as an S.E.5, with interest. “Sweet spirits of nitre,” he muttered. “What a hell to be flying through, all for a case of lemonade. He must be crazy.”
The S.E.5 was going down in an almost vertical dive, twisting like a wounded sparrow-hawk, pieces of torn fabric streaming out behind it.
Swift as had been its descent the balloon crew were faster, and the sausage was on the ground before the S.E. could reach it. The machine pulled up in an almost vertical zoom, and as it flew past him, Wilkinson, the pilot, pushed up his goggles and then very deliberately jabbed up three fingers at him.
“Three points, eh,” muttered Biggles. He placed his thumb against his nose and extended his fingers in the time-honoured manner. Wilkinson grinned, and with a parting wave turned for home. Biggles climbed away disconsolately.
For an hour he circled round, returning at intervals to see if the balloon had reappeared, but there was no sign of it, and he knew the reason. “They can see me,” he pondered. “They know why I’m hanging around, presently they’ll send for a Staffel1 of Huns to drive me away. I’ll have to try different tactics.”
He returned to the aerodrome, refuelled, and returning to the line crossed over four or five miles from the balloon-station. For ten minutes he flew straight into the enemy’s country and then circled back to approach the balloon from its own side of the line. Looking ahead anxiously, his heart leapt as his eyes fell in the ungainly gas-bag floating below him. Instinctively he looked upwards to make sure that there were no protecting machines, and caught his breath sharply.
Three Fokker Triplanes were coming down in a steep dive, but not in his direction. Following their line of flight he saw an S.E.5, which, apparently, just realising its danger, was streaking for home.
“That’s Wilks,” thought Biggles, “Wilks for a certainty. He did the same thing as I’ve done and was just going for the sausage when he saw them coming. They’ll get him. They’ve 3,000 feet of height of him—he’ll never reach the line. The Tripehounds have left the coast clear for me, though; I’ll never get such a chance again. It’s Wilks or the balloon—dash the luck! —I can’t let them get old Wilks.”
He put his nose down in the wake of the Fokkers in a wire-screaming dive. He reached the nearest Fokker almost at the same time as the leading Fokker fired at the S.E.5. At that moment the black-crossed machines were too intent on their quarry to look back. Biggles held his fire until his propeller was only a few feet from the nearest enemy machine, and then raked it from tail-skid to propeller-boss with one deadly burst. The Triplane slowly turned over on to its back. Hearing the shots, the other two Fokkers whirled round, leaving the S.E. a clear run home. Biggles, cold as ice, was on the tail of the nearest in a flash, and the next instant all three machines were turning in a tight circle. The Fokkers started to outdimb him at once, as he knew they would. “I’m in a mess now,” he thought, as the top Fokker levelled out to come down on him, and he pulled the Camel up to take it head-on.
What was that? An S.E.5 was above them all, coming down like a comet on the Fokker, guns streaming two pencil-lines of white smoke. The Fokker turned and dived, the S.E. on its tail.
“Good for you, Wilks,” grinned Biggles; “that evens things up.”
He looked for the other Triplane, but it was a mile away far over its own side of the line. Then he remembered the balloon. Where was it? Great Scott! There it was, still up, less than a mile away. Even as Biggles put his nose down towards it, its crew seemed to divine his intention and started to haul it down. A stabbing flame and a cloud of black smoke appeared in front of him, but he did not alter his course. He was flying through a hail of archie and machine-gun bullets now, every nerve taut, eyes on the blurred mass of the balloon. Five hundred feet—three hundred—one hundred— the distance closed between them.
“At least I won’t be out for a duck,” he muttered, as he p
ressed his triggers. He had a fleeting vision of the observers’ parachutes opening as they sprang from the basket, a great burst of flame, and then he was twisting upwards in a wild zoom in the direction of the line.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he passed over. An S.E.5 appeared by his side, the pilot waved a greeting. Biggles pulled off his gauntlet and jabbed five fingers upwards. “There will be no more balloons today,” he said to himself, glancing towards the setting sun, as he made for home.
As he landed, “Watt” Tyler, the Recording Officer, handed him a slip.
“Signal for you from Wing H.Q., just in,” he said. “Dashed if I know what it means.”
Biggles glanced at the message and smiled.
“Score 5-3 your favour,” he read. The initials were those of Colonel Raymond.
III
“Tired of life, Biggles?”
Biggles looked up from the combat report to see Major Mullen eyeing him sadly.
“Why, sir?” he asked.
“You’ve been balloon-strafing,” said the C.O.
“That’s true, sir. I had a little affair with the Duneville sausage this afternoon,” admitted Biggles.
“I see,” said the C.O. “Well, if you’re in a hurry to write yourself off2,’ go right ahead. You get balloon fever and you won’t last a week; you know that as well as I do. Don’t be a fool, Biggles. Let ‘em alone. By the way, I see that the wind has shifted; blowing straight over our way for a change. All right, finish your report, but let those infernal kites alone,” he added as he left the room.
Biggles remained with his pen poised, as an idea flashed into his mind. The wind was blowing straight over our lines, was it? He hurried to the window and looked at the wind-stocking. “Lord, so it is!” he muttered, and sat down, deep in thought. What was it Colonel Raymond had said? “Anybody capturing the balloon scores a grand slam and gets the other six bottles.” “Great Scott!” he grinned. “I wonder if it’s possible? If I could cut the cable the balloon would drift over to our side. Cables have been cut by shell splinters before today. I wonder—!”
He dashed off to the nearest balloon squadron and after spending half an hour asking many questions in the company of a balloon officer, returned to the aerodrome still deep in thought. He sought his Flight-Sergeant.
“What bombs have we, Flight?” he asked.
“Only 20-lb. Coopers, sir,” replied the N.C.O., looking at him queerly.
“Nothing bigger?”
“No, sir.”
“I see. Do you think my Camel would carry a 112-pounder?”
“Carry it all right, sir, if you could get the rack fixed, though you wouldn’t be able to throw the machine about much with that lot on,” returned the Flight-Sergeant.
“Where can we get one?”
“297 Squadron at Arville use them on their ‘Nines,”3 sir. If you gave me a chit to the E.O.4 I could fetch one and borrow a bomb-rack.”
“Will you do that for me, Flight—and get it fixed tonight? I’m leaving the ground at daylight in the morning. I’d like a five-seconds ‘delay’ fuse fixed, if you can manage it.”
“I’ll have a shot at it, sir.”
Well satisfied with his evening’s work, Biggles went to bed early.
IV
At the first streak of dawn he was in the cockpit warming up his engine. The Flight-Sergeant, as good as his word, had hung the bomb under the fuselage just clear of the undercarriage. The change of wind had brought low cloud, and Biggles looked at it anxiously. Too much cloud would spoil visibility and the balloon would not go up.
The Camel took a long run to lift its unusual load, but once in the air the difference was hardly noticeable except for a slight heaviness on the controls. “This is the maddest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” soliloquized the pilot, as he sped towards the lines.
As he approached Duneville he saw the balloon just going up, but following his tactics of the previous day he circled, crossed the line a few miles lower down, and prepared to attack from the German side. The balloon was straight ahead of him now and Biggles exclaimed softly as his eye fell on a solitary S.E.5 farther west, trailing a line of archie bursts in its wake. He put the nose of the Camel down and started “hedge-hopping” in the direction of the sausage, now far above him. Vaguely he heard the crackle of machine-gun fire as he raced across the enemy reserve trenches, but he heeded it not. He was afraid of one thing only, and that was accidentally hitting the balloon-cable with his wing; it was only about as thick as his finger and would be difficult to see. The balloon was less than a mile away now, the ground-party no doubt looking upwards for any possible danger. With his wheels nearly touching the ground he tore towards the little group at the foot of the cable. He saw them turn in his direction, scatter and dive for shelter, and then he was on them. At the last instant he threw the machine in a bank away from the cable-drum, pulled the bomb-toggle, and zoomed, twisting and turning as he dashed towards his own lines. As he reached comparative safety he looked back over his shoulder; a great pillar of smoke marked the spot where the bomb had burst, but the sausage was nowhere in sight.
Ignoring the archie that still followed him, Biggles pushed up his goggles and looked again, an expression of incredulous amazement on his face. A movement far above caught his eye and caused him to look up; an ejaculation of astonishment escaped his lips. The balloon, freed from its anchor, had shot up to ten or eleven thousand feet and was already sailing over no-man’s land! He could see no parachutes, and concluded that the observers, taken unawares, were still in the basket. Far away he saw an S.E.5 diving across the line to where the balloon would normally be.
Biggles grinned. “The bird has flown,” he muttered, as the S.E. pilot swung round in obvious confusion, evidently at a loss to know what had become of it; but when he began climbing Biggles knew that his balloon had been sighted by the lynx-eyed Flight-Commander.
Biggles reached the balloon first, waved a greeting to the occupants, who were busy with something inside the basket, and then fired a warning Very light in the direction of the rapidly approaching S.E.5. He guessed what had happened to the balloon. When the mooring cable had been cut it had shot up until the automatic valve had functioned, and, by releasing the gas, checked the ascent, and incidentally prevented the balloon from bursting. The observers had been too startled to take to their parachutes immediately, and then, seeing that they would in any case drift across the line and be taken prisoners, decided to remain where they were and bring their unwieldy craft to earth.
They were now opening the valve and losing height rapidly, which was exactly what Biggles had hoped would happen. He knew little of ballooning, but enough to understand what the two men in the basket would do. The balloon would drop with increasing rapidity. Near the ground the crew would check its descent by throwing ballast overboard and then pull the rip-panel, releasing all the gas from the envelope, which would then collapse and sink lightly to earth.
It happened as he anticipated. Close to the ground the fabric spread out like a giant mushroom and quietly settled down. Biggles landed in the next field, the S.E.5 landing a moment later. A touring car intercepted them as they crossed the road separating them from the deflated monster. Colonel Raymond greeted them.
“Who did that?” he laughed, pointing towards the balloon.
“My prisoner, sir,” grinned Biggles. “I claim a grand slam and the twelve bottles. There will be no more balloons up at Duneville today.”
“You’ve won them,” laughed the Colonel. “Collect them at the Chez Albert. They are paid for.”
“At the where?” said the two pilots together, staring. “Do you mean to tell us that the stuff was in there all the time?” added Biggles, with a marked lack of respect.
The Colonel nodded, his eyes twinkling. “Why were you so anxious to have it?”
Biggles answered: “You see, it’s 266 guest-night tomorrow, and I thought we’d give everyone a treat. Will you come, sir? You will, Wilks, I know.”
“You bet I will!” cried both officers together.
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* * *
1 The German fighting squadrons were known as Jagdstaffeln.
2 ‘Write-off’: an aeroplane that was so badly damaged as to be of no further use was officially ‘written off’ the squadron books. The expression ‘write-off’ was loosely used to infer the complete destruction of anything.
3 D.H.9s.
4 Equipment Officer.
THE BLUE DEVIL
THE summer sun shone down from a sky of cloudless blue. Biggles sat on a doorstep of No. 287 Squadron Mess and watched the evolutions of an aeroplane high overhead with puzzled interest, wondering what the pilot was trying to do.
He was on his way home from an uneventful morning patrol and had dropped in to have a word or two with Wilkinson, only to be told that he was in the air.
Slightly torpid from two hours at 6,000 feet, he had settled down in the ante-room to await his return, when the amazing aerobatics of the S.E.5 above had attracted his attention. With several other officers he had moved to the door in order to obtain an uninterrupted view of the performance.
“That’s Wilks all right,” observed Barrett, a comparative veteran of six months at the front. “He’s been doing that on and off for the last two days.”
Biggles nodded wonderingly. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked. “I always thought he was crazy—just look at the fool; he’ll break that machine in a minute.”
The evolutions of the S.E.5 were certainly sufficiently unusual to call for comment. The pilot appeared to be trying to do something between a vertical bank and a half-roll. Over and over he repeated the same manoeuvre, sometimes falling out of it into a spin and sometimes in a stall.
“Here he comes; you can ask him,” said Barrett, as the engine was cut off and the S.E.5 commenced to glide down to land.
