Algy nodded and turned again to watch the pursuing machines. The formation of three had now caught up with Blackbeard's seaplane and the four of them were not more than a mile behind. "They'll catch us in about ten minutes," was his mental note as he sat back in his seat.
The minutes passed slowly. Biggles racked his brain for a solution to the problem, but could find no answer; in the air or on the water they were completely at the mercy of their opponents. The chatter of a machine-gun made him look round quickly. One of the three machines had outdistanced the others, and, gathering a little altitude, was now coming down on his tail with two long fingers of orange flame spurting from its enginecowling. Biggles' eye narrowed. "You dirty dog!" he thought. "You'd shoot at an unarmed machine, would you? By James, if I had a gun I'd show you something." The range was still too long for effective shooting, but there was
always a chance of a stray bullet hitting one or the other of them, or disabling the machine. Presently, when the range became shorter, they would certainly be hit if he continued to fly straight, yet his only hope of escape lay in reaching the coast; to land on the open sea would simply provide their enemies with a stationary target at which they could shoot until the machine was sunk or its crew killed. He pushed the joystick forward, determined to hold out as long as possible, and when the worst came to the worst treat the gunners to a few of the tricks he had learnt in the grim school of war. He took out his revolver and passed it to Algy. Not that he expected him to do any serious damage with it, for a revolver against a machine-gun might be compared with a peashooter against a rifle. Still, it was better than nothing. He leaned out of the cockpit and saw the leading machine closing in on him. With all his old-time coolness, he watched the gunner's head move forward to peer through the sights, and kicked his rudder-bar at the precise moment that the man fired. He smiled grimly as a stream of tracer-bullets swept past his wing-tip, and the gunner's head jerked up again to discover how his target had vanished so suddenly from his sights.
The distance lessened between them, and the loss of speed occasioned by the manoeuvre enabled the other machines to come nearer, one of which went down in a steep dive with the apparent intention of coming up under the amphibian's keel.
Biggles kept them all in view, and as the lower machine came up he flung the amphibian round on its axis and charged straight back through the middle of the formation. The rear machine got in a fleeting shot at him as he passed, and a bullet whanged against the amphibian's engine-cowling, but did no damage. Algy had fired, too, but without visible result. Again Biggles turned, and, thrusting the stick hard forward, snatched a lead of nearly a quarter of a mile before the other pilots had grasped his intention. He knew it was only postponing the end, for such manoeuvres could not go on indefinitely, and he could not hope to be successful every time, yet it was better than doing nothing.
The gunners, with their greatly superior speed, were on him again almost at once, like a pack of wolves on the trail of a wounded doe, and again he had to swerve wildly to dodge the leaden hail. It cost him a certain amount of valuable height, but it was unavoidable. His lips became a straight line as the gunners, gaining experience by their previous failures, opened out and prepared to come in from each side and below at the same time, and he held the stick tightly, determined that if the amphibian was hit in a vital place he would at least take one of them crashing down to oblivion with him. Something—it may have been a flash of his old wartime intuition—made him look up, and he stiffened, staring unbelievingly. He jabbed Algy in the ribs with his elbow and pointed. Six aircraft, bearing the red-white-and-blue insignia of the Royal Air Force, were screaming down in a wing-tip-to-wing-tip dive. As they neared the amphibian the formation broke like a bursting rocket and the separate machines took up positions around the travel-stained amphibian. Biggles looked at them wonderingly, marvelling at their sudden appearance. Then he saw and understood. Far away, almost on the horizon, was the squat, ugly outline of an aircraft-carrier heading towards them at full speed, two great feathers of spray leaping from her knife-like bows. Something told him that its appearance had not been simply a lucky fluke. What was it Hesterley had said? "If I can do anything more to ensure
your safety I will." He must have rung up the Air Ministry on the telephone, or got in touch with them by wireless, and the carrier was the answer.
He looked behind, but Blackbeard and his three companions were already mere specks in the distance, racing nose-down for home. The R.A.F. machines had made no attempt to pursue them; the safety of the British machine was their only consideration. He caught Algy's eye and grinned, and then waved to the pilot of the nearest machine. "Good old England!" he thought soberly. "You certainly turned up trumps at the crucial moment that time."
A dark, low-lying shadow appeared on the sky-line, and he knew that it was the English coast.
The R.A.F. machines stayed with them until the estuary of the Thames opened out below, and then, reverting to their flight formation, dived a parting salute and disappeared in the direction of their parent ship, which had been left far behind. Half an hour later the amphibian's wheels rumbled over London Airport, and rolled to a standstill in front of the hangars. An N.C.O. in slate-blue uniform detached himself from a little group of mechanics and hurried towards it.
"Major Bigglesworth, sir?" he asked Biggles, who was stiffly removing his flying-cap.
"Yes?"
"Would you be good enough to come with me, sir —to the Air Ministry? I have a car waiting."
"Do you want us all to come?"
"Nothing was said about anyone else, sir. There's a party here to take charge of the machine," he added, glancing critically at the dirtiest aeroplane he had ever seen in his life.
"She looks as if a wash and brush-up wouldn't do her
any harm," smiled Biggles, as he jumped down from the cockpit.
"That's what I was thinking, sir," laughed the N.C.O.
"Just give me a minute and I'll be with you," Biggles told him, and then to Algy, "I suppose the Air Ministry wants a full report of the whole thing, and one of us will be sufficient. You'd better take Smyth and Ginger along to your rooms, and I'll join you as soon as I can get away. We'll leave the machine here for the present." Algy nodded. "Good enough," he agreed. "We'll go home and wait for you."
CHAPTER XVII
THE RAIDERS' FATE
IT was nearly nine o'clock that night before Biggles joined the others at Algy's flat in a side-turning off Baker Street. He found them yawning in their chairs with the debris of a meal on the table in front of them.
"Anything left?" he asked, glancing at the remnants. "We've had bacon and eggs. How will that suit you?" replied Algy.
"Fine. Pour me out a cup of that coffee, and I'll tell you the rest of the story; it won't take long."
"Go ahead," answered Algy, passing the coffee.
Biggles lit a cigarette and threw the dead match into the fireplace. "Have you seen an evening paper, by any chance?" he inquired.
Algy shook his head.
"I thought not or you'd have had more to say when I came in. Well, it's all over."
"What's all over?"
"Blackbeard's Air Fleet. It isn't any more—or not much of it. It's busted wide open."
" Come on; out with it!" cried Algy impatiently. "What's happened?"
"Well, this is the story as far as I can make it out," went on Biggles, "although you must understand that the Air Ministry are not saying much about it; I've had to guess part of it, although they helped me with a few
broad hints. This was the order of it, and it all hung on those papers Ginger snaffled in Russia. As far as I remember, not one of us looked at them, although it wouldn't have mattered very much if we had, as they were in Russian, but they meant a dickens of a lot to that fellow we met in Christianbad—what was his name?— Hesterley. He sent the whole story to England in code while we were kicking our heels in that cell. No wonder Blackbeard was upset."
Bigg
les dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper.
"Last night was the night decided for a full-dress rehearsal of Blackbeard's Air Fleet's raid on Great Britain; thirty flying-boats were to take part, landing at nine different bases on the English coast. The numbers of the machines and the exact positions of the objectives were all set out in those papers, together with the names of the people taking part, and all the rest of it. Well, there was the story, and the Air Ministry wasted no time. As far as can at present be ascertained, only two of those machines succeeded in getting back to the base in Russia. Some were damaged, and must have gone down in the North Sea trying to get back; one, they say, is down on the Dutch coast. The evening papers have got hold of a story about a lot of mysterious aircraft wreckage being washed up here and there on the east coast. The Ministry have denied any knowledge of the matter to the press, as they were bound to without running the risk of starting a war, and, as a matter of fact, they've succeeded in hushing the thing up pretty well. The newspapers have guessed that there is a lot more behind it, of course, but in the national interest they are allowing the thing to drop."
"But what happened?" cried Algy.
Biggles shook his head. "I doubt if we shall ever know
for certain, but a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse, and I have my own opinion."
"You think
"I believe that as soon as our people got the word, they made a lightning raid on every base that had been laid down in this country. Not only were the bases named in the papers, but there was a map marking their exact positions. Well, they collared the whole works, and quite a number of the personnel, I believe; they will probably be deported in due course. Every one of the black flyingboats—or, I should say, nearly very one—
crashed on landing, and that to my mind can only have been brought about by one thing. The submerged lights must have functioned, or the pilots would not have attempted to land; but I should say they functioned in the wrong places."
"You mean—our people shifted them?"
"Exactly. The lights were switched on, but instead of the illuminated positions being nice sheltered coves, they were amongst shoal, sand and rocks. You can imagine what happened. The machines would either buckle up or tear their keels out when they bumped into terra firma. They would certainly stick if they did not actually crash, and I expect our people were watching to pick up the survivors. Mind you, this is only assumption on my part, but I know for a fact that the machines all piled up where they came down, and that is the only way I can account for it. It seems a bit drastic, I must admit, but when all is said and done, the treatment handed out to these fellows was nothing like as drastic as that which they would have handed out to us when the time was ripe."
"They've got what they asked for," agreed Algy, "and they'll think twice before they try anything like that again. Was that all they said at the Air Ministry?"
"Pretty well. I made a full and complete report which was taken down in writing by a shorthand typist. At the finish I was thanked by the Chief of the Air Staff on behalf of the Secretary of State for Air—which, of course, means the Government—and asked to extend their thanks to my 'gallant and duty-devoted comrades.' "
"Was that all?" asked Algy bluntly. "Didn't they even offer to pay our expenses? This trip has cost a bit of money one way and another."
A slow smile spread over Biggles' face as he slowly took an envelope from his pocket. " You do me less than justice, as our friend Blackbeard would say," he said reprovingly. "I have a cheque which makes rather good reading, to be divided between you and me in such proportions as we may decide, being the chief partners in the affair, so to speak. There is a further cheque for £500 for Smyth, to do what he likes with, and another for the same amount for this ginger-headed young rascal—wait a minute, my lad, I haven't finished yet—in my name, to be devoted to, his education, in any way that I may think fit. As an' alternative, if he prefers it, the Service will take charge of him, in which case he will proceed to Cranwell as an aircraft-apprentice. Which is it to be, Ginger? "
"Do I have any say in my education?" asked Ginger shrewdly.
"Within reason. What's your idea of it?"
"To go to a civil flying-school and get my tickets—flying and ground-engineer's licences."
"That's all right with me. You can start in as soon as you like. You may learn to fly, but you won't be able to take your tickets just yet because you're still under age."
"Never mind that; as long as I can fly, that's all I care.
When I get my hands on a joystick I shall be able to hold my own with you guys on the next show we do."
"Well, I'm taking the amphibian tomorrow for complete overhaul; I'll take you down with me, if you like," concluded Biggles.
"O.K., big boy!" cried Ginger enthusiastically
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Biggles And The Black Peril (06) Page 15
