by W E Johns
‘Can I ask one, old warrior?’ put in Bertie.
‘Certainly.’
‘Assuming that the jolly old Boche9 is polluting the atmosphere along our route, is there any reason why he should choose this particular area – if you see what I mean?’
‘Yes. If he operated at either end of the line his machines would probably be seen. It seemed to me that he would be likely to aim for somewhere near the middle, because not only is the country uninhabited, but it happens to be the nearest point to German-controlled North Africa – at any rate to Libya, where there is a German army.’
‘Yes – of course – absolutely,’ muttered Bertie. ‘Silly ass question, what?’
‘Not at all,’ answered Biggles. ‘Well, that’s all for the moment. We’ll have a rest, but everyone will remain on the alert ready to take off at a moment’s notice. I’ve arranged for a code message to be radioed when the next transport machine leaves the West Coast for Egypt, or vice versa. Naturally, machines operate both ways over the route. Until we get such a signal we will confine our efforts to reconnaissance, noting the landmarks – such as they are. There is at least one good one. The caravan route, the old slave trail, as old as the desert itself, passes fairly close, running due north and south. All the same, the only safe plan in desert country is to fly by compass. Reconnaissance may reveal some of the lost aircraft, or the remains of them.’
‘Say, chief, what about Arabs?’ inquired Tex. ‘Are we likely to meet any, and, if so, what are they like?’
‘To tell the truth, I’m not sure about that,’ Biggles admitted. ‘There are wandering bands of Toureg – those are the boys who wear blue veils over their faces – all over the desert. They are tough if they don’t like you. Our best policy is to leave them alone in the hope that they’ll leave us alone – hark! What’s that?’
There was a brief attentive silence as everyone jumped up and stood in a listening attitude. But the matter was not long in doubt. An aircraft was approaching.
‘Keep under cover, everybody,’ snapped Biggles, and running to the door of the tent, without going out, looked up. For a full minute he stood there, while the roar of the aircraft, after rising in crescendo, began to fade away. There was a curious expression on his face as he turned back to the others, who were watching him expectantly.
‘Now we know better how we stand,’ he said quietly. ‘That was a Messerschmitt 10910. He was only cruising, so I imagine he was on patrol. It would be waste of time trying to overtake him – no doubt we’ll meet him another day. I don’t think he spotted anything to arouse his suspicions or he would have altered course – perhaps come low and circled. I’m glad he came along, because the incident demonstrates how careful we must be. Had anyone been standing outside the fringe of palms he would have been spotted.’
‘But sooner or later we shall be seen on patrol,’ Ginger pointed out.
‘That may be so,’ agreed Biggles, ‘but to be seen in the air won’t provide a clue to our base. This is not the only oasis in the desert. Well, that’s all. We’ll have a look round the district when we’ve fixed up our quarters.’
1 Legendary single-seat RAF fighter from World War Two armed with guns or a cannon.
2 Non-Commissioned Officer e.g. a Sergeant or a Corporal.
3 A long-range night bomber with a crew of five.
4 The place where the officers meet for eating and relaxing together.
5 Now Chad.
6 From 1940 to 1943 the Italians, under the Fascist dictator Mussolini, formed an alliance with Hitler and joined in the battle against Britain and her allies.
7 British two-seater fighter carrying a Rear gunner in a four-gun turret. It had no forward-firing guns.
8 See Biggles in the Baltic.
9 Slang: derogatory term for the Germans.
10 German plane often abbreviated to ME. The main German single seat fighter of World War Two.
CHAPTER 2
DESERT PATROL
OVER EARLY MORNING tea the following day Biggles planned the first operation.
‘No signal has come in, so as far as we know at the moment we have no aircraft flying over the route,’ he remarked. ‘That gives us a chance to have a look round. I don’t expect enemy opposition; if there is any it will be accidental, and for that reason we needn’t operate in force. It would be better, I think, if we started off by making a thorough reconnaissance of the entire district, or as much of it as lies within the effective range of our machines – say, a couple of hundred miles east and west along the actual route, and the district north and south. Keep a sharp look out for wheel tracks, or any other signs of the missing machines. Algy, take Carrington with you and do the eastern section. Fly on a parallel course a few miles apart; that will enable you to cover more ground; only use radio in case of really desperate emergency. Bertie, you make a survey of the northern sector. Don’t go looking for trouble. There are one or two oases about up there, but you’d better keep away from them – we don’t want to be seen if it can be avoided; information travels fast, even in the sands. Tex, you fly south, but don’t go too far. I don’t think you’ll see much except sand. Everyone had better fly high – you can see an immense distance in this clear air. I’ll take Ginger and do the western run. All being well we’ll meet here again in two hours and compare notes. That’s all, unless anyone has any questions?’
No questions were asked, so in a few minutes the engines were started and the six machines taxied out to the open desert for the take-off. Algy and Tug Carrington took off first, and climbing steeply disappeared into the eastern sky. Bertie and Tex followed, heading north and south, respectively.
Biggles spoke to Flight-Sergeant Smythe, who was standing by. ‘Remember to smooth out our wheel tracks as soon as we’re off,’ he said. Then he called to Ginger: ‘All right, let’s get away. Make a careful note of anything that will serve as a landmark. The course is due west. We’ll fly parallel some distance apart. If you see anything suspicious, or worth investigating, come across to me and wave – I’ll follow you back to it. I shall keep you in sight; in the same way, you watch me. Let’s go.’
The machines were soon in the air, heading west, with the oasis, a tiny island in an ocean of sand, receding astern. At fifteen thousand feet Biggles levelled out, and with a wave to his partner, turned a few points towards the south. Ginger moved north until the other machine was a mere speck in the sky, when he came back to his original westerly course. Throttling back to cruising speed he settled down to survey the landscape.
At first, all he could see was an endless expanse of sand, difficult to look at on account of the glare, stretching away to the infinite distance, colourless and without outline. Nowhere was there rest for the eye. There was no definite configuration, no scene to remember, nothing to break the eternal monotony of sand except occasional patches of camel-thorn, or small outcrops of what appeared to be grey rock. Over this picture of utter desolation hung an atmosphere of brooding, overwhelming solitude. Overhead, from a sky of gleaming steel, the sun struck down with bars of white heat, causing the rarefied air to quiver and the machine to rock as though in protest.
Ginger had flown over such forbidding territory before, but even so he was not immune from the feeling of depression it creates. Assailed by a sense of loneliness, as though he alone was left in a world that had died, he was glad that the other machine was there to remind him that this was not the case. Pulling down his smoked glasses over his eyes to offset the glare he flew on, subjecting the ground, methodically, section by section, to a close scrutiny. For some time it revealed nothing, but then a strange scar appeared, a trampled line of sand that came up from the south, to disappear again in the shimmering heat of the northern horizon. He soon realised what it was. The litter of tiny white gleaming objects that accompanied the trail he knew must be bones, human bones and camel bones, polished by years of sun and wind-blown sand. ‘So that’s the old caravan road, the ancient slave trail,’ he mused. ‘Poor devils.’ I
t was an outstanding landmark, and he made careful note of it.
Some time later, on the fringe of an area furrowed by mightily curving dunes, as if a stormy ocean had suddenly been frozen, he saw another heap of bones – or, rather, an area of several square yards littered with them. Clearly, it marked the spot where a caravan, having left the trail, had met its fate, or perhaps had been wiped out by those fierce nomads of the desert, the veiled Toureg. Ginger marked down the spot, which formed another useful landmark in an area where landmarks were rare. He made a note of the time, to fix its position in relation to the oasis. This done, he glanced across at Biggles’s machine, and having satisfied himself that it was there, still on its course, he went on, and soon afterwards came to the fringe of country broken by more extensive outcrops of rock, between which the camel-thorn grew in thick clumps, which suggested that although the country was still a wilderness there might be water deep down in the earth. Shortly afterwards Biggles came close and flew across his nose, waving the signal for return.
On the return journey the two machines for the most part flew together, although occasionally Biggles made a brief sortie, sometimes to the north and sometimes to the south. In this way they returned to the oasis, after what, to Ginger, had been a singularly uneventful flight. Landing, they taxied in to find that the other machines were already home. The pilots were waiting in the mess tent.
Biggles took them in turn, starting with Algy. ‘See anything?’ he asked crisply.
Algy shook his head. ‘Not a thing.’
‘What about you, Bertie?’
‘I saw plenty of sand, but nothing else.’
Tex and Tug made similar negative reports.
Biggles rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘We didn’t see anything, either, except the old caravan route,’ he said slowly. ‘I was hoping we should find one of the missing machines so that by examination we might discover what forced it down. Between us we must have covered thousands of square miles of country. I don’t understand it. Tomorrow we’ll try north-east and north-west – perhaps one of those districts will reveal something. If we draw blank again, I shall begin to think that my calculations were at fault. It isn’t as though we were flying over wooded country; if the missing machines came down in this area we are bound to see them. It’s very odd. If they didn’t land, where did they go? Why did they leave the route? They certainly didn’t land on it, or not in the four hundred miles of it which we’ve covered this morning.’
‘They might have got off their course,’ suggested Algy.
‘I could believe that one might, but I’m dashed if I can imagine seven machines making the same mistake.’
‘We may find them all in the same sector, one of the areas we haven’t covered yet,’ put in Ginger.
‘If we do it will puzzle me still more,’ declared Biggles. ‘It will raise the question, why did seven machines leave the route at practically the same spot? Don’t ask me to believe that the Higher Command would choose for a job like this pilots who are incapable of flying a simple compass course. In fact, I know they didn’t, because Fred Gillson was flying one of the machines, a Rapide of British Overseas Airways, and be was a master pilot. No, there’s something queer about this, something I don’t understand. We’ll have a spot of lunch, and perhaps do another patrol this evening.’
Biggles looked sharply at the tent entrance as Flight-Sergeant Smythe appeared. ‘Yes, flight-sergeant, what is it?’ he asked.
‘A signal, sir, just in. I’ve decoded it.’ The flight-sergeant passed a slip of paper.
Biggles looked at it. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘This may give us a line. One of our machines, a Dragon1, wearing the identification letters GB-ZXL, left the West Coast at seven this morning. It must be well on its way by now, and should pass over here inside a couple of hours. General Demaurice is among the passengers; he’s coming out to take over a contingent of the Free French2, so there will be trouble if the machine doesn’t get through. We can escort it through this area. Ginger, come with me. We’ll go to meet it. We’ll take the same course as we did this morning, although we may have to fly a bit farther apart so that it won’t slip by without our spotting it. Don’t go far from the route, though. Algy, you stand by with Bertie; when you hear the Dragon coming, whether we are with it or not, take off and escort it over the eastern sector as far as your petrol will allow you to go. Flight-sergeant, you stand by the radio in case another message comes through. Come on, Ginger, we’ve no time to lose.’
In a few minutes the two machines were in the air again, climbing steeply for height and taking precisely the same course as they had taken earlier in the day except that Ginger went slightly farther to the north, and Biggles to the south, an arrangement which enabled the two machines to watch the air, not only on the exact route, but for several miles on either side of it, in case the Dragon should have deviated slightly from its compass course.
As he flew, Biggles kept his eyes on the atmosphere ahead for the oncoming machine. Occasionally, for the first half-hour, he saw Ginger in the distance, but from then on he saw no more of him. This did not perturb him, for it was now about noon, and although it could not be seen he knew that the usual deceptive heat-haze was affecting visibility.
Time passed, but still there was no sign of the Dragon, and Biggles’ anxiety increased with each passing minute. Where could the machine be? He made fresh mental calculations, which only proved that his earlier ones had been right. If the Dragon had kept on its course at its normal cruising speed he should have met it before this.
When an hour had passed he knew beyond all shadow of doubt that one of two things must have happened. Either the Dragon had slipped past him in the haze, or, for some reason unknown, it had not reached the area of his patrol. He realised that there was a chance that Ginger had picked it up, and turned back to escort it, a possibility that was to some extent confirmed by the fact that there was no sign of Ginger’s machine.
Perceiving that he was already running his petrol supply to fine limits Biggles turned for home, and in doing so had a good look at the ground. Instantly his nerves tingled with shock as he found himself staring at a wide outcrop of rock which he had not seen on his earlier flight, although had the rock been there he could not have failed to notice it. How could such a state of affairs have come about? There was only one answer to that question. He was not flying over the same course as he had flown earlier in the day. But according to his compass he was flying over the same course; he had never deviated more than a mile or two from it, a negligible distance in a country of such immense size.
Biggles thought swiftly. Obviously, something was wrong. He could not believe that his compass was at fault because compasses rarely go wrong, and, more-over, he had boxed3 it carefully before starting for the oasis. Yet if his compass was right, how did he come to be flying over country that he had never seen before? This was a problem for which he could find no answer. The sun was of very little use to help him fix his position for it was practically overhead, so he took the only course left open to him, which was to climb higher in the hope of picking up a landmark which he had noted on his first flight.
By this time he was flying back over his course, or as near to it as he could judge without relying on his compass, but even so, it was not until he had climbed to twenty thousand feet that, with genuine relief, he saw, far away to the south-east, the caravan road. How it came to be where it was, or how he came to be so far away from it, he could not imagine. For the moment he was content to make for it, and from it get a rough idea of his position. The road ran due north and south. By cutting across it at right angles he would at least be on an easterly course, which was the one he desired to take him back to the oasis. And so it worked out. Half an hour later the oasis came into sight, and soon afterwards he was on the ground, shouting urgently for Algy as he jumped down.
Algy, and the others, came out at a run.
‘Have you seen the Dragon?’ asked Biggles crisply.
‘Not
a sign of it,’ answered Algy. ‘We’ve been standing here waiting for it ever since you took off.’
Biggles moistened his sun-dried lips. ‘Ginger is back, of course?’
‘No,’ declared Algy, alarm in his voice. ‘We haven’t seen anything of him.’
Biggles stared. ‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘I cut my petrol pretty fine. If Ginger isn’t back inside ten minutes he’ll be out of juice.’
‘What can have happened to him – it isn’t like him to do anything daft,’ put in Tex.
‘I’ve got an idea what’s happened to him,’ answered Biggles grimly. ‘Let’s get into the shade and I’ll tell you. Flight-sergeant, check up my compass, will you, and report to me in the mess tent.’
