by W E Johns
For an area of a mile around the structure the earth was pitted with holes of various sizes made by the British air bombs. As they approached, it was evident that the recent aerial activity above the bridge had not been lost on the enemy and that steps had been taken to give future visitors a warm reception.
Even Biggles hesitated for a moment before the storm of archie and 'flaming onions*' that tore the sky around them.
* Slang: a type of incendiary anti-aircraft shell only used by the Germans.
'Well, I'm not taking this load of bombs back home,' he told himself harshly, and, thrusting the control-stick forward, he tore down at the bridge.
Something jarred the Camel from end to end and he snatched a fleeting glance at his upper port wing, where a strip of trailing fabric told its own story. At four hundred feet he flattened out, took the bridge at the junction of his lower wing and the fuselage, and pulled the bomb-toggle, one – two – three – four. He jerked the control-stick back into his stomach in an almost vertical zoom, and, glancing down, snorted his disgust.
Three swirling rings of foam churned the water and showed where his bombs had fallen into the river which flowed beneath the bridge. The fourth had exploded harmlessly on the bank some distance beyond it.
Again he roared down and, hurtling through the vicious machine-gun barrage near the ground, delivered his last four bombs at point-blank range. Again he glanced over his shoulder as he twisted upwards, and a snarl of disappointment broke from his lips.
The bridge was still standing, apparently intact, while a line of still-smoking holes on the bank showed where his bombs had again missed their mark.
Algy was now busy, and Biggles watched him anxiously as he dodged through the swirling archie smoke. Again he snorted impatiently as he saw Algy's Cooper bombs bursting close to the bridge, but not one of them touched the bridge itself. Where was Henry?
Even as the thought struck him he saw the Professor going down in a vertical dive.
'The crazy fool,' grated Biggles through his teeth, 'he'll go right into the floor at that rate, with that load on!'
A stabbing flame and the vicious crack of a close burst of archie made him swerve wildly for a moment, and he eyed another gash in his wing fabric anxiously. It was near the leading edge, and he knew there was always a danger of the whole wing fabric 'ballooning' if the air rushed into it.
'This is a fool's game. I'm getting out of it!' he muttered, and a swift glance revealed Algy above him, streaking out of the danger zone. He hastened after him, then looked down for Henry's Camel, and an exclamation of amazement broke from his lips. He thrust up his goggles with a quick movement to see better, and he stared hard, almost unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
The centre of the bridge had completely disappeared, and a large cloud of smoke was drifting away from the ruins. But of Henry's Camel there was no sign!
As Biggles sped out of the sea of archie bursts, he looked around with ever-increasing anxiety, but there was no sign of the missing Camel. Algy was still circling for height – the only other machine in the sky beside his own. His practised eye searched the ground, field by field, tree by tree, for a mile or more around the bridge, but there was no sign of a crash.
Puzzled, he turned homewards, knowing there was just a chance that Henry had hopped across the hedges out of view, while he himself was busily engaged in dodging archie.
He landed, and sat on the 'hump' of his Camel behind the cockpit, until Algy had landed and taxied quickly alongside. Slowly he unfastened and removed his cap and goggles.
'What happened to him?' he asked quietly.
'I dunno!' replied Algy laconically. 'The last I saw of him, he was going down like a sack of bricks. I turned away out of the archie, and when I looked back again he wasn't there – neither was the bridge, for that matter,' he concluded, tapping a cigarette on the back of his hand.
'What on earth can have happened to him?' muttered Biggles, with a worried frown. 'He's down somewhere, or he would be home by now, that's certain. We'd better go back and have another look round.'
They hurried back to the bridge, and for more than an hour they flew up and down, in spite of the archie, searching the whole area systematically for signs of the crashed Camel, but without success.
Once, while Biggles was examining a wood closely, the archies died away suddenly, and he acted with the lightning-like speed born of long experience, without looking around to discover the reason. He flung the control-stick right over to the left, and then back into his right side, kicking out his right foot at the same time.
The Camel swung up in a swift barrel-roll. He was just in time. There was a shrill chatter of guns from somewhere near at hand, and a red-nosed Pfalz* scout roared past in a wire-screaming dive.
* German single-seater biplane fighter with two or three machine guns synchronised to fire through the propeller.
'Nearly caught me napping, did you?' thought Biggles grimly, as he flung the Camel on the tail of the now zooming Hun. 'Looking for trouble, eh? Well, you can have it! What's Algy doing? He ought to have attended to you.'
He lifted his arm in front of his face and squinted through the outstretched fingers of his gauntleted hand into the sun. He grinned as he saw a Camel standing on its nose, roaring down at the German plane.
But the Boche pilot had seen it too, and, regretting his indiscretion, was diving in a panic for the ground. Biggles and Algy both had height and speed of him, and were on his tail in an instant. The Boche hadn't a chance. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked death in the face, in the shape of two pairs of Vickers guns not a hundred feet behind him.
As he looked back, Biggles and Algy simultaneously started pumping lead through their props**. The Boche slumped forward in his seat. The dive of the Pfalz plane became steeper and steeper, until it was plunging down to oblivion at frightful speed in a vertical dive.
** Slang: firing through their propellers.
Biggles saw the top plane swing back as the black-crossed enemy machine broke up in the air, and then he pulled up in a steep, climbing turn, beckoning to Algy to follow him. A tornado of archie broke loose from the infuriated gunners on the ground who had witnessed the tragic end of the Boche machine.
'Pah!' snorted Biggles disgustedly, as he twisted and turned to throw the gunners off their mark. 'That was too much like murder for my liking. The Huns must be putting babies into some of their kites!'
An archie exploded not twenty feet below him, and the force of the explosion nearly turned him over. In a sudden fit of passion, he tore down at the stab of flame that revealed the position of the gun on the ground.
'Let's see how you like it!' he gritted, as he thumbed the gun lever. 'How do you like that, eh?' he went on, as a double streak of tracer bullets ripped and tore the earth about the gun, which he now saw was of the mobile type, mounted on a lorry.
That the gunners did not like it was at once evident, for the driver of the lorry set off down the road at full speed.
'You can't get away like that!' muttered Biggles coldly, and held his dive until he was a bare fifty feet behind the hurrying vehicle.
The German gunners could hardly be blamed for losing their nerve. The lorry swerved dangerously – once – twice – and then, crashing into the ditch that ran beside the road, it overturned and flung the driver and crew into the hedge.
The sight of a column of German infantry brought Biggles to his senses
'I must be crazy, coming right down so far over the Line!' he muttered, looking around to see if Algy had followed him. He discovered the other Camel still at his wing-tip. The pilot was making frantic signals and pointing.
Biggles, following the outstretched finger, saw a line of swiftly approaching black specks above them, and their straight wings told him all he wanted to know. They were Fokkers*! He whirled the Camel round in its own length, and raced back to the Lines, emptying his guns into the Boche trenches as he roared across them to safety.
&n
bsp; Algy looked at him coldly after they had landed and taxied in.
'What's gone wrong with you, Biggles?' he asked. 'I wish you'd warn me when you're going to do things like that. I'll get myself a pair of tin pants made if I've got to fly with you much longer,' he went on, as he climbed stiffly from his seat.
'Are you hurt?' asked Biggles quickly.
'No, only a scratch, but it happens to be where I sit down,' replied Algy. 'But what else can you expect if you will go footling about fifty feet above the whole blinkin' German Army?'
'Did you see any signs of a Camel on the ground?' asked Biggles.
'No,' Algy said. 'I can't make it out – and that's a fact!'
Inquiries soon revealed that Henry had not returned, and Biggles buried his chin between his palms sadly as he squatted down on a chock. 'The Professor's gone, I'm afraid,' he said. 'But I'm dashed if I can understand what happened!'
Refusing to give up hope, they lounged about the tarmac silently, their hearts sinking with the sun, but hoping against hope that the missing bird would come home to roost.
* German fighter with three wings with two forward-firing guns. Their slang name was tripehounds. See front cover for illustration.
'Come on, laddie, it's no use waiting any longer,' said Biggles at last, as twilight deepened into night. And together they made their way slowly to the mess.
'Well, it beats me!' said Biggles, several hours later, as he kicked the ante-room fire into a blaze with the heel of his shoe. The scene was the same as it had been the previous night at the same hour, except that Henry's face was missing. 'I can't make it out. If I was not sure that Henry wasn't the sort to commit suicide, I should say that he deliberately charged the bridge and knocked the whole works into the river.
'He was diving as if that was what he intended to do. But why take a bomb? What happened to the machine? There isn't a sign of it anywhere, as anybody can see for himself. I'll bet you that he had one of his fool schemes worked out on paper and it came unstuck. That was it.'
'You're right, Biggles, that was it,' said a sombre voice from the doorway.
Biggles stood as if turned to stone, his foot poised over the fire. The others stared at a mud-stained, bloodstained, dishevelled figure in the doorway with expressions of mingled alarm and amazement.
Henry! There was a crash of falling chairs in the wild stampede that followed. In a moment everybody was laughing and talking together to the comrade whom they had given up for lost.
'Mind my head, chaps, it's sore! Give me a hot drink,' said Henry wearily. 'I want a bath and some grub, and then I'll tell you how it came unstuck.'
'I worked it out this way,' began Henry an hour later. The mud had been removed and a bandage decorated his forehead. 'I noticed that everybody went for that bridge from up top-sides.'
'Well, how else –' broke in Biggles.
'Wait a minute,' continued Henry impatiently. 'The Huns had therefore concentrated all their dirty work – archie, machine-guns, and so on – to face the danger from that direction. Now it seemed to me that if an attack was made from underneath, it would not only upset their calculations, but a well-placed bomb would do more damage in the foundations than it would from up top. So I took a fifty-pounder with a fifteen seconds' delay fuse.'
'But underneath!' cried Biggles. 'How do you mean, underneath?'
'Well, instead of flying over it like everybody else did, I decided to fly up the river and underneath it. That's all.' He paused to relight his cigarette.
'Good heavens! I always knew you were off your rocker!' declared Biggles, with conviction.
'All went well, according to plan, until I reached the bridge,' continued Henry. 'And that's where I came unstuck – in every sense of the word,' he said sadly. 'The arch wasn't wide enough for me to get through!'
A yell of laughter split the air.
'It's all very well for you to laugh,' cried Henry hotly, 'but it was no joke, I can tell you!'
'I'll bet it wasn't!' agreed Biggles warmly. 'What did you do?'
'Do! Do! Dash it! What could I do? I didn't discover it until too late. It was either hit a buttress or the hole. I chose the hole,' he said simply.
'So should I, every time,' agreed Biggles.
'Don't ask me what happened,' Henry went on. 'I'd already got hold of the bomb-toggle and I suppose I must have pulled it. The next thing I knew there was one dickens of a crash, and my wings had gone. The fuselage, with me in it, didn't stop. We went right on. Boy, you should have seen me take the water. A torpedo wasn't in it. Talk about "Twenty thousand leagues under the sea"!'
'Joined the submarine service, eh?' grinned Biggles.
'I did,' acknowledged Henry. 'Fortunately, the river was in spate, and the next thing I knew I was floating down the river hanging on to a wheel trying to look like a bit of wreckage. And I didn't have to try very hard. I drifted into the rushes, and lay there, with just my nose sticking out, like a blinking alligator, wondering what had happened.
'A crowd of Huns were laughing like fun on the bank, as well they might, but luckily at that moment a formation of Nines* rolled up. That stopped 'em laughing. It stopped me laughing, too, if it comes to that. Those Nines unloaded about ten tons of perdition on the bridge, and I expect they'll claim they got it.'
* De Havilland 9's – two-seater British bomber with one fixed forward-firing gun for the pilot, plus a rear mobile gun for the observer.
'They won't!' said Biggles grimly. 'I'll see to that!'
'Well,' continued Henry, 'in the hullabaloo, I hoofed it down the river to a wood, where I got out of my Sidcot** and started off towards the balloon line, which I could see. I started crawling along ditches, and I crawled for miles. I crawled till I couldn't crawl any longer, and then I got up and walked.
** A thick padded garment worn by airmen.
'I thought I'd be spotted at once, but I couldn't crawl any longer; I'm no snake. First I passed a couple of Hun officers. I saluted, but they didn't even look at me. I passed a lot of troops, and a sergeant-major looked at me a bit old-fashioned – because I looked such a shocking mess, I expect. After all, they wouldn't expect me to be strolling about their reserve lines, would they?'
'No, you're right, they wouldn't!' muttered Biggles.
'I walked until it was dark, by which time I was pretty near the Front Line, I expect, and then an inferno broke loose. Every gun in France was turned on me – or it seemed like it.
'Naturally, that stirred things up a bit, and it gave me a chance to get moving. I doubled for about a couple of hundred yards, lay doggo while some Boches went past – going the other way for all they were worth – and then carried on.
'I don't know if any of you chaps have ever tried doing a quarter-mile steeplechase through a Crystal Palace firework display. Anyhow, I shifted like the dickens until I came to a trench, then I rested a moment before going on. There didn't seem to be anyone about. I suppose I was lucky.'
'Lucky – I'll say you were!' grunted Algy.
'Well, after that, things started getting a bit warm. There was an appalling bombardment, rifle-fire, a Lewis gun or two, and enough Very* lights to floodlight Hyde Park. I kept it up for about twenty yards, then I came to some wire, which I couldn't get round. So, reckoning I'd had about enough, I found a nice comfortable shell-hole and went to earth. The ground up above wasn't any too healthy just then!
* A coloured flare fired as a signal from a special short-barrelled pistol.
'I've never heard anything like the row. Thank goodness I'm not in the infantry! The next thing I heard was someone shouting in English, and I looked up to see a sergeant. I said,"Hold hard!" and he said: "What the dickens – " And I told him.
'He took me to an officer, a bloke named Davis – nice chap – and then I walked back to the old Front Line. I got a lift on a lorry back here. That's all!'
Chapter 4
The Bottle Party
Algy burst into the officers' mess of No. 266 Squadron like a whirlwind.
'I say, Biggles!' he cried excitedly. 'Have you seen Duneville?'
'No. What's it doing? Running about in circles, taking running snatches at itself?' replied Biggles, looking up from a well-thumbed paper.
'I mean those balloons*,' went on Algy breathlessly.
* Both sides in the First World War used kite or observation balloons, with observers in baskets suspended below the balloon, for spotting artillery and enemy troop movements. Their slang name was sausages.
'Calm yourself, son! What balloons?' asked Biggles, in surprise.
'Three – three blinking sausages all in a row,' declared Algy, 'and one of them has got two baskets on it,' he added vindictively.
'Yes; but what's this got to do with me?' replied Biggles coldly.
Algy stared at him, nonplussed.
'Well – er,' he stammered, 'I – er – thought that particular sausage was your special meat – yours and Wilkinson's of 287.'
'Is that why you didn't have a crack at 'em?' inquired Biggles sarcastically.
'Yes, that and – er – '
'Go ahead, laddie!' broke in Biggles impatiently. 'Don't stall. What was the other thing?'
'Ten Fokker triplanes cruising above 'em,' admitted Algy reluctantly, with a sheepish smile.
'Bah! You wouldn't let a little thing like that stop you, would you?' said Biggles reprovingly, raising his eyebrows.
'You go and have a smack at 'em yourself – they're still there,' invited Algy. 'If you think – '
A car pulled up outside, and Colonel Raymond, of Wing Headquarters, alighted. He nodded cheerfully to the officers present. 'Where's the major, Bigglesworth?' he asked quickly.
'Isn't he on the tarmac, sir?' asked Biggles.
'Can't see him,' replied the colonel. 'But what I really came over for was to ask if you'd seen – er – '
'The scenery around Duneville?' asked Biggles innocently.
'Then you have?' said the colonel.
Biggles shook his head vigorously.
'No, I haven't,' he denied, 'and, what is more, I don't want to. I don't see the sense in burning good petrol to go all that way just to look at it.'
