Biggles - Air Commodore

by W E Johns

  At that particular instant the amphibian turned. It was only a slight movement, but it was enough to disconcert the pilot of the seaplane, who, at the same time, opened fire.

  Biggles felt a cold perspiration break out on his face as the Nemesis swerved sickeningly. Whether or not the movement was accidental or deliberate he did not know, but when he saw the nose soar skyward and the machine swing round in a tight Immelmann turn, he knew that whoever was at the controls had not been hit, for the manoeuvre was one that could only be performed by a machine under perfect control.

  Again the seaplane fired, and again the amphibian twisted like a snipe as the pilot strove to spoil the other’s aim. And for a moment it seemed to Biggles that he succeeded, although he knew quite well that such an unequal combat could not be prolonged. ‘Go down!’ he roared, well aware of the futility of speech but unable to control himself any longer, for his one concern at this stage was that Algy and Ginger might save their lives regardless of anything else.

  From the behaviour of the Nemesis it almost seemed as if the pilot had heard him, for both engines stopped and, with propellors stationary, the machine began to zigzag back towards the land, at the same time sideslipping, first to left and then to right, in order to lose height. The seaplane was round after it in a flash, little tongues of orange flame flickering from the concealed guns in its engine cowling, and streams of tracer bullets cutting white pencil lines across the blue.

  With a wild swerve, and with the seaplane in close attendance, the Nemesis disappeared from sight behind the high ridge of trees on Biggles’s right, so that he could only stand and listen for the sound he dreaded to hear. He clenched his teeth as the harsh, staccato chatter of a machine-gun palpitated through the still air. It was maintained for several seconds, and then followed a screaming wail that was cut short by a crash like that made by a giant tree when it falls in a forest. Then silence. Absolute silence.

  In an agony of suspense Biggles waited for one of the machines to reappear; but he waited in vain. The echoes of the combat died away; the parrots that had circled high in the air in alarm at the unusual spectacle returned to their perches, and once more the languorous silence of the tropics settled over the scene.

  Biggles had no recollection of how long he stood staring at the ridge of trees, but suddenly he seemed to come to his senses. Throwing the things he had collected into a heap, regardless of stings, tears, and scratches, he set off at a wild run in the direction of the hill behind which the machines had disappeared.

  * * *

  1 An international seaplane race competing for a trophy donated by M. Jacques Schneider. Britain won the trophy permanently by winning it three times in 1927, 1929 and 1931 using Supermarine monoplane racing seaplanes.

  Chapter 6

  Jungle-Bound

  In spite of their recently acquired knowledge that a hostile aircraft was, or had been, in the vicinity, nothing was farther from Algy’s thoughts as he pushed forward the master-throttle of the Nemesis and soared into the air. As a matter of detail, he was not even thinking of the message they were to send, but of the dead men who lay on the hill-side.

  Ginger, having already worked out the position of the island, was inside the cabin letting out the aerial, at the same time carefully forming in his mind the context of the signal he was about to send.

  He had tapped out the call sign, thrice repeated, and his position, and was about to follow with the rest of the message when, without the slightest warning, the whole apparatus blew up, or so it seemed to him. There was a tremendous crash and, simultaneously, a sheet of electric blue flame flashed before his eyes with a vicious crackling noise, while a smell of scorching filled his nostrils. Temporarily half stunned with shock, he staggered up from the floor where he had fallen and tore the headphones from his ringing ears, only to be thrown down again as the machine heeled over in a vertical bank. As he clambered to his feet again a conviction took form in his mind that the aircraft had been struck by lightning, throwing it out of control, and he swayed through to the cockpit fully prepared to find Algy unconscious.

  To his astonishment he found him very much alive, crouching forward, but looking back over his shoulder with a terrible expression on his face. At the same time, above the hum of the engines, Ginger heard for the first time the unmistakable taca-taca-taca-taca of a machine-gun and, looking back over the tail, saw the seaplane.

  Such was his surprise that for several seconds he could only stare at it unbelievingly; but then, his brain at last taking in the full extent of the danger, he turned and ran back into the cabin in order to get their own machine-gun from the locker in which it was kept.

  Ran is perhaps not quite the right word, for it is impossible to do anything but roll in a machine that stands first on its nose and then on its tail. However, he managed to get to the armament locker, and to it he clung with a tenacity of despair which the Nemesis performed such evolutions that he became convinced it could only be a matter of seconds before she broke up. The thing that worried him most was whether or not Algy had been hit. From time to time he could still hear the rattle of the seaplane’s machine-gun, and the sound seemed to drive him to distraction. Bracing himself against the side of the hull, in a passion of fury he flung open the locker and dragged out the gun. Seizing a drum of ammunition, he clamped it on and, at imminent risk of shooting his own pilot, he staggered through into the cockpit in order to get into the open.

  He knew without looking that the Nemesis was going down; the angle of the floor told him that; but he was not concerned with it. At that moment he was concerned with one thing, and one thing only, and that was the destruction of their attacker, the man who, he guessed, must have been responsible for the death of Tom Lowery and his mechanic. He felt no fear; he felt nothing but an overwhelming desire to destroy the man who was shooting at them; he wanted to do that more than he had ever wanted to do anything in his life before. After that, he wouldn’t care what happened.

  Actually, although he was unaware of it, his reactions were precisely those of scores of air fighters in France during the war; and they were the reactions by which those fighters could only hope to achieve their success, or even save their lives, for in air combat it is a case of kill or be killed.

  Vaguely he saw the trees rushing up to meet them, was dimly aware that the engines had stopped. But neither of these things meant anything to him. He did not even hear Algy’s frantic yell of ‘Be careful!’ With a fixed purpose in his mind, he scrambled up the back of the cockpit until he was standing on the hull just behind it, with the machine-gun resting on the main spar of the top plane. He saw the seaplane sweeping down over their tail; saw the pilot’s helmeted head looking out over the side of his cockpit as he measured his distance; saw his head bob back and knew that he was squinting through is sights; knew that if he was allowed to fire at such point-blank range it would be the end.

  As he glanced along the blue barrel of the gun a feeling of power swept over him, bringing with it a wonderful sense of satisfaction. Coolly and deliberately he trained the muzzle on the pointed nose of the other machine. His finger crooked round the trigger, pressed it down and held it down.

  Instantly a stream of glowing white-hot sparks appeared. They seemed to form a chain, connecting the two machines. In a curious, detached sort of way he saw the drum slowly revolving, in funny little jerks, while his ears were filled with a harsh metallic clatter and his nostrils with the acrid reek of burning cordite.

  The gun quivered like a live thing in his hands, but still he clung to it, his left hand clutching the spade-grip and his right forefinger curled round the trigger.

  Suddenly the gun stopped moving; the noise ceased abruptly, and he looked at it reproachfully, unaware that he had emptied the entire drum. Looking back at the seaplane, he saw that it was behaving in an extraordinary manner. Its nose was dipping down—down—down, until it was nearly vertical. Why didn’t the pilot pull out? The fool, he’d be in the trees...

&nbs
p; ‘Ah!’ Unconsciously he winced as the seaplane struck the trees and instantly seemed to dissolve in a cloud of flying splinters. The terrible noise of the crash came floating up to him, and he looked at Algy oddly, feeling suddenly queer. For one dreadful moment he thought he was going to faint, but the feeling passed, and again he tried to catch Algy’s eye. But Algy, he saw, was not taking the slightest notice of him, or the crash. He was levelling out over a stretch of black, oily water, surrounded on all sides by trees with which he felt sure they would presently collide.

  For a few seconds it was touch and go, and Algy only saved the machine by a swerve, before it had finished its run, that nearly sent Ginger overboard. Then, in some curious way, the Nemesis was floating motionless on its own inverted image, while little ripples ruffled the water and disappeared under the dark trees that lined the water’s edge.

  ‘Good shooting, kid,’ said Algy, looking up at Ginger and smiling in a peculiar, strained sort of manner.

  ‘I got him, didn’t I?’ muttered Ginger, as if he still had difficulty in believing it.

  ‘You can write number one on your slate just as soon as you get back to where you can buy yourself one,’ answered Algy, standing up and looking around. ‘Did you get that message off, that’s what I want to know?’

  ‘No, I only got the call sign and our position out when a bullet knocked the instrument to smithereens.’

  Algy grimaced. ‘Do you mean to say that our wireless is smashed?’

  ‘It’s in so many pieces that it would need a magician, not an electrician, to put ‘em together again,’ declared Ginger. ‘Why did you come down?’

  ‘For two very good reasons,’ Algy told him shortly, still taking stock of their surroundings. ‘In the first place I wanted to, and in the second I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what’s happened, but a bullet must have hit something vital. Both engines cut out together. I switched over to gravity but there was nothing doing, so I made for the only stretch of water within reach that was big enough to land on. I’d have got back to the sea if I could, but I hadn’t enough height. Poor old Biggles will be in a stew, I’ll bet; he must have seen the whole thing.’

  ‘He’ll be on his way here by now,’ announced Ginger firmly.

  ‘No doubt he’ll try to get here, but from what I can see of it, it isn’t going to be too easy,’ murmured Algy anxiously. ‘It looks to me as if we’re in the middle of that big mangrove swamp at the end of the island, and there isn’t a way out to the sea; I noticed that from the air before I put her down.’

  ‘How are we going to get out?’

  ‘I don’t think we ever shall unless we can fix things up and fly her out. I wonder if we can make Biggles hear us? Let’s try a hail.’ Cupping his hands round his mouth Algy yelled ‘Biggles’ two or three times, but the only answer was the screech of startled parrots and parakeets that rose into the air from the surrounding trees voicing their indignation at the intrusion.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ said Ginger, and resting his hands on the edge of the cockpit he regarded the boundaries of the watery glade with interest not unmixed with apprehension.

  On all sides the sombre mangroves lifted their gnarled trunks on fantastic, stilt-like roots from the black waters and slime of the swamp from which, here and there, sprang rank growths of orchids and other exotic flowers, the only spots of colour in a world of desolation and decay. Except for an occasional humming-bird, or butterfly of gigantic size, nothing moved. Even the air, heavy with the stench of corruption, was still, and endowed the place with an atmosphere of sinister foreboding.

  Ginger shivered suddenly. ‘I don’t think much of this place,’ he said. ‘I should say it’s rotten with fever.’

  ‘There will probably be a mosquito or two about when the sun goes down,’ opined Algy. ‘Well, looking at it won’t get us anywhere; let’s see if we can get the engines going.’

  It did not take them very long to locate the damage. The gravity tank had been holed, and the petrol lead that fed both engines from the main tank had been severed in two places by bullets. Several had struck the machine, but as far as they could ascertain nothing else was damaged except the wireless gear, which was completely wrecked.

  ‘Can you put it right, do you think?’ asked Algy, looking at Ginger, who was examining the fractures with professional eye.

  ‘Yes, but it will take some time to make an airworthy job of it. I could make a temporary job with tape, but I don’t think we’d better risk it; if the vibration shook the join apart again just as we were taking off over the trees it would put the tin hat on the whole caboodle. The same applies to the gravity tank. Much better do the thing properly. Lucky you turned off the petrol when you did, or we should have lost all our juice.’

  ‘Lucky! You don’t flatter me, do you? That was common sense. As soon as I smelt petrol I couldn’t turn it off, or the ignition, fast enough. I was afraid the main tank had gone, and the thought of fire put the wind up me. Will it take long to mend those holes?’

  Ginger glanced at the sun, now sinking fast behind the tree tops. ‘I shan’t get it finished in time to get out of here tonight,’ he said frankly. ‘Personally, I don’t mind that; it’s the thought of Biggles dashing about not knowing what has happened to us that upsets me. I wonder if it’s possible to get out of this swamp on foot? I can see one or two places where the ground seems fairly firm. What with that, and by clambering over the roots of these foul-looking trees, one might be able to make terra firma.’

  ‘How can we reach the trees?’

  ‘Oh, we can easily fix up some sort of paddle or punt-pole. I wonder how deep the water is?’

  A quick examination revealed that the stagnant water on which the Nemesis floated was not more than three feet deep. By splitting the cover of the armament locker and binding the ends together, they soon had a makeshift punt-pole, flimsy it is true, but quite sufficient to cause the lightly borne amphibian to move slowly in any desired direction; and as Algy poled carefully towards that side of the swamp nearest the place where they had left Biggles, Ginger got out his emergency repair outfit and prepared to mend the fractured parts.

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Algy suddenly, as the Nemesis grounded gently on the mud in the shade of the trees. ‘How does this idea strike you? I can’t do much in the way of helping you and, as you’re going to be some time, suppose I work my way to solid ground and look for Biggles? With luck I might be able to do that and bring him back here—either that or we could fetch you and spend the night on the beach.’

  ‘I think it’s a good scheme,’ agreed Ginger. ‘Whatever else we do, I think we ought to make a big effort to let Biggles know how things stand. But be careful what you’re doing in that swamp; it wouldn’t be a healthy place to get stuck in. If the going gets difficult you’d better come back rather than take any risks.’

  ‘I think I can manage it,’ replied Algy confidently, crawling along the wing and letting himself down carefully on the twisted roots of the nearest tree, regardless of the clamour set up by a number of monkeys that were catching their evening meal of crabs and limpets a little farther along.

  ‘Got your gun?’ asked Ginger, watching him rather doubtfully.

  Algy tapped his pocket and nodded. ‘I don’t think I shall need it, though,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It can’t be more than a couple of hundred yards to dry land.’

  ‘I should say it’s nearer a quarter of a mile the way you’re going,’ argued Ginger, as he turned to go on with his work.

  For a little while he glanced occasionally into the swamp where Algy was slowly picking his way over the roots, but after he had disappeared from sight he became engrossed in his task and concentrated on it to the exclusion of everything else.

  In such circumstances time passes quickly, and almost before he was prepared for it he became conscious that darkness was falling. Looking up with a start he saw that a thin miasma of mist was rising slowly from the silent water about him and, leaving his work, he leaned over
the side of the hull, peering in the direction in which Algy had disappeared. As he did so he became aware of something else, although at first he could not make out what it was. Somehow the scenery seemed to have changed. Then he saw, and drew in his breath quickly with a little gasp of consternation.

  There was no longer any land visible, nor any of the tentacle-like roots. It was as if the whole forest had sunk several feet, allowing the oily water to creep up the trunks; so much so that the branches of the nearest tree, instead of being several feet above the wing as they had been, were actually brushing it.

  Then, with a flash of understanding, he perceived what had happened, and wondered why he had not anticipated it. The tide had come in, raising the level of the water several feet.

  ‘Algy!’ he cried loudly, in a sudden panic as he realized what the result might be if Algy had not succeeded in reaching the far side of the swamp. ‘Algy!’ His voice echoed eerily away among the trees.

  There was no reply.

  For some minutes he stood staring into the gathering darkness wondering if there was anything he could do; then, with a little gesture of helplessness, he picked up his tools and carried them through into the cabin.

  Chapter 7

  A Terrible Night

  Algy had not covered a third of the distance that separated him from dry land when he became aware of the flowing tide, although at first he did not recognize it as such and, as footholds and handholds became more difficult to find, he merely thought that he had struck a difficult part of the swamp, possibly a more low-lying area than the earlier part. But when he noticed suddenly that the turgid water was flowing steadily past him, gurgling and sucking amongst the hollows in the roots, he realized just what was happening. Even so he was not particularly alarmed, although he was certainly annoyed, knowing that his task would not be made easier by the new conditions.