by W E Johns
‘I should say that we shall be extremely fortunate if we hit the ground within sight of the oasis,’ he said quietly. ‘If we do, I am afraid it will be more by luck than judgment. I wouldn’t swear to our position to within fifty miles. The wind speed up here might be anything—anything up to a hundred miles an hour. I don’t know, and it would be a clever man who could guess. I don’t fancy going down into the pea-soup underneath us, but we shall have to in a minute or two.’
‘Well, at least we shan’t hit somebody’s wireless-mast or chimney-pot,’ asserted Algy optimistically.
‘I only wish there was a risk of that, believe me,’ murmured Biggles. ‘Better tell the boys inside to be ready to jump clear when we hit. I won’t guarantee to put her down the right side up in this infernal murk.’
Algy did as he was requested, and as he returned, the engines, after a choking splutter, cut out dead. The propellers stopped. The roar died away, to be replaced by the not-unmusical murmur of wind in the wires. Biggles pushed the joystick forward. The nose went down, and almost at once the brown twilight began to close in around them again. He did not speak. The situation did not call for comment. He, Algy, and Ginger knew precisely what was happening, and what was likely to happen. They were flying blind. Presently they would reach the ground, and the violence of the impact depended on whether or not Biggles saw it. The needle of the altimeter began to creep back, 8,000—7,000—6,000.
Algy coughed, the noise seeming to be curiously loud.
The machine continued to lose height, with Biggles’s eyes alternating between the false horizon on the instrument-board and the altimeter. There was no need for him to look at the speed indicator, for he could judge his approximate speed by the feel of the joystick.
They were down to a thousand feet, and Algy began looking over the side. There was still no sign of the ground, and he said so, jerking his head back sharply as a great black bulk appeared to float past them.
‘What the dickens was that?’ he cried sharply.
Biggles raised his eyes for an instant. ‘If I didn’t know better I should say it was a mountain.’
‘It was!’ yelled Algy suddenly. ‘Look out!’
‘Impossible!’ snapped Biggles, and then flung the joystick over as a great sombre mass loomed suddenly in front. The machine went over on its side, but he righted it again instantly. With every nerve in his body strained to breaking-point, he swerved again as a jagged peak leapt up out of the gloom and appeared to clutch at the machine. He flashed a glance at the altimeter. As inexorable as fate the needle was creeping back— 400— 300. His eyes switched to the darkness ahead, and then to the vague shadows underneath.
‘Look out!’ yelled Algy again. ‘I can see the carpet.’
So could Biggles. Or he saw something, he was not sure what it was. He snatched the stick back, felt the machine falter, and waited for the stall. The crest of a solitary palm floated past his side window, then a cairn of stones. He flattened out and braced himself for the crash. Bump! He felt the wheels strike something solid, and knew that he had bounced. Bang! Again the wheels struck, and the machine reared like a bucking horse. Another brief interval, seeming like an eternity in the pent-up anxiety of the moment, and the wheels struck again. This time they held the ground, although the machine lurched sickeningly. Then came a series of minor jars, another slight bounce, and the machine ran to a standstill.
There was a moment of utter silence, almost frightening in its suddenness. Then Algy spoke.
‘Well, we are at least on the ground,’ he said simply. ‘And that’s something.’
Biggles smiled wearily. ‘It’s a lot,’ he said as he leaned back, and Algy noticed that his face was strangely drawn.
* * *
1 Bumps are caused by rising or falling currents of air which, because they are invisible, pass unnoticed by people on the ground. In point of fact, the air is far more restless than an ocean, and is rarely still except on cold, windless days. Bumps are caused by a variety of reasons. A common cause of up-currents is the wind striking against an obstacle, such as a hill, and being deflected upward. Again, the sun striking on rock heats it, and, as hot air rises, an up-current is the result. Perhaps a short distance away a down-draught (in flying parlance, a ‘sinker’) may be caused by cool air falling over a lake, or a shady valley into which the sun cannot penetrate. These currents of air sometimes cause partial vacuums, and further turbulence is created by the outside air rushing in to fill them. In Africa and on the North-West Frontier of India bumps can be alarming, carrying a machine up or down for two thousand feet or more, and so straining it that it has to be completely re-rigged when it lands. There is no real danger in flying in such conditions, but, naturally, it puts an extra strain on an aeroplane and makes the pilot’s task a very trying one, for he must be continually correcting the bumps to keep the machine on an even keel.
2 Haboob. A severe sand-storm, far worse than the more common dust-storm; it may extend from the ground to a height of 10,000 feet.
Chapter 9
Lost in the Desert
‘Well, I suppose we might as well get out and see where we’ve arrived at,’ announced Ginger.
‘I fancy we shall be lucky to do that,’ answered Biggles. ‘In any case, we had better sit where we are until the sand settles a bit, or we shall be choked. The storm has passed, but it has left all this stuff in the air, so we had better wait for it to thin a bit.’
‘Pass me a drop of water, somebody,’ requested Algy.
‘Go steady with it,’ warned Biggles. ‘We don’t know where any more is coming from.’
They bore the stifling heat inside the cabin for another half hour, and then, the sand having thinned considerably, they got out and looked about them. Biggles pointed to the machine, coated with a thick layer of sand, so that the fabric resembled nothing so much as sand-paper.
‘What a pretty problem that will be for some explorer in a few hundreds of years’ time, wondering how an aeroplane got here,’ he observed. ‘He will probably pack it up and take it home and have it put under a glass case in a museum, in the same way as we should a chariot.’ While Biggles had been speaking he had been looking round. ‘I may be mistaken, and I hope I am, but this place doesn’t strike me as being what you might call a health resort,’ he concluded.
‘You’re right, it doesn’t,’ agreed Algy.
Nevertheless, they were able to judge how lucky they had been in getting down without a serious accident, for the place in which the machine had landed was a narrow wadi, or valley, between forbidding outcrops of rock. All around them towered gaunt, barren hills, their peaks still half obscured in a mist of sand. Rocks lay all about them.
There was little else, except the floor of the wadi, which was a long expanse of sand that had silted in— the accumulation of years. There was no sign of life, but one or two stunted palms, their fronds brown and withered, suggested that there might be water deep down in the earth; but as there was not a blade of grass, green or otherwise, there was clearly none near the surface.
‘Gosh! What a sun-smitten dustbin,’ muttered Ginger disgustedly. ‘I wonder what lies beyond the edge of the wadi. I have a feeling that there ought to be an oasis not far away.’
‘And I have a feeling that if there is we shall have found what we were looking for,’ returned Biggles dryly.
The others stared at him.
‘You mean— the Lost Oasis?’ cried Ginger.
‘Why not?’ continued Biggles. ‘We were flying due east when the haboob caught us. It came from the north, therefore our line of flight must have been something south of east— say due south-east. Speaking from memory, according to my map no oasis occurs in that direction for hundreds of miles. Nor, for that matter, are there any mountains shown. If there is an oasis here it is certainly an unknown one, even if it is not the legendary Lost Oasis of— what was the name of it—? Zenzura.’
‘By the head of my father, I believe you are right!’ cried Kadar.
‘We have found by accident what we came to look for.’
Biggles nodded. ‘Well, Kadar,’ he said, ‘if it is, I hope you are satisfied with your find; but you’ll pardon me, I hope, if I do not go into ecstasies about it. The thing that exercises my mind at the moment is not how to find the Lost Oasis, or what to do with it if we have indeed found it, but how we are going to get home again.’
‘But suppose this is the Lost Oasis?’ cried Kadar enthusiastically.
Biggles regarded him moodily. ‘Suppose it is? What are you going to do with it, anyway? It’s all yours as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I’d swap the lot for a tuft of nice green grass or even a bunch of stinging-nettles.’
‘It is rather depressing, I must confess,’ admitted Kadar, somewhat abashed.
‘Depressing!’ Biggles laughed harshly. ‘I could find a better word than that for it.’
‘I think the first thing to do is to try to ascertain if it is the Lost Oasis,’ declared Kadar.
Biggles eyed him sadly. ‘You do, do you?’
‘Yes; I fancy I saw a cairn of stones farther back—’
‘Listen, laddie,’ interrupted Biggles. ‘From what I can see of it, you are going to have plenty of time to trot about looking for heaps of stones. What we need is a nice heap of scones. We are not likely to get very fat on a diet of boulders, so before we start sharpening our teeth on the crusty crags of your precious oasis, let us try to find something softer. Haven’t you realized yet that if we don’t find water within twenty-four hours, when the sand clears and the sun comes out, we shall be frizzled like kippers on a grill? It seems to me that the sooner we start looking for something to drink and eat, the better.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Kadar. ‘Of course. I am sorry. I was carried away by my excitement.’
‘Well, calm yourself, and try to think of something to carry us away from this oven,’ Biggles told him. ‘That should give you something to ponder on. Well, come on, let’s start exploring.’
‘All of us?’ asked Ginger.
Biggles thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think we’d better all go, in case a bunch of stray Tuareg drift in and steal what little food we’ve got. We don’t want to carry it about with us, so some one had better stay here and look after things. You stay, Algy. I’ll go and have a look round. Ginger can come with me; and I’d better take Kadar in case we meet any one—not that I think it’s likely—because he can speak the local languages.’
‘Will you take the rifle?’ asked Algy. With the exception of their pistols, a rifle was the only weapon they had brought with them. They had tried to avoid unnecessary weight, but a rifle had been brought for emergencies, although Kadar had stated that it was most unlikely that it would be needed.
‘No, I will leave it here with you,’ replied Biggles. ‘We shan’t go far. We ought to be able to see quite a long way from the top of the next hill.’ So saying, he slung a water-bottle over his shoulder, adjusted a pair of the dark glasses with which the expedition had been equipped, without which blindness soon comes in the desert, and set off down the wadi with Ginger and Kadar on either side of him. They, also, wore sun-glasses.
The heat was intense. The sand that had been whirled high into the air by the haboob had either settled again or been drawn on by the vortex, and the sun, now immediately overhead, probed the bare, tortured earth with bars of white heat. There was no escape, for there was no shade. The rocks quivered as they flung back the heat they could not absorb, and the sandy floor of the wadi became a gleaming carpet that scorched the explorers’ feet through the thick rope soles of their desert shoes.
Before they had reached the end of the wadi the sky had entirely cleared, and the depression had become a cauldron. The white glare had given way to yellow haze, distorting the rocks into fantastic shapes, and making it impossible to judge distance. The hill at the end of the wadi appeared to recede as they went forward, but they reached it at last, and climbed it, only to find that their view was interrupted by a slightly higher hill in front of it.
‘This is awful,’ muttered Ginger, who was beginning to feel the first symptoms of the dreadful desert lassitude. He felt his face curiously, wondering why he did not perspire, not realizing that the fiery heat of the desert dries all moisture as fast as it exudes through the skin.
Biggles said nothing. He went on, with gnawing anxiety in his heart. He knew that his casual remark about the necessity for finding water was literally true. If they did not find it in the next few hours, while they had the strength to search for it, they would perish.
They climbed the next hill, and Biggles’s heart sank as he saw a great face of cliff in front of him. obstructing what lay beyond and forming an insurmountable obstacle. Biting his lip with vexation and disappointment, he faced to either side in turn. It was the same everywhere. Rock and sand. Nothing more. To the left of the hill, however, the ground fell away sharply into a deep gully, and towards this he turned his steps.
‘You know more about this sort of thing than we do, Kadar,’ he said, ‘but I imagine that we should stand a better chance of finding water on the lower ground.’
‘Yes, although it will be hotter.’
They went on, traversed the gully, only to find that it led into a yet deeper one. And all around was the ghastly sameness of rock and sand.
Biggles stopped. ‘This is no use,’ he said simply. ‘We had better not go any farther without a bigger water supply, or without Algy. We’ve come some distance already. Let us get back and suspend operations until the sun goes down. It will be cooler after dark, and we shall be able to find our way in the moonlight.’
They went back through the gully, climbed the hill, and descended the other side, retracing their footsteps—as they thought. Suddenly Biggles stopped again. ‘This isn’t the hill we came up,’ he said in a hard voice.
‘It must be. I think we are only going down a different way,’ muttered Ginger, but his voice lacked conviction.
They went on down to the bottom, where Biggles again stopped. He pointed to a huge, mushroom-shaped rock, the base of which had been worn to a mere stalk by countless centuries of erosion. ‘We didn’t come past that,’ he said.
‘I think the wadi is here,’ suggested Kadar, in a voice that had become strangely hoarse.
Again they went forward, hurrying now, to the great cleft in the rocks which Kadar had indicated. But as they reached it they pulled up short, staring aghast at an inferno of rocks and sand which they had certainly not seen before.
Biggles passed his hand wearily over his face. He no longer attempted to deceive himself. ‘We’re lost,’ he said simply.
‘Yes, we’re lost.’ Kadar sat down and buried his face in his arms. ‘It was my fault,’ he went on miserably. ‘I should have known better. The Tuareg have a saying which is taught to their children as soon as they are old enough to understand. It means. “Never leave the trail”.’
‘But it seems impossible that we could lose ourselves so quickly,’ said Ginger.
Kadar shook his head. ‘In the desert one can become hopelessly lost, and die of thirst, within a mile of camp. It has happened many times.’
‘Well, there is only one thing left. Perhaps Algy will hear this.’ Biggles took out his pistol, and, pointing the muzzle into the air, fired three shots at regular intervals.
If there was a reply they did not hear it. All they heard were the echoes of the shots reverberating from hill to hill until they died away in the distance. A piece of rock detached itself from a nearby cliff and fell with an astonishing amount of noise for its size. After that there was silence. Dead, utter silence. Not merely the lesser noise of civilized countries; it was a complete absence of sound.
Ginger felt a thrill of fear, nearly approaching panic. A cold hand seemed to clutch his heart. He realized that he was very thirsty, and also very tired.
‘We should never have left our water-supply,’ muttered Kadar.
‘It isn’t much use saying now what we should
or should not have done,’ returned Biggles bitterly. ‘The question is, what are we going to do?’
The others did not answer.
‘Well, it isn’t much use standing here,’ continued Biggles striking at a fly that persisted in settling on his face. ‘Confound these flies. Where the dickens do they come from, anyway?’
‘Wherever you go in Egypt you will find “Gippy” flies,’ answered Kadar wearily, as he stood up. ‘Let us go back to that deep gully and see where it leads. The ground sloped downwards there, and the bottom of the depression is the most likely place to find water.’
They dragged their weary legs back up the hill, and down the other side, but there was no sign of the gully they sought.
Biggles laughed harshly, an unpleasant sound without any humour in it. ‘This place is bewitched,’ he muttered viciously.
‘Of course it is,’ returned Kadar quietly. ‘Now you know why the Tuareg call this district the Region of Devils. It is full of evil spirits. It is the djinns who send the haboobs.’
Biggles unslung his water-bottle. ‘There is no need for us to die of thirst before we must,’ he said casually. ‘A mouthful each—no more.’
The water was quite warm, and did little to slake their raging thirst, but Biggles recorked the bottle carefully. After that they went on.
They did not go in any particular direction. One way was the same as another. More and more flies appeared, until they hung in a black cloud over their heads, and although they struck at them repeatedly, they settled on eyes, nostrils, and even crawled into their ears. Once Ginger in a fury turned and slashed at them with his helmet, but it made no difference, and he stumbled on, panting.