by W E Johns
‘And I’ve seen enough of it to last me for the rest of my life,’ Biggles told him definitely. ‘Go steady with the water in there; there’s a lot of sand between here and the place we are making for,’ he added, and he eased the throttle forward.
The engine roared and the machine began to move forward; the tail lifted; the wheels bumped gently once or twice, and then the Tourer soared into the air.
Biggles glanced at Algy as he levelled out and swung the nose of the machine round towards the north-west. ‘It’s queer how things turn out, isn’t it?’ he mused. ‘Twenty-four hours ago, what we are doing now seemed as unattainable as the moon. It just shows that you never know. All I ask now is that the gee-gees in the engines go on kicking until we get to the other side of this confounded sand.’
‘What a treat it will be to get a bath,’ murmured Algy, as he settled down in his seat for the long flight ahead.
‘I’ll believe that there are such things when I see one,’ returned Biggles, as his eyes went to the compass and then down to the sterile landscape underneath. The wadi in which they had first landed was slipping away below, and he knew that whatever happened he would never see the Lost Oasis of Zenzura again.
Chapter 21
Mirage!
For three long hours the machine roared on over the seemingly endless sand. To Ginger, sitting in one of the back seats, each passing hour, with nothing but dunes, and still more dunes, creeping up over the horizon, seemed more incredible than the last. It was hard to believe that such a place could exist on the face of a world that is assumed to be civilized and sophisticated. But here was nature as it always had been, and might be for ever.
To Biggles the period was one of intense strain. Before he had experienced real thirst he had not been particularly concerned at the prospect of flying over long stretches of open desert, but now that he knew the horror of it he could only sit with his eyes fixed on the horizon, inwardly praying that some speck, some living thing, even if it were only an isolated palm, would come into view to break the eternal monotony of the yellow waste. No ocean crossing he had ever made, and he had made many, had filled him with so much dread.
From time to time his eyes dropped for an instant to the fast-sinking petrol-gauge, only to return again the the horizon, while he tried to keep the machine as steady as possible in the heat-rocked atmosphere through which it bored. He realized more clearly than ever before what a tangible thing the atmosphere was; over the rolling dunes, some of them many miles in length, the air seemed as fluid as water and as unstable as a storm-tossed ocean.
‘Something ought to show up soon,’ murmured Algy at last, holding his shirt away from his body for relief, for the heat in the little cabin was appalling.
‘Yes,’ was Biggles’s only answer.
‘How much juice have we got left?’
‘With the gravity tank, I reckon about forty minutes.’
Algy said no more, but, like Biggles, concentrated on the horizon. Never did shipwrecked sailor watch for land with greater anxiety.
Twenty-five minutes went past; it seemed like an hour, and still there was no sign of a break in the sand.
‘It begins to look as though the whole blessed earth has turned to sand,’ muttered Algy.
Biggles said nothing, but switched over to the gravity tank as the main tank petered out.
‘Land ho!’ cried Ginger suddenly.
Biggles started. ‘Where away?’
Ginger pointed due north.
It was difficult to see anything clearly on account of the quivering haze, for now that the sun had nearly reached its zenith the air rocked and shook like a jelly, but by focusing his eyes on the spot indicated Biggles could just make out a faint blue smudge.
‘Mirage,’ said Kadar, softly.
‘I hope you are wrong,’ muttered Biggles. ‘If that is what it is, then we are out of luck, but I think I can make out what looks like the top of some palms.’
Kadar was standing up, bent forward, peering through the windscreen in his anxiety. ‘I am afraid of it,’ he said. ‘The curse of the desert is that you cannot trust your eyes. They often show you things that are not there. The things are, of course, somewhere, but what appears to be just in front of you can be fifty miles away in any direction. It is an illusion, simply a reflection on the hot atmosphere.’
‘Hey! Look at that!’ cried Ginger, pointing to a line of huge, distorted camels, their supercilious faces held high, marching along below.
Algy gave a shout of joy. ‘A caravan,’ he said.
Kadar shook his head. ‘It is a mirage. I have seen too many not to recognize one when I see it. Watch, and see what happens.’
As the machine roared on the camels seemed to grow enormous, until they towered up far into the sky, an unbelievable spectacle. Then they began to fade into the haze. More and more indistinct they grew, until, when the Tourer roared over the spot where they had been, there was nothing as far as the eye could see but sand; no longer wind-blown dunes, but a flat, gently undulating plain.
‘See! They have gone,’ said Kadar seriously. ‘That is the usual way with a mirage. How many unfortunate people have seen visions of water, limpid streams, waving palms—’
‘All right, don’t make a song about it,’ interrupted Biggles irritably. He was staring forward at the smudge, which had now become a dark, filmy green.
‘I can see palms,’ declared Algy.
‘As likely as not you will see water presently,’ returned Kadar quietly, ‘but that does not mean that it is there. Do not think me pessimistic, but we must face facts, and a mirage is anything but a fact. It is pure hallucination.’
Biggles, still watching, saw the crest of a long line of palms appear; they seemed to grow rapidly larger, but at the same time there was something odd about them. Then he understood. They were upside-down, their fronds resting on the sand and their long straight boles pointing upwards to the sky.
Biggles blinked and shook his head. Then he looked again. ‘Am I going crazy, or are my eyes going cock-eyed?’ he snapped.
‘Neither,’ replied Kadar calmly. ‘It is merely another trick of the mirage.’
‘But do you mean to say that those things are not there?’ demanded Algy incredulously.
‘They are somewhere, or we should not see the reflections of them,’ agreed Kadar, ‘but they might be some distance away. They might even be below the sky-line. Still, it is comforting to know that we are at least in the region of an oasis, and a caravan; but, as I have warned you, one cannot rely on them being where they appear to be. Look! Look! Now perhaps you will believe me.’
While he had been speaking the palms had suddenly assumed colossal proportions. They seemed to fill half the sky, and were all the more terrifying on account of the fact that they were still upside-down. Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, they became a vague blur, and soon, like a cloud of smoke on a windy day, finally disappeared altogether.
‘Heavens, what a country to live in,’ groaned Biggles. He still held on the same course, for there appeared to be no point in altering it.
‘How much petrol have we left?’ asked Ginger.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep asking that,’ answered Biggles coldly. ‘Ten minutes at the outside.’
Nothing more was said while the seconds ticked past on the watch on the instrument-board, and the sky turned from dull blue to an intense steely grey.
‘Is that another storm coming?’ asked Ginger.
‘If it is, we’re sunk,’ said Biggles curtly. He was feeling the strain.
‘I do not think so; the sky plays all sorts of tricks in such heat as this,’ Kadar told them. He was now the chief spokesman, for his experience of desert travel could not be ignored.
‘How far is it to the horizon?’ asked Biggles. ‘I ask because we shall not get to it — anyway, not in this machine.’
‘How far would you think?’
Biggles frowned. ‘I’m dashed if I know,’ he said. ‘I am no
t sure whether I am looking at it or not, and that’s a fact. In normal conditions I should say fifty miles, since there appears to be nothing in the way to interrupt the view. One can see as far as that on a fine day in England, sometimes farther.’
Kadar regarded the sky-line steadily for some seconds. ‘It might be ten miles,’ he said at last. ‘It is certainly not more; it might be less.’
‘But that sounds ridiculous,’ argued Biggles.
‘No doubt it does. In England you get fogs which restrict visibility. Here we get heat-haze which distorts everything hopelessly.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Biggles told him moodily.
‘Look there!’ shouted Ginger suddenly, pointing forward and downwards, and the others stared in surprise as a long line of camels, each animal accompanied by its own dense black shadow, appeared in a manner which could only be regarded as miraculous, so close were they.
‘Where the dickens did they come from?’ ejaculated Biggles. ‘I could have sworn a moment ago that there wasn’t a living thing in sight. I suppose it isn’t another mirage?’he concluded doubtfully.
‘Oh, no,’ declared Kadar definitely. ‘That is the real thing. There is no doubt about it. Look how clear-cut everything is. There must have been a change in atmospheric conditions. It was the reflection of this caravan that we saw just now; it has appeared out of the invisible haze I told you about. The drivers have seen us.’
This was obviously true, for the line of camels had halted, and white-robed figures could be seen staring upwards.
Biggles was now in a quandary, for if they went on without finding the oasis they might lose the caravan; on the other hand, if they went down it might be only to learn that the oasis they were trying to reach was not far away. But if the sand was soft, as seemed highly probable, they would not be able to get the machine off the ground again. Should he go down, or should he risk going on?
Kadar seemed to guess what was going on in his mind, for he urged him to continue. ‘If the caravan was so close, it is likely that the oasis is close, too,’ he said.
A moment later his assumption was confirmed in a startling manner. The atmosphere seemed suddenly to clarify, and there, only a few miles away, was an unmistakable oasis.
‘Siwah!’ cried Kadar delightedly. ‘I recognize it. Look, there are the ruins of Jupiter Ammon, the place Cambyses’ army was trying to reach when it was overwhelmed. Is it not remarkable to think that for thousands of years the descendants of those same people have gone on living, while the temple their ancestors set out to plunder has been slowly falling into decay? They might have been a million miles away for all the hope they had of reaching it.’
Algy and Ginger looked with interest at the ancient ruins of such romantic association, but Biggles was more concerned with the present. He had already throttled back as far as he dared, to conserve his fast-diminishing supply of petrol, but he was still some distance away when, after the usual warning from the engines, it gave out, and he was compelled to put the Tourer into a glide. He had, however, nearly three thousand feet of altitude, and as the machine, with empty tanks, could glide for a mile to every thousand feet of height, he was able to reach the nearest palms with a hundred feet to spare. Choosing the smoothest area he could see, he glided down to land.
In this landing, apart from the care he exercised, he may have been lucky, for had he gone on a little farther he would have struck a patch of soft sand, and the machine might have somersaulted with serious, if not fatal, results. As it was, it ran for a little way over fairly hard gravel before reaching the sand, so that by the time it did reach it its speed was greatly reduced. The machine shuddered and the tail cocked high as the clogging sand embraced the wheels; but it also acted as a brake, and although the machine stopped dangerously quickly, it did not turn over.
Biggles sank up to the ankles as he jumped down, and when the others joined him he pointed to the wheels, buried for half their depth in fine dust. ‘We are lucky we are where we are,’ he said grimly, ‘for we should never get off this without help. You have been to Siwah before, Kadar; do you think there will be any difficulty in getting labourers to drag the machine clear of this stuff?’
‘I do not think so,’ answered Kadar. ‘Money will do most things even in the desert, as it does in civilized places.’
Hardly had he finished speaking when, with a shout, a party of horsemen appeared from the direction of the village, riding at breakneck speed.
‘What’s the idea, I wonder?’ asked Biggles anxiously. ‘Do they mean trouble?’
Kadar was watching the horsemen with a perplexed expression on his face. ‘I trust not,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why they should—’ He broke off, peering forward with an expression of astonishment. ‘Why—why— it’s Sarapion,’ he cried.
‘Who?’ inquired Biggles.
‘Sarapion. He is one of our servants,’ explained Kadar in great excitement, and rushing forward, he embraced a white-clad Egyptian who slid gracefully from his horse.
They spoke together for a little while, and then Kadar returned to the others, his face beaming. ‘My father is here,’ he said joyfully.
‘Good! That should make things easier for us,’ smiled Biggles. ‘But he was soon on our track, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but it came about like this. One of the men with our caravan was mounted on a very fast camel, and he managed to escape the massacre. By good fortune and great endurance he reached Siwah, and from there sent a message to my father to tell him what had happened. My father, may heaven preserve him, went at once to the Governor and asked for his assistance, and I believe he is about to send aeroplanes in search of us.’
‘They would have been a long time finding us at Zenzura, I am afraid,’ murmured Biggles doubtfully.
‘Yes, but that does not matter now. My father came on to Siwah at once in a small aeroplane which he was able to charter, in the hope of arranging for caravans to go and search for us in the desert. By offering a big reward he was able to do this, and several Arabs have already left. No doubt it was one of the search-parties that we saw just now.’
‘This is all very comforting,’ declared Biggles. ‘What had we better do now?’
‘We shall have to stay here for a little while, I am afraid, while a messenger goes back to Mersa Matruh aerodrome and arranges for petrol to be sent out to us— unless, of course, you prefer to go back on a camel.’
‘Not for me, thank you,’ replied Biggles quickly. ‘I’d rather ride an aeroplane than a camel any day. How are they off for water here?’
‘Oh, there is plenty of water. There are even some lakes.’
‘Lead me to one,’ murmured Biggles. ‘Tell me when we get to it, because I may have forgotten what a lot of water in one piece looks like.’
Chapter 22
Farewell to the Desert
Two hours later, having bathed, shaved, and changed their clothes, they sat contentedly in a shady tent which had been pitched among the palms, telling Kadar’s father the amazing story of their adventures.
The old man also had some news for them, which cleared up a lot of points, although certain of these were already suspected.
It appeared that the Society for the Preservation of Antiques, the organization of which Kadar had told them, had been on Zarwan’s trail for some time, although the members had raised no objection to Kadar’s trip because his genuine and impersonal motives were well known. Zarwan had, in some way, got wind of this and bolted from Egypt, which accounted for his sudden disappearance while the airmen were making their preparations. Active members of the society had gone both to Khargah and Siwah to await his return, so even if he had escaped his fate at the hands of the lost tribesmen, it was likely that he would have found death waiting for him in his own country. Moreover, the Egyptian police were on his track for supplying intoxicating liquor to natives, this having been his practice for some time past.
It was three weeks before the messenger who had been dispatched
for the petrol returned with an ample supply. The airmen spent most of their time bathing in one of the lakes for which the celebrated oasis is justly famous— and there were no crocodiles— or resting in the shade of the palms. With their host they also visited the ancient ruins of the temple, and walked with awe over the stones that had been trodden by Alexander the Great and other men famous in history.
Kadar spent most of his time writing voluminous notes on his opinions and discoveries at the Lost Oasis, and these were in due course presented to an excited gathering of archaeologists in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great long before the birth of Christianity.
But at last, with its tanks filled, the Tourer stood at the end of a specially cleared runway, and they said goodbye to Kadar’s father, who had decided to return by the more prosaic method which has been employed from time immemorial, that of a camel caravan.
One long day’s flying saw the airmen back at Cairo, where they had a great reception and a civic ceremony, word of their discovery having preceded them. The jewels which they had found were, as Biggles had suspected, uncut gems of great value, and these were handed over to the authorities for disposal. Their sale realized a large sum, part of which was handed over to the explorers, and more than repaid them for the risks they had taken. Kadar, much to his delight, was also appointed an honorary curator of a well-known Egyptian museum where, as Biggles told him, he would be able to study antiquities to his heart’s content without such attendant discomforts as thirst, scorpions, and crocodile sacrifices.
Sitting on the patio of the hotel where Kadar had first met them, Algy glanced suddenly at Biggles with a puzzled expression on his face but a twinkle in his eye.
‘I seem to remember that when we first came here we were on our way to somewhere,’ he murmured blandly.
‘Quite right,’ agreed Biggles. ‘We were on our way to South Africa when Kadar came along with his bright idea for a joy-ride into the desert.’