Biggles - the Boy

by W E Johns

  James had reloaded. He was taking no chances. His shikari friend, the Skipper, had told him: “Always one more shot before you go close to a dangerous beast which you think is dead. Always one more shot to make sure. To forget that is asking to be mauled.”

  Taking his time James put another bullet into what was now a stationary object. It was an easy shot. The panther did not move. He advanced cautiously and put another bullet behind the ear into the brain. Then he looked up at Habu, and in a voice that he hardly recognized as his own, he called: “It’s all right. You can come down now.”

  Habu came shakily down the tree, smiling sheepishly when he reached the ground. For some seconds the two boys stood looking at the dead animal.

  “I seem to remember you saying there was nothing here likely to hurt us,” reminded James coldly. “What about this?”

  Habu made a gesture. “It is true. But I have never seen anything like this here. Who could have expected it? It must have come from far away.”

  James contemplated the panther, a picture of feline perfection. “What a beautiful creature,” he said sadly. “Pity I had to shoot it.”

  Habu obviously did not share these sentiments. “The son of Satan is better dead,” he declared. “The monkeys and everything else here will be happy. You made a good shot. Thank you.”

  “Lucky for you I brought the rifle,” James said. “Do you still want to get some honey?” he added, looking around. “This fine fellow may have a mate near.”

  Habu smiled wanly. “I seem to have lost my taste for honey. I think I’ll go home.”

  “I’ll come with you,” returned James. “On the way we’ll call at the plantation and tell the men what lies here. One of them might like the skin. It seems a pity to let it lie here to rot.”

  “Don’t you want it?”

  “Me? No. It would give me a fright every time I looked at it.”

  Habu Din smiled.

  They set off for home.

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  A PROFESSOR LEARNS A LESSON

  JAMES had never been up to the really high ground, the upper foothills of the Himalayas, that lay to the north of Mirapore where his father was stationed. This itself was at the northern tip of the United Provinces, near Garhwal. One reason may have been that he never had a reason to go. It would have been a long and arduous journey, anyway. It is unlikely that he would ever have gone had it not been for an unusual circumstance. Even then he had no definite purpose, and in the ordinary way it is unlikely that his father would have allowed him to go; but it had been an exceptionally hot spell of weather, and everyone, natives as well as Europeans, was feeling the strain. That was another reason why the trip ever took place. It was thought the cool mountain air would be beneficial to his health, which in the torrid heat had not been too good. It turned out to be a memorable experience, not without educational value.

  The adventure began, although James was not to know it at the time, with the arrival at the house of a horse and cart of the type often used locally for longish journeys where there was no other means of transport. In the cart were two men and a load of luggage. James knew one of the men. It was his shikari friend, Captain Lovell, whom he knew well enough to call ‘Skipper’.

  The other was a stranger, a young man in the early twenties, immaculate in obviously new white ducks and extra large pith helmet; and from the colour of his skin James judged he had not been in India for very long. This turned out to be correct. It had not had time to become tanned by the sun. Indeed, as it was learned later, this was his first visit to the tropics.

  It turned out that he had come on a curious mission. Or at least so it seemed to James when he learned what it was. By local standards it was certainly unusual. Captain Lovell explained it that evening, James’ father having provided accommodation for them in the house, their stay being a short one.

  The stranger had been introduced as Professor Nigel Desmond, an American, and the Skipper was acting as his guide and escort. He was tall, thin, with a high forehead from which the hair was already beginning to recede. He wore large spectacles. Naturally, he spoke with an American accent. James thought he seemed a nice enough fellow, if inclined to talk with too much self-assurance about matters of which he could have had no practical experience. Later, at the first opportunity they had to speak alone, the Skipper confirmed this opinion by saying he thought the Professor’s knowledge had been acquired from books. However, James thought none the worse of him for that. As the Skipper remarked, everyone had to learn.

  To make a long story as short as possible, it transpired that Professor Desmond was a biologist and a naturalist of repute, with several letters after his name which meant nothing to James. He took them to be university degrees, and at least they sounded impressive. He was also, it seemed, a taxidermist, as he would have to be for what he intended to do.

  He was now working for an important natural history museum in America. It was a new one and anxious to extend its exhibits. He admitted that he was at a disadvantage in not knowing a word of any Indian language, wherefore the Skipper had been engaged to make the necessary arrangements for him, to help him to get to his proposed destination. This was the hill country to the north of Garhwal. As he might be there for some time the Skipper would have to leave him to make his own way home.

  The main purpose of the Professor’s expedition was to secure specimens of those difficult animals, the goral, the tahr, and, if possible, a markhor. They were difficult in that they were extremely shy, and living among crags were not easy to approach. They were not in any way dangerous. He had brought with him everything he was likely to require for obtaining the skins, for their preservation and shipment home, when they would be stuffed, mounted, and put on exhibition in the museum.

  It seemed to James that he had also brought a lot of things he would not require, at least by normal standards. James had never seen so much equipment. A tent, a rifle, camera, medicine, a chest of rupees to pay his bearers, these things he could understand, but others, such as a portable bath and a quantity of luxury foodstuffs, seemed quite unnecessary. They would all have to be carried, and that would mean a lot of porters. It was evident that the Professor had been to some pains to avoid anything like discomfort.

  There was nothing wrong with this, of course, but to James it was something new. All the white hunters he had known, and he had known several, believed in ‘travelling light’, not necessarily because they could not afford expensive equipment but because it was the thing to do. They preferred their sport the hard way. A lot of luggage could be a nuisance, anyway.

  However, James made allowances for the fact that the Professor was not concerned with sport. The expedition had a scientific purpose, and apparently money was no object. At first, when the Professor referred to animals like goral, tahr and markhor, James was at a loss to know what he was talking about. He had never even heard of these creatures, much less seen one. But this was understandable because they did not occur in any part of India that he knew; consequently they were never discussed.

  The Professor, who seemed to know all about them, explained, somewhat condescendingly James thought, considering he could never have seen one of these animals either. However, he tried not to be too critical of a stranger. It was just his manner. No doubt he meant well.

  The goral was the native name for a horned animal related to antelopes and goats. It had thick, coarse, dark hair to protect it from the cold in the region where it lived. The tahr was also a wild goat. The markhor was similar, with spiral horns. They were all mountain dwellers and remarkable for the speed at which they could run up apparently unscalable crags, where it might be thought nothing on legs could find a foothold. They had been hunted for generations by the hill tribesmen who had to live on what the country could provide. This had made them so wary that they were now very difficult to approach; but the hill-men had devised their own method of trapping them, as the travellers were to discover.

  Professor Desmond remarke
d casually that he was also hoping to get an ounce, an animal about the size of a leopard with a pale yellowish-grey coat and a short thick mane sometimes known as the snow leopard. James knew something about these because he had seen their skins offered for sale in the bazaar at Allahabad. Not many people had seen a live one; it was so rare and so timid that one had never been known to attack a man.

  Just how the Professor hoped to get near these nervous and uncommon creatures he did not say. James asked him if he had ever done any stalking. To his astonishment the Professor admitted that not only had he never stalked anything but he had never shot anything in his life. In fact, until just before he had started on this present undertaking he had never fired either a gun or a rifle. He had done some practice at a rifle range. James can be forgiven if he began to wonder how this was going to work out when it came to hard facts. So apparently did the Skipper from the way he glanced at James and raised an eyelid.

  The Skipper then explained his part in the operation. He would take the horse and cart as far as it could go; that is to say, take a route to the hills where there were bridges suitable for wheeled vehicles over the several rivers they would have to cross, tributaries of the Ganges which rose in the mountains and watered the whole region. These bridges, like the track, had been built by the Forestry Service for the transport of timber. They had also established dak bungalows at intervals although few of these now had a resident caretaker. But that didn’t matter. In this way he hoped to reach the village of Dardani in three days.

  That was as far as the cart would be able to go. It would be left there, and from then on travel would be on foot with Garhwali porters carrying the luggage. These would be changed from village to village until the necessary altitude was reached. The Garhwalis or Kumaons whom they might meet were good porters, so there should be no difficulty about that. They would be glad to earn some money.

  The Skipper estimated that it would take a week to get to the high ground where the animals the Professor wanted were to be found. There, the necessary arrangements for hunting having been made with the local people, he would leave the Professor and return home. The hunting might take some time and he wouldn’t be able to wait. But by that time the Professor should know enough about the country to manage without any great difficulty.

  “Without some knowledge of the language that might not be as simple as it sounds sitting here,” James said.

  “I’m afraid there’s no alternative,” said the Skipper. “I shall have to get back.”

  “What about me?” suggested James.

  “What about you?”

  “If the Professor wouldn’t mind having me in the party I could be useful acting as interpreter. The Professor might have an accident, or be taken ill, then what would he do? On these trips, as you know, all sorts of things can happen,” concluded James.

  Now when he said this he did not expect to be taken seriously. He was fully prepared for his father to squash the proposal on the spot. But to his surprise he hesitated.

  “That makes sense to me,” said the Skipper. “Really, it would be better if he had with him someone who, in case of emergency, can speak the language.”

  “Yes, it would be a wise precaution,” agreed James’ father. “The boy needs a change from this sweltering heat. A breath of fresh mountain air should do him a power of good.”

  Professor Desmond looked dubious. “Is a boy of his age qualified for such a journey?”

  The Skipper answered: “You needn’t worry about that. If you knew as much about the country as he does you wouldn’t need me for a guide.”

  “Is he safe with a firearm?” queried the Professor.

  “If you can shoot as fast and as straight as he can you should have no difficulty in getting your goral.”

  “Okay, if you say so,” returned the Professor. “If it suits you it suits me.”

  So, before the evening was over it was settled that James should make the third member of the party. He was delighted. This would be a new experience. He had always had a hankering to go to the mountains, which he could see but had not had a chance to reach.

  The following morning saw the party on the road, travelling by horse and cart. The Skipper and the Professor sat in front. James sat behind on his luggage, a light valise which was in fact a sleeping bag. It contained his toilet things, the Professor having said he had enough food for everyone. Apart from the valise all James had with him was his rifle and cartridge bag. They made good time and evening found them on schedule at the first resthouse.

  To narrate the rest of the journey in detail would be tiresome repetition. Dardani, the terminus of the cart track, was reached on the third day without any incident worth recording. To James this was easy travel, and with the air becoming cooler for every thousand feet of altitude he was enjoying every minute. He knew, of course, the hard part was yet to come.

  At Dardani the horse and cart were left in charge of the headman, who made no trouble of finding the required number of porters. Loads were arranged, and early the following morning, under a clear blue sky, the march was resumed on foot. It was uphill work and heavy going but James still enjoyed it. He had never felt so fit and began to appreciate the difference altitude could make.

  The air was so clear that it seemed to sparkle, and objects a long way off could be seen in wonderful detail. By the end of the fourth day the tropical forest was becoming thinner. In front of them towered the mountains for which they were making, their flanks heavily clothed in trackless forest of spruce and fir that stretched for hundreds of miles. Beyond, still in the distance, hung what appeared to be drifts of white cloud, but which James knew were the peaks of the mighty Himalayan giants, covered with eternal snow. The so-called Roof of the World.

  The party did not stop for anything except an occasional rest, and the objective, a Garhwali village in a valley at 10,000 feet, was reached on the sixth day. The tent was pitched and camp made. James was tired, partly no doubt as a result of the rarefied atmosphere after the humid heat of the plains, but he tried not to show it. His outstanding memory of the first night was waking up chattering with cold; from which he realized they were in the frost area where, just before dawn, the temperature could drop to below freezing point. It did not occur to him that this might have a bearing on what the Professor intended to do. Presumably the Skipper didn’t know, either, or he would have given a warning. In the morning he made the final arrangements and left for the long walk home.

  As soon as he had gone Professor Desmond started to make certain arrangements of his own. One of them, harmless on the face of it and no doubt made with the best intentions, was to offer a reward of a hundred rupees for every skin obtained. He only wanted the skin. The village could have the meat. Of course, this delighted the hillmen, but James was not sure it was wise. It would have been better, he thought, to let them know this after the event, because they would now make certain that something was killed, no matter how, if necessary by employing their own methods. And they would have their own methods he was sure. That was how snow leopard skins came into the bazaar at Allahabad, when white hunters almost invariably failed to catch sight of the beast.

  The Professor’s next move was to appear with a pair of high-magnification binoculars over his shoulder. James asked him what he was going to do. The Professor, pointing to a peak that rose behind the village, said he was going to the top of the hill to spy out the land. To which James replied he would have thought it better to leave that sort of thing to the men the Skipper had arranged to act as guides. They must know every inch of the ground. The Professor said, rather shortly, that he would prefer to use his own eyes. James said no more, but as he walked up the hill with the Professor he thought about the remark. He would have put his trust in the local hunters, who would know every crag, every stone, within miles. Their lives depended on it. They would know of conditions that might not be revealed even by binoculars. However, it was the Professor’s expedition, not his, so it was not for him to argue.
After a hard climb—harder, James thought, than the Professor had supposed—they reached the summit. There the Professor lay down and began his ‘spy’ in the approved manner, surveying thoroughly the crags around them. After some time he said in a low, excited voice: “I can see them.”

  “See what?”

  “Goral.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there to the right. There’s a small herd, in charge of what I take to be a fine male, on that plateau above the valley. Here, take the glasses.”

  James took the binoculars and saw that the Professor was right. The herd appeared to be grazing peacefully. He handed back the glasses.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” went on the Professor. “If they stay where they are they should be easy to stalk. I can see what I take to be a goat track winding round the flank of the mountain. It ends just below the plateau. From there the animals should be within range.”

  James glanced at the sun, now well up. “It’s a long way,” he said dubiously. “I doubt if we could get there before dusk. I wouldn’t care to try to get back along that track after dark; it looks dangerous to me even in daylight. Nor would I care to spend the night on the plateau. It would be freezing cold. We should have started earlier.”

  “That’s all right,” returned the Professor eagerly. “There’s no great hurry. We can go tomorrow, starting at dawn. That should give us time to get there and back in daylight.”

  “The goral may not still be there.”

  “I think they will. I’d say they’re on one of their regular feeding grounds. They are not likely to move far. We can keep an eye on them.”

  “We’ll ask the headman for his opinion,” James said. “The Skipper said he was wise. If in doubt ask him.”