"You're barmy-I always knew you were," declared Biggles. "What's all this got to do with balloons, anyway?"
"Listen, you poor fish!" said Henry tersely. "When I was at Thetford, learning to fly…"
"Learning to fly! Did you learn to fly?" gasped Biggles, in mock amazement.
"I wish you wouldn't interrupt!" snarled Henry. "When I was at Thetford, a fool came over from Narborough, on Christmas morning, and dropped an empty bottle from about ten thousand feet. We didn't know it was a bottle. We thought it was just the sky falling down. At first it
whistled, then it shrieked, and then it…" Henry threw
up his hands in a despairing gesture. "The din was like nothing on earth. It made more noise than a score of 230-pound bombs. Now, my point is this: If one bottle can do that, think of the noise two or three dozen bottles would make falling at once! I'll bet the gunners would stick their heads in their dugouts when that lot started warbling. They'd go to earth like a lot of rabbits with a terrier around."
"I get you!" cried Biggles. "Go on, kid!"
"How many machines can we raise?" asked Henry.
"Nine," Biggles replied.
"Eight," corrected MacLaren. "Mine's having a new tyre put on."
"Not on your life!" cried Biggles hotly. "You're not getting away with that, Mac. You take off on bare rims if you can't get off any other way. Nine! Go on, Henry."
"Well, we all go over at the maximum height, and six come up behind the Fokkers," Henry explained. "We'll cross over, say, at Hamel, so that they won't see us. Now, let us suppose that each of the six machines has nine bottles. Let me see! That's fifty-four bottles. We'll tie a bit of string round the necks, but keep them separate, so that we can pick up the whole lot in a bunch and drop them overboard together. Now, this is the plan. We've all crossed over at Hamel and are approaching the balloons from the German side. The first six machines go on ahead, drop the load of bottles overboard as they pass the balloons, and then dive for home underneath the Fokkers. They'll come down, of course, but we can beat them in a dive. They'll break up if they try to catch us. The Fokkers will chase the six machines, and that will take them away from the balloons and dispose of one difficulty. When the bottles start singing their song of songs, every gunner on the ground for miles will think the sky is falling down on him, and they'll dive into the nearest hole. That will leave the way all clear for the other three machines which are in the offing. They make for the sausages-one sausage apiece-and they ought to get them before the Huns see what's up. They won't hear the machines coming for the noise of the bottles. How's that?" he concluded triumphantly.
Biggles looked at the speaker approvingly.
"Come on, chaps!" he cried, springing to his feet and starting towards the door. "Let's go and fill up with Buckingham."
By "Buckingham," Biggles meant a type of incendiary bullet used only for balloon-strafing. Its use was forbidden for any other purpose, and an officer with Buckingham in his machine-gun belts had to carry written orders from his CO. that he was balloon-strafing-to save him from punishment, perhaps death, if he was captured with the illegal missiles on board.
"Wait a minute! Who's going to do what?" cried Mahoney. "Let's get this clear at the start."
"Algy, the Professor, and I will do the shooting, and the rest can carry the bottles," replied Biggles. "Algy ought to be able to hit a balloon, if he can't hit anything else. Come on, let's get the bottles."
The shell-torn village of Hamel lay below. Nine Camels in a "layer" formation of six and three, the three underneath, roared across the Lines and headed steadily out into enemy sky. A few minutes later they started to swing round in a wide curve which would bring them up behind Duneville and the balloons.
Biggles, leading, peered ahead through the swirling flash of his propeller, and gave a little grunt of satisfaction as his eyes fell on a large formation of enemy triplanes in the distance.
He glanced over his shoulder, rocked his wings, and altered his course a trifle to place himself directly between the sun and the enemy machines. His eagle eyes probed the atmosphere under the Fokkers. Ah! There were the balloons, looking from that height like three huge, overgrown mushrooms on the ground.
His eyes returned to the Fokkers, and did not leave them again until the distance between them was little more than a mile. Then he raised his arm above his head, which was the signal that had been arranged for the attack to be commenced.
The six top machines immediately turned to the right and dived steeply in the direction of the enemy balloons.
Biggles, with Algy at one wing-tip and the Professor at the other, turned slightly to the left, and then came round on his original course to watch the bottles go overboard. He pushed up his goggles and rocked with silent mirth as the six Camels, with the Fokkers now in hot pursuit, began heaving their curious cargo overboard.
"My hat! That's the funniest thing I ever saw in my life!" he chuckled.
The six machines, with the Fokkers still behind them, were soon mere specks in the sky, far away and below them. He banked steeply towards the balloons, and, raising his left arm above his head, pushed the control-stick hard forward.
The Camel stood on its nose and roared down in a wire-screaming dive with Algy and the Professor close behind. The sausage seemed to float up to meet them. Not a single burst of archie stained the sky. The plan had worked.
Biggles took the centre sausage in his sights, and grabbed his gun-lever.
At three hundred feet two streams of orange flame leapt from the twin Vickers guns on his engine cowling as he pumped lead into the ungainly gasbag.
"Got him!" he grunted, with satisfaction, as a streamer of black smoke burst out of the side of the victim.
He held his fire a fraction of a second longer, then pulled up in a steep zoom, glancing backwards as he did so. A triumphant yell burst from his throat, but it gave way to a mutter of annoyance. Two of the sausages were falling in flames the other was still intact but it was not that which had provoked the exclamation. The Professor had evidently missed and had turned back for a second attack.
Biggles grinned as he saw the flames light up the side of the third balloon.
Simultaneously an inferno of darting flames and smoke tore the air around him. He dived for the Line, looking anxiously ahead for the Fokkers as he did so. There they were, all ten of them, coming back.
"This isn't going to be so funny!" he muttered between set teeth, as he watched the ten enemy triplanes streaking down out of the blue with the speed of light on a course that would intercept them before they could reach the Lines and safety.
He beckoned to Algy to come closer, pointing towards the enemy machines, and Algy obediently crept in close against his wing-tip. Where was Henry? Biggles' brow puckered in a frown as he scanned the sky in every direction, but could see no trace of him.
If the Fokkers caught him alone, he would stand a poor chance of ever getting back.
There was no time for further meditation, for the Fokkers, painted all colours, were falling on them like a living rainbow. Biggles tilted his nose up a trifle and took the leader, who was flying a blue machine, in his sights.
At five hundred feet the enemy formation broke like a bursting rocket, each machine swerving round to attack from a different direction. Biggles paid little attention, for his eyes-the mirth gone from them now-were fixed on the Spandau guns on the nose of the blue machine.
Through the gleaming swirl of his prop he saw two streaks of stabbing flame leap from them, and his hand closed on the gun lever on his own control-stick. Something crashed against his ring-sight with a shrill metallic whang.
His windscreen disappeared as completely as if it had been swept away with a blow from an axe an invisible hand snatched at the shoulder of his coat, but he did not flinch. He was watching his own tracer bullets boring into the engine of the blue machine.
Only when collision seemed inevitable did the German pilot lose his nerve and swerve, and Biggles whirle
d round on his tail in the lightning right-hand turn for which the Camel was famous. A red machine with yellow wheels swept past, with Algy glued to its tail, but two other triplanes were close behind.
The blue machine roared up in a perfect stalling turn, but even as Biggles took it in his sights an ominous flack-flack-flack warned him that an unseen enemy was perforating his fuselage.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw two triplanes meet head-on and break up into fragments in a sheet of flame. The sight left him unmoved, for he had seen it happen before. Another machine roared past him, leaving a long plume of black smoke in its wake as it plunged headlong to oblivion, but it was gone before he could see whether it was friend or foe. Coloured machines flashed across his sights and his guns chattered incessantly.
"This won't do!" he muttered anxiously, flinging the Camel into a steep bank to survey the position. "We'll be out of ammunition in a couple of minutes at this rate."
Algy was still on the tail of the red Fokker, which had also gone into a steep bank in an effort to escape him. The other machines followed, and a moment later they were all whirling around in an ever-decreasing circle.
Where was Henry? Biggles wished he knew, for his absence worried him. Perhaps he had slipped home before the dog-fight started, and Biggles hoped fervently that such was the case.
Meanwhile, the position of the other two Camels was desperate, and he said bitter things about the other six Camels, which, having got rid of their bottles, had evidently gone straight on home without waiting to see whether the three balloon-strafing machines had got clear.
A V-shaped formation of nine tiny dots far overhead caught his eye, and he laughed hysterically as he recognised them for British S.E.5s. "That's Wilks and his crowd!" he told himself delightedly. "Raymond has sent them over here to get the sausages. They've arrived too late, but they are just in time to help us out of this mess."
The S.E.s were coming down, still in formation, in an almost vertical dive, but the Huns had seen them, too, and one by one they broke out of the circle and dived for home. Biggles did not pursue them, as he had little ammunition left and felt that they could now safely be left to the S.E.s.
Wilks, in his blue-nosed machine, roared by, placing his thumb against his nose and extending his fingers in the time-honoured manner as he passed the Camel. Biggles grinned, and returned the salute in like manner.
"Lor! What a day!" he chuckled, as he raced towards the Lines for safety. "I should like to see old Wilks' face when he sees we've knocked all those sausages down!"
Once more his eyes swept the skies. Over Duneville the air was black with archie, the gunners having evidently recovered from the bottle scare. And Wilks and his crowd, having driven the Fokkers to earth, were dodging through the barrage on their way home.
In front of him, Algy's Camel was already across the Lines. But of Henry there was no sign. Perhaps he was home already-perhaps going back another way. Anyhow, it was useless to go back and look for him.
He dived across the Lines, followed by a trail of raging archie. Six machines were taxi-ing in as he reached the aerodrome. Another was just landing.
"Have you seen Henry?" yelled Biggles to Algy, who was standing up in his cockpit, grinning, as he taxied in.
"No," Algy said. "I didn't see anything except Fokkers after they turned back on us. He must have been crazy to have another go at that sausage after missing it first time. Why Mac and Mahoney didn't have the sense to come back after the triplanes, I don't know. They might have known we should run into the whole bunch of them. My machine's shot to bits. My word, that red Hun could fly!"
A group of wildly excited pilots gathered around the Squadron Office, waiting to make out combat reports, and a babble of laughing voices rose into the air.
"I wish that kid'd come in," said Biggles, with a worried frown. "I wonder what he can be up to."
The telephone in the office rang shrilly, and Biggles hurried to the door as he heard "Wat" Tyler, the Recording Officer, speak. Wat was writing down a message, repeating it as he wrote.
"Yes," he was saying. "Observation Post 19-117 Brigade, Royal Field Artillery." He glanced up at Biggles and looked quickly down again. "Yes," he went on, "three enemy balloons-seen to fall-just behind-enemy Front Line trenches. Yes. I've got that. One Sopwith Camel- also seen-to fall-in-flames-message ends. Goodbye."
Dead silence fell upon the group. Biggles leaned for a moment against the doorpost, staring at the ground. The knuckles of the hand that gripped his flying-cap had turned very white.
His nostrils quivered once, quickly. He looked up mistily, and his face twisted into a semblance of a smile.
"Come on, chaps !" he said huskily. "Let's aviate!"
THE TRAP
Beating time with his left hand on the side of the cockpit of his Camel, Biggles hummed an inaudible tune as he cruised along sixteen thousand feet above Le Cateau, on patrol. Looking forward over the leading edge of his lower port plane, he could see an R.E.8, ten thousand feet below. The British plane was beetling round and round in a monotonous circle as it signalled the results of their shooting to the gunners on the ground. A winding trail of black archie smoke marked its erratic course.
The eyes of the Camel pilot instinctively lifted and probed the sky above for prowling enemy scouts who might have designs on the artillery plane. He squinted carefully between outstretched fingers in the direction of the sun, and then, satisfied that all was well, swung round in a wide circle in the direction of Duneville. His roving eye fell on a moving speck three thousand feet above, heading towards the British Lines. Its twin tail-plane showed it to be a German Hannoverana, and he altered his course to overtake it. But the German observer was wide awake, for the black-nosed enemy machine turned instantly and raced nose-down for its own side of the lines.
Biggles watched its departure sombrely, knowing full well that with its advantage of height he could not catch it.
"I wish they'd put some men in their kites who'd stop and fight!" he complained bitterly, as he returned to his original course.
Approaching Duneville, still humming, he leaned far out of the cockpit and studied the atmosphere below intently. An object far below caught his eye, his tune ended abruptly, and his left hand remained poised in mid-air.
"If that isn't another blinkin' sausage!" he muttered. "Those boys deserve to succeed. I seem to spend my life shooting down sausages over Duneville!"
He edged a little nearer the enemy observation balloon, snatching swift, anxious glances above and behind him.
"No escort, eh?" he mused. "That's odd!"
He throttled back, and still keeping well away from the kite-balloon, began gliding down in a wide circle. He could see the two occupants now, bending over the edge of the basket studying the ground below. Like a fish approaching a bait, ready to dart away at the first sight of danger, he side-slipped a little nearer to the object of his curiosity.
"No archie, eh?" he muttered. It was amazing to him that there should be no anti-aircraft gunfire directed at him by the enemy.
"What sort of a balloon is this, anyway?" he muttered. He turned his eyes again to the observers in the basket. "You'll get a stiff neck, you two, if you stand there like that much longer!" he said sarcastically.
He watched the sausage for some minutes with intense interest, wondering whether he should risk an attack. Then a curious expression crept slowly over his face. The observers in the basket were still in the same position.
Indeed, they had not moved since he had first seen them. There was something unnatural in the way they stared steadfastly into space without even troubling to glance in his direction.
Suddenly he fixed them with a long, penetrating stare, and then, catching his breath sharply, opened his throttle wide and raced away in the direction of the Lines.
Without warning, a furious bombardment of archie broke out around him, but he only laughed as he dodged and twisted through the pungent black smoke and twinkling stabs of orange fl
ame. A few minutes later he landed at Maranique, switched off his engine, and after a curt "She's flying perfectly" to his fitter and rigger, strode quickly in the direction of the officers' mess. The five or six officers who were in the room looked up as he entered.
Biggles' eyes swept over them and came to rest on MacLaren, who, with three others, was playing bridge at a table near the far window.
"Who's in the air, Mac?" Biggles asked.
"Mahoney's out on patrol, with a couple of new men. Why?" Mac replied.
"Which way have they gone, do you know?"
"No idea, but they're due back any minute. Hark! Here they are now," Mac added, glancing through the window to where three Camels were gliding in over the sheds.
Biggles crossed to the fireplace, lit a cigarette, and waited until the three pilots entered.
"Listen, everybody!" he called. "There's a new kite-balloon up at Duneville. Don't anybody go near it!"
MacLaren looked at him in astonishment.
"Why?" he cried. "What's biting you? Have you bought it, or something?"
"You'll buy it if you go near that kite!" answered Biggles grimly.
"What's wrong with it?" MacLaren demanded.
"I don't know-yet. But whatever it is, it isn't nice you can bet your boots on that. Hold hard a minute!" Biggles walked quickly to the hall and took up the telephone.
"287 Squadron, please-and make it snappy," he told the telephone operator. "Oh, hallo, Freddy!" he called, a moment later. "Is Wilks there?" Another pause, and then: "Is that you, Wilks? Fine! Listen, laddie. There's a new kite up at Duneville. It looks like one of the old obsolete Parseval-Drachen type, so they must be running short of balloons. But there's more to it than that. . . . What's that? You know all about it? I'll bet you don't. I've rung you up to tell you to keep away from it. What? No, it isn't mine, and I don't want it, either. You can have it. Seriously, there is something fishy about that kite- what's that?-just gone off to get it-who did you say? Young Tom Ellis? Oh! I'll try to stop him. Cheerio!"
Biggles slammed the receiver down, and without looking to right or left ran through the ante-room and down the tarmac to where he had left his Camel.
Biggles of the Camel Squadron Page 5