Biggles - Air Commodore

by W E Johns

  For some minutes he stood staring at this extraordinary phenomenon, completely perplexed. ‘What the dickens is it?’ he muttered, taking a few steps sideways in order to regard it from a new angle. ‘Well, if birds built those, I only hope they’re not at home, that’s all,’ he concluded, picking up a piece of loose rock and throwing it at the nearest ‘nest’.

  Nothing happened. The rock bounded back on to the ground with a clatter, and again the deathly silence settled over the scene.

  ‘Well, I give it up,’ he murmured, seating himself on a convenient boulder from which he could keep watch in both directions. It was a lonely vigil, and before long he found himself wishing fervently that Biggles would return; moreover, he was worried to death about the loss of the boat, and he wondered uneasily what Biggles would have to say about it when he knew. From time to time an unpleasant musty odour tainted the still night air and did nothing to add to his comfort; indeed, once or twice the stench was so bad that a wave of nausea swept over him. Still, he did not attempt to find the source of it, supposing that it was some sort of corruption in the forest.

  For a long time he sat, sometimes staring at the beach, sometimes gazing the other way, and occasionally watching the moonbeams flicker on the rippling water that stretched away from immediately below him to the distant horizon. He could see the islet clearly, but there was still no sign of the boat.

  Suddenly his reverie was disturbed by a sound that brought him to his feet with racing pulses. At first he could hardly believe his ears; it was quite faint, but it increased rapidly in volume and there was no mistaking it. It was the deep, steady throb of a powerful engine, but far too slow and heavy for an aero engine, to the sound of which he was accustomed. In startled alarm, he turned swiftly to each point of the compass in turn, trying to locate the noise, but he could not; it seemed to be advancing over the ground from the direction of the forest—which was, of course, impossible. For a few unbelievable seconds it seemed to beat against his feet as though it were passing underneath him. Then, as though the door of an engine-room had been opened, the sound was magnified ten times, and welled up behind him. He was round in an instant, eyes wide open, lips parted, prepared almost for anything except what he actually saw.

  Straight from the base of the low cliff on which he stood was emerging, very slowly, a black torpedo-shaped object. For five breathless seconds he stared at it uncomprehendingly; then, as the unmistakable conning-tower came into view, he understood everything and dropped flat, quivering with excitement but completely self-possessed. It was a submarine, under way, heading out to sea.

  The heads and shoulders of two men protruded from the circular super-structure, and a few words of a strange foreign language floated up to him.

  In silent wonderment he watched the sinister craft, tense with the knowledge that the secret of the enemy’s base was now his. Like a great fish with its back awash, it held on its course, leaving a flashing wake of disturbed water behind it, growing quickly smaller as, once clear of the islet, it increased its speed. The sound became a throbbing purr, then died away altogether, and the scene reverted to its former condition.

  Chapter 12

  Elephant Island

  When Biggles had left Ginger and set off along the beach, his direction was not a matter of choice. The jungle which enveloped the whole island like a shroud was, he knew from previous experience of similar islands, practically impenetrable by day, and to attempt to force a passage through it by night would be a physical impossibility, quite apart from the very real danger of an encounter with one of the deadly beasts that dwelt in it and the noise that such a method of progress would inevitably entail. It was for these reasons, then, that he followed the beach, although he was aware that had he been able to reach the hill in the middle of the island, it might have been possible to command a view of the whole coastline, including his objective, in whichever direction that might lie.

  What sort of country lay at the end of the little bay where the beach terminated he did not know, so he could only hope that the vegetation would not be so dense as to bar his progress. On reaching it he found to his relief that the sand gave way to a rising rocky foreshore on which the jungle had only been able to fasten an insecure hold. Through this he made fast time, keeping as near to the edge of the cliff as possible and stopping occasionally to listen. Once or twice he heard sounds in the undergrowth which suggested that wild creatures were pursuing their nocturnal tasks or pastimes, but as far as humanity was concerned, there was nothing to suggest that he was not alone on the island. On the right was the sea, calm, silent, deserted, gleaming wanly in the eerie light of the young moon. To the left, the forest, dark, unscrutable, heavy with an atmosphere of menace.

  In this manner he covered what must have been three or four miles, seeing and hearing nothing to arouse his suspicions. Nevertheless, he did not relax his caution. He noticed that the moon was now behind him, and realized that in following the curve of the coastline he was now facing a different direction, and was able to estimate that he must have traversed nearly a quarter of the circumference of the island. Looking ahead, he saw that the cliff rose still higher, but intervening was another small bay, smaller than the one on which he had landed, but otherwise precisely the same in appearance. It was as if a giant dredge had grabbed a great lump out of the rock.

  He reached the point where the cliff sloped down to it, and paused to scrutinize the open area, but a few moments’ investigation revealed it to be as deserted as the other. Stepping carefully from rock to rock, he hastened down the slope and jumped lightly on the sand at the base.

  As he landed there was an unpleasant squelch, and he sank into it over the ankles. At the same time the ground seemed to quiver and press tightly round his feet. Even so, it was not until he went to take a pace forward that he realized that he was in the grip of a quicksand.

  He perceived afterwards that, had he stood still, even for a few seconds, when first he stepped on to the sand, he would certainly have died the most dreadful of all deaths; but, fortunately, such was his haste that only a barely perceptible instant elapsed between the time he jumped down and the time he started to move on, to discover that his feet were held fast. To say that he ‘discovered’ this may not be the literal truth. There was no time to discover anything, for, instantly, he began to fall forward, as was inevitable in the circumstances.

  Even as he fell, the thought, ‘quicksands’, flashed through his brain, but the frantic grab that he made at an overhanging shrub was purely instinctive.

  He managed to catch hold of it and hang on. For a few desperate seconds, as he began to haul on the branch round which his fingers had closed, it was touch and go whether it would stand the strain, or break and precipitate him bodily into a death-trap; but it held, and with the crisis passing as his feet began to emerge from the treacherous sand, it was only a matter of another second before he lay gasping on the rock and not a little shaken.

  For a short while he sat regarding the innocent-looking beach with cold, hostile eyes, memorizing the lesson he had just learned—that in the tropics it does not do to trust anything, however harmless it may appear. Then, drawing a deep breath, he prepared to resume his march.

  This, he discovered to his dismay, was likely to be difficult, if not impossible, for the jungle ran right down to the sand and both appeared to be impassable. He tried to find a way through the fringe of the tangled vegetation, and to some extent succeeded, but then a deep ravine into which he did not feel inclined to venture barred further progress. So he returned to the rock from which he had started. Somewhat to his surprise, he found that it was possible to work inland by keeping to the most prominent outcrops of rock, and he reproached himself for not investigating this direction before, although, thinking it over, he knew that it was the innocent-looking beach that had lured him on at that particular point.

  The ground now rose steeply and, to his great satisfaction, the vegetation opened out instead of becoming more dens
e as he expected; and a quarter of an hour’s hard work enabled him to reach the peak of a fairly considerable hill, from which he was able to make a comprehensive survey of the whole island and its coastline. It was with the coastline that he was particularly concerned, for he supposed that a submarine base was hardly likely to be established anywhere except on the actual shore.

  Quickly his eyes swept round the limited sea-board, but all he saw was a succession of beaches, screes, and cliffs. Mystified, he looked again, this time more carefully, but with the same result. At first he was incredulous and refused to believe it, and it took him the best part of ten minutes to convince himself that he was not mistaken.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ he mused fatalistically, concealing his disappointment even from himself. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t have a smoke.’ He took a cigarette from his case, tapped it thoughtfully on the back of his hand, and then lighted it. For a little while he lingered, surveying the landscape that was as destitute of life as on the day it had emerged from the sea in some remote age, wondering what the next move would be now that his plan had so completely fizzled out.

  ‘Yet it’s funny about those lines,’ he soliloquized, thinking of the chart that had been taken from the junk. ‘This must be a watering-place, or a half-way mark, or something of the sort, that’s the only solution. Well, I’d better see about getting back.’

  He turned away from the tree against which he had been leaning at the precise moment that a perfectly aimed kris1 struck it with a vicious zip. Where it came from he did not know; nor did he stop to inquire. For one fleeting instant, hardly understanding, he stared at it in shocked amazement, the haft still quivering, the steel gleaming brightly in the moonlight. Then he bolted, ducking as he ran.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a number of figures take shape, flitting through the trees like shadows not ten yards distant, and he swerved like a hare away from them. He did not waste time feeling for his automatic; his assailants were too numerous and too scattered. Time for that when he was cornered or overtaken, he thought, as he sprinted down the hill towards the cliff.

  Shouts now broke out behind him, and he hoped fervently that Ginger would hear them and take them as a warning to be prepared to move quickly when the crucial moment arrived and he reached the beach—if he did manage to reach it. Dodging, twisting, ducking, and jumping, he sped on. Reaching the cliff, he turned sharply to the right and set off back along the way he had come, but in a very different manner. For some time he did not look behind him, but concentrated his entire attention on avoiding the numerous obstacles that crossed his path; but reaching a fairly open space just before the point where the cliff began to slope down to the beach, he risked a quick glance over his shoulder.

  What he saw made him redouble his efforts, for his pursuers were in a bunch not fifty yards behind. He looked again as he reached the far side of the open space, and saw to his horror that they were even closer, apparently travelling faster than he was now that the way lay open and the quarry was in view.

  Biggles gathered himself for a final spurt. A dead branch protruded like a paralysed arm from a tree in front, and he ducked. In doing so he failed to see a loose rock that lay directly in his path. The first he knew about it was when his toe struck against it. Stumbling, he made a tremendous effort to save himself, but to become unbalanced at the speed he was travelling could have only one ending. For a split second he still ran forward, arms outstretched, and then crashed heavily to the ground.

  * * *

  1 Small curved knife.

  Chapter 13

  A Gruesome Refuge

  Ginger was still lying on the cliff staring out to sea at the point where the submarine had disappeared when he heard another sound that brought him to his feet with a rush. It was a confused hubbub of several voices shouting at once, calling to each other. It sounded unpleasantly like an alarm, and if this supposition was correct, it seemed extremely likely that Biggles had had something to do with it—as was in fact the case. And when, a few seconds later, the shouting died away, only to be replaced by the drumming beat of running footsteps coming in his direction, his fears became acute.

  Still, he did not lose his head. In any case it was no use running, for, with the boat gone, there was nowhere in particular to run to, so he took the obvious course, which was to find a hiding-place. The huge nests on their prop-like supports suggested themselves immediately, and up the nearest one he went without further loss of time. He was conscious of an overpowering stench as he clambered up on to the structure at the top and lay flat, but he ignored it, for his attention was entirely taken up by the hue and cry coming nearer every second.

  Soon the chase came into view. Sprinting along the lip of the cliff, jumping over loose rocks, and swerving round trees and bushes, came Biggles. After him, with the relentless determination of a pack of wolves, came a mob of Dyaks, or tribesmen of some sort; the distance and the deceptive light made it impossible for Ginger to make out just what they were. Nor did he care particularly. As far as he was concerned, the fact that they were in hot pursuit of Biggles was all that mattered. And Biggles was sprinting for dear life towards his only hope of escape—the boat. There was no doubt of that. But the boat was not there!

  It may have been the realization of this appalling fact that kept Ginger tongue-tied. His usual alert faculties seemed to be paralysed. What to do he did not know, and the very urgency of the situation only made him worse. In fact, he floundered in a horrible condition akin to stage-fright when he could only stare, incapable of lucid thought or action. Should he shoot? If he did, Biggles would probably stop, or at least hesitate, and that was something he could ill afford to do. Yet if he, Ginger, remained silent, Biggles would dash off down to the beach, only to find that there was no boat and no Ginger. What would he do then?

  These were the thoughts that rushed through Ginger’s brain as he watched the chase approach, but they did not occur in sequence. Rather were they a chaotic jumble of impressions—detached, incoherent.

  Then, at the precise moment that Biggles drew level with the eyrie on which he was perched, so many things happened together that the result was pure nightmare. It began when Biggles caught his foot against a rock and took such a header that a moan of horror burst from Ginger’s dry lips, and unconsciously he started forward in order to see if Biggles had hurt himself badly, as seemed by no means improbable. But either the sticks that comprised the ‘nest’ were rotten, or else the structure had not been designed for such treatment, for with a sharp cracking noise, the whole thing began to slip.

  Ginger’s reaction was purely automatic. Quite naturally he clutched at the sticks to save himself, and he sent a fair number of them flying in all directions before he succeeded.

  His fingers closed over something soft, and simultaneously a stench at once so awful, so nauseating, so completely overpowering filled his nostrils that he looked down to see what he was holding.

  What he saw can safely be described as the final straw that broke the back of his already overwrought nerves. Staring up at him was a face: a human face—or what had once been a human face. It had not been a pretty thing to look at in life. In death it must have been awful, but in the advanced stages of decomposition it was so utterly dreadful that any description of it would fail in its object.

  Ginger stopped breathing as he stared down into the glassy eyes and the grinning mouth with its protruding teeth. He forgot where he was. Forgot what he was doing. Forgot what was going on below. Forgot everything. He even forgot Biggles. A screech of stark terror broke from his lips as he sprang upright, arms waving as he strove to balance himself. Then he jumped clear. He was not in the least concerned about where he landed, or how. Had a famished lion been underneath he would have jumped just the same, for there was only one thought in his mind, which was to vacate the gruesome sepulchre on which he had taken refuge with all possible speed regardless of any other consideration.

  Subcons
ciously he was aware of a number of men recoiling away from the spot, of a confused noise of shrieks and groans; then he struck the ground.

  For a moment he lay still with the breath knocked out of him; then he staggered to his feet, swaying, glaring wildly about him. Not a soul was in sight. The men were gone. Biggles had gone. He was quite alone. It seemed impossible, but there was no doubt about it. He was still staring, trying to force his brain to comprehend that this was in fact the case, when, without warning, his recent refuge collapsed completely, throwing its grisly tenant clear on to the rocks.

  If Ginger had needed an incentive to cause him to move, nothing could have succeeded better. With a noise that was something between a moan and a yell, he turned on his heel and made a bee-line for the beach. Biggles’s flight had been in the nature of a headlong rush, but it was not to be compared with Ginger’s, which was stark panic.

  But it did not last long. Rounding a corner at the point where the rock sloped down to the sand, he met somebody coming in the opposite direction. There was no time to dodge. There was no time to do anything. They met head on, and the result was instantaneous and inevitable. Ginger skidded sideways like a rugger ball on a greasy field, and collapsed with a crash into a convenient clump of bushes. Threshing and plunging like a salmon in a net, he fought his way out of the tangle, and then stopped dead, staring at Biggles, who was still sitting where he had fallen, muttering under his breath and rubbing his knee.

  Ginger’s relief was beyond words. ‘Come on, Biggles,’ he cried hoarsely. ‘Let’s get out of this perishing place.’