Читать книгу Biggles of the Camel Squadron - W E Johns - Страница 4

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Biggles sat on a chock outside “A” Flight hangar, and surveyed the jazz camouflage pattern on the wilting canvas of the temporary structure disconsolately.

“The fact is,” he said moodily to the little group of pilots who were lounging about the tarmac between patrols, “this war isn’t what it used to be. There seems to be a sort of blight settling over it. Why, I remember the day when you couldn’t stick your nose over the Line without butting into a bit of fun of some sort or another. Now you trail up and down, and if you do see a Hun he’s gone before you can pass the time of day. I don’t know what’s come over ’em—not that we do anything very clever, if it comes to that. Escort—escort—escort—always blinking well escort. I’m sick of beetling along behind a lot of Nines. There was a time when you could go where you liked and do what you liked and no one to say how, where, or why, so long as you got a Hun once in a while. Now, what with half the old crowd gone west or gone home, and thousands of spare brass-hats looking for jobs, it’s escort every blinking day. That’s about as far as their imagination goes. It makes me tired. I hear old Wilks, of Squadron No. 287, actually got strafed the other day for shooting up a Jerry aerodrome alone. Said he ought to wait for orders or something. By the way, where have they put that Albatross you brought down yesterday, Algy?” he asked suddenly.

“Along in old ‘C’ Flight hangar,” replied Algy.

“Let’s go and have a look at it,” suggested Biggles rising.

The group wended its way towards the last hangar in the line, where the captured red-nosed Albatross plane poked round a fold in the canvas.

“Where did you hit him, Algy?” asked Biggles, as he examined the machine with interest.

“I didn’t. His engine stopped running on the top of a stall, and just glided down comfortable-like,” responded Algy, with a broad grin.

“Really! Then the machine’s O.K.?”

“Should be.”

“Come on; let’s start her up, for a joke!” cried Biggles, with a flash of inspiration.

“I shouldn’t, if I were you,” broke in Mahoney. “Wing’ll probably be fetching her this afternoon.”

“Wing be dashed! Whose aeroplane is it, anyway?” growled Biggles, as he clambered into the wooden fuselage and juggled about with the controls. “Give me a swing, Algy!” he called.

The engine started with a roar, and Biggles grinned delightedly as the group behind him staggered out of the slipstream. Suddenly the grin grew broader, and he glanced at the wind stocking. It hung motionless.

“Look out—I’m off!” he yelled, and pulled the throttle open.

The German Albatross sped across the aerodrome like a bullet, and soared into the air. Something sprang through the fuselage behind him, and the pilot looked down with a start. A squad of British troops, evidently returning from the Line, were passing up the narrow road which skirted the aerodrome, and the stabbing flashes of rifle fire warned him of his danger. He was in an enemy plane—and naturally the troops were firing at it!

“My hat!” he muttered, as he pulled the control-stick back and zoomed swiftly. “Let’s get out of this!”

A cloud of white smoke blossomed out in front of him, another, and another, each one closer than the last, and he dodged wildly into the clouds which half-covered the sky to avoid the bursts of anti-aircraft gun-fire.

“Best shooting I’ve ever seen ’em make!” he muttered grimly. “They’ll probably hit me in a minute. I must have been crazy to take this kite off the floor. How am I going to get back? That’s the question!”

He climbed slowly in ever-widening circles as he pondered the question, anxiously scanning the sky in every direction. He started as his eye fell on a speck in the distance. It was an R.E.8 describing figures-of-eight as it ploughed a lonely course on a “shoot” for the artillery. He was about to turn away when something else caught his eye—a cluster of specks moving fast into the sun, in line with the R.E.8.

“Huns!” he ejaculated. “And that fool observer hasn’t spotted them. He must be asleep!”

Automatically he raced in the direction of the lone British machine. In his excitement, the fact that he was flying a black-crossed machine—marking it as German, of course—completely slipped from his mind, but a flashing streak of tracer bullets across his nose, delivered by the gunner in the rear cockpit of the R.E.8, reminded him, and he dodged away quickly. The R.E.8 pilot waited for no more, but dived for home, the observer grinding out the remainder of the drum of ammunition at long range as he went. Biggles watched its departure with a smile, satisfied that his arrival had served its purpose.

“He’s out of harm’s way, now, anyway,” he muttered. “Hallo——”

He blinked in startled surprise as a green Albatross swam into view a bare hundred feet away. The pilot was gesticulating wildly. Biggles instinctively groped for his triggers, but, suddenly remembering the circumstances, released them wonderingly.

“I can’t get the hang of this!” he groaned. He glanced to the right, and started again in dismay. German Albatrosses were all around him. “So I’m flying in a blinking Hun formation, eh?” he gasped, trying to grasp the situation. “This is getting me all groggy. What’s he waving about, I wonder?” he muttered, staring at the leader of the enemy formation. “Peeved because I scared his bird, I suppose. I’d better see about getting out of this—but it won’t do to be in too much of a hurry.”

The Boche machines had once more settled down to steady flight, and he kept his position, glancing furtively from left to right at the strange faces around him. It took him a full five minutes to become accustomed to the position, then a slow grin spread over his face.

“And I’ve just been saying that things aren’t what they used to be! Why, there never were such times!” he thought.

A movement on the part of the leader caused him to look down. Another R.E.8 was cruising to and fro as it signalled to the gunners.

“How any of those kites are left in the sky beats me. They must fly with their eyes shut!” muttered Biggles, as he tore down and sent a warning stream of tracer bullets across the nose of the unsuspecting machine. Pulling up steeply, he narrowly escaped collision with the rest of the enemy formation. The R.E. pilot streaked for home as if he had had a glimpse of the devil.

Again the leader swung close to Biggles, making violent signals. “If I do that again he’ll be shooting me down, and I don’t wonder,” Biggles reflected, sympathising with the man’s just cause for anger. He realised that it must have been annoying in the extreme for the other man to have some fool in the formation who made a premature attack and scared the other machine away before an effective attack could be launched. He realised, also, that he was in a very awkward position. Even if he was able to reach the British Lines safely, it would lead to all sorts of complications if the Germans ever discovered that a British officer had been flying a German machine. Quite apart from the fact that it would bring disgrace on the whole British Service for an officer, other than a Secret Service agent, to fly an enemy machine over hostile country, he would certainly get in hot water himself if the authorities discovered the culprit—as they undoubtedly would. Once such a practice was started there was no telling where it would stop; an impossible state of affairs might easily be created. No man would trust another in the air, irrespective of the type of machine or nationality marks, and it might end by friends shooting each other down by accident on mere suspicion. People would shoot first and ask questions afterwards.

No. It was a bad business, from which he must extricate himself with the least possible delay. How to do it was the question. Obviously he could not just fly back behind the British Lines and land under the very noses of the Germans, who could not fail to see him from the air. They would remember the colour of the machine, possibly the number on it, and inquiries would speedily reveal that it had not returned from its last patrol, and a shrewd suspicion as to the true state of affairs would inevitably result. Even now there was the possibility of one of the German pilots with whom he was flying recognising the machine as one which had been reported missing. In fact, one of them, in a bright yellow machine, had twice come very close indeed, with his goggles raised as if he was trying to ascertain the identity of the pilot.

Biggles turned his collar a little higher, and got well down into the cockpit. “I am a poor prune,” he muttered, “getting myself into this mess. I shall have to get out of it, that’s all.”

Rather than incur suspicion by turning away now, he decided to stay with them until well over the German Lines, and then turn away, as if he was going to another German aerodrome. The thing that worried him most was whether the machine he was flying had belonged to the “circus” he was with; if so, the very act of leaving them would in itself be suspicious.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the leader swung round and headed towards the German support trenches, and he began to drop back at once, with a view to fading quietly away the moment a reasonable opportunity presented itself. It was with no small apprehension that he noticed the pilot in the yellow machine was dropping back also, and, although it might be pure chance, he seemed to be taking care to keep between Biggles and the British Lines—a position which would effectually prevent the British pilot from creeping away unobserved.

A few minutes passed, and Biggles could stand the suspense no longer. He decided at all costs to find out whether the Boche in the yellow machine was really suspicious, or whether it was his own guilty imagination. He was not kept long in doubt, for the moment he turned the yellow machine turned with him, and this move threw Biggles into a worse position than ever. He could not bring himself to commit the unpardonable offence of shooting down a German from a German machine. Yet what was he to do if the Boche suddenly turned on him? One thing was certain. If the Boche got back home, then the cat would be out of the bag with a vengeance. More than ever, he regretted the foolish impulse which had resulted in his present absurd predicament.

He looked across at the other pilot, who was now flying not more than twenty feet away, and he could almost imagine what the other was thinking. He was suspicious, that was obvious; he might even have been a personal friend of the man who had previously flown the machine which the British pilot was now flying. Yet he could not bring himself to shoot at the machine on suspicion alone.

Biggles guessed he was waiting to ascertain if the machine was going back, and he knew instinctively that the moment he reached the Lines and made the first move to cross over the German would shoot. He wondered vaguely what the troops in the trenches would think when they saw the unbelievable spectacle of two Albatrosses fighting each other.

It is perhaps curious that the one event which could solve the problem never occurred to him, and he could never afterwards understand why such an obvious possibility did not strike him. As a matter of fact, the next move in the amazing cycle of events came with such a shock that for the moment he simply did not know how to act.

The first indication he had of it was the vicious stutter of guns close at hand, and he caught his breath as a British S.E.5 tore past, a bare thirty feet away. Both he and the pilot of the yellow German machine had been so interested in each other that they had been caught napping. Biggles glanced upwards. Five or six more S.E.s were dropping like vultures out of the sky.

Rat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Biggles groaned as the first S.E. swung round at him, guns streaming tracer bullets.

“It must be Wilks and his crowd,” he thought bitterly.

Now thoroughly alarmed, he skidded wildly away from the dog-fight and raced nose-down for the Line. But escape was not to be so simple. A sharp staccato rattle of guns and a flack-flack-flack-flack behind him sent him half-rolling frantically away from a blue-nosed S.E. that was spitting a stream of death and destruction at him.

“Wilks himself!” gasped Biggles. “Wilks!” he roared desperately, but quite aware of the futility of his appeal.

He looked down quickly and saw they were immediately over no-man’s-land. Nearly panicking, for the first time in his life, he threw the machine into a spin, came out, spun again, pulled out again, then zigzagged for the Line. He had a fleeting vision of the yellow German machine roaring down in a sheet of flame, but he had no time to dwell on it. It looked as if he was likely to follow it to a similar fate. The other British S.E.s were hemming him in, and their nearness at least helped him to keep the anti-aircraft gunners from getting busy.

The last thousand feet were a nightmare for Biggles. He stunted as he had never stunted before, and the fact that he was unaccustomed to the controls of the German machine he was flying made the exhibition still more alarming. Falling out of a wild loop, he looked around anxiously. The S.E. was still on his tail, coming in again to deliver the final blow. In the almost hopeless anxiety of the moment Biggles got an inspiration. Thrusting himself as far up in the cockpit as he could he raised both arms about his head as a signal of surrender. As he hoped, Wilks sheered off, pointing downwards.

Biggles needed no second invitation. A useful-looking field swept into view below, and he side-slipped steeply towards it; but as he flattened out he realised that he had come in much too fast. The hedge seemed to rush towards him. There was a crash of breaking wood and rending fabric as he plunged nose first into it.

For a moment he sat quite still, dazed, hardly daring to believe in his good fortune at being still alive. He could no longer hear the S.E.’s engine.

“Gone home to tell the boys about it, I expect,” he muttered, as he painfully removed a long bramble from his face. A voice near at hand made him jump nervously.

“Hi, Jerry! Come out of that!” it yelled.

Before he had time to move, a hand clutched his hair and jerked him bodily from the cockpit. He let out a yell of agony and, turning, looked into the red and panting face of the S.E. flight-commander.

Wilks stopped panting. He stopped breathing. A look of incredulous amazement crept over his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

“Who do you think you’re knocking about?” snarled Biggles. “Can’t a fellow have a joyride without your crowd butting-in and spoiling it?”