Читать книгу Biggles, Pioneer Air Fighter - W E Johns - Страница 6

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Captain Bigglesworth, of Squadron No. 266, R.F.C., sat shivering in the tiny cockpit of his Camel at rather less than 1,000 feet above the allied reserve trenches. It was a bitterly cold afternoon; the icy edge of the February wind whipped round his face and pierced the thick padding of his Sidcot suit as he tried to snuggle lower in his “office”.

The little salient on his right was being slowly pinched out by a detachment of infantry; to Biggles it seemed immaterial whether the line was straightened out or not; a few hundred yards one way or the other was neither here nor there, he opined. He was to change his mind before the day was out. Looking down, he could see the infantry struggling through the mud from shell-hole to shell-hole, as inch by inch they drove the enemy back.

Squadron orders for the day had been to help them in every possible way by strafing back areas with machine-gun fire and 20-lb. Cooper bombs to prevent the enemy from bringing up reinforcements. He had been at it all morning, and as he climbed into his cockpit for the afternoon “show” he anticipated another miserable two hours watching mud-coated men and lumbering tanks crossing no-man’s-land, as he dodged to and fro through a venomous fire from small-arms, field-guns and archie batteries.

He was flying a zig-zag course behind the British lines, keeping a watchful eye open for the movements of enemy troops, although the smoke of the barrage, laid down to protect the advancing troops, made the ground difficult to see. It also served to some extent to conceal him from the enemy gunners. From time to time he darted across the line of smoke and raked the German front line with bullets from his twin Vickers guns. It was a highly dangerous, and, to Biggles, an unprofitable pursuit; he derived no sense of victory from the performance, and the increasing number of holes in his wings annoyed him intensely. “I’ll have one of those holes in me in a minute,” he grumbled.

Crash! Something had hit the machine and splashed against his face, smothering his goggles with a sticky substance.

“What’s happened now?” he muttered, snatching off the goggles. His first thought was that an oil lead had been cut by a piece of shell, and he instinctively throttled back and headed the Camel nose down, farther behind his own lines.

He wiped his hand across his face and gave a cry of dismay as it came away covered in blood. “My gosh! I’m hit,” he thought, and looked anxiously below for a suitable landing-ground. He had little time in which to choose, but fortunately there were many large fields handy, and a few seconds later the machine had run to a standstill in one of them. He stood erect in the cockpit and felt himself all over, looking for the source of the gore. His eye caught sight of a cluster of feathers stuck on the centre section bracing wires, and he sank down limply, grinning sheepishly.

“Holy mackerel,” he muttered, “a bird! So that was it!” Closer investigation revealed more feathers and finally he found a mangled mass of blood and feathers on the floor of the cockpit. “The propeller must have caught it and chucked what was left of it back through the centre section into my face,” he mused. “Looks like a pigeon. Oh, well!”

He made to throw it overboard, when something caught his eye. It was a tiny tube attached to the bird’s leg.

“A carrier pigeon, eh?” He whistled. “I wonder if it is one of ours or a Boche?”

He knew, of course, that carrier pigeons were used extensively by both sides, but particularly by the Allies for the purpose of conveying messages from spies within the occupied territory.

Sitting on the “hump” of his Camel, he removed the capsule and extracted a small flimsy piece of paper. One glance at the jumbled lines of letters and numbers was sufficient to show him that the message was in code.

“I’d better get this to Intelligence right away,” he thought, and looked up to see an officer and several Tommies regarding him curiously from the hedge.

“Are you all right?” called the officer.

“Yes,” replied Biggles. “Do you know if there is a field-telephone anywhere near?”

“There’s one at Divisional Headquarters—the farmhouse at the end of the road,” was the answer.

“Can I get through to 91st Wing from there?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right; many thanks,” called Biggles. “I’ll go and find out. Will you keep an eye on my machine? Thanks.”

Five minutes later he was speaking to Colonel Raymond at Wing Headquarters, and after explaining what had happened, at the Colonel’s invitation read out the message letter by letter. “Shall I hold on?” asked Biggles at the end.

“No; ring off, but don’t go away. I’ll call you in a minute or two,” said the Colonel crisply.

Five minutes passed quickly as Biggles warmed himself by the office fire, and then the phone bell rang shrilly.

“For you, sir,” said the orderly, handing him the instrument.

“Is that you, Bigglesworth?” came the Colonel’s voice.

“Yes, sir.”

“All right; we shan’t want you again.”

“Hope I brought you good news,” said Biggles, preparing to ring off.

“No, you brought bad news. The message is from one of our fellows over the other side. The machine that went to fetch him last night force-landed and killed the pilot. That’s all.”

“But what about the sp——man?” asked Biggles, aghast.

“I’m afraid he is in a bad case, poor devil. He says he is on the north side of Lagnicourt Wood. The Huns have got a cordon of troops all round him and are hunting him down with dogs. He’s heard them.”

“How awful!”

“Well, we can’t help him; he knows that. It will be dark in an hour and we daren’t risk a night landing without looking over the ground. They’ll have got him by tomorrow. Well, thanks for the prompt way you got the message to us. By the way, your M.C. is through; it will be in orders tonight. Goodbye.” There was a click as the Colonel rang off.

Biggles sat with the receiver in his hand. He was not thinking about the decoration the Colonel had just mentioned. He was visualizing a different scene from the one that would be enacted in mess that night when his name appeared in orders on the noticeboard. In his mind’s eye he saw a cold, bleak landscape of leafless trees through which crawled an unkempt, mud-stained, hunted figure, looking upwards to the sky for the help that would never come. He saw a posse of hard-faced, grey-coated Prussians holding the straining hounds on a leash, drawing ever nearer to the fugitive. He saw a grim, blank wall against which stood a blind-folded man—the man who had fought the war his own way, without hope of honour, and had lost.

Biggles, after two years of war, had little of the milk of human kindness left in his being, but the scene brought a lump into his throat. “So they’d leave him there, eh?” he thought. “That’s Intelligence, is it?” He slammed the receiver down with a crash.

“What’s that, sir?” asked the startled orderly.

“Go to blazes,” snapped Biggles. “No, I didn’t mean that. Sorry,” he added, and made for the door.

He was thinking swiftly as he hurried back to the Camel. “North edge of Lagnicourt Wood, the Colonel said; it’s nearly a mile long. I wonder if he’d spot me if I got down. He’d have to come back on the wing—it’s the only way, but even that’s a better chance than the firing party’ll give him. We’ll try it, anyway; it isn’t more than seven or eight miles over the line.”

Within five minutes he was in the air heading for the wood, and ten minutes later, after being badly archied, he was circling over it at 5,000 feet.

“They haven’t got him yet, anyway,” he muttered, for signs of the pursuit were at once apparent. Several groups of soldiers were beating the ditches at the west end of the wood and he saw hounds working along a hedge that ran diagonally into its western end. Sentries were standing at intervals on the northern and southern sides. “Well, there’s one thing I can do in case all else fails. I’ll lay my eggs first,” he decided, thinking of the two Cooper bombs that still hung in their racks. He pushed the stick forward and went tearing down at the bushes where the hounds were working.

He did a vertical turn round the bushes at fifty feet, levelled out, and, as he saw the group just over the junction of his right-hand lower plane and the fuselage, he pulled the bomb-toggle, one—two. Zooming high, he half-rolled, and then came down with both Vickers guns spitting viciously. A cloud of smoke prevented him from seeing how much damage had been done by the bombs. He saw a helmeted figure raise a rifle to shoot at him, fall, pick himself up, fall again, and crawl into the undergrowth. One of the hounds was dragging itself away. Biggles pulled the Camel up, turned, and came down again, his tracer making a straight line to the centre of the now clearing smoke. Out of the corner of his eye he saw other groups hurrying towards the scene, and made a mental note that he had at least drawn attention to himself, which might give the spy a chance to make a break.

He levelled out to get his bearings. Left rudder, stick over, and he was racing low over the wood towards the northern edge. At thirty feet from the ground he tore along the side of the wood, hopping the trees and hedges in his path. There was only one field large enough for him to land in; would the spy realise that, he wondered, as he swung round in a steep climbing turn and started to glide down, “blipping” his engine as he came.

He knew that he was taking a desperate chance. A bad landing or a single well-aimed shot from a sentry when he was on the ground would settle the matter. His tail-skid dragged on the rough surface of the field; a dishevelled figure, crouching low, broke from the edge of the wood and ran for dear life towards him. Biggles kicked on rudder and taxied, tail-up, to meet him, swinging round while still thirty yards away, ready for the take-off. A bullet smashed through the engine cowling; another struck the machine somewhere behind him.

“Come on!” he yelled frantically, although it was obvious that the man was doing his best. “On the wing—not that—the left one—only chance,” he snapped.

The exhausted man made no answer, but flung himself at full-length on the plane, close to the fuselage, and gripped the leading edge with his bare fingers.

“Catch!” cried Biggles, and flung his gauntlets on to the wing within reach of the fugitive.

Bullets were flicking up the earth about them, but they suddenly ceased, and Biggles looked up to ascertain the reason. A troop of Uhlans were coming down the field at full gallop, not a hundred yards away. Tight-lipped, Biggles thrust the throttle open and tore across the field towards them. His thumbs sought the Bowden lever of his Vickers guns and two white pencil lines of tracer connected the muzzles with the charging horsemen.

A bullet struck a strut near his face with a crash that he could hear above the noise of his engine, and he winced. Zooming high, he swung round towards the lines.

“I’ve got him—I’ve brought it off!” hammered exultantly through his brain. “If the poor fellow doesn’t freeze to death and fall off I’ll have him home within ten minutes.” With his altimeter needle touching 4,000 feet he pulled the throttle back and leaning out of the cockpit yelled at the top of his voice, “Ten minutes!” A quick nod told him that the spy had understood.

Biggles pushed the stick forward and dived for the line. He could feel the effect of the “drag”^[1] of the man’s body, but as it counterbalanced the torque^[2] of his engine to some extent it did not seriously interfere with the performance of the machine.

He glanced behind. A group of small black dots stood out boldly against the setting sun. Fokkers!

“You can’t catch me, I’m home,” jeered Biggles pushing the stick further forward.

He was down to 2,000 feet now, his air-speed indicator showing 150 m.p.h.; only another two miles now, he thought with satisfaction.

Whoof! Whoof! Whoof! Three black clouds of smoke blossomed out in front of him, and he swerved. Whoof!—Spang! Something smashed against the engine with a force that made the Camel quiver. The engine raced, vibrating wildly, and then cut out dead. For a split second Biggles was stunned. Mechanically he pushed his stick forward and looked down. The German support trenches lay below.

“My gosh! What luck; I can’t do it,” he grated bitterly. “I’ll be three hundred yards short.”

He began a slow glide towards the Allied front line, now in sight. At 500 feet, and fast losing height, the man on the wing twisted his head round, and the expression on his face haunted Biggles for many a day. A sudden thought struck him and an icy hand clutched at his heart.

“By heavens! I’m carrying a professed spy; they’ll shoot us both!”

The ground was very close now and he could see that he would strike it just behind the Boche front line. “I should think the crash will kill us both,” he muttered grimly, as he eyed the sea of shell-holes below. At five feet he flattened out for a pancake landing; the machine started to sink, slowly, and then with increasing speed. A tearing, ripping crash and the Camel closed up around him; something struck him on the head and everything went dark.

*****

“Here, take a drink of this, young feller—it’s rum,” said a voice that seemed far away.

Biggles opened his eyes and looked up into the anxious face of an officer in uniform and his late passenger.

“Who are you?” he asked in a dazed voice, struggling into a sitting position and taking the proffered drink.

“Major Mackay of the Royal Scots, the fust of foot, the right of the line and the pride of the British Army,” smiled his vis-à-vis.

“What are you doing here—where are the Huns?”

“We drove ’em out this afternoon,” said the Major, “luckily for you.”

“Very luckily for me,” agreed Biggles emphatically.

[1] “Drag”: head resistance.

[2] Torque: the reaction of a propeller, which tends to turn an aeroplane in the opposite direction to which the propeller is turning.