BIGGLES
IN AFRICA
by Captain W.
E. Johns
VIII. SAVAGES (Pages 120 – 136)
Ginger comes round to find Biggles
bandaging him. Ginger’s face has been
badly cut by the knife thrown at him, but the cut isn’t deep. Biggles asks about the whereabouts of
Sarda. Ginger points at the smoking
remains of the rest-house. Ginger
explains how he never intended to shoot Sarda but the gun went off when the
knife was thrown at him. The building
collapsed on Sarda before he could pull him clear. Biggles says “It may sound callous, but I’m
no hypocrite, and I don’t mind telling you that I feel happier with him out of
the way”. Ginger explains what happened
to him and that the Puss Moth is about three miles away. Biggles is glad that he and Algy were only
given dope and not poison. Biggles
suspects Leroux gave Sarda the dope to put them out of action. His aircraft engine must have been playing up
and he landed at their secret landing-ground to come back and steal their
machine. Biggles, Algy and Ginger go out
to the Puss Moth with tools from their kit, intending to repair it. They are able to confirm that it is Harry Marton’s machine.
They can still see the original red dope under the exhaust pipe. Ginger suspects the fault was faulty
lubrication and being a qualified ground engineer, he sets to work for an hour
and a half on the plane. The cause of
the trouble is a piece of cotton waste in an oil lead. As Ginger finishes the repair a line of
“savage warriors” appear. “Nude except
for a short skirt of leopard skin and a garter-like fringe of white hair bound
below their knees, they fitted perfectly into the inhospitable landscape. All were armed with short-handled broad-bladed
assagais”. (An
assegai is a light spear made of wood with a flat iron blade. Johns spells the plural as “assAgais” but it is more often spelt “assEgais”
with an ‘E’). but Biggles asks the
warriors what they want. “What you make
with my master’s aeroplane?” asks the leader of the warriors. “You go and tell your master that we’re
taking his aeroplane to Insula, where he can have it just as soon as he brings my aeroplane back” says Biggles. “If you no give aeroplane, then we take it”
declared the other impudently. “You
insolent rascal; you talk to me like that and I’ll thrash the skin off your
back. Be off, and sharp’s the
word”. “The savage did not move a
muscle”. “Did you hear me? Cried
Biggles, in a voice that cut through the air like the crack of a whip. The savage stood his ground”. Biggles asks Ginger to get the rifle. “Perhaps you’ve heard it said that Englishmen
always keep their word. Think hard on
that, because in one minute by my watch I’m going to shoot at any one I see within
spear-throw”. (In one minute by my
watch I’m going to shoot at any one I see within spear-throw - is the
illustration on page 131). The
warriors back away until their leader finds himself alone. Then “he turned and followed the others in
the slow, insolent, provocative manner sometimes employed by small children
when made to do something against their will.
Biggles’s eyes narrowed. “You
cheeky swine,” he snarled, and throwing up the rifle, sent a shot whistling in
the direction of the cause of his ire”.
The native runs off. A distant
hum of aero engines alerts them to the Dragon in the sky. Not wanting to be caught on the ground, Biggles
and Algy clear a runway whilst Ginger starts their plane up. A spear hits the plane as Biggles and his
friends try to take off, “he saw the savages closing in on the machine in a
wild charge”. They have a hair-raising
take off and Biggles looks for the Dragon.
(To his surprise it was two or three miles away - is the frontispiece
illustration taken from a line on page 134). Biggles decides to return to Insula to fill
up their tanks with fuel. “Keep your eye
on those n****rs and see which way they go when they
move off. I’m going to Insula”. (This is the fourth Biggles
book to feature the use of the very offensive “N” word by W. E. Johns. The word appears four times in this book,
once in this chapter, “Savages” and then once in the next chapter, Chapter IX,
“Biggles Sums Up” and twice in Chapter XI, “Crashed by a Rhino”. Of course, in its day, the word was in
regular use and not considered offensive at all, otherwise it would not have
appeared in a children’s book, where even mild expletives are watered
down. The word remained in all Oxford
editions of this book, however, as early as 1962, in the Armada paperback
version, the word in this chapter was changed to “cut-throats”. In the last edition published in 1985, where
the book is one of five books featured in THE BEST OF BIGGLES, a Chancellor
Press Omnibus, the word was replaced with the word “fellows”).