BIGGLES SEES IT THROUGH

by Captain W. E. Johns

X. AWKWARD PREDICAMENTS (Pages 139 – 153)

“Biggles sank down so that he could not be seen”. He suspected – correctly as it turned out – that the Russians had come to salvage the contents of the Blenheim and such component parts as were worth saving. Biggles was now in a predicament. Whoever flies to the lake to try and find the papers and find out what has happened to Biggles needs to be warned. But to do so would instantly betray him to the Russians. Biggles comes up with a plan. “The employment of the device long used in the Royal Air Force by army co-operation machines for picking up messages from the ground, a system that for years was demonstrated to the public at the R.A.F. Display at Hendon. It is comparatively simple. Two thin poles are fixed upright in the ground some twenty feet apart in the manner of goal-posts. Between them a cord is stretched, and to the cord is attached the message. The message in this case would, of course, be the papers. The machine swoops, picks up the line and the message, with a hook which it lowers for the purpose. Here, however, the machine would not be fitted with such a hook, but a clever pilot should have no difficulty in picking up a taut line on his undercarriage wheels”. Biggles uses two branches stripped of their twigs and his shirt and lining of his jacket, ripped into strips, to build such a set up. Meanwhile, the Russians are on the far side of the lake to salvage the Blenheim. A Gladiator arrives with Finnish markings and Biggles lights a fire and fires his red flare. The plane flies near and Biggles can see it is Ginger. Biggles jabs his hand frantically at the goal-post arrangement and makes ‘zooming’ motions with his hands and eventually communicates to Ginger what he wants him to do. Ginger has to make three attempts before he successfully hooks the line with the secret papers attached and flies off due west. By now, the Russians have been making their way around the lake and are almost upon Biggles. He flees and being less lightly loaded with equipment, soon outruns them. Knowing he is a good thirty miles inside the Russian frontier, Biggles thinks he must have fifty miles to go “to find succour”. Heading due west for hours, Biggles decides to try and find a cave for some form of shelter where he can rest. When he finds and approaches a dark fissure he is confronted by a bear and chased. Biggles has to climb up a rocky outcrop and finds himself trapped when the bear waits at the bottom. The bear is soon joined by its mate and two cubs. “Biggles considered them moodily. “Oh, go home”, he told them impatiently”. A breeze gets up and Biggles sees a strip of pale blue material drift down from the trees. He stares at it wide-eyed because he recognises it as part of his shirt. It was part of the makeshift line he made and has obviously come adrift from Ginger’s Gladiator. Time passes and eventually the bears drift off, but Biggles is still within watching distance of their lair. Climbing down and dropping quietly to the ground, Biggles waits and listens. Hearing nothing he moves off, but the bear chases him and Biggles runs for his life. Catching his foot in a root and falling, the bear is instantly upon him. He whips out his pistol as he falls but one sweep of a hairy paw knocks the weapon away. “Helpless in its ferocious grip, he gave himself up for lost”.