BIGGLES - CHARTER PILOT

by Captain W. E. Johns

XI THE ADVENTURE OF THE HAUNTED CREEK (Pages 99 - 108)

“The officers of Biggles’ Squadron looked round as the mess door opened and a stranger, in flying kit, entered. He raised his hand in a gesture of friendly salutation and joined the others at the fireside”. The new arrival is an Australian officer (we are not told his name) from ‘K’ Squadron – night fighters. He has received a bullet hole through his petrol tank and landed for repairs. When his accent prompts Ginger to remark that he was in Australia once, Ginger says he was there looking for ghosts at Dead Cow Creek, on the Cooper River. The Australian pilot has not been there but has heard it’s pretty grim. Ginger replies “Grim is the word. If anyone wants to make a collection of skeletons, he can take his choice in Cooper Creek”. Algy suggests Ginger tells everyone about it and this is the story he told:

“First of all, you must try to form a mental picture of the part of Australia I’m talking about. Years ago, the Cooper was a regular river, flanked with lovely country and perfect pasture land. Stock-breeders found the place and several townships sprang up. Then, one year, the river dried up”. All the animals died in a drought that was to last nine years. Winds came afterwards, even leaving the graveyard uncovered and dried out corpses exposed. The whole landscape was covered with the bones of thousands of cattle. Some cattle even died on their feet and were sun dried where they stood “with empty eye-sockets”. Rats were everywhere. The place had got a reputation for being haunted and Dr. Duck wanted to investigate rumours of people actually hearing ghosts speaking. A daylight expedition to investigate gives Ginger the creeps and when it is decided to go to the graveyard in the moonlight, Ginger refuses to go. Ginger elects to remain alone at the plane and after about an hour, he hears voices saying things like "They're all dead" and "Water – water – water". A terrified Ginger runs off to join the others shouting for Biggles. “Believe it or not, something floated over me moaning, “Biggles”. It wasn’t an echo as the voices are moving about. Ginger runs straight into one of the petrified cows and goes down in a pile of bones. Biggles finds him and then they all hear the voices. Biggles says “This is certainly uncanny”. From the aircraft Biggles gets a twelve-bore sporting gun and fires at the voices. There is a frightful shriek. “Biggles put two more cartridges in the gun and set off towards the village. “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said, in that hard, tight voice he uses when he gets angry”. They go to a big barn and Biggles shines his torch in. “We couldn’t see anything except rats, cobwebs and spiders’ eyes”. They go in and Biggles takes another shot at the voices and they hear ghastly screams and cries from all around them. Leaving the barn, Biggles tells Ginger to take a look inside a house. “Well, as you can imagine, I didn’t exactly chortle with delight at the prospect, but Biggles has a way of telling you to do a thing that makes you do it, whether you want to or not”. On trying to enter the abandoned house, Ginger is hit in the face by something and blood is left on his face. The blood appears to have come from a freshly dead rat as they find half a rat on a piano in the house. Throwing the rat remains into the street, our heroes wait to catch whatever it is and when something swishes down, Biggles shoots it and they find a dead raven. They next morning they find plenty of ravens. They have developed nocturnal habits and ravens are well known for talking. They can talk as clearly as parrots. They must have picked up common phrases being said when the area was populated. “When the last settler had gone, and the birds had been left behind, they must have gone on croaking these words. The birds had bred, and the young ones had picked up the same sounds, and passed them from one to the other”. “One can imagine what the effect must have been on the first ignorant native who heard them – or white men, for that matter. I was scared to death myself; in fact, we all were”. Had it not been for Dr. Duck's inquisitive nature and Biggles' obstinate determination to see the thing through, the voices might have remained a mystery for years, says Ginger. Ginger glanced at the clock, then at the visitor from Australia. “Well, that’s all there was to it,” he concluded. “If you like I’ll walk along with you to see how our lads are getting on with your machine”.