BIGGLES GETS HIS MEN

by Captain W. E. Johns

VII. INTO THE UNKNOWN (Pages 85 - 97)

The party set off at dawn, with certain kit items such as wire-cutters, hacksaws and torches, arranged on belts under their white shirts so they still looked like Korean hunters or traders. A gruelling cross country march takes place where, from time to time, Biggles consults the photographs obtained the previous day and not a human being is seen. A halt is called on the fringe of a small forest of mixed trees and Biggles decides to set up an advance base here where he leaves Bertie and Mayne. Biggles and Ginger are to advance forward to the area where the supposed trench was seen from the air. Arriving there filthy from the journey, Biggles and Ginger find slave workers cutting lignite (a footnote tells us this is a dark brown substance midway between peat and coal that burns freely) from what they had taken to be a trench. As the slave workers, mostly Koreans, pack up to leave, Biggles and Ginger join the party as they look very similar to the slave workers. The slave workers are supervised by Mongolian horsemen and even when a count reveals they appear to have two more workers than they started off with, it doesn't stop them from marching everyone back to the camp. After dumping the fuel, the slaves are locked in a stinking barbed wire compound with fencing ten feet high. Ginger falls into an exhausted sleep. "He could, he thought, safely leave the thinking to Biggles".