BIGGLES GOES TO SCHOOL

 

by Captain W. E. Johns

 

 

IX.                   THE CHESTNUT WOOD  (Pages 111 - 127)

 

Biggles ends up getting six strokes of the cane, three to each hand, after he put a firework in Mr. Bruce's door.  He gets away with it the first time, but makes the mistake of going back to do it again and is caught.  The firework season also sees Hervey getting into trouble when he accidently lights the fireworks hidden in his desk whilst messing around in Monsieur Bougade's French class.  On the first Saturday afternoon in November, (This must be 1913), Biggles begins an adventure "that took all the joy out of his life, even though there were compensations.  It was his first experience of real trouble, and he lost weight, not to mention sleep, under the strain of it".  Biggles goes to Foxley Wood to go chestnutting, on the estate of Sir Colin Markland JP, who is one of the Governors of his School.  Here, Mr. Samuel Barnes is the gamekeeper, with a vicious reputation for using his stick against any boys found trespassing.  He once caught the notorious local poacher and worst character in town, Mick Dunnage, and both men had been injured in a fearful fight.  Dunnage had got six months hard labour.  Smith is unable to go with Biggles, having gone sick with toothache, so Biggles goes alone.  He turns his cap inside out to hide his school badge and sneaks into the wood.  As Biggles begins to regret his actions he feels bound to go on.  "To retire would be to acknowledge himself to be a funk".  Biggles comes across a newly snared pheasant and sees two boys, his old enemies Hervey and Brickwell, putting it into a sack.  Suddenly, they are seen and chased by the gamekeeper, Mr. Barnes:  They escape.  A frightened Biggles makes his way out of the wood and by the time he reached the town it had become quite dark.  "The lamplighter with his pole was going his round.  Several gas lamps had already been lit, and it may have been a guilty conscience that made Biggles haunt the shadows".  Biggles sees Hervey and Brickwell in the light of a shop window and sees them go to Mr. Jeremiah Siggins' butcher's shop.  There is a chink of money.  Biggles is shocked to discover that Hervey and Brickwell are poachers of the worst sort.  Not taking animals to eat - but for money.  "Miserable under the burden of his unpleasant secret he returned to school.  That night he slept badly for the first time".  “It was perhaps fortunate for him that he could not foresee the events that the next day were to bring”.