BIGGLES GOES TO SCHOOL

by Captain W. E. Johns

XI. DARK DOINGS (Pages 141 - 151)

Biggles suspects that Hervey and Brickwell may still be poaching so he goes alone to Foxley Wood to counter the pheasants. This time there are only forty-two! Another five appear to have gone. He hears a shot and a thud and believes somebody has shot a pheasant and it has hit the ground. Later he hears another shot. Then he sees Mick Dunnage, the notorious local poacher carrying a pheasant and a light rifle with a folding skeleton stock. The pheasant is still alive, so Dunnage smashes its head against a fence post. Dunnage then goes through a pre-made hole in the wooden fence and heads off in the Hayford direction, rather than back to Hartbury (the town was called Hertbury earlier, unless this is meant to be a different town!). Biggles, who having lived in India knows a thing or two about tracking, notices the heavy boot marks in the mud that Dunnage has made. They are distinctive as two nails have come out of his hobnailed boots. Biggles runs back to school and sees Hervey and Brickwell. He asks them if they have taken more birds and they say they haven't. They also say they never set the snares, Dunnage set the snares and they just took birds out of them, unbeknown to him, and sold them. Hervey asks if it is "pax" (Latin for peace). Biggles says it is "pax est" (Peace is?) while you keep out of the wood and stop bullying the kids.