BIGGLES WORKS IT OUT

by Captain W. E. Johns

XI. EL ASILE (Pages 125 – 140)

“It was nearly an hour later when Algy took off and headed south for El Asile”. Algy had made notes on the back of an envelope of his information, for Marcel to pass to Biggles. The Ahagger Mountains are some twelve hundred miles due south of Algiers. Algy flies over the empty desert aware that his life depended on his engines. “Should they fail him, all that remained would be a choice of death; a slow one from thirst, or a quick one from a shot from his own pistol”. Arriving at El Asile, there are more men than Algy expects. Algy is pleased to see Bertie amongst the awaiting men and when asked, Algy says “Lacey’s the name. I’m doing the run for Groot, who was to have come”. Algy says Groot has gone sick with sunstroke and he has orders to “take another lot over”. Algy is asked why he looks like he has been in a fight and he says “Some guys in Marseilles tried to get tough with me yesterday”. Bertie offers to show Algy around so they can talk when out of earshot. Algy explains that von Stalhein knows Bertie is there (Johns appears to forget that Bertie could not have known that von Stalhein was in anyway involved, certainly he shows no surprise or reaction to mention of the name) and Canto was on his way to bump him off. Bertie says there is a radio there but it is not used for fear of being picked up by the French Security Police; it is for use only in a real emergency. Bertie adds “The top people don’t live here, of course. No bally fear. Too beastly hot. They live where they can enjoy the jolly old fleshpots”. Algy’s Douglas is covered over and Bertie says they also have a spare Douglas, a Mosquito and a Hurricane. Bertie says that the people here are a lot of cut-throats. The head man, Odenski, is “either Russian or Roumanian” (sic). There are about twenty of the “fake prophets”. “They’re a lot of disgusting cads, anyway. One of them isn’t too bad. A French lad named Emile something or other”. Emile had deserted from the Foreign Legion to see his sick mother before she died. The gang had got hold of him, by a trick, he said, and sent him to El Asile. “He’s sick to death of the place – got what the French call le caffard”* (* a footnote tells us this means literally “the grasshopper”. A mental disorder arising from heat, loneliness and boredom. Google tells me it is spelt ‘le cafard’ with one ‘f’ and actually means the cockroach and is slang for feeling depressed). Algy needs to sleep and Bertie wakes him at six o’clock. He says the Douglas is loaded and ready to go. The “stuff” is marked as fertilizer. Bertie tells Algy there are two sentries. They are needed to keep an eye out for the Tuareg Arabs. “Some Tuareg came in asking to fill their water-skins. Some of the bright boys here tried fooling about with their women. Their men-folk objected. Quite properly too. Whereupon there was a bit of fuss in which a couple of Arabs were killed. The rest made off”. Algy goes to take off but Odenski calls for him to stop as another plane in coming in to land. The plane is a Mosquito and when it lands, von Stalhein and Groot get out. Von Stalhein asks if Canton is there and when told no, he asks who bought the Douglas. Told it is “Lacey” he runs towards Algy’s machine with his pistol out. Under fire, Algy takes off. Bertie makes his presence known, having hidden on the aircraft as previously planned. Another stowaway makes himself known, it is Emile. He cries out “Essence!” (French for ‘petrol’). Von Stalhein has holed the fuel tank. “It’s squirting like a soda-water syphon” says Algy to Bertie. “See if you can do anything about it. If you can’t, we’ve had it”.