BIGGLES IN THE GOBI

by Captain W. E. Johns

VII. A LAND OF FEAR (Pages 77 – 86)

“In twenty minutes the rescue party was on its way”. The Kirghiz ride at a gentle cantor on their small and rough, but wiry-looking beasts. Ginger is astonished how they find their way as there is no track. They ride silently and Ginger loses all sense of reality. “He knew the old rhyme about the brigands sitting round their camp fire”. (I had no idea what Johns was referring to here, but a Google search tells me this ‘Twas a dark and fearsome night. Brigands great and brigands small were gathered around the camp fire. “Come, Antonio,” they called to the terrible chief, “tell us one of your famous stories.” And Antonio arose and said: “‘Twas a dark and fearsome night. Brigands great and brigands small were gathered around the camp fire. ‘Come, Antonio,’ they called to the terrible chief, ‘Tell us one of your famous stories.’ And Antonio arose and said: “‘Twas a dark and fearsome,” etc., etc., indefinitely”). The cold is perishing. At long last, the party dismounts and the Kirghiz send one man off with the horses to a valley whilst the others hide in folds in the ground. In due course a cart passes by, but it is not the one they want. Then the creak of a wooden axle alerts Ginger to another cart, with four armed men. “With a throaty cry that was half-way between a yell and a snarl, the Kirghiz leaped from their lairs, like tigers”. All the guards drop their rifles and run, screaming, into the desert. The Kirghiz pursue them and Ginger hears one shot fired. Ginger runs to the cart and asks “Who’s in there?” A Scottish accent answers “Angus McDougall for one”. Four figures get out the cart, (but apart from Dr. McDougall, we are not told who they are!). Ginger is told that Abbot Ching-fu is not with them as he has been released. The communist agents didn’t want to start an uprising by holding the popular holy man. The Kirghiz return from the desert and take one of the horses pulling the cart. “The thing that amazed Ginger, as they retraced their steps through the lonely passes, was not so much the success of the operation as the simplicity with which it had all worked out. At the outset it had been a forlorn hope. In the event, nothing could have been easier, apart from the physical discomfort and fatigue”. As they return, they see the sun rise and with still some distance to go, they see a figure top a dune and come striding down the sand to meet them. The figure is Ming who has run far and fast and he is babbling incoherently. Ginger can see from the behaviour of the Kirghiz that the messenger had bought evil tidings. Dr. McDougall translates. “He says there are many soldiers at the oasis”. This is enough for the Kirghiz, who after a conversation of about ten seconds, turn their mounts and gallop off. The remaining men debate what to do when from somewhere not far away there is the roar of an explosion. “All eyes turned in the direction of the oasis, above which a cloud of smoke was now rolling into the sky”.