BIGGLES IN THE GOBI

by Captain W. E. Johns

XIII. CUTTING IT FINE (Pages 151 – 160)

“At the oasis, after realising that discovery was now inevitable, that the food cartons had betrayed them as effectually as if they had shown themselves on the ledge, Algy and Ginger retired a little way into the cave behind them”. They then hear a plane, Algy thinks it can’t be Biggles as he is too early, but Ginger says those are Rolls engines so it must be the Halifax. “Ginger did not know whether to be glad or sorry; whether to laugh or cry. The irony of it was maddening. Here was Biggles. The airstrip was ready. They were ready. In the ordinary way nothing could have fitted more perfectly. But with the oasis alive with the Tiger’s troops, on the face of it any attempt to leave the caves would be suicidal”. Algy decides to contact Biggles by radio. “We brought it for an emergency. If this isn’t one, what is it?” Algy gets Ming to take him outside via a passage of caves, to the extreme end of the cliff, so he can use the radio. The Halifax circles, obviously looking for them. Ginger frantically waves his arms and points. Algy gets through to the aircraft and listens to what he is told. Biggles will land and Bertie will man the forward turret. Algy is to get onboard and man the rear turret while Ginger gets everyone onboard. Ming decides to stay as he wants to guard the caves until the Abbot returns. Feng decides to stay with him. Ginger says they will return and drop money and food. If the Kirghiz are all dead, they can keep it themselves. The Halifax lands and Algy races to take up his station. Ginger leads a human crocodile of men and women, sliding and rolling down the sloping bank of loose sand on the intervening dune. The enemy troops approach and Bertie rakes them with his guns. That makes them take cover. “As a matter of fact, heads did appear from time to time as the troops were presumably urged on by their commander. But none of the attackers got far”. A dozen men made a determined effort to reach the aircraft but “a rifle is a poor weapon against machine guns”. “The guns in both turrets opened up and the attack fizzled out, the attackers going flat, either because they had been hit or because they couldn’t face the deadly music”. “At the last moment a figure came bounding over the ridge, screaming and firing a revolver. Sunlight gleamed on gold braid and Algy recognised the frog-like face of Ma Chang. It rather looked as if the Chinese colonel, seeing the aircraft about to escape, had lost his head. Algy could have asked for no better target. “Ah!” he breathed, and his guns streamed a long burst, longer than was really necessary, for almost at once the Tiger had dived into the sand, the revolver flying from his hand in a way that suggested he had lost not only his head but his life as well”. Biggles takes off. When they are at eighteen thousand feet a Russian Yak aircraft appears. Bertie, Ginger and Algy in their gun turrets all shoot at it. It veers off and doesn’t return. “From first to last the affair had occupied not more than two seconds. That’s how things happen in air combat. This turned out to be the only incident worth recording on the run home. No more aircraft were sighted”. They fly over Thibet and on to Pakistan. “There the story can end, for with the end of the journey the case was, for all practical purposes, closed. No further news came out of the war-torn heart of Asia. A week after its return the Halifax made a night flight back to Nan-hu, as Biggles insisted that it should, to drop a bag of silver and some tins of food stuffs on the landing strip. There was no sign of life at the ancient shrine, so the bags may still be lying there to this day”. “As the Air-Commodore remarked when they were back at the Yard, they couldn’t do more, or less”. (This chapter title, Cutting it Fine, must have inspired the title of the next Biggles book, which was “Biggles Cuts it Fine”).