NO REST FOR BIGGLES

by Captain W. E. Johns

V. TOUGH GOING FOR GINGER (Pages 53 – 61)

“Ginger had been content to leave Biggles to take care of himself, at any rate for the time being, feeling sure that the place to which he was taken could not be far from the airstrip”. The important thing was to get in touch with the Halifax to let Algy and Bertie know what had happened. The ideal thing would be to find a place where the Halifax could land as obviously it could not use the airstrip. Ginger thinks that Algy might be calling him on the radio so he decides to get his radio set functioning. There are already two snags. As they are in Liberia, “any interference with a sovereign state would be bound to raise what Biggles had called a stink”. Only in dire extremity would the British government come to their assistance. “The second snag was the alleged presence in the district of hostile blacks. It seemed to Ginger that there was something wrong about this”. “There were now few Africans who had not been in touch with white men, and co-operation rather than open hostility was the general rule”. The atmosphere under the trees is hot and heavy and twice Ginger thinks he can hear the drone of an aircraft, but under the trees he can see nothing. Reaching the scrub that fringes the forest, Ginger squats down on a bulging root and gets out the radio. He sees a pigmy elephant running through the trees and wonders what has disturbed it. There could be only one answer to that, Ginger told himself. Man. Ginger gets up from his root to see around the tree and within five yards he sees a “crouching black, who, spear half raised, had obviously been stalking him. Their eyes met. For a split second they stared at each other, rigid. (“… they stared at each other, rigid” – see page 56 – is the illustration opposite page 65). “The black moved first. He sprang erect. His spear jerked back for the throw. Ginger’s gun crashed as he fired from the hip. The native dived into the ground, the spear quivering at Ginger’s feet”. “He realized with a sinking feeling in the stomach what would have happened had it not been for the elephant, which had caused him to reach for his gun. Otherwise there would have been no time to take it from his pocket”. “His own reaction, in pulling the trigger of his automatic, had been prompted by the instinct of self-preservation. And, as it happened the shot had killed the man stone dead. He consoled his conscience by telling himself that it had to be one or the other of them, and it was better as it was”. Ginger’s one thought is now to get away in case his assailant has friends nearby. He gathers his things together and hastens away. Ginger turns into a clump of acacia to think about what has happened. Why had the man tried to murder him? “In Kenya he could have understood it; but that unhappy country was far away”. (This is a reference to the “Mau Mau Rebellion”, 1952 – 1960, against British rule in Kenya, which was ongoing as Johns wrote this book. This was a war in the British Kenya Colony between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities). Ginger “wished fervently that he had Algy or Bertie with him. He was feeling horribly alone”. Ginger sets up the radio and then a hundred yards away he sees a lion walking. It yawns and lies down, so he can just see the black tips of its ears. Ginger operates the radio and after about five minutes gets a reply from Bertie, although the signal is very faint. However, once Bertie gets the direction, Bertie is able to follow it and the strength of reception grows. Ginger conveys the information that the Hastings is down and he was on the ground on the northern frontier of Liberia. He explained the difficulties of showing his position. Ginger says he will light a fire but dare not remain with it. He will move off north and they will know he is on that line. Bertie says they have fuel for another half-hour. Ginger lights a fire with a match and uses his pocket compass to set off in the correct direction across the plain. Ginger knows that every native within miles will see the smoke. A slight movement twenty yards away alerts Ginger to the lion. “Ginger walked on. There was nothing else he could do. He watched the lion. The lion watched him”. Then a lioness stands up behind the lion and watches him as well. “Dry-lipped Ginger walked on without altering his pace, although every instinct in him was screaming at him to run”. The lioness lies down and the danger passes. Ginger sees the Halifax now standing directly towards him and losing height. There can be no question of the machine landing as the ground bristles with obstructions. Ginger makes for a group of small flat-topped trees and makes haste to resume radio contact. Bertie tells him that the nearest possible spot for landing is about four miles further on. Ginger can’t get to it before the Halifax runs out of fuel. Bertie tells him that Algy has decided to go to Accra, on the Gold Coast, the nearest British airport, to refuel and will return as soon as it was light in the morning. Ginger will push on to the prospective landing ground and wait there. The Halifax drops a can of water and some food for Ginger then heads west. Ginger has a quick snack and a drink and then sets off, determined to get as close to his objective as possible before darkness falls and travel is too dangerous. Ginger knows the ground will have to be surveyed before any landing is attempted after dawn. He also feels “that the farther he got from the forest the safer he would be from the blacks who by this time might be looking for him”.