Sir Biggles, Order of the Camel: Chapter 11.

By Sopwith

Disclaimer: I do not own, or claim to own, any of the Biggles series characters used in this work. This fan fiction was written for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered part of the official storyline.

Algy took the plane down as low as he dared. He completed one circuit without seeing anything out of the usual, and was halfway through the second, feeling sick at heart, when his eye caught movement and he saw someone waving at him.

He shouted with joy as he recognized Biggles, and next to him, Ginger. As far as he could see, neither of them had suffered serious injuries. He banked slowly to show that he had seen them, but to his surprise they continued to wave and run about, as if trying to convey a message.

Algy cast an eye over the island, debating whether or not he should land and hear what the others had to say. He was just about to risk it when he checked his petrol gauge and realized that he might not have enough petrol to get back to the club.

“I’ll just have to come back,” he decided, half-regretting the time he had spent probing the ocean for signs of wreckage before. “I should have come straight here,” he murmured to himself. “Oh, well. It can’t be helped.” He would go home and refuel, and then fly straight back, perhaps with Bertie in tow if the other single-seater had come back. “It shouldn’t take me more than three hours,” he mused.

He would have to let Biggles know what he planned to do. Reaching for his notebook, he tore out a leaf and scribbled a quick note. He was about to place this in his cigarette case, which he had already emptied, when the thought struck him that the others might need food and water. With this in mind, he decided to tuck the note into his ration box and drop that instead.

Swooping low, he dropped the metal box and waited for Biggles to walk over and open it. He saw him reading the note, and then Biggles raised a hand in acknowledgement.

Satisfied, Algy climbed for more height and swung the plane around for home.

He was just getting comfortable when he heard a most unexpected sound that shook him out of his relaxed state and had him looking around in alarm.

It was the rat-tat-tat of a machine-gun, close at hand.

&&&

Ginger stared at the remaining wing and tail of the Mosquito, not quite able to comprehend that they had just lost their aircraft. It took him several minutes to get over the shock and pull himself together.

“We’ve lost the machine,” he said to Biggles, blankly.

“So we have,” agreed Biggles, starting to walk away. “But it’s no use crying over spilt milk. Come on, let’s go and see what we can salvage.”

“Salvage?” Ginger called after him. “What d’you mean?”

But Biggles was already out of earshot, hurrying back the way they had come, stooping to pick up some small objects in his path.

“What’s that?” asked Ginger, hurrying to catch up.

“Rations,” replied Biggles. “I threw them out after you when I saw we were going to lose the plane. The first-aid kit should be somewhere around here as well. Ah! There it is. I think that’s all. We’d better be getting back under cover. I don’t want to be out in the open in case that brute comes back.”

“I don’t think he will,” opined Ginger. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

“True. Well, I’m feeling quite peckish. What about something to eat?”

He passed out some food and Ginger began to feel quite cheerful. “Algy should be along in the morning,” he said, between bites. “He’ll know something’s come unstuck if we don’t go back tonight.”

“I wouldn’t start celebrating yet,” said Biggles calmly. “For one thing, even if he does come over, what’s to stop the chap with the machine gun from shooting him down?”

“By gosh!” Ginger stopped with a handful of food halfway to his mouth. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And he’d need a fairly big machine to pick us up,” continued Biggles. “I don’t think he’d be able to get one on down on this island, not to mention taking off again.”

Ginger’s eyes widened. “So we’re stuck here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” replied Biggles reassuringly. “No doubt something will turn up. Algy should be able to think of something. I do wish there was some way to warn him of the other plane, though. If he’s flying something from the club, he wouldn’t have any guns, and likely as not he would end up in the soup along with us.”

&&&

It was too quiet.

Ginger tossed and turned for several hours, trying to make himself comfortable on the hard ground, occasionally slapping at mosquitoes that flew toward him. He glanced over at Biggles, and was rather disconcerted to find that he had already fallen asleep.

Finally, as it occurred to him that he was getting more and more awake, despite his best efforts to do otherwise, he resolved to go for a walk and get some fresh air until he felt tired enough to go back to sleep.

Moving quietly so as not to wake Biggles, he got to his feet, placed a torch in his pocket, and set off.

Ginger walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, not really paying attention to where he was going, when he noticed what appeared to be a light shining on the other end of the island. This struck him as somewhat odd, so he changed direction and made for it.

He soon found that he was separated from the light by a thick clump of trees. Shining his torch around, he made out what seemed to be a path through the trees. He debated whether or not to go down it, but finally decided not to, as he was not eager to get lost in the dark. Also, he was anxious not to go too far, as Biggles might awaken at any moment and be worried by his absence.

With that second thought in mind, he began to make his way back the way he had come, and was halfway there when he heard a sound that made him stop in his tracks and look up in surprise.

It was the sound of aero engines.

Ginger’s first thought was that it was Algy, come to see why they had not returned. But he quickly realized that Algy was unlikely to come after them in the dark, especially in unfamiliar surroundings where he would be likely to lose his way.

The engines cut out, and Ginger saw the machine, a single-seater monoplane gliding down, soon drifting out of his sight on the other side of the clump of trees that he had seen before. “What’s it doing?” he wondered aloud to himself. He stood in place for a few minutes, hoping to see the plane reappear, and sure enough, after about ten minutes, the silence was shattered by the sound of engines starting up.

Ginger began to run towards the sound, for no reason other than a desire to see what the plane and its pilot was up to. In his haste, he paid little attention to where he was going, and he was abruptly brought down to earth by a sudden sharp hissing sound that seemed to resonate through his entire body.

Looking around for the source of the sound, he saw two pinpricks of light, no more than a feet in front of him, at perhaps waist-height.

With shaking hands he shone the torch, and found himself face to face with a giant lizard, standing up on its hind legs in a fighting stance, poised to attack.

&&&

Ginger forgot about the plane. He forgot about wanting to see what the pilot was up to. He forgot about Biggles. He forgot about everything except the blind terror that coursed through his veins as he stared into the lizard’s beady eyes.

“It’s a dragon!” he thought to himself, as he desperately tried to remember all the things he had heard about them. Rick had said that their skin was tough to withstand a bullet, which did not help Ginger much as he had left his gun back where Biggles was, not anticipating any danger on his evening walk, which he now realized was a mistake.

With a warning hiss, the lizard in front of him abruptly spat a stream of dark liquid. Ginger leapt aside hastily, only to see the liquid hit a tree next to him, blackening and disintegrating the leaves and bark as if by magic. “My gosh!” he muttered to himself. “That could have been me.”

The creature continued to advance, and Ginger backed away, glancing desperately at the ground, hoping for something, anything, that he could use to deter the lizard. But there was nothing, not even a stone or branch that he could throw. All he could do was look into the dragon’s grim yellowish eyes as it fell to all fours and continued its relentless progress.

Ginger’s retreat abruptly came to a halt as he came up against a tree trunk. There was now nowhere else for him to go, he realized, and there was nothing he could do but stand quivering against the tree as he waited for the creature’s inevitable attack. If he could have, he would have shouted perhaps, or screamed, but his mouth had gone dry, and the only sound he was capable of making was a faint croak.

There was no warning this time. The lizard simply leapt at Ginger, and he found himself rolling over and over with the creature on top of him, hissing and snapping.

Goto Chapter 12.

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