The Black Peril.
Captain W. E. Johns.
CHAPTER I.
FORCED DOWN.
THE northern horizon, which for some time had been growing more and more indistinct, finally disappeared, and the dull, greeny-black sea merged into the grey canopy of the sky. Biggles leaned out of the cockpit of his amphibian aeroplane and peered ahead anxiously. For a full minute he stared, and a frown creased his forehead as he looked at Algy Lacey, sitting in the second pilot's seat beside him.
"I don't like it!" he told Algy. "That stuff'll start coming down presently." He jerked his head at the forbidding cloud-mass above.
Algy indicated that he had heard by a grimace of annoyance. "Typical English weather,"
he commented. The sun had been shining from a cloudless blue autumn sky when Biggles had rung him up that morning to suggest a joy-ride, a proposal to which he had readily agreed. They had travelled by road to the aerodrome, and after a short discussion as to the most desirable route they had left the ground shortly after two o'clock. They had picked up the Thames, followed it as far as the estuary, and then turning north continued up the east coast. It had been their intention to find a suitable cove in which to land if the water was smooth enough, and have a picnic tea from a hamper which reposed in the cabin; alternatively, if the water was choppy, they would turn inland to one of the many north-country aerodromes, and land on terra firma, leaving the ground in time to get back home by dusk, which would be about six o'clock. The change in the weather had first been apparent as they were passing Felixstowe, but Biggles had held on to his course hoping it would improve. On the contrary it had grown steadily worse, until now, with the Wash behind them and the Lincolnshire coast two thousand feet below their keel, it had become definitely forbidding.
A wraith of white mist enveloped the machine with a clammy embrace, and blotted out the landscape. The noise of the engine faded suddenly as Biggles throttled back to lose height, and then sprang to life again as they sank through the vapour and the ground once more appeared below.
"Going back !" he yelled, and suiting the action to the word, swung the machine round and began to retrace his course. His frown deepened as he peered through the windscreen. From east to west, straight across their path, lay a dark, uniform indigo belt that could only mean rain, and heavy rain at that. Land and sea, at a distance of a mile or two, were swallowed up in gloom. Then, as so often happens in such conditions, the moisture-laden sky above began to close down on them. Twice within five minutes the machine was enveloped in opaque mist, so thick that the wing-tips were lost in it and each time the pilot was compelled to lose height in order to keep the ground in sight. He jerked the throttle wide open, and the bellow of the engine increased in volume as it jumped from cruising to maximum speed.
They were now recrossing the Wash, and he touched his right rudder slightly in order to strike the coast, their only landmark, as quickly as possible; they were down to five hundred feet when it loomed dimly ahead. At the same moment a sharp spatter of rain struck them; it formed in curious little globules on the doped planes, tiny beads of moisture that danced towards the trailing edge and then disappeared into space.
Visibility quickly grew worse until he could only just see the ground from a hundred feet; so thick was it that at times it was difficult to tell whether land or sea lay below. He pushed his stick forward a trifle, staring over the side, and saw that they were passing over a little natural creek. The water in it was smooth, for the storm had not yet had time to beat up a big sea, and he made up his mind with the promptness of long experience.
The roar of the engine ceased abruptly; the machine tilted in a swift "S" turn, sideslipped, flattened out, and cut a creamy wake across the smooth water of the creek.
"And that's that," observed Algy philosophically, as the machine ran to a standstill.
"As you say, that's that," agreed Biggles, unfastening the strap of his flying cap. "And I don't mind telling you that I'm not sorry to be on the carpet. Did you ever see visibility cut right out like that in your life?"
"Never."
"Nor I. Well, we're down and that's something," went on Biggles. "I haven't the remotest idea where we are, except that that bit of oozy-looking marsh over there is part of Norfolk, and the liquid on which we are floating is the North Sea."
"What are we going to do?"
"Taxy along this creek until we find a sheltered place to moor up, and then unpack that hamper. One thing I'm not going to do is to take off again in this soup. My goodness, hark at the rain!"
"If it keeps on it looks as if we're here for the night."
"We are as far as I'm concerned," declared Biggles, as he opened the throttle a trifle and began taxying along the low, bleak shore. "Fog is the dickens. Here we are; what about this?"
At the spot indicated, a short, narrow arm of the creek felt its way through wire-grass and sandhills that arose here and there from a swampy reed-covered plain.
"Do as well as anywhere," agreed Algy. "Go ahead; taxy right in and beach her here. I'll get out and have a look round." He jumped ashore on firm sand and ran to the top of the nearest sandhill. He was back again in a moment. "Nothing," he said tersely, "not a blooming thing in sight, although I can't see more than a hundred yards, if it comes to that."
"Well, come back in and let's have some tea; maybe the clouds will lift again presently."
In this hope they were doomed to disappointment, however, for an hour later, although the rain had stopped, the air was still thick with mist and visibility practically nil.
Presently it began to grow dark.
"Nothing doing," declared Biggles. "It's clearing, I believe, but I'm not taking a chance. It will be as black as your hat in a few minutes, and night flying with fog about is not my idea of an amusing evening. What the dickens was that?" he went on in alarm, as the machine gave a sudden lurch. He put his head out of the cabin window and then laughed.
"We're a nice pair of fools," he observed. "Well, that settles it, anyway; we're here for the night now without any argument."
"Why, what is it? "
"The tide's gone out while we've been sitting here and left us high and dry; even if we could get our wheels down there isn't room to turn. No matter; it's safe anchorage, and we're well protected in this gully. It could blow a gale without hurting us."
"But what about grub? We look like getting no dinner."
"What a fellow you are; always thinking about your stomach. Let's get ashore and see if there is a house anywhere in sight. After all, we're in England, and in my experience one can't go far in England without bumping into a house of some sort."
In this, however, he was not altogether correct, as a close examination of the desolate landscape quickly revealed. In all directions, as far as they could see in the gathering darkness, stretched a monotonous expanse of flat, bleak moorland, in which the receding tide had left sinister-looking rivers of mud. They tried to find a way through them, but quickly gave it up after slipping knee-deep in slime at every other step.
"Come on, let's get back to the machine," said Biggles disgustedly. "There's no sense in drowning ourselves in this bog."
"Hold hard a minute. What's that over there?" asked Algy, peering into the gloom.
"I can see what you mean; it's a building of some sort," returned Biggles.
They picked their way carefully towards it, but their hopes of finding a human habitation were soon dashed to the ground. As they drew near, the building resolved itself into a small, square, concrete structure with a flat roof; a single window, an open unglazed square cut in the wall, overlooked the sea. A wooden door gave access to it on the landward side.
"Cheerful-looking hole," observed Algy. "You know a, lot; perhaps you can tell me what sort of madman would build a place like that in a place like this, and what for? "
Biggles grinned. "I think I can tell you that," he replied. "It looks like a relic of the war, one of those pillbox affairs they built all round the coast. They were used as lookout posts, or machine-gun emplacements, probably, but I'm not quite sure about that. Watch your step for barbed wire and unexploded mines. They had soldiers putting up wire entanglements and other defensive works all round the coast, and in many places, where the ground was not wanted for cultivation, they have been left just as they were at the end of the war. There you are; what did I tell you?" he went on, pointing to a zigzag depression that wound its way through the sand-hills. On the seaward side of it was a row of rotting stakes and a tangle of barbed wire. "Yes, this is a bit of the war there's no doubt of that," he concluded. "Come on, let's get back."
"Wait a minute; we may as well look inside; it might be more comfortable here than in the cabin," suggested Algy.
"There might be more room, but it will be less cheerful, and colder, I imagine," replied Biggles, pushing the door open. "More like a prison cell than anything else," he went on, striking a match. "Well, there's nothing here ; let's go."
"Just a minute; strike another match; I saw a piece of candle-it may be useful."
" Candle!"
"Yes. There's nothing funny about that, is there?" "No, I suppose not, except that it's odd that a candle should remain here for so long."
Biggles lighted the candle, of which a good half remained, and they surveyed the blank walls of the deserted building. "Yes, we shall do better in the cabin," he said.
"I'm not so sure. If we could get a good fire going-"
"Fire! What are we going to burn?"
"We could burn the door," suggested Algy brightly. "Well, go ahead and pick it to pieces with your fingers,"
sneered. Biggles. "It would take an axe to make any impression on that."
"Don't be funny," Algy told him. "What's this, I wonder," he went on, stooping and picking up a small piece of paper that was half buried on the sandy floor. He held it to the candle, and a curious expression crept over his face as he looked at it. "That's funny,"
he said.
"What is?"
"If, as you say, this was a British dugout, how comes this here? " questioned Algy, passing him the paper.
"Written in Russian, which I can't read to any extent," said Biggles, turning the paper over. " Murskilooks like a name. Well, I'm dashed. This is a label, and it doesn't look very old."
"What do you make of it?"
"I don't know what to make of it, unless someone has had some Russian machinery stored here; a farmer, for instance."
"I'm not an agricultural expert, but this place doesn't look to me as if much farming has been done around here lately," replied Algy. "Has that anything to do with it, I wonder?"
Biggles saw that he was looking at something on the wall, and crossed over to see what it was.
"What about that?" asked Algy.
Someone at some time had drawn a curious device in black paint on the seaward wall. It appeared thus: "Beats me," muttered Biggles, "unless it's an Admiralty mark of some sort-that may be it."
"Reminds me of those plates you see on walls-firehydrants."
"Yes," replied Biggles slowly. He put out his hand and touched the mark; then he withdrew it and looked at his fingers. "Why, it's wet!" he said in an amazed whisper. "
Someone must use this place, but what on earth for is more than I can imagine, unless it is the Admiralty, or the Ministry of Fisheries. But one thing is certain: that sign, or whatever you like to call it, means something. By Jove! I believe that hydrant idea of yours was right; those marks mean distance and position. They couldn't mean anything else. That arrow at the bottom, for instance, and the M. If M means 'mile,' it means something is half a mile straight down, so obviously that isn't it. What else could it mean besides milesmetre-that's it. Half a metre-just over eighteen inches."
"Perhaps it's a buried treasure," suggested Algy hopefully.
"Buried fiddlesticks ! Wait a minute." Biggles began stamping about on the floor. "Here it is, whatever it is," he announced, as the solid sound suddenly gave way to a hollow one. "Just where you picked up that piece of paper. Find a piece of wood or something to dig with. This is rather fun; we've nothing else to do, so it will kill time."
Algy hunted about with the candle outside the door, and presently returned with an old rusty piece of iron.
"That'll do," declared Biggles, and began scraping away the earth from the hollow place.
Ten minutes later, taking it in turns, they struck something solid, and, raking aside the loose earth with their hands, exposed an iron manhole-cover.
"Gold!" chortled Algy. "I've always wanted to find a miser's hoard-strewth!"
The exclamation leapt to his lips as Biggles lifted the cover, exposing what lay beneath.
What Algy seriously expected to find he did not know, but it was certainly not what he now saw. At first glance it appeared to be a complicated piece of machinery, but a close examination showed it to be a row of large electric accumulators, some intricate wiring, and a switch.
"Here, we'd better cover this up; it's an Admiralty gadget all right; must be," said Biggles seriously.
"What about switching on the switch to see what happens? "
"Don't be a fool, anything might happen. That switch might explode a minefield somewhere and blow the fleet up, for all we know."
"Admiralty, my foot!" cried Algy suddenly, bending down. "The Admiralty don't use Russian machines, do they?"
"I shouldn't think so. Why?"
"Look at the name on these accumulators."
"Murski, Moscow. That's the name that was on the paper. Why, of course," went on Biggles excitedly, "that label was on the package that brought this stuff over. But we'd better cover this up; whoever it belongs to it's no concern of ours."
They set to work and in a few minutes had replaced the soil. When they stood up, the ground was as smooth as when they entered the hut.
"Come on, it's time we got back to the machine," said Biggles, blowing out the candle. "
Crumbs! Isn't it dark? Watch your step."
The lapping of the water on the beach guided them towards the sea, and they had almost reached their aircraft when Biggles laid his hand on Algy's arm. "Hark!" he said. "Do I hear a machine, or am I crazy?"
"It's an aeroplane all right," declared Algy, with his head on one side.
"The mist has cleared, and so has most of the cloud, but who on earth would be night-flying on such a night as this?" asked Biggles in surprise. "What a funny sound the engine makes; sounds sort of muffled. By Jingo, it's coming this way, too!" he went on as the sound drew nearer. "Stand still a minute, and see if the engine tells us anything."
They stood quite still in the darkness, listening.
"Well, I'm dashed if I know," he growled, "but if it was daylight I should say there was a formation of machines upstairs; if there aren't several engines up there I'll eat my hat."
"Big R.A.F. bomber, perhaps?"
"Must be; can't be anything else as far as I can see.
"Well, I'm dashed!" interrupted Algy breathlessly. "What's wrong now?"
"There's a light in the hut-or there was. It's gone now."
"You're getting lightheaded."
"Lightheaded my eye! Do you suppose I don't know what a light is when I see it? I saw a light in that window, I tell you, as if someone had flashed an electric torch."
"Impossible!"
"There you are; what did I tell you?" cried Algy triumphantly as the window of the hut became a square of dull orange light. "Someone's lit that candle."
"We're beginning to see things," muttered Biggles. "What the dickens is happening?
Come on; let's go back; whoever it is will be able to tell us where we are, and tell us the way to the nearest village. Hark! By James, that machine has cut off its engines, which knocks my suggestion on the head. If there is more than one machine, the chances against all the pilots throttling back at the identical instant are too remote to be considered. There is only one machine up there and it's a multi-engined job. But never mind that; let's go and see who it is in the hut."