Biggles in the Terai Read online

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER 1: WHERE IS ALGY?

  CHAPTER 2: BIGGLES ARRIVES

  CHAPTER 3: RAM SINGH

  CHAPTER 4: A STRANGER OFFERS HIS SERVICES

  CHAPTER 5: DARK WORK IN THE NIGHT

  CHAPTER 6: FIRST FLIGHT

  CHAPTER 7: AKBAR ASKS QUESTIONS

  CHAPTER 8: THE WHISTLE

  CHAPTER 9: A DISCOVERY AND A MYSTERY

  CHAPTER 10: DETECTIVE WORK IN THE WILDS

  CHAPTER 11: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS

  CHAPTER 12: BIGGLES IS WORRIED

  CHAPTER 13: MAHOMAD KHAN

  CHAPTER 14: HOW IT HAPPENED

  CHAPTER 15: EXPLANATIONS AND A PLAN

  CHAPTER 16: WHAT HAPPENED AT THE AIRSTRIP

  CHAPTER 17: BUTTONED UP

  FOREWORD

  THIS WORD ‘JUNGLE’

  Many countries have found it necessary, or desirable, to coin a word to describe tracts of land peculiar to themselves, and these have often found their way into the vocabularies of other peoples who, naturally, did not have a name for something they themselves did not possess.

  For examples we have prairie, the wide areas of level grassland of Central North America. Moving south, the similar treeless plains of tropical America are called savannah. In South Africa the early Dutch settlers called their open country the veldt. In Europe, from the Mediterranean island of Corsica we have maquis, a single word which describes the dense forests of dwarf evergreen shrubs, or tall white heather, that cloaks so much of the island. From the barren plains of arctic and sub-arctic Russia comes tundra, meaning a frozen or partially frozen desert in which nothing grows except mosses and lichens. But the word with which we are concerned is jungle.

  India inevitably had to have a name for its vast expanses of wild, virgin country; or territory that had been deserted and allowed to revert to anything nature cared to make of it The native word in the Hindi language was jangal, which in English, with very little alteration, has become jungle.

  Up to the time of the British occupation of India we had no use for such a word, but having helped ourselves to it we now exploit it far outside its literal meaning. A few nettles, weeds or brambles, become a jungle. A modern city has been called a ‘concrete jungle’, which surely is stretching the word too far — unless it is intended simply to suggest a dangerous place.

  Apart from its misuse, the term jungle has served a convenient purpose because much of the land surface of our planet in the region of the Equator, where there is a high rainfall, can be broadly described as jungle, although in most cases a more correct word would be forest. The vegetation of tropical America, Africa and Asia, consists mostly of great trees.

  But let us not quibble over the precise meaning of a word we all understand. When it is used we know the sort of picture it is intended to convey: a place with dense undergrowth, perhaps with a few trees, through which a man can only advance with difficulty unless he has a cutting tool to clear a path. It may or may not be literally impenetrable. Size has nothing to do with it. In fact, areas to which the word jungle could be, and is applied, occur in every country except where the absence of water has created a desert. Usually, however, the word implies tropical vegetation, probably with dangerous inhabitants — animals, insects and reptiles.

  In the following pages the word is used in its true sense, so let us glance at what might be called a classic example of jungle, as it occurs in its country of origin, and discover how it came to be there, because we shall have more to say about it presently.

  If you care to open your atlas and turn to the map of India you will observe on the extreme north-east frontier a country about five hundred miles long and shaped rather like a sausage. This is the independent Kingdom of Nepal with whom we have been on friendly terms for a hundred and fifty years. It has helped us with men and materials in two world wars. As remote as a country could be, it lies in three broad terraces, each with its own climate and vegetation as the altitude increases towards the shadows of the mighty Himalayas.

  The original inhabitants were, it is believed, of Mongolian stock; but at some period of the eighteenth century certain warlike tribes in Central India decided to move northward. Why they did this we don’t know, but from the earliest times, before the world was surveyed and frontiers fixed, it was not uncommon for a nation to pick up its belongings and seek a new land in which to live. There are many examples of such migrations. Perhaps the soil had become impoverished. Perhaps game was getting scarce, for animals migrate as well as humans. People may have fled before invaders or from an epidemic disease.

  At all events, these warrior tribes of Central India, always travelling north, did not stop until they reached the fair and pleasant land which we call Nepal. They dropped their loads at a little town named Gurkha, some forty miles from that still legendary capital, Katmandu. They were not opposed. Presumably there was plenty of room for everyone. They settled down, intermarried with the local people and in course of time produced a cheerful, utterly fearless race of little brown men famous for their fighting qualities. Their religion is Hindu.

  Known as Gurkhas (after their original settlement) they have for years furnished the British Army with some of its most loyal and efficient regiments.1 Their standard weapon in the army is a heavy curved knife two feet long called a kukri. Actually it is more than a weapon. It is often used for household chores. Boys start early to carry one, with the result that by the time they have grown up they are expert in its use. Not only can they quickly slash a path through a jungle; the kukri will just as easily peel a potato as it will remove the head from the shoulders of an enemy.

  One might not suspect it, but a little brown man sitting outside his home in far-off Nepal may have seen active service all over the world and is now enjoying his declining years on a well-earned British army pension. We have a minister in Katmandu and the Nepalese have a minister of equal rank in London. But this came later.

  All the early Gurkhas (or Gurkhalese or Nepalese, if you prefer it) wanted, was to be left alone in peace. They had good reason to think they had nothing to fear from the north because their country lay in the shadow of the most stupendous mountain system on earth. The giants of the Himalayas. The average elevation is 18,000 feet, and forty of the mountains, in range after range divided by fearful chasms, top 24,000 feet. Invasion could hardly come that way. A smart well-equipped party might cross this terrifying divide, but not an army with all the baggage an army needs.

  Of the south they were not so sure. Trouble might come through India. To rule out this possibility, in 1815 they called in nature to erect a barrier. All they had to do was leave untouched, uncultivated, a strip of marsh land, twelve miles wide, all along their southern boundary. This was the Tariyani, or as it is more often called, the Terai. Nature made a good job of it. This land, left alone, became the perfect jungle. In it can be found the best that nature can produce, and the worst; the most beautiful, and the ugliest; the most harmless and the deadliest. No army commander in his right mind would try to march troops through it. What a modern tank would make of it is open to speculation; but the drivers, even if they got through, would be in a sorry state by the time they arrived in Nepal. No other country in the world enjoys such natural protection.

  Now let us have a closer look at this genuine jungle because presently we shall need to know more about it; what to expect. This is the picture.

  For the sportsman or the naturalist it is not without its fascination. An ideal sanctuary for animals, and birds with brilliant tropical plumage, at a certain season of the year a visitor might imagine he had arrived in paradise. He would be quickly disillusioned. The heat, and a myriad stinging, biting, bloodthirsty insects would see to that
. During the monsoon, and after, it is a very different cup of tea. The thunderstorms are of unimaginable intensity. Those who have experienced them claim the thunder and lightning are continuous.

  Much of the terrain, as we have already remarked, is marshy, for it is threaded by several rivers. After the rainy season, there are vast areas of swamp from which spring dense growths of rushes up to fifteen feet high. Wide clumps of bamboo and rattan can present unclimbable fences. These conditions are of course perfect for mosquitoes, and here they are monsters with particularly voracious appetites. The Terai also breeds a great variety of other savage insects to make life uncomfortable if not intolerable. It is no place for a picnic.

  That other curse of the tropics, the leech, is also there in force. Sitting on a leaf or hanging from a twig it looks like a short piece of string. It is blind, but on the approach of anything with blood in it, it coils itself like a spring and jumps; it rarely fails to hit its mark. Once on you it will get to your skin somehow, somewhere, regardless of any protective clothing you may adopt. By the time it has had its fill of your blood and drops off it is a huge bloated slug. If you try to remove it before it is ready it leaves its head under your skin to set up a festering sore. All warm-blooded animals are plagued by this foul little beast.

  As you would expect there are crocodiles, as there are in almost all Indian rivers. As for snakes, all we need say about them is they include some of the most poisonous in the world. Size matters little. A twenty-foot python may be less dangerous than the krait, a small snake, but unless help is at hand its bite means death in a matter of minutes. The same with that evil-looking little horror, the cobra.

  The monarch of this frightening kingdom is of course the tiger. Apart from man he has nothing to fear; but even he has been known to die from infected wounds caused by thorns or porcupine quills which he is unable to remove.

  This side of the picture looks alarming, but it is not all bad. The vegetation can be enchanting as well as ugly. There are woods of chestnut, walnut, cherry, mimosa and other trees to provide retreats for tribes of monkeys and roosts for peacocks and other tropical birds. There are flowering shrubs in profusion. From the trees, on the bark of which they live, hang rare and lovely orchids, dropping their waxen petals on a wonderful variety of terrestrial flowers, the resort of exquisite butterflies and moths.

  This, then, is the jungle, the real Indian jangal, the jungle known as Terai. There is no great difficulty in getting to it. The people to whom it belongs are friendly. All you need is the money for your fare!

  W. E. J.

  * * *

  1 At the time of writing (1964) in the British Army there are four Gurkha Infantry Regiments, each of two Battalions. In addition the Gurkhas provide an Engineer Regt., a Signal Regt., an Army Service Corps and Military Police personnel. All are based on Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong, but four or five battalions at any one time are operating in Borneo.

  CHAPTER 1

  WHERE IS ALGY?

  Air Detective-Inspector Bigglesworth entered the office of his Chief, Air Commodore Raymond of the Air Police, and accepted an invitation to be seated. This was the usual prelude to a problem, so he took a cigarette from the box pushed towards him, and waited. He was not in a hurry and he was not perturbed. This was a common occurrence.

  The Air Commodore signed the document he had been reading, put down his pen and looked Biggles in the face. ‘How long is it since you heard from Lacey?’ he inquired.

  ‘The last letter I had from Algy was about a fortnight ago,’ answered Biggles.

  ‘Have you got the letter on you?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s in my office. Shall I fetch it? He didn’t say very much. I can remember the gist of it.’

  ‘What exactly did he say?’

  ‘He said he had just about got things buttoned up, so in a day or two he would be handing everything over to the Indian Customs for them to do the rest.’

  ‘Which means he must have got to the bottom of this gold-smuggling racket.’

  ‘That’s how I took it. He said there would soon be nothing to keep him in India, so he reckoned to be coming home in two or three weeks’ time. There were still one or two little things he had to do, which meant, I imagine, when he wrote, he was still short of some piece of conclusive evidence.’1

  The Air Commodore, with his eyes still on Biggles’ face, went on. ‘Did he tell you in his letter how the thing was being worked?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. Why not, I wonder!’

  Biggles shrugged. ‘You know how it is in the East. Algy is an old hand. He’d know how hard it is to find someone who could be trusted implicitly. He’d probably hesitate to put anything important in writing for fear of his letters being tampered with. Bribery and corruption is as common there as it is here when big money is at stake.’

  ‘From what you tell me, at the time of writing he hadn’t disclosed to the Indian authorities what he knew, or suspected.’

  ‘If he was wise he’d keep that under his hat until the last moment for fear of a whisper getting out to give the crooks a chance to slip away under the net. I don’t have to tell you that all too often the big bad boys get away, leaving the small fry to take the rap.’

  The Air Commodore nodded. ‘Too true,’ he sighed. ‘From where was Lacey’s last letter posted?’

  ‘From a place called Shara. I assumed he was operating from there.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Shara?’

  ‘Very little. I’d never heard of it. I looked it up and found it, a small place, in Upper Bengal, no great distance from Patna.’

  ‘I know a little more than that. I got some particulars from a colleague at the India office. The airfield was originally laid as a training ground for service pilots. When that was packed up it became a public aerodrome and an overnight stop for civil aircraft. Today I gather it’s little more than an air junction and refuelling station in charge of a care and maintenance party.’

  ‘Algy’s first letters came from Calcutta. I wondered why he had moved his base farther north.’ Biggles frowned as if a thought had struck him. ‘Why this sudden concern for him?’

  ‘He’s missing.’

  Biggles stiffened. ‘He’s what?’

  ‘Missing. So you needn’t expect him back yet — if at all.’

  ‘How much do you know about this?’

  ‘Actually, very little. He took off on what he told his maintenance engineer he hoped would be his last reconnaissance from Shara. Apparently he flew off to check something. He didn’t come back. He still hasn’t shown up.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Ten days.’

  ‘How do you know about it?’

  ‘I’ve just had a letter from the India Office in London. They thought I ought to know. You can read the letter. It doesn’t tell us much. No doubt they’ve told us as much as they know.’

  ‘What was he flying?’

  ‘A Hunter.’

  Biggles stared. ‘A Hunter. What the devil was he doing in a Hunter?’

  The Air Commodore shook his head. ‘It’s no use asking me.’

  ‘He went out in one of our Austers. Where is it? Do they say?’

  ‘It’s still at Shara. They want to know if we’re going to fetch it.’

  Biggles lit another cigarette.

  The Air Commodore continued. ‘He must have borrowed the Hunter from the Indian Air Force. They have some. It was fully armed — if that means anything.’

  Biggles looked up. ‘I’d say it means a lot. He wouldn’t be likely to attack another aircraft in any circumstances; so it sounds to me as if he thought he might be interfered with and wanted to be in a position to defend himself.’

  ‘That could be the answer.’

  ‘He didn’t say where he was going?’

  ‘No. Well, not as far as is known.’

  ‘He wouldn’t, of course,’ muttered Biggles. ‘There’s just a chance he may have said something, dropped a hint, per
haps, to the engineer who had charge of the machine. I take it he would be an Indian.’

  ‘Naturally. The man has been questioned. All he knows is, when the Hunter took off it headed north.’

  ‘I suppose a search has been made?’

  ‘Search planes have been out every day. Hence the delay. Our Indian friends didn’t want to upset us until they’d done everything possible on the spot. Now they’re satisfied Algy won’t be coming back, the search has been called off. You know India better than I do, so you can judge what hope there is of finding the remains of an aircraft, particularly if it is down in jungle country.’

  Biggles thought for a moment. ‘There are a lot of airfields in the north of India. We built them when we were there as forward bases to keep the recalcitrant tribes, like the Waziris and Mahsuds, from raiding the plains.’

  ‘Yes, but that was on the north-west frontier, where there was so often trouble.’

  Biggles admitted this was true. ‘I don’t know much about the north-east, where apparently Algy had been working. If the old airfields are being maintained Algy might be down on one of them.’

  ‘There isn’t much hope of that, and you know it,’ returned the Air Commodore gravely. ‘Inquiries would be made at any that are still in use. However, I’ll ask about that. 1 seem to remember reading during India’s recent troubles with China that they cleared some forward ground for airstrips for the transportation of supplies and the evacuation of the wounded. I imagine that would be nearer the fighting, farther to the west. But as I say, I’ll find out about that. Can you remember anything else Lacey said in his letter?’

  ‘He mentioned that what we were looking for, meaning the gold, of course, was coming in by air from the north.’

  ‘That surprises me. Where could it come from in the north?’

  ‘I don’t know. I imagine it could start from China. The Chinese now hold Tibet. It’s no great distance, as a plane flies if the pilot is sober, from Tibet down into India.’

  The Air Commodore’s eyebrows went up. ‘Over the Himalayas?’