Biggles Cuts It Fine Read online

  Biggles made two uneventful circuits, flying low, whereupon, as nothing of interest was seen, he nosed down to what proved to be a comfortable mooring, presumably the anchorage mentioned by the castaway.

  “We’ll stay here to hear what this fellow has to say,” he told Ginger.

  “It’s no use returning to base only to find that we have to come back. Moreover, this weather is exceptional. It may not last. We might have to wait a month for another chance like this to complete the survey. If this chap we’ve picked up was one of a ship’s company, and he must have been, his shipmates may be about. We’ll see while we’re here. Tell Algy to come down.”

  “Okay,” acknowledged Ginger.

  Ten minutes later the two machines, side by side, were floating close inshore on the calm black water of Deliverance Bay, Hog Island.

  * * *

  1 The Crozets were named after the historian of de Fresne’s expedition.

  2 This incident, while strange, is not unique in the history of islands. On one of the Society Group, some rats got ashore from a trading vessel. Having no natural enemies, they multiplied at phenomenal speed and overran the island. The planter who lived there, faced with ruin, imported some cats. These, too, increased at a fantastic rate while the food supply—the rats—lasted. When the last rat had been eaten, the cats, faced with starvation, set about each other and so exterminated themselves. A few survivors saved themselves by learning how to catch fish. They have remained fish eaters to this day.

  III

  ALF ROBINSON

  THE castaway was given a little while to eat the best meal the aircraft could provide, and at the same time recover from the shock of his rescue, which had left him somewhat shaken and inclined to be incoherent, as was understandable. Apart from that, strange to relate, he seemed fit enough, although emaciated by semi-starvation and nervous from long solitude. The crew of the second machine launched their dinghy and came over to see him. They stayed on to hear his story, and took the opportunity to have their “elevenses “ in a stationary aircraft.

  When Biggles thought that the new member of the party had had enough to eat for the time being, and was in a fit state to talk, he invited him to tell his tale, which, except in one respect, turned out to be a typical castaway misadventure.

  The man, somewhat unnecessarily, began by saying that he was English. His name, appropriately enough, was Robinson—Alf Robinson. Which made them all smile. His home was at Wapping. He had always wanted to be a sailor ever since, as a kid, he had played round the Port of London. He was eighteen years old, and this, the voyage that had ended in disaster, was his first. It would also, he assured his hearers, be his last. He had seen enough of the sea to last a lifetime, he declared with some warmth—a sentiment which Ginger could well appreciate.

  He had shipped as a deck hand on a tramp named the Kittiwake, 1,400 tons, Captain Legett, master, out from the Port of London to Cape Town with a cargo of machinery. Failing to find freight in South Africa for London, the Captain had accepted mixed cargo for Hobart, Tasmania, hoping there to pick up a consignment of wool for the United Kingdom. The date was some time in January, from which it was worked out that Robinson had been on Possession Island for eleven months.

  Six days out from the Cape, the ship, which Robinson described as an old tub, had developed engine trouble—not for the first time. The Captain had not asked for help because the Chief Engineer thought he could put the trouble right, which in fact he did, although by that time they were rolling in dirty weather.

  The sailor admitted that he didn’t really know what happened after that, although he remembered hearing someone say that they had drifted south while the engines were out of action. “We were in fog most of the time, so I reckon no one didn’t know where we were,” he opined.

  All that he knew for certain was, that about midnight, just as he had gone below, there was a horrible scraping sort of crash. He was thrown over, and by the time he had picked himself up, he was up to the neck in water. By the time he had reached the deck the ship was on her beam ends and settling fast. It was pitch dark, foggy and bitterly cold. “I reckon the poor old Kittiwake must’ve tore her bottom clean off on a lump of ice,” surmised Robinson sadly.

  It was impossible to see what was happening, he resumed. He could hear the skipper shouting every man for himself. He didn’t think any boats got away; there wasn’t time.

  He found his own hanging by the stern, the falls having apparently jammed. The bows were already in the water, the ship was so far down. He slashed the ropes with his knife and by wonderful luck the boat landed on the water the right way up. “Lucky ! Not arf I wasn’t,” declared Robinson. “You see,” he added naively, “I can’t swim a blooming stroke.”

  Sitting in the boat he saw the ship disappear.

  That was all he knew about the wreck. For a little while he could hear men shouting. Whether they were in boats or in the water he didn’t know. There was nothing he could do, for when he felt for the oars they weren’t there. “Must’ve dropped out when the boat got up-ended,” he conjectured. “So there I sits, out on the rollin’ deep, all on my blinkin’ lonesome, wonderin’ what’s goin’ to ‘appen next. Blimey! What a night! Cold? I was fair perished. I shan’t forget it in a ‘urry, I can tell yer.”

  “I’ll bet you won’t, laddie,” murmured Bertie sympathetically.

  Robinson said he sat in the boat with nothing to do but bale and stare at the sea for three days and nights. On the third night the boat bumped into something solid. At first he thought it was an iceberg. Whatever it was knocked a hole in the bottom of his boat which began to sink, so he scrambled out to find himself on a rock. Not until daylight came did he know how big it was. Then he discovered that he was sitting on a ledge at the bottom of a cliff, with no way to the top unless he climbed up the face. How he did this he didn’t know. He thought he might as well fall and die quickly as sit where he was and die slowly. Somehow he got to the top, and after that it didn’t take him long to discover that he was on a fair-sized island, the coldest, wettest, ugliest island he had ever seen.

  Still, it was better than an iceberg. But, he averred, he nearly died when he saw the sort of place he’d got stuck on.

  Walking about to keep himself warm, and hoping to see some of his shipmates who might have made the same landfall, he discovered a notice board on which had been painted the wonderful words: “Food Depot in Cave One Mile East. Cairn marks Spot. H.M.S. Pelican, 1899. It give me new ‘eart,” asserted the castaway. “Good old Pelican, sez I. They ought t’ ‘ave named yer Santa Claus. Off I goes in a ‘urry, for I don’t mind tellin’ yer I was pretty peckish by this time. And there, lo and be’old is a big pile of stones in front of a cave. Some of the grub was pretty rotten, as you’d expect after all that time; but ‘oo was I to be particuler ? There was paraffin, matches, fish ‘ooks and lines, medicines with labels sayin’ what they was for, all done up careful in sealed tins. Best of all there was some fags and tobacco. This is a bit of all right, I sez. Good old Navy. Trust them! Wot ‘it me ‘ardest was bein’ on me own, and thinkin’ of me shipmates. From the top of the island I could see others, so I ‘oped that they might’ve got ashore on one of ‘em. Mind yer, wot with collecting driftwood for fires, and fishin’, and watchin’ fer ships, I had plenty to keep me busy. I lived in the cave, of course, so I could keep an eye on my stores. The nights were the worst part. Lumme! I used to think they’d never end.”

  Those listening to this recital found the story entertaining, but nothing more. What was to come, although they had no reason to suspect it, was far more interesting, and they listened all ears, as the saying is, as Robinson continued.

  He said he reckoned he’d been on the island four or five months, as near as he could guess, when, one fair morning, at daybreak, making his usual survey of the ocean, which was always his first job, he saw, to his unspeakable joy, a ship—or rather a submarine—standing close in, off a distant point of the island. Fearing it might
leave before he could get to it, he rushed up the hill on which he had built a bonfire for such an occasion. But his frantic haste was his undoing, for in jumping over the rocks he slipped and fell, striking his head and knocking himself unconscious. At the same time, although being unconscious he didn’t know it, he broke or sprained his ankle—he wasn’t sure which.

  How long he lay where he had fallen he didn’t know. He never did know. But it must have been a fair time, for when he came round it was dark, and he was so stiff with cold that he could hardly move. It was when he tried to do so that he discovered the injury to his ankle. He described in some detail his anguish as he lay there, sick and helpless, waiting for morning, wondering if the submarine was still there or if it had gone. When daylight came at last and there was no sign of it, he admitted that he lay there and “cried like a kid.”

  With a great effort and in terrible pain he managed to get to his cave, and there he lay—he didn’t know how long—until he was well enough to hobble about, using two pieces of driftwood for crutches. He was doing this when, looking down, he saw, to his amazement, a man sitting on the rocks, staring at the sea. He shouted. The man saw him and came up. It took him some time because, as it turned out, he was also on the sick list.

  This was how Robinson had met Willy. Robinson fell silent at the recollection of this strange meeting.

  “And who exactly was Willy?” asked Biggles, trying not to reveal his impatience.

  “He was a Jerry, a real German, but he could talk English all right,” explained the castaway. “He was a good sort, too. He was dying with consumption, and he knew it, which made me feel I hadn’t much to grumble at after all. Poor old Willy. I did what I could for him but it was no use. He lived about six weeks. Then he died. I couldn’t dig much of a ‘ole to bury ‘im in, but I piled plenty of rocks on top to stop the gulls from gettin’ at ‘im. The big ‘uns, what they call albatrosses, are fair devils. They’d eat you alive if they thought they could get away with it. At one time I thought Willy seemed a little better; but no; it didn’t last. Then I saw he was a gonna. Died like a good ‘un, too, ‘e did. I said all the prayers over ‘im that I could remember.” Robinson’s eyes grew misty at the memory.

  “Who was he?” pressed Biggles.

  A hard note crept into Robinson’s voice. “You won’t believe this, but it’s a fact. ‘Is shipmates put ‘im ashore and left ‘im to die.”

  Ginger stared, incredulously. “Oh no—!”

  Robinson threw out a hand. “There you are, I told you you wouldn’t believe me!”

  Biggles stepped in. “Why did they do that?”

  “Well, yer see, it was like this ‘ere. Willy was one of the crew of the sub, and as it ‘ad a long way to go, they thought if they kept ‘im aboard, they might all catch the disease off ‘im. That’s what ‘e told me. They left ‘im some grub.”

  “That was very kind of them,” said Biggles, caustically.

  “They said they’d be back for ‘im later on when ‘e was better; but of course, Willy knew better than that.”

  “Do I understand that this was a German submarine?” asked Biggles.

  “Oh no. Not likely,” denied Robinson. “Willy said Germans wouldn’t do a thing like that. It was a Russian.”

  “I see,” said Biggles slowly, his eyes on the sailor’s face. “How did he come to be aboard a Russian craft?”

  “That’s the first thing I asked ‘im,” stated Robinson. “‘E told me. He’d ‘ave told me anything, he was that sore about the way they’d treated him. It seems he was in that part of Germany what the Russkys ‘ave collared. During the war, ‘e served in Hitler’s U-boats, so there was nothing ‘e didn’t know about subs. The Russians must have found that out, because they went to ‘im and offered ‘im a job—good pay it was, too, he said. Being out of work ‘e took on, naturally. So presently he found ‘imself in one of their biggest and latest subs; able to stay under water six months if it wanted to. This was the one I saw, of course. We talked about it for hours. There wasn’t much else to talk about.”

  “Did he tell you what the submarine was doing?” inquired Biggles.

  “‘E told me as much as ‘e knew ‘imself. It was supposed to be all very secret, but Willy didn’t care, ‘e was that fed up. I reckon the Bolshies would ‘ave thought twice about dumping ‘im ashore if they’d known I was there. Thinking about it after Willy died, it seemed I might ‘ave been lucky after all, missing the boat like I did.”

  “I’d say you were very lucky indeed,” said Biggles seriously. “Carry on.”

  “Well, at first things weren’t too bad, Willy said. They stopped at two or three islands and had a look at ‘em. Then they went to the bottom of South America and ‘ad a look there. That was pretty awful, ‘e said. There was thousands of islands, some with mountains covered with snow. It was cold and raining all the time. They ended up at a place where a German cruiser ‘id in the Kaiser’s war, after the Battle of the Falklands. Willy ‘eard them talkin’ about it. ‘E often ‘eard the officers talking, but he couldn’t always get what it was about. ‘E was the only German aboard, so most of the talk was in Russian, which he didn’t understand, apart from orders. All he knew about it was, some people who were aboard were not part of the sub’s regular crew. They were the ones who always seemed to go ashore. ‘E couldn’t make out what they were doing, but they seemed to do a lot of measurin’. Between you and me, Willy worked out there was somethin’ fishy about it. For one thing, every time they picked up a radio signal from another ship they used to sit on the bottom till it had gone. It was when they were there Willy first started to feel queer. He told me ‘e didn’t say anythin’ about it at the time, thinking ‘e’d be able to last out until ‘e got home. Home? What a ‘ope ‘e’d got. One day along comes a Russian whaler what must ‘ave known they was there. She fills up the sub’s tanks, and off the sub goes again, this time for the islands where you found me. From what Willy said it was this very island we’re on now.”

  “Hog Island.”

  “He didn’t know the name. Nor did I if it comes to that. Anyway, it was while they were ‘ere that the doctor on board sees Willy coughing and spittin’. ‘E makes ‘im undress, and after he’d ‘ad a look at ‘im, ‘e told ‘im ‘e was pretty sick. Poor old Willy gets pushed into the sick berth and there he ‘as to stay. It must’ve been then that they decided to get rid of ‘im, for presently ‘e’s told that ‘e’s goin’ to be put ashore for fear of them all catching the same disease, being cooped up together in a glorified tin can. Of course, they didn’t tell ‘im as blunt as that. What they said was, it was bad for ‘im to be cooped up without fresh air. But Willy was no fool. He twigged they didn’t want ‘im. He was no more use to them, so they didn’t care what ‘appened to ‘im as long as ‘e didn’t get ashore somewhere and talk about what ‘e’d seen. So they puts ‘im ashore and away goes the sub. There was nothin’ Willy could do about it. He’s just sittin’ there waiting to die when I spots ‘im. ‘Ow about that for a trick to play on a shipmate? I asks yer.”

  “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” said Biggles.

  “As I say, the skipper tells Willy that ‘e’ll come back for ‘im later on. That was all my eye and Betty Martin. Willy knew ‘e hadn’t a ‘ope. What a place to end up! It would’ve been kinder to shoot ‘im.” Robinson sighed. “Poor old Willy. ‘E was a good sort. I’m glad I was there at the finish to keep ‘im company.”

  “You haven’t seen the submarine since?”

  “No. And I didn’t reckon to,” answered Robinson.

  “Tell me this,” requested Biggles. “Did Willy happen to say if any of these people in the submarine had been left ashore anywhere—I mean, apart from himself?”

  “He didn’t mention it. If it ‘appened after he fell sick I reckon ‘e wouldn’t know, because, accordin’ to what ‘e told me, he was kept in quarantine, in the sick bay. ‘E wouldn’t see much from there.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Biggles.

>   Ginger stepped in. “What I don’t understand is this. Why didn’t they leave him here on Hog Island? Why take him over to Possession?”

  Robinson shook his head. “You’ve got me there, mate. Funny, I never thought of that.”

  “They had a reason, you may be sure of that,” said Biggles. He looked at his watch. “But that’s enough for now. We’ll see about getting back.”

  “And then what?” asked Ginger.

  Biggles hesitated. “I don’t know—yet. I may have to dash back to London to tell the chief about this. There’s too much to put in a written report. Besides, that would take time. I don’t feel like going any further on my own responsibility, particularly as islands belonging to other people come into the picture. But we’ll talk about this later on, when we’ve had time to think about it. Alf, here, must be panting to get back to Wapping. He’s overdue to renew acquaintance with a razor and a pair of scissors.”

  Alf smiled sheepishly. “You get a bit careless about yerself in a place like this,” he explained. “What I could do with more than anythin’, if you was to ask me, is a slice or two of roast beef or a steak pudding like mother used to make. Boiled penguin is all right for a bit, but lumme, you don’t ‘alf get sick of it.”

  Ginger had no difficulty in believing this.

  IV

  LEAVE IT TO BIGGLESWORTH

  ON the afternoon of the third day following the events narrated in the previous chapter, Biggles walked into his chief’s office at Scotland Yard to find the Air-Commodore waiting, having been advised by cable of the probable time of his arrival.

  Biggles had, in fact, resolved on his course of action during the return flight from Hog Island to the Cape. Before doing anything else, he decided, he would have to put the Air-Commodore in possession of information which, through the odd chance of picking up the castaway, had been brought to his notice. This practically confirmed what had been suspected, and the situation that had developed, or threatened to develop, was too serious for him to handle on his own initiative.