Biggles Flies Again by Captain W E Johns

Author:Captain W E Johns [Johns, Captain W E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction, Flying
Published: 2011-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THE ORIENTAL TOUCH

FROM THE comfortable cockpit of the "Vandal" Biggles looked down dispassionately upon the sun-soaked waters of the Indian Ocean two thousand feet below as he sped northwards on the eight-hundred-mile trip from Penang to Rangoon. A fortnight had elapsed since their departure from New Guinea. They had made their way by easy stages to Lombok and Surabaya, made famous as the landing-grounds of record-breaking pilots on the Australia run, and thence to Jakarta, the terminus of the K. L.M. grand trunk airline to the Dutch East Indies. From there they had flown to Singapore, where they had been guests of the Royal Air Force Flying-boat Squadron stationed there while the "Vandal" was given a quick overhaul by Service mechanics, and then on to Penang. After a brief stay they had left that morning for Rangoon, the next port of call on their homeward journey.

In the distance, on their right, lay the palm-fringed, surf-washed beach of the Malay Peninsula, with the dark-green forest stretching away behind it. To their left was the ocean, an infinite expanse of blue reaching to the far horizon; not a ripple broke its surface to give a hint

of the seething fury soon to come in the wake of the inevitable monsoon. A short distance ahead were the outlying sentinels of the Mergui Archipelago, the long line of islands that lie like a chain of emeralds set in turquoise for more than four hundred miles along the western seaboard of Malaya.

For an hour they held steadily on their course, fresh islands rising up over the horizon to meet them as others slipped away astern. At one of them, rather larger than the rest, a junk rode at anchor in a small almost landlocked lagoon. From sea-level it must have been out of sight of passing ships, but from the air its limp sulphur-yellow sail gleamed like a ray of gold amid the encircling blue.

For a few minutes, while they were passing over the island, the pilot watched it curiously; he could see the crew standing on the beach watching him, and half envied them their simple existence far from the turmoil of civilisation. Presently the island slid away behind as the "Vandal" roared on through the crystal-clear atmosphere, and with its passing the junk became a half-forgotten memory.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later that Algy, starting up out of a day-dream, noticed the pilot staring hard at something that lay ahead and below. Following his gaze, he had no difficulty in picking out the object of his partner's attention on the limpid water. At first he watched it disinterestedly, but as he held his gaze a puzzled expression crept over his face, and shading his eyes from the glare of the sun he subjected the object to a long and searching scrutiny. He looked up and his eyes

met those of the pilot. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly and turned his thumb down with a grimace. Instantly the roar of the engine

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