Chapter 3 Tarzan and the Jungle Murders by Edgar Rice Burroughs
BROKEN WINGS
The blue waters of the Mediterranean rolled below Lieut. Cecil Giles-Burton as he winged south toward the African shore. So far, the undertaking had progressed with extraordinary success and it would have been quite simple to circle to the west now, and swing back to London. But there were reasons for his not doing so. His orders were to continue south to Bangali, where his father was Resident Commissioner. He was to leave the purloined plans with his father and continue on to Capetown, just as if this was really a sporting flight, as the newspapers had announced. For the British Government thought it unwise to permit a friendly power to suspect that its agents had stolen the plans from under the nose of the Great Man, even though they had originally been stolen from them. And because Lieutenant Burton's father was Resident Commissioner at Bangali, the lieutenant had been selected for the mission. What could be more natural than that the son should stop to visit his father on his flight to Capetown? In fact, the government records would show that he had asked permission to do so.
Although Bangali had an emergency airport, it was off the main traveled air route, and there was a question as to whether or not a plane could be refueled there, so Burton decided to land at Tunis and fill his tanks. While he was refueling at the Tunis airport, a little crowd of the curious surrounded his ship. The formalities of the French airport were quickly and pleasantly attended to, and while he was chatting with a couple of the officials, a native approached him.
"The Italians," he said in excellent English, "may beat you to Capetown, if you remain here too long."
"Oh," said one of the Frenchmen, "a race. I did not know that."
Burton thought swiftly. He was being pursued! And the Italian Government was seeking to give the impression that it was just a sportsman's race.
"It really isn't an official contest," said Burton, laughing. "Just a private wager with some Italian friends. If I don't want to lose, I'd better be hopping off."
Five minutes later he was in the air again and winging south with wide-open throttle, grateful for the ingenuity and thoughtfulness of his confederates in Rome and the cleverness of their agent, the "native" in Tunis. Burton had lost half an hour at Tunis, but it would soon be dark, and if his pursuers did not come within sight of him soon, he hoped to lose them during the night. He was flying a straight course for Bangali, which would take him east of an airline course for Capetown and west of the regular airlane from Cairo to the Cape, the route that they might reasonably expect him to fly because of its far greater safety. Occasionally he glanced back, and finally, in the last rays of the setting sun, he saw the shimmering silver reflected from the lower surface of the wings of an airplane far behind. All night that plane followed him, guided by the flames from his exhaust. It was a faster ship and hung doggedly on his trail.
He wondered what the enemy's plans were. He knew they didn't want him; it was the papers he carried that they wanted. If he could reach Bangali, the plans would be safe, for he would find ample protection there.
But it was not to be. When dawn broke, the pursuing plane had drawn up beside him. Its wing-tip almost touched his. He saw that it was an Italian military pursuit plane, piloted by an Italian officer. The two passengers he did not recognize, although he assumed that they were Campbell and Zubanev, whom he had never seen.
Open country lay beneath them, and the Italian officer was motioning him down. He believed that Bangali was not more than fifty miles away. When he shook his head at them, they turned the machine gun on him. He banked and dove, and banked again, coming up under their tail.
His only weapon, was a service pistol. He drew it and fired up at the belly of the ship, hoping that he might be lucky enough to sever one of the controls. As the other ship banked and turned, he zoomed up.
They were coming from behind now, and coming fast. He turned and fired four more shots into them, and then a burst of machine-gun fire tore away his rudder and stabilizer.
Out of control, his ship went into a spin. He had done his best, but he had failed. Cutting the engine, he bailed out with his parachute and floated gently down to earth. As he was floating downward, he watched the other ship. It was behaving erratically, and he wondered if he had hit the pilot or damaged the controls. The last he saw of it, it disappeared low over a forest a few miles to the south.
Thus the two ships went down to land at the separate spots where Tarzan of the Apes was afterward to find and wonder over them.
Burton quickly came to his feet and unbuckled the harness of his parachute. He looked about him. No living creature was in sight. He was in the midst of an African wilderness, with only a hazy notion of the distance to Bangali, which lay, he believed, a little east of south. His plane lay, a crumpled mass of wreckage, a few hundred yards away. He was glad he had cut the engine and that his ship had not burned, for it contained a little food and some extra cartridges. He figured that he was in a hell of a fix, and he was—much worse than he realized. But the plans for which he had risked his life were buttoned securely inside his shirt. He felt of them to make sure that they were still there. Satisfied, he walked over to the wrecked plane and got ammunition and food. He set off immediately in the direction in which he thought Bangali lay, for he knew that if his pursuers had made a safe landing they would be looking for him.
If Bangali were only fifty miles away, as he hoped, and lay in the direction he believed it did, he felt that he might reasonably expect to reach it on the third day. He prayed that he was not in lion country, and, if there were natives, that they were friendly. But he was in lion country, and what natives there were were not friendly—and Bangali was three hundred miles away.