WORRALS ON THE WAR-PATH

by Captain W. E. Johns

XII. A CHAPTER OF ADVENTURES (Pages 120 – 130)

Worrals flies over the Camargue. After a while her starboard engine develops a fault and releases a trail of black smoke. Worrals throttles back and realises that there is no hope of her trying to get back to the Cevennes now. She lands, but finds herself in soft mud and although the plane runs for a little way, the nose of it ends up in the ground. Worrals is in an empty and lonely area and there is not a human being in sight. She estimates she is some 60 miles away from the Cevennes and she rests and soon falls asleep. She is awoken by a plane circling overhead and then sets out to walk back to the Cevennes. After some ten minutes or so, she is seen by a man on horseback, he is a local cowboy known as a 'gardian'. He takes Worrals on horseback to the road to Nimes some 12 kilometres away. On the road, Worrals meets a policeman on a motor-cycle looking for the aeroplane that she has landed. Clearly the spotter plane has reported what it had seen. Worrals says she has seen it and gives directions. The 'gendarme' realises that he will have to walk to the location as there is no road and so he parks up his motor-cycle and leaves his dust coat with it. When the man is out of earshot, Worrals takes the motor cycle for her own use and drives towards Nimes.