WORRALS GOES EAST

by Captain W. E. Johns

XV. FRESH PLANS (Pages 174 – 181)

Worrals introduces Frecks to the Bronfields. Helen asks for Worrals’ gun in order to shoot Hylda but Worrals won’t let her do it. Worrals decides that they have to grab the Germans aeroplane and as they can’t all go, Frecks will have to fly it on her own. Brunowsky comes to the printing room and finds Sheikh Ali dead. Worrals captures him. They all move outside of the cave just as dawn is breaking. Berthold and Voss see them, so Frecks has to run for the aircraft, with Worrals giving her covering fire. The Zogorites who handled the portable palms also break into a run, approaching the aircraft from the opposite side. Worrals was “sick at heart, for the position looked hopeless. Even if Frecks reached the machine first the natives would be all over it before she could start up”. Suddenly a machine gun opens fire giving them additional covering fire. It is Nimrud shooting from the mouth of a high tomb on the cliff face. Worrals, Doctor Bronfield and his two daughters, Helen and Daphne run up the steps to where Nimrud is, whilst Frecks is able to take off. Nimrud relates how he returned to Frecks plane after it crashed and found out from the Zogorites, before he killed them, that Frecks had been taken to Wadi Omar. He retrieved the machine gun from the plane and came to assist. Worrals can still hear Frecks plane and when she hears the engine cut out she realises that her petrol is finished. Worrals says “We shall stay here and fight it out”.