Biggles Takes It Rough, by W. E. Johns
"The skunk who sank my boat must have scoffed my beer."
I regret to inform you that the title refers to sleeping rough. As opposed to any other meaning that I cannot imagine Johns was unaware of because come on.
Biggles, Ginger, Bertie, and Algy go to investigate possible airplane-related crimes on a supposedly deserted Scottish island, and proceed to have ALL the Scottish island-related experiences you could possibly want to read about, like camping, foraging and hunting, creating a little home in an abandoned house, exploring a castle, chasing criminals around the moors, etc.
One of the most enjoyable things about the Biggles series is how varied the tone, mood, and even genre is across books. The WWI short story collections are both dark and zany, much like MASH in tone and incident. Biggles Flies East is a tense spy thriller. Biggles Flies South is batshit 30s pulp adventure a la H. Rider Haggard. Biggles Buries a Hatchet is a quite dark story with a very grim setting, in which not everyone can be saved but one man hits bottom and climbs up from there. Biggles Looks Back is a Ruritanian adventure that's also a sweet, wistful look at love that begins when you're very young and remains when you're all much older and living very different lives.
Biggles Takes It Rough is Johns' take on a specific type of children's adventure book, the one where kids camp out and play house and cook over little fires and solve a mystery. It has all the charm and atmosphere and humor of such stories.
Bertie particularly shines. Everything involving him is comedy gold. Early on, he's complaining about having nothing to eat but what they can hunt and forage: "I mean to say, wild duck with nothing else is going to be pretty tough chewing."
Biggles turned to him. "What do you expect with it - gravy?"
And then there's the running thread of Bertie and crustaceans. Here he's been startled by a criminal when he's just retrieved a large crab from a trap.
"Unless you're as daft as you look, you won't try giving me any of your lip."
What Bertie's answer to this, if any, would have been will never be known, for at this juncture the scene turned to comedy - at least as far as Bertie was concerned - when the crab took a hand. Literally. Bertie's hand. Bertie may have forgotten what he was holding. Or in his resentment at the way he was being questioned he may have become careless. At all events, the struggling crustacean managed to get a claw round one of his fingers.
His reaction was natural and instantaneous. With a yell he swung out the arm concerned to get rid as quickly as possible of the creature that had fastened itself to the extreme end of it. In this he succeeded. The crab, suddenly subjected to centrifugal force beyond its experience, was flung off the hand. It flew through the air and, although this was purely accidental as far as Bertie was concerned, would have hit his questioner in the face had the man not ducked and taken a quick step backwards. Anyone would have done the same thing. But the rocks, wet from the recent rain and slippery with seaweed, were not the place for sudden ill-considered movements. His feet skidded, and after a vain attempt to recover his balance he sat down with a squelch in a pool of water. The crab ended its short flight in the sea.
It's a funny incident, but the way Johns tells it makes it so much funnier. Centrifugal force beyond the crab's experience! The short flight of the crab!
A delightful entry in the series.
[image error] [image error]
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I regret to inform you that the title refers to sleeping rough. As opposed to any other meaning that I cannot imagine Johns was unaware of because come on.
Biggles, Ginger, Bertie, and Algy go to investigate possible airplane-related crimes on a supposedly deserted Scottish island, and proceed to have ALL the Scottish island-related experiences you could possibly want to read about, like camping, foraging and hunting, creating a little home in an abandoned house, exploring a castle, chasing criminals around the moors, etc.
One of the most enjoyable things about the Biggles series is how varied the tone, mood, and even genre is across books. The WWI short story collections are both dark and zany, much like MASH in tone and incident. Biggles Flies East is a tense spy thriller. Biggles Flies South is batshit 30s pulp adventure a la H. Rider Haggard. Biggles Buries a Hatchet is a quite dark story with a very grim setting, in which not everyone can be saved but one man hits bottom and climbs up from there. Biggles Looks Back is a Ruritanian adventure that's also a sweet, wistful look at love that begins when you're very young and remains when you're all much older and living very different lives.
Biggles Takes It Rough is Johns' take on a specific type of children's adventure book, the one where kids camp out and play house and cook over little fires and solve a mystery. It has all the charm and atmosphere and humor of such stories.
Bertie particularly shines. Everything involving him is comedy gold. Early on, he's complaining about having nothing to eat but what they can hunt and forage: "I mean to say, wild duck with nothing else is going to be pretty tough chewing."
Biggles turned to him. "What do you expect with it - gravy?"
And then there's the running thread of Bertie and crustaceans. Here he's been startled by a criminal when he's just retrieved a large crab from a trap.
"Unless you're as daft as you look, you won't try giving me any of your lip."
What Bertie's answer to this, if any, would have been will never be known, for at this juncture the scene turned to comedy - at least as far as Bertie was concerned - when the crab took a hand. Literally. Bertie's hand. Bertie may have forgotten what he was holding. Or in his resentment at the way he was being questioned he may have become careless. At all events, the struggling crustacean managed to get a claw round one of his fingers.
His reaction was natural and instantaneous. With a yell he swung out the arm concerned to get rid as quickly as possible of the creature that had fastened itself to the extreme end of it. In this he succeeded. The crab, suddenly subjected to centrifugal force beyond its experience, was flung off the hand. It flew through the air and, although this was purely accidental as far as Bertie was concerned, would have hit his questioner in the face had the man not ducked and taken a quick step backwards. Anyone would have done the same thing. But the rocks, wet from the recent rain and slippery with seaweed, were not the place for sudden ill-considered movements. His feet skidded, and after a vain attempt to recover his balance he sat down with a squelch in a pool of water. The crab ended its short flight in the sea.
It's a funny incident, but the way Johns tells it makes it so much funnier. Centrifugal force beyond the crab's experience! The short flight of the crab!
A delightful entry in the series.
[image error] [image error]
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