The Aeroplane of Adventure

©2009 David Marlor

This novel is based on the characters created by Enid Bylton in the Adventure Series. In this regard, it is the ninth adventure and follows The River of Adventure.

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Chapter 15: Adventure Underground

Philip found his torch a few steps further down when he heard the rumbling and Jack's muffled shouts coming down the stairway. Philip ran for all he was worth up the spiral stairway. But his twisted ankle suddenly sent a sharp pain up his leg. He fell in agony against the hard metal steps. He managed to grab on to the railing and limp up the stairway, but not as fast as he would have liked. He came around the final bend and saw the moonlight disappear, closed off by the heavy rocky roof of the lamp.

Soon Philip found himself in complete darkness, except for the powerful beam of his torch. He felt thankful that he had taken the extra batteries from his duffel bag and put them in his pocket before leaving the treehouse. Philip sat on the step and rested for a minute. Surely there must be a way to open the roof again? Why else would there be a stairway up here?

"Jack!" he yelled. "Jack, can you hear me?" Philip listened but the rocky roof was too thick for sound to penetrate. He flashed his torch around him. Next to him was the lamp, sitting in its resting space. But, except for the stairway and lamp, there didn't seem to be anything else. No levers, no switches. Nothing.

He decided to sit and wait a while in case Jack found a way to cause the lamp to rise.

Philip must have nodded off, because he awoke with a start when his head fell against the steel railings. He looked at his watch. Four in the morning. No wonder he was tired! What was Jack doing? How long had he been here now? It must be three hours. Three hours! Obviously Jack had had no luck in finding a way to get the beastly lamp to rise.

Philip felt in his pocket and found some soft chocolate. He put it in his mouth and felt instantly better. He decided to go down the spiral stairway and see if there was a control near the bottom. He got up and tested his ankle. It was still sore, but he could put his weight on it. He started to descend the stairway, always going around and around, bending constantly to the right. The stairs went a long way down. Soon he left the lamp chamber and found the stairway winding its way down a narrow hole. It was no longer steel either, but had now become a rock spiral stairway. It narrowed down so it was just wide enough for one parson to walk. Nobody could pass if they wanted to if it wasn't for the little niches let into the side of the stairway. When he saw the first of these niches, Philip mistakenly thought he'd come to a door.

Down and down went Philip. Down and down, round and round, deeper and deeper into the depths of the hill. After what seemed like ages, Philip found himself at the bottom of the spiral stairway. He flashed his torch ahead and saw a narrow passage angling steeply down in front of him. With no other way to go, Philip continued to follow the passage. He had no sense of the direction he was going. Except down of course. But where did this passage lead?

Philip came to a junction with a bigger and wider passage. His torch picked out something shining on the floor. He bent down and whistled in surprise. There were train tracks laid out about two feet apart on the floor of this tunnel. A train tunnel! On the island! Was this a mine then? Philip knew that sometimes miners used small trains to move ore or goods through the tunnels.

The air felt fresher in this tunnel and Philip could feel a breeze blowing through. He went to the right and followed the new train tunnel as it gradually wound down and down. Then he heard a noise coming from behind. To his left he noticed a small niche. Snapping off his torch, Philip crouched in the small recess. The noise came nearer, a sort of rumbling and whining noise. Then Philip heard voices and saw lights. Some men were coming down the passage on a small train.

Fancy driving underground in the dead of night! Philip shivered. He crouched back and felt a rush of air as the train ran by. He squeezed as far back as he could, and as he pushed, he felt the rear of the cave give way and poor Philip tumbled down a steep incline with an involuntary cry.

He sat up, brushed himself off, and tested his bruised arms and legs. Nothing seemed to be broken. Gingerly, he stood up and flashed his torch on. He was in a small cave, not much bigger than he was. To his left he saw a bright pinprick of a light. Philip crawled over to it and found that it was a peephole into a much larger and brighter room. In fact, as Philip's eyes adjusted he cold see it was a huge floodlit cave with men working at consoles around the perimeter down below. "They look like ants from up here," thought the boy. "Golly, what is that?"

In the centre of the large cave room was what looked like a rocket that Philip had seen in a science manual at school. But this looked much bigger than the pictures he had seen. And why was it in the middle of this island? Philip felt his hair prickle. Whatever these men were doing here, they didn't want anybody to know about it.

He watched the goings-on a little longer and then decided he'd better find a way out. "In fact," thought the boy, "I really think we'd better get off this island as soon as we can and tell Bill all we know. He'll know what to do. Now, how do I get out of here?"

Philip shone his torch back the way he had fallen. He found that by using the rocky sides of the steep narrow tunnel, he could pull himself back up the way he had fallen. Philip was soon in the niche in the train tunnel again. The boy snapped off his torch and sat and listened. After ten minutes, Philip felt it was safe to start walking in the tunnel again.

He crawled out of his hiding place. "Well," he thought. "If the men are going in that direction, then I'll go the other way." So he set off in the opposite direction to the men. He used a hanky to shield his torch now, knowing that men were down here. The train tunnel seemed to be a long one. After a while it opened up into a larger cave. By the light of his torch, Philip could see small trains sitting on sidings. The engines looked strange to Philip. Nothing like the engines he knew back home. There were about six trains sitting in the cave. The main line, as Philip called it, ran up the middle and disappeared into another tunnel.

Philip went into this tunnel and after five minutes found that it opened up into another much larger cave. There were dim lights in this cave. Philip shut off his torch and cautiously crept into the cave. He let out an involuntary exclamation.

"Gosh!" he said to himself. "Aeroplanes. It's an underground hanger of some kind." Astonished, he looked around. Except for about five aeroplanes of different types and sizes, the place looked deserted. Philip kept to the shadows at the edge of the cave and made his way around the perimeter.

"How did they get the aeroplanes in here?" wondered Philip. "There must be a large door to the outside." He came to what looked like a kitchen off to one side near to a large aeroplane. The food on the table made Philip realise that he hadn't eaten for quite a while. He grabbed a handful of bread and ham and retreated into the shadows to eat.

"Gosh, I feel much better now," thought Philip. After a rest, he made his way around the cave-hanger, feeling much bolder. He walked up to one or two aeroplanes and examined them. All of them had been painted in a light gray colour. None of the planes had any identification markings on them.

Floodlights suddenly lit the cave-hanger and Philip darted to the back of the cave and hid behind a large crate. As he watched, a train emerged from the tunnel he had walked through. Loaded on the train were long cylinder-like objects. Each car of the train held about six. As Philip watched, the train stopped next to the big aeroplane he had just been examining. Two men jumped off the train and were joined by two more from a small door in the side of the cave that Philip had missed.

The men carefully unloaded the train's cars and loaded them into the belly of the large aeroplane.

"That's the lot for this flight," said one of the men to the train operator. "Tell the boss that the shipment will go out tonight on schedule."

The men detached the train engine from the cars and got back on the engine. One of the other men threw a switch and the train engine ran around its cars. It rejoined with the cars on the opposite side and rumbled off back down the tunnel it had come from.

The other two men went back through the doorway they had come from and the flood-lights snapped off, leaving just the dim lights to see by. Philip waited a few more minutes to make sure the men had gone and to let his eyes adjust to the dim light, and then darted over to the aeroplane that the men had loaded. The belly door was still open, so he climbed in quickly and cautiously flashed his torch around. Each of the cylinder objects had four small fins and where pointed at one end. The tip of the point was painted red. On the side was a small red logo that looked like a capital T with a line crossed through it.

Philip felt a prickle of excitement run up and down his spine. He'd seen that sign before. Now, where had he seen it? Of course! On that fragment of metal that Jack had found at Eagle Grange. What was the connection between Eagle Grange and this remote island?

Philip still hadn't a clue as to what the objects in the belly of the aeroplane were for. Maybe Bill would know, but Philip certainly didn't. They were like nothing he had ever seen before. Phillip wondered if he could escape on this plane, like he had out of the Valley of Adventure. But no, that wouldn't work. There was nowhere to hide in this plane and besides, he didn't know where it was going. And he had no way of telling the girls and Jack.

Crawling out of the aeroplane's belly, Philip made his way to the great hanger-like doors he'd seen earlier. In one of the doors he spotted a smaller door. Philip tried it, expecting it to be locked, but to his surprise it opened. He opened the door a crack and listened. Nothing. Philip opened it wider, ready to run and hide if there was somebody there. Nobody!

He stepped through the door and found himself in a pitch dark cave. He quickly flashed his torch and saw that he was in a narrow space between the metal doors and the rocky wall of the cave. "The rock must open by some mechanism when they want to take the aeroplanes in and out," thought Philip. He felt a draft around his ankles and followed it along the side of the steel doors. He came to a small round opening near the floor. The draft seemed quite strong here, so he crawled in to see where it went. Philip had to put his torch on now and risked that it wouldn't be seen. The small round tunnel bent steeply to the left and suddenly Philip found himself in daylight.

Phillip felt overjoyed. He'd managed to escape from the tunnels and he'd learned something about the island. Though what he'd learned he really wasn't sure. Philip pushed his way through the brush and found himself on the side of the airstrip, not far from Bill's aeroplane. Philip was surprised to see the aeroplane still sitting under its netting. Why didn't the men hide it in the hanger with the rest of their aeroplanes?

Looking back, Philip saw that the hanger he was in must be accessed by a secret door in the face of the steep cliff next to the airfield. At least he knew the way back now, although it would take him most of the day. He was glad he'd stopped to eat in the cave-hanger.

Philip set off up the familiar path, through the cliff tunnel and across the open space, keeping a sharp lookout for the men. There was nobody about. He climbed steadily and it was well after lunch when he reached the top of the hill.

He looked around. It looked so peaceful and natural that he found it hard to believe there was a way underground from here, and a big lamp that popped up at will. He looked around a little more and checked the bush they had hidden in the night before, just in case Jack had decided to wait another night for the lamp to rise again. But no, Jack wasn't there. Instead, Philip found a note stuck to the inside of the prickly bush. it said:

Philip. Sorry I couldn't get you out. I've gone back to the girls. I'll come back tonight and try again.
—Jack

Philip grinned. Good old Jack. Philip left a note to say that he was going back to the treehouse, just in case they missed each other on the trail, though that was unlikely. After a short rest, Philip set off at a fast trot down the steep hillside. It was dinner time when Philip got back to the pool. He expected to see the others lazing about next to the pool. But there was nobody there. "They must be in the treehouse," thought Philip.

The ladder wasn't down, so Philip yelled up into the tree. "Hi, Dinah, Jack, Lucy-Ann, it's me." There was no answer. Philip began to feel uneasy. He ran down the rocks and climbed up inside the trunk of the tree and was puzzled to find the hole out to the branch boarded up. Phillip found it easy to pry one board off and continued up to the treehouse. Nobody was there.

"Maybe they've gone looking for me and I missed them on my way down," thought the boy. He opened some tins and had his dinner. Afterwards, he slipped down to see if the raft was still there. Maybe Jack had decided to take the girls and go for help. But no, the raft was still there, hidden under its seaweed. He walked back to the treehouse, feeling uneasy.

"Where is everybody?" he thought. "And why didn't they leave me another note in the treehouse?"

Continues tomorrow...

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