BRITISH COMICS
THE BIG TREE
The last
episode, taken from The Wizard June 1st 1974
I hurried to the top of the tunnel and found Greg Walton, Dick Sullivan and
Jock Leven anxiously awaiting me. Directly they saw that I had no torch in my
hand their expressions revealed their horror.
My
name is Sam Walker and I’m a photographer. At that time I was part of an
expedition into the heart of
We were about halfway down when Walton yelled—“Hold on tightly!” I did
so, and the next moment the upper end of the ladder became detached from the
branch we had recently left, and the ladder whirled downwards. The Tree-men had
cut the ladder above us.
There came a jerk that all but tore
us from our hold, and then we found ourselves swinging upside down from the
lower branch, swinging on only a few feet of ladder. We managed to right
ourselves, but the ladder was swinging so violently that we could not climb it.
Then I noticed that the lower end now swung very close to yet another branch,
which seemed to be unoccupied. “Let’s get down to the bottom of the ladder and
make it swing us across!” I shouted. I reached one of the bottom rungs. The
others were not far above me, and we began to work ourselves to and fro, like
children on a swing. I reached out with one hand to try to grasp some of the
twigs which grew from the side of the bough we wanted to gain. Our chief fear
was that more Tree-men would appear there before us. We could hear them
scrambling down alternative ladders. At last I got hold and held on, hooking
both feet over a rung of the ladder. It was a precarious link. “Use me as a
bridge to get across!” I panted. It was not a thing they ventured at ordinary
times, but the situation was desperate and one by one my companions climbed
across me. Somehow I hung on, but my arms were nearly at breaking point by the
time Walton had crossed. Then they heaved me up to the branch as well. Jock
Leven was in the lead now, and a moment later he shouted out that he had found
a slender ladder going in the right direction. We raced to the spot. By this
time we were experts on ladders, and shot to the bottom without making use of
the cross rungs. Hardly had we landed when Leven let out a stifled cry. Sitting
on the same branch, between ourselves and the hole in the tree, was one of the
giant rats which we had encountered on our way up. At that moment it was faced
about to watch the oncoming Tree-men. Its long tapering-tail was lashing to and
fro. “Let’s get out of here—down some other ladder!” hissed Walton. But when we
came to seek such a thing we found there was none. The only way down from this
branch was to get to the tree trunk and make use of that for further descent.
We were trapped between the rat and the Tree-men. If we had possessed one
revolver among us things would have been different, but we had not seen our
firearms since they had been first taken away from us when we were captives of
the Tree-men. Against the rat we were helpless, except for our sticks. So far
it did not know we were there. The Tree-men had seen it, and had stopped
climbing down. They clung to the trunk and pointed the rat out to one another.
For the moment the Tree-men could
not reach us, but our position was far from comfortable, for we were only
protected by the rat, and it might at any moment, scent us out and turn on us.
We had never been in a worse plight since we had climbed the Big Tree.
FLYING
DRAGON.
Once again our hopes were centred on our comrade, Archie Cunliffe,
below. Archie had been chosen to make a do-or-die attempt to escape with a
home-made parachute, and he was trying to help us that morning.
Archie
had tried to communicate with us earlier that morning but we had been unable to
reply. Now we were worried about what he would think of this. Would he believe
it too late to make a rescue attempt? Would he be unable to do any thing
without our co-operation? There was a good deal of noise at the other end of
the branch, though we could not see what was going on. The Tree-man were
evidently throwing spears at the rat, and we hoped they wouldn’t succeed in
dislodging it. Suddenly a new sound struck upon our ears, a shrill,
high-pitched whistling. It seemed to come from well above the ground, but not
from the Big Tree. We turned our heads the other way, and looked intently
around us. All we saw was a gigantic but vague shape swooping slowly to and fro
about a thousand feet below us. It seemed to be rising, but not very quickly,
and the arc of its movement was only a few hundred feet. The shrill whistling
was incessant. It was a little louder when the mystery thing swooped, but it
never stopped altogether. Then the sun shone through the clouds and revealed
another detail. The swooping object had a hideous face, with great staring eyes
with a vivid red mouth. “Are we seeing things?” muttered Dick Sullivan. “It’s a
flying dragon!” I laughed. “It is a flying-dragon cloth and bamboo! It’s a
gigantic kite! Archie Cunliffe has made a big Chinese kite and has attached a
whistle to it. The wind is making that noise as the kite climbs.” The kite
continued to swoop higher and higher. Someone far below was letting out an
immense amount of thin but strong twine. The Tree-men must also have seen the
strange object soaring around the lower branches, and they had become silent.
We kept watch for the giant rat, but devoted all our attention to the kite. It
was truly a big one, perhaps a dozen feet across, and twenty in length. The
tail, of twisted paper attached to thread, must have been thirty feet long, and
undulating like a snake as the kite changed direction. Presently a group of
figures ran into our view, and we could see that they were holding on to the
end of the thread. It was Ben Rami, Watson’s faithful servant, who held the
bobbin, and with him were three or four Swahili bearers, helping him hold the
kite from plunging too steeply. Archie Cunliffe was not to be seen. “I bet he’s
on his way up!” muttered Dick Sullivan. “He’s using this to hold the attention
of the Tree-men while he makes the climb.” “Good old Archie! If we had got his
signal, we might have found he was asking us to come down and meet him.” But
there we were, pinned at the end of a branch by a giant rat and a bunch of
Tree-men! We were prisoners unable to stir to help ourselves. The whistle from
the kite was nerve-racking in its shrillness. It never stopped. It seemed to
pierce our eardrums, and rose to an unearthly sharpness as the kite made one of
its periodical plunges. After each plunge the kite rose still higher. We
watched the flight for altitude anxiously. We wondered how long the twine would
last out, and dreaded that it might snap. Everything now seemed to depend on
the kite getting high enough to cause a real panic amongst the Tree-men. The
whistling was louder now, for the kite had gained several hundred feet. It was
now no more than three hundred feet below us, and was still climbing. In the
bright sunlight the face looked hideous. Cunliffe must have drawn it with
charcoal and the blood of some animal. If we had never seen a kite before we
would certainly have been terrified when it swooped in our direction. The
thread was almost invisible, and in any case it would mean nothing to the
ignorant tree-dwellers. A burst of voices greeted the nearer approach of the
flying dragon. Some of the Tree-men were already retreating. We decided to go
along the branch and watch what happened. The rat was now backed against the
tree trunk, and its teeth were bared. It had glimpsed the kite through the
foliage below. We looked to the branches above, crouching figures were no
longer there. The Tree-men had given up the chase, and were climbing to get
away from this new invader of their strange world in the Big Tree. Pieces of
twig and many leaves were drifting down – testimony to the haste of their
movements, for usually they disturbed nothing. Then came a noise from below,
and the rat turned its head. A huge grey shape rushed up the side of the tree
and arrived beside it. It was another rat of equal size, evidently its mate.
The two monsters stood there for a moment, then with one accord turned and went
up the hole at express speed. We sighed with relief. The way was now clear. We
could go down by way of the trunk. We hastened to swing ourselves on to the
footholds which the Tree-men had worn in the bark, and down we went, while the
giant kite rose almost level with us.
CATERPILLAR
MENACE.
It was at about twelve hundred feet from the ground, when we were in the
midst of that jungle formed by huge lower branches of the Big Tree, that we
encountered the caterpillars again. They appeared to be busy devouring the
leaves ahead and below us. There were more than we had ever seen before; there
must have been sixty of the hideous creatures, ranging in size from six to
fifteen feet in length.
They
had thick green bodies and hideous-looking black heads. Their eyes were
attached to their heads by short spikes. The mouth was on the underside of the
head, and we could hear the sharp teeth tearing at the tough leaves. We
clambered round to the other side of the hole, and reached the end of another
branch, but there the situation was worse. The caterpillars were in greater
numbers. We crouched and watched them devouring leaf after leaf, and finally we
decided to try to clear a way by hurling things at them. This had absolutely no
effect, but from somewhere below them came a voice which cheered us: “I’m
coming, you chaps! What’s wrong?” We were too startled to reply for a moment,
then yelled in unison: “Archie! Archie Cunliffe! Where are you?” “On my way
up—about a couple of hundred feet below by the sound of it. What’s the
trouble?” “Caterpillars!” we yelled back. “There are scores of them between us
and you. They won’t shift, and we can’t use the branches when they’re there.”
“Hold on and I’ll clear a way,” was his cheery reply. “I’ve got a couple of
revolvers. What about the Tree-men?” “Your kite settled them! They’re well
above us, and not likely to come down yet awhile.” We heard Archie chuckle, and
shortly afterwards his head and shoulders appeared through some leaves. He
looked hot, but quite unperturbed, and when he saw how the caterpillars barred
our way he wedged himself comfortably against the tree trunk and drew a
revolver. I had seen Archie using a revolver before, and knew him to be a crack
shot, but he had never done better than he did today. Shot after shot he fired,
and every one scored a hit. As soon as they were struck the caterpillars reared
up, curled themselves in ungainly shapes, and toppled backwards from their
perch. They uttered no sound. In all he fired twelve times, and each shot
claimed a victim. A gap was made through which we could descend and quickly we
took advantage of it. At last we reached Archie, and there was much handshaking
and back-slapping. On his back he had a heavy pack, and in this he brought
foodstuffs, tobacco, matches, and other things which he knew we desperately
needed. We squatted down there and then, and enjoyed the first real food for
days. Heartened by this, we continued the downward climb, for we still had a
great distance to go. Archie told us how he had injured his ankle when he had
made that amazing parachute descent. It was still swollen and bandaged. He had
spent the night making a kite, with the aid of Ben Rami, and at dawn had
demonstrated how it was to be flown. When it was high enough he started up the
tree. Archie was the only one provided with climbing irons, but we had had so
much practice during the past week that we were quite at home without these
aids. We did not go straight to the bottom without a halt. Not even the
toughest of us could do that. We had numerous rests, and it was during these
that Walton picked selected leaves and flowers and threw them down to be
studied when we reached the ground. Archie told us how Ben Rami and the bearers
had buried the body of poor Reg Hunt, and how the falling of our comrade to his
death had almost provoked a stampede amongst the carriers. Finally we swung
down the last long, stiff climb. It was the end of a desperate day, and we were
not as strong as we had been when we had first climbed the Big Tree, but we were
buoyed up by the sight of the ground below, and by the knowledge that if we
once got there we would be safe. By the time we reached the bottom we were
exhausted, but our Swahilis caught us up and carried us over to the camp, where
they had first-class meals awaiting us. Lying there in the shade of one of the
huts, we looked up at the mighty tree vanishing towards the clouds, and found
it hard to believe that hundreds of savages, giant gorillas, and a host of
giant rats, spiders and caterpillars and other insects lived amongst its
widespread branches. That night we slept soundly, and the Swahilis and Ben Rami
kept watch, but as far as they knew none of the Tree-men came down to follow up
their escaped prisoners. Perhaps they were just as glad to get rid of us as we
were to be out of their tree! The following day I took a series of photos with
ordinary and telephoto lenses, while the others took further measurements,
samples of bark and of the soil in which the Big Tree grew. That night we
camped on the other side of the river, and in the morning took out last look at
the Big Tree before once again plunging into the bamboo forest on the next lap
of our trek back to civilization. We knew we were taking with us a story that
would startle not only
THE END
The
Big Tree 10 episodes appeared in The Rover issues 1125 – 1134 (1945/1946)
The Big Tree 10 episodes appeared in The Wizard issues
The Big Tree also appeared in The Wizard 1974
© D. C. Thomson & Co Ltd
Vic Whittle 2006