The Polar Treasure - Robeson Kenneth - Страница 19

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"I'll show yer who's master of this hooker!" he snarled.

He reached for Doc's throat.

The walrus was now treated to the big surprise of his life.

His hand was trapped in mid-air by case-hardened bronze fingers. For an instant, McCluskey thought the hand had been cut off, so much did that grip hurt, and so numb did it make his arm.

He started a blow with his free fist.

It traveled hardly more than an inch. Then that hand was closed in a fearful clasp. The hard paw crushed like so much dough. Big blisters of blood popped out on the finger tips, and burst with fine sprays of crimson.

The walrus screamed like a hurt child.

He stared at his hands. His eyes nearly fell out. Both his monster claws were now being held easily by one hard hand of bronze. Strain as he would, he could not budge them. The largest vise could not have held them tighter — or more painfully.

The walrus screamed again. He had thought himself a mighty fighter. Not in the scope of his memory had he met a scrapper who could stand before him.

But in the hands of this strange bronze man, he was like a fat sheep in the jaws of a hungry tiger, Then a Big Bertha shell seemed to go off in the captain's head. He slumped senseless.

Doc had kayoed him with one punch!

THE SUBMARINE rooted through growlers and pan ice. Back and forth, right and left, lunged and wallowed. Sometimes sheets of pan ice crowded up on the deck until Doc, Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny had to dive hastily down the hatch to avoid being crushed or swept overboard.

They had been searching for five hours.

No sign of Monk or Renny had they found.

A bitter wind was swooping off the distant wastes of ice-capped Greenland. It froze spray on the steel runners affixed to the hull of the under-the-ice sub. But the chemicals on the sides of the ship flushed the frigid coating away at intervals.

"The gale was worse during the night," Johnny muttered. "Poor Monk! Poor Renny!" He blinked his eyes back of his spectacle lenses.

Although Monk and Renny had indeed vanished during the night, it was night only by their watches. The sun hung well above the horizon — where it had lingered for some days. It was wan, almost lost in a pale, nasty haze.

Ice which had piled up on deck abruptly slid off with a grinding roar.

Doc went outside. He carried powerful binoculars. But once more, a search through them disclosed nothing.

However, the sub now surged across a comparatively open lead in the ice pack. This was what Doc had been hoping for.

"Stand by to put out the seaplane!" he ordered. The crew crowded the deck. They were surly. The air of sinister trouble still hung about them. But they obeyed Doc's orders with alacrity. Some of them had seen what had happened to Captain McCluskey. They had told the others.

A deck plate was lifted. A folding boom was jacked into position.

Out came an all-metal, collapsible seaplane. Doc himself got the tiny hornet of a craft ready for the air.

Captain McCluskey came on deck while the work was under way. Doc Savage rested his golden eyes intently upon the walrus of a man.

McCluskey scowled for a second or two. Then he grinned sheepishly.

"Ye won't have any more trouble from me, matey," he mumbled. Then he winced and moved his hands.

Each paw was bundled in bandages until it resembled the foot of a man with the gout.

Doc drew his three remaining companions aside.

"Keep your hands on your guns," he warned them. "I don't think McCluskey will make more trouble immediately. But watch his crew!"

It seemed a miracle when the cockpit of the diminutive seaplane held Doc's mighty bronze form. The little radial engine was fitted with a starter. Doc turned it over. The cold made it stubborn. It fired at last.

The exhaust stacks smoked for a while. Then they lipped blue flame. The engine was warm.

The plane floats left a ribbon of foam as they scudded across the open lead in the ice pack. Doc backed the control stick. The ship vaulted off the water.

He banked in circle after circle, each one wider than the last.

The pale haze hadn't looked so thick from the surface. But it hampered vision amazingly from the air. The gloom was increasing, too.

No sign of Monk or Renny could he discern.

He flew back at last and alighted beside the submarine. The frozen rigidity of his bronze face told Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny the worst.

"Monk and Renny are — finished," Long Tom said thickly.

"Monk — how I'm gonna miss that guy!" Ham mumbled. He was near tears.

The crew hoisted the seaplane aboard, collapsed it, and stowed it under the deck plates.

TWO HOURS later, walrus-like Captain McCluskey was pointing with a thick arm.

"Rust my anchor — look!" he boomed. "Two points off the starboard bow!"

Doc Savage, coming up from below, was a bronze flash. He thought Monk and Renny might have been sighted. There was always the possibility they had been washed overboard, and had reached one of the many icebergs.

This, however, was only a herd of walrus asleep on an enormous pan of ice.

"We need fresh meat," explained Captain McCluskey. "It's unusual to sight 'em this far north. I'm goin' after some of the critters. Want to go along, matey?"

Doc nodded. He advised Ham, Johnny, and Long Tom to go also. It would get their minds off the loss of Monk and Renny.

Several of the crew were also going, big Dynamite Smith included in them. Doc made sure a number of the surly faction amid the crew, the suspected plotters, were among the hunters. There seemed nothing to be lost in deserting the sub for a time.

Two folding kayaks — long and narrow boats with a covering of sealskin — were set up. They also assembled a umiak, overgrown brother of the kayak.

Doc went below. He was gone about ten minutes. During that time, he was alone below decks, every one being outside to witness the departure of the hunters.

Doc came up, bearing a sizable bundle. This was done in waterproof silk.

"What's that, matey?" Captain McCluskey wanted to know.

Big bronze Doc Savage seemed not to hear the query.

They put off.

The edge of the iceberg, near where the walrus herd slept, arose almost vertically. It was too sheer for a landing. The hunters decided to stalk the animals from the berg. They paddled directly to the floe, alighted, and drew the folding boats well out of the cold water.

Captain McCluskey and the rest of the Helldiver crew led the stalk. Doc, with his strange bundle, kept warily in the rear. Ham, Long Tom, and Johnny trod his heels.

The bitter cold bothered them at first, but became less noticeable in a few minutes. They wore regulation Eskimo garb — moccasins reaching to their knees, and lined with reindeer skin, bearskin trousers, shirts of auk skins with the feathers inside, and shirts of sealskin, with a hood which covered their heads.

The surface of the ice pack was rough. Progress became laborious. The need for silence made it harder. Their speed was hardly half a mile an hour.

Captain McCluskey and his men drew a little ahead.

Suddenly they whirled. They aimed rifles at Doc and his friends.

"Kill the swabs!" shrieked Captain McCluskey.

DOC HAD been alert. He was not taken off guard. Hardly had the Helldiver men started their show of hostilities when a mighty bronze arm rushed Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham to cover behind an ice hummock.

The move was executed so quickly they were sheltered before the first rifle volley spattered out noisily.

Bullets dug into the ice hummock, showering Doc and his friends with fragments of ice. The pieces tinkled down the hard flanks of the ice mound with a sound like tiny bells.

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