"We hid on land. We saw the mutineers depart over the ice, hauling the fur-wrapped figure of a man on a sledge. We did not realize until it was too late that the man they hauled was my father."
She stopped. She bit her lips. Her eyes swam in moisture. They were very big, enthralling blue eyes.
Doc made an impatient gesture for her to go on. "Oh — I'm neglecting to tell you it was the crew who murdered those aboard the liner. Men named Ben O'Gard, Dynamite Smith, and Keelhaul de Rosa, were ring leaders — "
"I know all that," Doc interposed. "Tell your side of it."
"My mother and I got food from the liner after the mutineers had gone," she continued. "We built a crude hut inland. We didn't — we couldn't stay on the liner, although it was solidly aground. The mutineers might return. And all those murdered bodies — it was too horrible. We couldn't have borne the sight — "
"When did the Eskimos come?" Doc urged her along.
"Within a month after the mutineers had departed. This spit of land was their home. They had been away on a hunting trip."
She managed a faint, trembling smile. "The Eskimos treated us wonderfully. They thought we were good white spirits who had brought them a great supply of wood and iron, in the shape of the liner. They looked upon myself and my mother as white goddesses, and treated us as such — but refused to let us leave. In a way, we were prisoners. Then, a few days ago — the white men came!"
"Oh, oh!" Doc interjected. "I begin to see the light."
"These men were part of the mutineer crew," Roxey Vail said. "Keelhaul de Rosa was in command. They came in a plane. They visited this wrecked liner. After that, they seemed very angry."
"Imagine their mortification" — Doc chuckled — "when they found the treasure gone!"
"They gave the Eskimos liquor," Roxey Vail went on. "And they gave them worse stuff, something that made them madmen — a white powder!"
"Dope — the rats!" Doc growled.
"My mother and I became frightened," said the girl. "We retreated to a tiny hideaway we had prepared against just such an emergency. None of the Eskimos know where it is.
"An hour or so ago, I came to the liner. We needed food. There are supplies still aboard, stuff preserved by the intense cold.
"I heard the Eskimos come aboard. I spied on them. They had a white man prisoner. A white man with hair like cotton. There was something strange about this man. It was as though I had seen him before."
"You were very small when you were marooned here, Weren't you?" Doc inquired softly.
"Yes. Only a few years old. Anyway, the Eskimos talked of killing this white-haired man. I do not quite understand why, but it filled me with such horror I went completely mad. I screamed. Then you — you came."
"I heard your scream." Doc eyed her steadily. Then he spoke again.
"The white-haired man was your father," he said.
Without a sound, Roxey Vail passed out. Doc caught her.
He heard the search of the Eskimos drawing near. They did not have sense enough to hunt quietly. Or perhaps they wanted to flush him out like a wild animal, so he wouldn't be in their midst before they knew it.
Doc quitted the strong room. He sped down a passage, bearing the unconscious girl in his arms. He was soundless as a wraith. He came to a large clothes hamper. It was in perfect shape. It still held some crumpled garments.
Doc dumped the clothes out. The hamper held Roxey Vail nicely as the big bronze man lowered her into it. He closed the lid. The hamper was of open wickerwood. It would conceal her, yet she could breathe through it.
Directly toward the oncoming Innuits, Doc strode.
His hand drew a small case from inside his parka. With the contents of this, he made his preparations.
He stepped into a cabin and waited.
The first Eskimo passed. Like a striking serpent, Doc's bronze hand darted from the cabin door. His finger tips barely stroked the greasy cheek of the Innuit. Yet the man instantly fell on his face!
Doc flashed out of the cabin. His fingers touched the bare skin of a second Eskimo, another — another. He got five of them before the fat fellows could show anything like action.
All five men who felt Doc's eerie touch seemed to go suddenly to sleep on their feet.
It was the same brand of magic Doc had used on the gangsters in New York City.
Murderous Eskimo with his harpoon, or pasty-cheeked New York rat, with his fists full of high-power automatics — both are the same breed. Doc's magic worked in the same fashion.
The Innuits saw their fellows toppling mysteriously. They realized the very touch of this mighty bronze man was disastrous. They forgot all about fighting. They fled.
Ignominiously, they piled out on deck. Rigging tripped them. After the fashion of superstitious souls, the instant they turned their back on danger, their peril seemed to grow indescribably greater. They were like scared boys running from a graveyard at night — each jump made them want to go faster.
Two even committed unwilling suicide by leaping over the rail of the lost liner to the hard glacier far below.
In a matter of minutes, the last Innuit was sucked away into the screaming blizzard.
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
She stopped. She bit her lips. Her eyes swam in moisture. They were very big, enthralling blue eyes.
Doc made an impatient gesture for her to go on. "Oh — I'm neglecting to tell you it was the crew who murdered those aboard the liner. Men named Ben O'Gard, Dynamite Smith, and Keelhaul de Rosa, were ring leaders — "
"I know all that," Doc interposed. "Tell your side of it."
"My mother and I got food from the liner after the mutineers had gone," she continued. "We built a crude hut inland. We didn't — we couldn't stay on the liner, although it was solidly aground. The mutineers might return. And all those murdered bodies — it was too horrible. We couldn't have borne the sight — "
"When did the Eskimos come?" Doc urged her along.
"Within a month after the mutineers had departed. This spit of land was their home. They had been away on a hunting trip."
She managed a faint, trembling smile. "The Eskimos treated us wonderfully. They thought we were good white spirits who had brought them a great supply of wood and iron, in the shape of the liner. They looked upon myself and my mother as white goddesses, and treated us as such — but refused to let us leave. In a way, we were prisoners. Then, a few days ago — the white men came!"
"Oh, oh!" Doc interjected. "I begin to see the light."
"These men were part of the mutineer crew," Roxey Vail said. "Keelhaul de Rosa was in command. They came in a plane. They visited this wrecked liner. After that, they seemed very angry."
"Imagine their mortification" — Doc chuckled — "when they found the treasure gone!"
"They gave the Eskimos liquor," Roxey Vail went on. "And they gave them worse stuff, something that made them madmen — a white powder!"
"Dope — the rats!" Doc growled.
"My mother and I became frightened," said the girl. "We retreated to a tiny hideaway we had prepared against just such an emergency. None of the Eskimos know where it is.
"An hour or so ago, I came to the liner. We needed food. There are supplies still aboard, stuff preserved by the intense cold.
"I heard the Eskimos come aboard. I spied on them. They had a white man prisoner. A white man with hair like cotton. There was something strange about this man. It was as though I had seen him before."
"You were very small when you were marooned here, Weren't you?" Doc inquired softly.
"Yes. Only a few years old. Anyway, the Eskimos talked of killing this white-haired man. I do not quite understand why, but it filled me with such horror I went completely mad. I screamed. Then you — you came."
"I heard your scream." Doc eyed her steadily. Then he spoke again.
"The white-haired man was your father," he said.
Without a sound, Roxey Vail passed out. Doc caught her.
* * *
AS HE stood there, with the soft, limp form of the exquisitely beautiful girl in his arm, Doc wondered if it could have been the fact that white-haired Victor Vail had been murdered which had caused her swoon. She was not the type of young woman, from what he had seen of her, who fainted easily.He heard the search of the Eskimos drawing near. They did not have sense enough to hunt quietly. Or perhaps they wanted to flush him out like a wild animal, so he wouldn't be in their midst before they knew it.
Doc quitted the strong room. He sped down a passage, bearing the unconscious girl in his arms. He was soundless as a wraith. He came to a large clothes hamper. It was in perfect shape. It still held some crumpled garments.
Doc dumped the clothes out. The hamper held Roxey Vail nicely as the big bronze man lowered her into it. He closed the lid. The hamper was of open wickerwood. It would conceal her, yet she could breathe through it.
Directly toward the oncoming Innuits, Doc strode.
His hand drew a small case from inside his parka. With the contents of this, he made his preparations.
He stepped into a cabin and waited.
The first Eskimo passed. Like a striking serpent, Doc's bronze hand darted from the cabin door. His finger tips barely stroked the greasy cheek of the Innuit. Yet the man instantly fell on his face!
Doc flashed out of the cabin. His fingers touched the bare skin of a second Eskimo, another — another. He got five of them before the fat fellows could show anything like action.
All five men who felt Doc's eerie touch seemed to go suddenly to sleep on their feet.
It was the same brand of magic Doc had used on the gangsters in New York City.
Murderous Eskimo with his harpoon, or pasty-cheeked New York rat, with his fists full of high-power automatics — both are the same breed. Doc's magic worked in the same fashion.
The Innuits saw their fellows toppling mysteriously. They realized the very touch of this mighty bronze man was disastrous. They forgot all about fighting. They fled.
Ignominiously, they piled out on deck. Rigging tripped them. After the fashion of superstitious souls, the instant they turned their back on danger, their peril seemed to grow indescribably greater. They were like scared boys running from a graveyard at night — each jump made them want to go faster.
Two even committed unwilling suicide by leaping over the rail of the lost liner to the hard glacier far below.
In a matter of minutes, the last Innuit was sucked away into the screaming blizzard.
Chapter 16
THE REALM OF COLD
The lost liner Oceanic lay like something that had died.
Wind still boomed and squealed in the forest of ice-coated, collapsed rigging, it was true. The sand-hard snow still made a billion tiny tinklings as the gale shotted it against the derelict hulk. But gone were the uncanny whisperings and shufflings which had been so unnerving.
Doc Savage went below, moving silently, as had become his habit when he trod the trails of danger. His flashlight beam dabbed everywhere. Sharp, missing nothing, his golden eye took stock of his surroundings. He was seeing everything, yet speeding along at a pace that for another man would have been a lung-tearing sprint.
A squarish, thick-walled little bottle chanced to meet his gaze. He did not pick it up. Yet the printing on the label yielded to his near-telescopic scrutiny.
It was a perfume bottle. Two more like it reposed a bit farther down the passage.
Here was the explanation of the flowery odor of the Eskimos which had so baffled description. To the characteristic stench of blubber, perspiration and plain filth which accompanied them, they had added perfume. The whole had been an effluvium which was unique.
Doc opened the clothes hamper where he had left unconscious Roxey Vail.
Emptiness stared at him.
Doc dropped to a knee. His flashlight beam narrowed, becoming intensely brilliant. The luminance spurted across the carpet on the passage floor. This looked as though it had been laid down yesterday. But the years had taken the springiness out of the nap, so that it would retain footprints.
The girl had gone forward-alone. This told Doc some of the Eskimos had not remained behind and seized her.
"Roxey!" he called.
Doc's shout penetrated the caterwauling of the blizzard in surprising fashion. A sound expert could have explained why. It is well known that certain horn tones, not especially loud, will carry through the noise of a factory better than any others. Doc, because of the perfect control he exercised over his vocal cords, could pitch his voice so as to waft through the blizzard in a manner nearly uncanny.
"Here!" came the girl's faint voice. "I'm hunting my father!"
Doc hurried to her. She was pale. Terror lay like a garish mask on her exquisite features.
"My father — they took him with them!" she said in a small, tight voice.
"They didn't have him when they fled a moment ago," Doc assured her. "I watched closely."
Her terror gave way to amazement.
"They fled?" she murmured wonderingly. "Why?"
Doc neglected to answer. How he produced that mysterious unconsciousness with his mere touch was a secret known only to himself and his five friends.
But no. Doc shivered. His five friends had met their end in the burning plane. So the secret was now known to but one living man — Doc Savage himself.
"The Eskimos must have removed your father before they attacked me," Doc told Roxey Vail.
He wheeled quickly away. The glow of his flashlight reflected off the paneling of the lost liner, and made his bronze form seem even more gigantic than it was. Fierce little lights played in his golden eyes.
"Where are you going?" questioned his entrancing companion.
"To get Victor Vail," Doc replied grimly. "They took him away, and that shows he was alive. No doubt they took him to Keelhaul de Rosa."
"You haven't told me how you happen to be here," she reminded.
In a few sentences, as they climbed upward to the ice-basted deck of the lost liner, Doc told her of the map on her father's hack which could only be brought out with X rays, of the efforts of Keelhaul de Rosa and Ben O'Gard to kill each other off so one could hog the fifty-million-dollar treasure, and the rest.
'But where is the treasure?" asked the girl.
"I have no idea what became of it," Doc replied. "Keelhaul de Rosa expected to find it in the strong room, judging from his actions as you described them to me. Too, it looks like he suspects the Eskimos of moving it. That's why he gave them liquor. He wanted to get them pie-eyed enough to tell him where they hid it."
"They didn't get it." Roxey Vail said with certainty. "It was removed before the mutineers ever left the liner, more than fifteen years ago."
They were on deck now. Doc moved along the rail, hunting a dangling, ice-clad cable. He could drop the many feet to the glacial ice without damage, but such a drop would bring serious injury or death to the girl.
Roxey Vail was studying Doc curiously. A faint blush suffused her superb features. To some one who had been with Doc a lot, and watched the effect his presence had on the fair sex, this blush would have been an infallible sign.
The blond young goddess of the arctic was going to fail hard for big, handsome Doc.
"Why are you here?" Roxey Vail asked abruptly. "You do not seem to be stricken with the gold madness which has gripped every one else."
Doc let a shrug suffice for an answer.
Probably it was a brand of natural modesty, but Doc did not feel like explaining he was a sort of supreme avenger for the wrongs of the world — the great Nemesis of evildoers in the far corners of the globe.
They found a hanging cable. It terminated about ten feet from the ice. With Roxey Vail clinging to his back like a papoose, Doc carefully went down the cable.
Into the teeth of the moaning blizzard, they strode.
An instant later, Doc's alertness of eye undoubtedly saved their lives. He whipped to one side — carrying Roxey Vail with him.
A volley of rifle bullets spiked through the space they vacated.
The Eskimos had returned, accompanied by Keelhaul de Rosa and four or five riflemen and machine gunners.
He wanted to get the girl to safety. Then he was going to hold grim carnival on the glacier with Keelhaul de Rosa and his killer group.
For his share in those hideous murders aboard the Oceanic, Keelhaul de Rosa would pay, as certainly as a breath of life remained in Doc Savage's mighty bronze body.
Another fusillade of shots clattered. The reports were almost puny in the clamor of the blizzard. Lead hissed entirely too close to Doc and his companion.
Doc's fingers slipped inside his capacious parka, came out with an object hardly larger than a high-power rifle cartridge — and shaped somewhat similarly. He flipped a tiny lever on this article, then hurled it at the attackers. The object was heavy enough to be thrown some distance.
Came a blinding flash! The glacier seemed to jump six feet straight up. A terrific, slamming roar blasted against eardrums. Then a rush of air slapped them skidding across the ice like an unseen fist.
There had been a powerful explosive in the little cylinder Doc hurled at his enemies.
Awful quiet followed the blast. The very blizzard seemed to recoil like a beaten beast.
A chorus of agonized squealings and bleatings erupted. Some of the enemy had been incapacitated. They were all shocked. The Eskimos felt a vague, unaccountable terror.
"Up an' at 'em, mateys!" shrilled a coarse tone. "Keelhaul me, but we ain't gonna let 'em get away from us now!"
It was Keelhaul de Rosa's voice. He, at least, had not been damaged.
More lead searched the knobby glacier surface. None of it came dangerously near Doc and his fair companion. They had gotten far away in the confusion.
Doc suddenly jammed the young lady in a handy snowdrift. He wasn't exactly rough about it, but he certainly didn't try to fondle her, as a man of more ordinary caliber might have been tempted to do. And it wasn't because the ravishing young woman would have objected to the caresses. All signs pointed to the contrary.
The big bronze man had long ago decided a life of domestication was not for him. It would not go with the perils and terrors which haunted his every step. It would mean the surrendering of his goal in life — the shunning of adventure, the abandoning of his righting of wrongs, and punishing of evildoers wherever he found them.
So Doc had schooled himself never to sway the least bit to the seductions of the fairest of the fair sex.
"Stay here," he directed the entrancing young lady impassionately. "And what I mean — stay here! You can breathe under the snow. You won't be discovered."
"Whatever you say," she said in a voice in which adoration was but thinly veiled.
She was certainly losing no time in falling for Doc.
The giant bronze man smiled faintly. Then the storm swallowed him.
"Ye blasted swabs!" he railed at the Eskimos, forgetting they did not understand English. "Keelhaul me. The bronze scut was right in yer hands, an' ye didn't wreck 'im!"
"I tell ya dat guy is poison!" muttered a white gunman. "He ain't human! From de night he tied into us outside de concert hall in de big burg, we ain't been able ter lay a hand on 'im!"
Another white man shivered. He was fatter than Keelhaul de Rosa or the other gunmen. It was to be suspected he had some Eskimo b!lood in his veins.
As a matter of fact, this fellow was a crook recruited in Greenland. He knew the arctic. It was he who served interpreter in all discussions with the Eskimos.
"Dat bane awful explosion a minute ago." this man whined. "Aye sure hope we bane get dat feller damn quick."
"Scatter!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "We'll get the swab!" The Eskimos spread out widely. The white men kept in a group for mutual protection.
One Eskimo in particular rambled a short distance from the others. He floundered through a snowdrift.
He did not see a portion of the drift seemingly rise behind him. No suspicion of danger assailed him until hard, chill bronze fingers stroked his greasy cheek with a caress like the fingers of a ghost. Then it was too late.
The Innuit collapsed without a sound.
Doc pounced upon the inert Eskimo. From his lips came a loud shout-words couched in the tongue of the native.
Excitement seized the white man who understood the Eskimo lingo, and he listened intently to the distant voice.
"Dat Eskimo bane kill the bronze feller!" he shrieked. "He bane say come an' look!"
Three men sprinted for the voice they had heard.
The interpreter glimpsed two figures. One was prone, motionless. The second crouched on the first. That was about all Doc Savage could see in the flying gale.
"There they bane!" he howled.
They charged up. Two of them prepared to empty their guns into the prone form. just to make sure.
The crouching man heaved up. Strikingly enough, he seemed to grow to the proportions of a mountain. Two Herculean bronze fists drove accurate blows. Both gunmen described perfect flip-flops in mid-air — unconscious before their feet left the glacier.
The interpreter whirled and ran. He knew death when he saw it. And big Doc Savage was nothing less.
Doc did not follow him. For to the bronze man's sensitive ears came a stifled cry.
Roxey Vail was being seized!
Doc appreciated her good intentions. But at the moment, he could have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of turning her over his knee and paddling her.
A bullet squeaked in Doc's ear. He folded aside and down. A machine gun picked savagely at the ice near him. He traveled twenty feet on his stomach, with a speed that would have shamed a desert lizard.
"Take the hussy to the boat!" Keelhaul de Rosa's coarse voice rang. "Step lively, me lads!"
Doc tried to get to the hideous voice. Murderous lead drove him back.
He was forced to skulk, dodging bullets while Roxey Vail was taken aboard the ice-coated hulk of the lost liner.
More Eskimos soon arrived. Keelhaul de Rosa was arming some of them with guns. The interpreter instructed the Innuits on how to operate the unfamiliar firearms.
The natives were far from effective marksmen. More than one greasy eater of blubber dropped a big pistol after it exploded in his hand and ran as though the worst tongak, or evil spirit, were hot on his trail. But the guns made them more dangerous, for wild shots were almost as liable to hit the elusive figure of Doc Savage as well-aimed ones. In fact, they were worse. Doc couldn't tell which way to dodge.
The heat of the hunt finally drove Doc to the remote reaches of the glacier and rock crest of the land.
There he replenished his vast reservoir of strength by dining on frozen, raw steaks he wrenched with his bare, steel-thewed fingers, from the polar bear he had slain.
The mighty bronze man might have been a terrible hunter of the wild as he crouched there at his primeval repast. But no such hunter ever possessed cunning and knowledge such as Doc Savage was bringing to bear upon the problem confronting him.
But caution remained uppermost in his mind. He had been crouching with an ear pressed to a pinnacle of rock. The stone acted as a sounding board for any footsteps on the surrounding glacier.
Noise of men passing in the blizzard reached Doc. There seemed to be four or five in the group.
Doc fell in behind them. He followed as close as was possible without discovery. Growled words told him they were white men.
"De skipper says for us to take de stern of de liner, mateys," one said. "Our pals will join us dere. Everybody's helpin' in dis party, even de cook."
"We'd better throw out an anchor," another grunted. "Keelhaul an' his whole bloody crew, together wit' de Eskimos, is movin' bag an' baggage onto de liner. We wanta give 'em time to get settled."
Doc Savage sought to get even closer. He was not three yards away as the group of men came to a stop in the shelter of a rock spire. There were five of them.
What he was hearing was most interesting!
"De bronze guy has just about got Keelhaul de Rosa's goat!" he chuckled. "To say nothin' of de panic de Eskimos are in. Dat's why they're all movin' onto de liner. Dey figure dey can fight 'im off better."
Another man swore.
"Don't forget, pal, dat we gotta smear de bronze guy ourselves before we leave here!" he growled.
"Time to begin worryin' about dat after we got Keelhaul an' all de others croaked!" another informed him.
"Yer sure Keelhaul an' his gang don't suspect we're around?"
"Dey sure don't. I crawled up close an' listened to 'em gabbin'. Here's what happened, pal — de bronze guy got de idea we had croaked. He tol' de skoit dat. De broad, she up an' told it to Keelhaul when they caught her. An' he believes her."
Once more, an evil laugh gurgled in the blizzard.
"Well, Keelhaul is sure due to change his mind!" sneered the one who had laughed.
"Yeah — only he won't have the time to change 'is mind before we boin 'is insides out wit' Tommy lead."
"How long yer figure we'd better wait here?"
"About an hour."
A brief silence ensued.
"I don't like dis ting much," muttered one of the five uneasily. "We could light out wit'out all dis killin'."
"Yah — an' have somebody from dis place show up in a few years an' spill de woiks to de law," was the snarled reply. "We gotta clean up de loose ends, pal. We ain't leavin' nothin' behind but stiffs. We're playin' safe."
Once more there was quiet. One of the evil gang broke it with a startled ejaculation.
"What was dat?"
They peered at each other, turtling their vicious faces forward to see in the blizzard.
"I didn't hear nothin'!" muttered one.
"Sounded like de wind," suggested another.
They got up and circled their shelter. They saw nothing. They heard only the hoot of the gale. They gathered behind the outthrust of stone once more, huddling close for warmth.
They had dismissed what they heard as a child of the storm.
Indeed, it almost could have been some vagrant creation of the wind — that strange, low, trilling note which had come into being for a moment, then trailed away into nothingness. However, it was Doc's sound which they had heard.
Doc was now scores of yards away. He had much to do for he had learned a great deal.
The five were Ben O'Gard's thugs. And Doc's listening ears had detected enough to tell him the submarine had not met disaster, as he had thought. Yet he had carried the all-important valve with him in the folding seaplane!
The survival of the Helldiver without the valve could be explained, though. Ben O'Gard's crew had simply fashioned a substitute valve. There was a small machine shop aboard the underseas craft which they could use for this purpose.
No doubt they had started work on the substitute shortly after they marooned Doc on the iceberg during the walrus hunt. It had not been finished in time to use when they were so nearly trapped in the ice. But they had completed it while Doc was locked in the compartment aboard the Helldiver.
This, Doc believed, was the true explanation of their presence on land.
Ben O'Gard was preparing to slay every one on this forlorn spot!
No blood-bathed Jolly Roger ever held more frightful ambitions.
Doc's great bronze form traveled like the wind. He had much to do — not much time in which to accomplish it.
Doc had formulated a plan of action which boded ill for his enemies.
Wind still boomed and squealed in the forest of ice-coated, collapsed rigging, it was true. The sand-hard snow still made a billion tiny tinklings as the gale shotted it against the derelict hulk. But gone were the uncanny whisperings and shufflings which had been so unnerving.
Doc Savage went below, moving silently, as had become his habit when he trod the trails of danger. His flashlight beam dabbed everywhere. Sharp, missing nothing, his golden eye took stock of his surroundings. He was seeing everything, yet speeding along at a pace that for another man would have been a lung-tearing sprint.
A squarish, thick-walled little bottle chanced to meet his gaze. He did not pick it up. Yet the printing on the label yielded to his near-telescopic scrutiny.
It was a perfume bottle. Two more like it reposed a bit farther down the passage.
Here was the explanation of the flowery odor of the Eskimos which had so baffled description. To the characteristic stench of blubber, perspiration and plain filth which accompanied them, they had added perfume. The whole had been an effluvium which was unique.
Doc opened the clothes hamper where he had left unconscious Roxey Vail.
Emptiness stared at him.
Doc dropped to a knee. His flashlight beam narrowed, becoming intensely brilliant. The luminance spurted across the carpet on the passage floor. This looked as though it had been laid down yesterday. But the years had taken the springiness out of the nap, so that it would retain footprints.
The girl had gone forward-alone. This told Doc some of the Eskimos had not remained behind and seized her.
"Roxey!" he called.
Doc's shout penetrated the caterwauling of the blizzard in surprising fashion. A sound expert could have explained why. It is well known that certain horn tones, not especially loud, will carry through the noise of a factory better than any others. Doc, because of the perfect control he exercised over his vocal cords, could pitch his voice so as to waft through the blizzard in a manner nearly uncanny.
"Here!" came the girl's faint voice. "I'm hunting my father!"
Doc hurried to her. She was pale. Terror lay like a garish mask on her exquisite features.
"My father — they took him with them!" she said in a small, tight voice.
"They didn't have him when they fled a moment ago," Doc assured her. "I watched closely."
Her terror gave way to amazement.
"They fled?" she murmured wonderingly. "Why?"
Doc neglected to answer. How he produced that mysterious unconsciousness with his mere touch was a secret known only to himself and his five friends.
But no. Doc shivered. His five friends had met their end in the burning plane. So the secret was now known to but one living man — Doc Savage himself.
"The Eskimos must have removed your father before they attacked me," Doc told Roxey Vail.
He wheeled quickly away. The glow of his flashlight reflected off the paneling of the lost liner, and made his bronze form seem even more gigantic than it was. Fierce little lights played in his golden eyes.
"Where are you going?" questioned his entrancing companion.
"To get Victor Vail," Doc replied grimly. "They took him away, and that shows he was alive. No doubt they took him to Keelhaul de Rosa."
* * *
ROXEY VAIL hurried at his side. She was forced to run to keep abreast."You haven't told me how you happen to be here," she reminded.
In a few sentences, as they climbed upward to the ice-basted deck of the lost liner, Doc told her of the map on her father's hack which could only be brought out with X rays, of the efforts of Keelhaul de Rosa and Ben O'Gard to kill each other off so one could hog the fifty-million-dollar treasure, and the rest.
'But where is the treasure?" asked the girl.
"I have no idea what became of it," Doc replied. "Keelhaul de Rosa expected to find it in the strong room, judging from his actions as you described them to me. Too, it looks like he suspects the Eskimos of moving it. That's why he gave them liquor. He wanted to get them pie-eyed enough to tell him where they hid it."
"They didn't get it." Roxey Vail said with certainty. "It was removed before the mutineers ever left the liner, more than fifteen years ago."
They were on deck now. Doc moved along the rail, hunting a dangling, ice-clad cable. He could drop the many feet to the glacial ice without damage, but such a drop would bring serious injury or death to the girl.
Roxey Vail was studying Doc curiously. A faint blush suffused her superb features. To some one who had been with Doc a lot, and watched the effect his presence had on the fair sex, this blush would have been an infallible sign.
The blond young goddess of the arctic was going to fail hard for big, handsome Doc.
"Why are you here?" Roxey Vail asked abruptly. "You do not seem to be stricken with the gold madness which has gripped every one else."
Doc let a shrug suffice for an answer.
Probably it was a brand of natural modesty, but Doc did not feel like explaining he was a sort of supreme avenger for the wrongs of the world — the great Nemesis of evildoers in the far corners of the globe.
They found a hanging cable. It terminated about ten feet from the ice. With Roxey Vail clinging to his back like a papoose, Doc carefully went down the cable.
Into the teeth of the moaning blizzard, they strode.
An instant later, Doc's alertness of eye undoubtedly saved their lives. He whipped to one side — carrying Roxey Vail with him.
A volley of rifle bullets spiked through the space they vacated.
The Eskimos had returned, accompanied by Keelhaul de Rosa and four or five riflemen and machine gunners.
* * *
AFTER THE flashing movement which had saved their lives, Doc kept going. He jerked the white hood of the girl's parka over her face to camouflage the warm color of her cheeks. He shrugged deep in his own parka for the same reason.He wanted to get the girl to safety. Then he was going to hold grim carnival on the glacier with Keelhaul de Rosa and his killer group.
For his share in those hideous murders aboard the Oceanic, Keelhaul de Rosa would pay, as certainly as a breath of life remained in Doc Savage's mighty bronze body.
Another fusillade of shots clattered. The reports were almost puny in the clamor of the blizzard. Lead hissed entirely too close to Doc and his companion.
Doc's fingers slipped inside his capacious parka, came out with an object hardly larger than a high-power rifle cartridge — and shaped somewhat similarly. He flipped a tiny lever on this article, then hurled it at the attackers. The object was heavy enough to be thrown some distance.
Came a blinding flash! The glacier seemed to jump six feet straight up. A terrific, slamming roar blasted against eardrums. Then a rush of air slapped them skidding across the ice like an unseen fist.
There had been a powerful explosive in the little cylinder Doc hurled at his enemies.
Awful quiet followed the blast. The very blizzard seemed to recoil like a beaten beast.
A chorus of agonized squealings and bleatings erupted. Some of the enemy had been incapacitated. They were all shocked. The Eskimos felt a vague, unaccountable terror.
"Up an' at 'em, mateys!" shrilled a coarse tone. "Keelhaul me, but we ain't gonna let 'em get away from us now!"
It was Keelhaul de Rosa's voice. He, at least, had not been damaged.
More lead searched the knobby glacier surface. None of it came dangerously near Doc and his fair companion. They had gotten far away in the confusion.
Doc suddenly jammed the young lady in a handy snowdrift. He wasn't exactly rough about it, but he certainly didn't try to fondle her, as a man of more ordinary caliber might have been tempted to do. And it wasn't because the ravishing young woman would have objected to the caresses. All signs pointed to the contrary.
The big bronze man had long ago decided a life of domestication was not for him. It would not go with the perils and terrors which haunted his every step. It would mean the surrendering of his goal in life — the shunning of adventure, the abandoning of his righting of wrongs, and punishing of evildoers wherever he found them.
So Doc had schooled himself never to sway the least bit to the seductions of the fairest of the fair sex.
"Stay here," he directed the entrancing young lady impassionately. "And what I mean — stay here! You can breathe under the snow. You won't be discovered."
"Whatever you say," she said in a voice in which adoration was but thinly veiled.
She was certainly losing no time in falling for Doc.
The giant bronze man smiled faintly. Then the storm swallowed him.
* * *
KEELHAUL DE ROSA was in a rage. He was burning up. He filled the blizzard around about with salty expletives."Ye blasted swabs!" he railed at the Eskimos, forgetting they did not understand English. "Keelhaul me. The bronze scut was right in yer hands, an' ye didn't wreck 'im!"
"I tell ya dat guy is poison!" muttered a white gunman. "He ain't human! From de night he tied into us outside de concert hall in de big burg, we ain't been able ter lay a hand on 'im!"
Another white man shivered. He was fatter than Keelhaul de Rosa or the other gunmen. It was to be suspected he had some Eskimo b!lood in his veins.
As a matter of fact, this fellow was a crook recruited in Greenland. He knew the arctic. It was he who served interpreter in all discussions with the Eskimos.
"Dat bane awful explosion a minute ago." this man whined. "Aye sure hope we bane get dat feller damn quick."
"Scatter!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "We'll get the swab!" The Eskimos spread out widely. The white men kept in a group for mutual protection.
One Eskimo in particular rambled a short distance from the others. He floundered through a snowdrift.
He did not see a portion of the drift seemingly rise behind him. No suspicion of danger assailed him until hard, chill bronze fingers stroked his greasy cheek with a caress like the fingers of a ghost. Then it was too late.
The Innuit collapsed without a sound.
Doc pounced upon the inert Eskimo. From his lips came a loud shout-words couched in the tongue of the native.
Excitement seized the white man who understood the Eskimo lingo, and he listened intently to the distant voice.
"Dat Eskimo bane kill the bronze feller!" he shrieked. "He bane say come an' look!"
Three men sprinted for the voice they had heard.
The interpreter glimpsed two figures. One was prone, motionless. The second crouched on the first. That was about all Doc Savage could see in the flying gale.
"There they bane!" he howled.
They charged up. Two of them prepared to empty their guns into the prone form. just to make sure.
The crouching man heaved up. Strikingly enough, he seemed to grow to the proportions of a mountain. Two Herculean bronze fists drove accurate blows. Both gunmen described perfect flip-flops in mid-air — unconscious before their feet left the glacier.
The interpreter whirled and ran. He knew death when he saw it. And big Doc Savage was nothing less.
Doc did not follow him. For to the bronze man's sensitive ears came a stifled cry.
Roxey Vail was being seized!
* * *
EVEN AS he raced toward where he had left her, Doc fathomed what had occurred. She had disobeyed his injunction to stay hidden. The reason — she had heard the shouted information that Doc was dead. She had started out with some desperate idea of avenging him.Doc appreciated her good intentions. But at the moment, he could have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of turning her over his knee and paddling her.
A bullet squeaked in Doc's ear. He folded aside and down. A machine gun picked savagely at the ice near him. He traveled twenty feet on his stomach, with a speed that would have shamed a desert lizard.
"Take the hussy to the boat!" Keelhaul de Rosa's coarse voice rang. "Step lively, me lads!"
Doc tried to get to the hideous voice. Murderous lead drove him back.
He was forced to skulk, dodging bullets while Roxey Vail was taken aboard the ice-coated hulk of the lost liner.
More Eskimos soon arrived. Keelhaul de Rosa was arming some of them with guns. The interpreter instructed the Innuits on how to operate the unfamiliar firearms.
The natives were far from effective marksmen. More than one greasy eater of blubber dropped a big pistol after it exploded in his hand and ran as though the worst tongak, or evil spirit, were hot on his trail. But the guns made them more dangerous, for wild shots were almost as liable to hit the elusive figure of Doc Savage as well-aimed ones. In fact, they were worse. Doc couldn't tell which way to dodge.
The heat of the hunt finally drove Doc to the remote reaches of the glacier and rock crest of the land.
There he replenished his vast reservoir of strength by dining on frozen, raw steaks he wrenched with his bare, steel-thewed fingers, from the polar bear he had slain.
The mighty bronze man might have been a terrible hunter of the wild as he crouched there at his primeval repast. But no such hunter ever possessed cunning and knowledge such as Doc Savage was bringing to bear upon the problem confronting him.
But caution remained uppermost in his mind. He had been crouching with an ear pressed to a pinnacle of rock. The stone acted as a sounding board for any footsteps on the surrounding glacier.
Noise of men passing in the blizzard reached Doc. There seemed to be four or five in the group.
Doc fell in behind them. He followed as close as was possible without discovery. Growled words told him they were white men.
"De skipper says for us to take de stern of de liner, mateys," one said. "Our pals will join us dere. Everybody's helpin' in dis party, even de cook."
"We'd better throw out an anchor," another grunted. "Keelhaul an' his whole bloody crew, together wit' de Eskimos, is movin' bag an' baggage onto de liner. We wanta give 'em time to get settled."
Doc Savage sought to get even closer. He was not three yards away as the group of men came to a stop in the shelter of a rock spire. There were five of them.
What he was hearing was most interesting!
* * *
ONE OF the five men laughed nastily."De bronze guy has just about got Keelhaul de Rosa's goat!" he chuckled. "To say nothin' of de panic de Eskimos are in. Dat's why they're all movin' onto de liner. Dey figure dey can fight 'im off better."
Another man swore.
"Don't forget, pal, dat we gotta smear de bronze guy ourselves before we leave here!" he growled.
"Time to begin worryin' about dat after we got Keelhaul an' all de others croaked!" another informed him.
"Yer sure Keelhaul an' his gang don't suspect we're around?"
"Dey sure don't. I crawled up close an' listened to 'em gabbin'. Here's what happened, pal — de bronze guy got de idea we had croaked. He tol' de skoit dat. De broad, she up an' told it to Keelhaul when they caught her. An' he believes her."
Once more, an evil laugh gurgled in the blizzard.
"Well, Keelhaul is sure due to change his mind!" sneered the one who had laughed.
"Yeah — only he won't have the time to change 'is mind before we boin 'is insides out wit' Tommy lead."
"How long yer figure we'd better wait here?"
"About an hour."
A brief silence ensued.
"I don't like dis ting much," muttered one of the five uneasily. "We could light out wit'out all dis killin'."
"Yah — an' have somebody from dis place show up in a few years an' spill de woiks to de law," was the snarled reply. "We gotta clean up de loose ends, pal. We ain't leavin' nothin' behind but stiffs. We're playin' safe."
Once more there was quiet. One of the evil gang broke it with a startled ejaculation.
"What was dat?"
They peered at each other, turtling their vicious faces forward to see in the blizzard.
"I didn't hear nothin'!" muttered one.
"Sounded like de wind," suggested another.
They got up and circled their shelter. They saw nothing. They heard only the hoot of the gale. They gathered behind the outthrust of stone once more, huddling close for warmth.
They had dismissed what they heard as a child of the storm.
Indeed, it almost could have been some vagrant creation of the wind — that strange, low, trilling note which had come into being for a moment, then trailed away into nothingness. However, it was Doc's sound which they had heard.
Doc was now scores of yards away. He had much to do for he had learned a great deal.
The five were Ben O'Gard's thugs. And Doc's listening ears had detected enough to tell him the submarine had not met disaster, as he had thought. Yet he had carried the all-important valve with him in the folding seaplane!
The survival of the Helldiver without the valve could be explained, though. Ben O'Gard's crew had simply fashioned a substitute valve. There was a small machine shop aboard the underseas craft which they could use for this purpose.
No doubt they had started work on the substitute shortly after they marooned Doc on the iceberg during the walrus hunt. It had not been finished in time to use when they were so nearly trapped in the ice. But they had completed it while Doc was locked in the compartment aboard the Helldiver.
This, Doc believed, was the true explanation of their presence on land.
Ben O'Gard was preparing to slay every one on this forlorn spot!
No blood-bathed Jolly Roger ever held more frightful ambitions.
Doc's great bronze form traveled like the wind. He had much to do — not much time in which to accomplish it.
Doc had formulated a plan of action which boded ill for his enemies.
Chapter 17
THE CAPTIVES
IT WAS midnight, but the sun shone brightly. The storm had abated as swiftly as it had arisen. Snow no longer swirled. Such drifts as had gathered glittered like tiny, ridged diamonds in the solar rays.
Around the uncharted arctic land, the short, terrific gale had made a startling change. It had pushed the ice pack away. For miles in every direction, comparatively open water could be seen. This was spotted with a few vicious-looking blue growlers, but no ice floes of any size.
In the main lounge of the lost liner Oceanic. Keelhaul de Rosa walked angry circles, kicking chairs out of his path.
"Keelhaul me!" he bellowed. "The bloody treasure has gotta be somewhere!"
He came over and planted himself in front of pretty Roxey Vail. He glowered at the young woman. He had a face that mirrored indescribable evil.
Two rat-faced thugs held Roxey Vail. Their bony claws dug painfully into her shapely arms.
"Where's the swag?" Keelhaul de Rosa roared at her.
"I don't know anything about any treasure!" the girl replied scornfully.
It was perhaps the fiftieth time she had told her captors that.
"You an' your maw swiped the gold an' diamonds!" snarled Keelhaul de Rosa.
Roxey Vail made no answer.
"The Eskimos told me all about you an' your maw," the hulking pirate chief informed her. "Where's she hidin'?"
The young woman gave him a look of scorn. If she had practiced all her life squashing mashers on New York streets, she couldn't have done it better.
"C'mon — cough up!" the man hissed in her face. "Where's your old lady hangin' out? I'll bet she's sittin' right slap-dab on the bloomin' treasure! Keelhaul me if I don't think that!"
"You're wrong!" the girl snapped
"Then where is she?"
Roxey Vail tightened her lips. That was something she would never tell. No horror they could inflict upon her would bring the information from her lips.
"You'll spill the dope, sister, or I'll cut that swab of an ol' man of yorn to pieces right here in front of you!" gritted Keelhaul de Rosa. "I'll start by puttin' out the ol' geezer's bloody eyes again!"
Roxey Vail said nothing to this. What could she say? Her cheeks became pale as damask, though.
Keelhaul de Rosa kicked over a couple of additional chairs. He picked up a book that had lain on a table for more than fifteen years, and threw it at a greasy Eskimo.
Coming back the pirate chief tried softer arguments.
"Listen, sister," he purred, "gimme the swag an' I'll see that you an' yer ol' man gets safe passage back with me an' my crew."
"How can you escape?" Roxey Vail questioned curiously. "Your plane is destroyed. You have no submarine."
"I'm makin' the Eskimos haul the swag to Greenland for me."
"Then you'll kill them, I suppose," the young woman said coldly.
The way Keelhaul de Rosa gave a guilty start showed the young woman's guess had been close to the truth.
"Will you spare the life of the bronze man, also?" Roxey Vail asked tentatively.
Keelhaul de Rosa scowled.
"That swab is already dead," he lied, hoping it would help break the nerve of the beautiful girl.
"Lay aboard her!" he howled in agony. "Pull her off, you swabs! Keelhaul me, but she's a bloody wild cat!"
His two men secured fresh hold on Roxey Vail, but not before one of them collected a flattened nose. Her arctic life had made a very hard young woman out of Roxey Vail.
The pretty girl now broke into sobs. The reason for her grief was easily understood — she believed Doc Savage was dead. It was incredible that the bronze man, mighty as he was, could cope with such odds as confronted him now.
Suddenly a bellowing voice filled the lounge.
"Boarders!" it roared. "Ben O'Gard and his swabs! They're comin'. aboard by the stern!"
Every eye in the lounge went toward the source of that roaring voice. It seemed to come from a small companionway which led off in the direction of the purser's office.
"It's Ben O'Gard, I tell yer!" crashed the voice. "They're crawlin' up some lines danglin' near the stern!"
Any doubt which might have been arising was dispelled by the loud clatter of a machine gun on deck. The sound came from the stern!
Another rapid-firer joined it. A white man — one of Keelhaul de Rosa's small gang — shrieked a warning.
"Ben O'Gard — " The howling of Eskimos drowned out the rest.
Ben O'Gard was indeed making his attack. "One of you hold her!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "Keelhaul me — I gotta look into this!"
He sprinted out of the room. One of the pair who had been holding the young woman followed him.
Roxey Vail promptly engaged in combat with the single rat who now pinioned her arms. She stamped his toes through his soft mukluks. She did her best to bite him.
Although strong and agile for a woman, Roxey Vail would have been overpowered by the man.
But from the spot where that great voice had first roared a warning, there glided a form that might have been liquid bronze. Nearing the struggling man and girl, this became a giant, Herculean man of hard metal. Hands floated out.
They were hands which could have plucked the very head from the rat now belaboring the poor girl with his fists. Yet those hands barely stroked the man's face.
The thug fell senseless.
"You — oh, thank — "
"Listen — here's what you're to do!" Doc interrupted. He didn't like the tearful business of receiving thanks from young women whether they were pretty or not.
"You are to go and get your mother!" Doc told her. "You know where the finger of land juts into the sea half a mile to the north of this spot?"
"Yes."
"Take your mother there. The storm left a floe of ice attached to the point. It is long and narrow. It protrudes out into the sea fully half a mile. The tip is rather rough where ice cakes were piled upon it by the force of the gale. You are to hide, with your mother, among those ice cakes."
Roxey Vail nodded. But she wanted to know more.
"What — "
"No time to explain!" Doc waved an arm in the general direction of the stern. A bloody fight was going on back there, judging from the bedlam.
Doc now grasped the girl. He shook her like a child but not very hard.
"Now get this!" he said sharply. "I don't want any more disobeying my orders just because you think something has happened to me!"
She sniffed at him. Tears were in her eyes.
"I won't," she said. "But my father is — "
"I'll attend to him." Doc gave her a shove. "Scoot, Roxey. And be on the end of that ice neck with your mother as soon as possible. Things are going to happen fast around here."
Obediently, the young woman raced for the bows. These were deserted, due to the fight at the stern. She should have no trouble escaping.
Doc disappeared down a companionway as though in the grip of a great suction. He knew where he was going. He had overheard a chance remark, while skulking aboard the lost liner a few minutes ago, which told him where to look.
He shoved a stateroom door inward. A long leap and he was working over tough walrus-hide thongs which bound Victor Vail.
"They told me you were dead!" Victor Vail choked.
"Have you seen your daughter yet?" Doc grinned.
Victor Vail's long, handsome face now became a study in emotions. His lips trembled. Big tears skidded down his cheeks. His throat worked convulsively.
"Isn't she — a wonderful girl" he gulped proudly.
He had seen her, all right.
"She's swell," Doc chuckled. "She's gone to get her mother. They'll meet us."
At this, Victor Vail could not restrain himself. He broke into open sobs of delight and gratitude and eagerness.
It would be a strange reunion, this of father and mother and daughter, after more than fifteen years. It would be something, in itself alone, worth all the perils and hardships Doc Savage had undergone.
The fight astern was coming closer. Automatics hammered fiercely. Machine guns tore off long strings of reports. Men shrieked in the frenzy of combat. Not a few of them were screaming from their hurts, too.
"We'd better drift away from here!" Doc declared.
They ran down a passage.
An amazing thing happened to a stateroom door ahead of them.
The panel jumped out of the door, literally exploding into splinters. An object came through which resembled a rusty keg affixed crosswise to the end of a telephone pole.
Such a hand and fist could belong to only one man on earth.
"Renny!" Doc yelled.
Big Renny leaped out, somber face alight.
Through the door after him came two hundred and sixty pounds of red-fuzzed man-gorilla.
Monk! He overhauled the Innuit as though the greasy bag of fright were standing still. Both his hands grasped the Eskimo and yanked backward. Simultaneously, his knee came up. The Innuit landed on his back across that knee. He all but broke in halves.
Doc looked into the stateroom.
Ham, not quite the fashion plate he usually presented, was there. Long Tom was astride another Eskimo. The oily native was twice the size of the pale electrical wizard. But he was getting the beating of his life.
Johnny, the gaunt archaeologist, was dancing around with his glasses, which had the magnifying lens on the left side, askew on his bony face.
Doc groped for something that would express his happiness, for he had given these five friends of his up as dead men. The proper words refused to come. His throat was cramped with emotion.
"What a bunch of bums!" he managed to chuckle at last.
"We've been praying for the sun to come out," said Ham. He pointed at a porthole. A strong beam of sunlight slanted through it. "Johnny used that magnifying lens to burn his bonds apart. It's lucky for us our captors stink like they do — they can't smell anything but themselves. They couldn't smell the smoke from the thongs as Johnny burned them through."
The group ran for the stern. Renny secured an automatic pistol from the Eskimo whom Ham had skewered with his sword cane. Long Tom carried another he had seized from his opponent. Monk had obtained a third from his own victim.
"I had written you guys off my books," Doc's expressive voice rumbled pleasantly. "How'd you escape from that burning plane?"
"What d'you think we had parachutes for?" Monk inquired in his tiny murmur.
"But I flew over the ice, and saw no sign of you," Doc pointed out.
Monk grinned widely. "I'm tellin' you, Doc, we didn't linger after we landed. We come down in the middle of a gang of wild and woolly Eskimos. They started throwin' things at us — harpoons mostly. Our ammunition was gone. We'd wasted it all on the plane that shot us down. So we made tracks. We thought the Eskimos was cannibals, or somethin'."
Ham scowled blackly at Monk.
"And you, you missing link, suggested leaving me behind as a sort of pot offering!" he said angrily.
Ham wasn't mad, though. It was just the old feud starting again. Things were back to normal.
"Listen, you overdressed little shyster!" Monk rumbled. "You were knocked cold when your parachute popped you against an iceberg, and I had to carry you. Next time, I'll sure-enough leave you!"
"The Eskimos set a trap for us," Renny finished the story for Doc. "They were too many for us. They finally got us."
Doc halted near an ice-crusted, dangling cable which offered safe, if somewhat slippery, transit to the ice below.
"Half a mile north of here, an ice finger juts out into the sea," Doc said rapidly. "Go there, all of you! Roxey Vail and her mother should be there already. Wait for me."
"What are you going to do?" Ham questioned.
"I'm staying behind for a short time," Doc replied. "Over the side with you, brothers!"
Rapidly, they slid over the rail.
Monk was last. His homely face showed concern over Doc's safety. He tried to put up an argument.
"Now listen, Doc," he began. "You better — "
Doc smiled faintly. He picked up the argumentative two hundred and sixty pounds of man-gorilla by the slack of the pants and the coat collar, and sent him whizzing down the icy cable.
"Beat it!" he called down at them, then sank behind a capstan.
They ran away across the ice.
One of the battlers on the derelict liner saw the group. He threw up a rifle and fired. He missed. He ran forward to get a better aim.
The man was one of Ben O'Gard's thugs. He crouched in the shelter of a bitt and aimed deliberately. He could hardly have missed. Squinting, he prepared to squeeze the trigger.
Then, instinctively, he brushed at something which had touched his cheek. It felt like a fly. It was no fly — although the rifleman toppled over senseless before he realized it.
Doc retreated as soundlessly as he had reached the man's side.
Rapidly, Doc removed metal caps from the ends of his fingers. These were of bronze. They exactly matched the hue of Doc's skin, and they were so cleverly constructed as to escape detection with the naked eye. However, one might have noticed Doc's fingers were a trifle longer when the caps were in place.
These caps each held a tiny, very sharp needle. A potent chemical of Doc's own concoction fed through glands in those needles. One prick from them meant instant unconsciousness.
This was the secret of Doc's magic touch.
Doc now saw men gathering astern. They were Ben O'Gard's thugs. Victory had evidently fallen to them.
A captive was hauled up from below. He squealed and whimpered and blubbered for mercy.
Two pirates held him. An automatic in Ben O'Gard's hand cracked thunder. The prisoner fell dead.
The man they had murdered was Keelhaul de Rosa. His proper deserts had at last reached the fellow. As an unmitigated villain, he had been equaled only by the devil who now slew him so cold-bloodedly — Ben O'Gard.
Doc Savage suddenly yelled loudly. His great voice tumbled along the ice-coated deck.
Ben O'Gard saw him, shrieked: "Get the bronze guy, mateys!"
Doc whipped over the rail.
This was what he had remained behind for. He wanted Ben O'Gard and the rest to follow him!
Around the uncharted arctic land, the short, terrific gale had made a startling change. It had pushed the ice pack away. For miles in every direction, comparatively open water could be seen. This was spotted with a few vicious-looking blue growlers, but no ice floes of any size.
In the main lounge of the lost liner Oceanic. Keelhaul de Rosa walked angry circles, kicking chairs out of his path.
"Keelhaul me!" he bellowed. "The bloody treasure has gotta be somewhere!"
He came over and planted himself in front of pretty Roxey Vail. He glowered at the young woman. He had a face that mirrored indescribable evil.
Two rat-faced thugs held Roxey Vail. Their bony claws dug painfully into her shapely arms.
"Where's the swag?" Keelhaul de Rosa roared at her.
"I don't know anything about any treasure!" the girl replied scornfully.
It was perhaps the fiftieth time she had told her captors that.
"You an' your maw swiped the gold an' diamonds!" snarled Keelhaul de Rosa.
Roxey Vail made no answer.
"The Eskimos told me all about you an' your maw," the hulking pirate chief informed her. "Where's she hidin'?"
The young woman gave him a look of scorn. If she had practiced all her life squashing mashers on New York streets, she couldn't have done it better.
"C'mon — cough up!" the man hissed in her face. "Where's your old lady hangin' out? I'll bet she's sittin' right slap-dab on the bloomin' treasure! Keelhaul me if I don't think that!"
"You're wrong!" the girl snapped
"Then where is she?"
Roxey Vail tightened her lips. That was something she would never tell. No horror they could inflict upon her would bring the information from her lips.
"You'll spill the dope, sister, or I'll cut that swab of an ol' man of yorn to pieces right here in front of you!" gritted Keelhaul de Rosa. "I'll start by puttin' out the ol' geezer's bloody eyes again!"
Roxey Vail said nothing to this. What could she say? Her cheeks became pale as damask, though.
Keelhaul de Rosa kicked over a couple of additional chairs. He picked up a book that had lain on a table for more than fifteen years, and threw it at a greasy Eskimo.
Coming back the pirate chief tried softer arguments.
"Listen, sister," he purred, "gimme the swag an' I'll see that you an' yer ol' man gets safe passage back with me an' my crew."
"How can you escape?" Roxey Vail questioned curiously. "Your plane is destroyed. You have no submarine."
"I'm makin' the Eskimos haul the swag to Greenland for me."
"Then you'll kill them, I suppose," the young woman said coldly.
The way Keelhaul de Rosa gave a guilty start showed the young woman's guess had been close to the truth.
"Will you spare the life of the bronze man, also?" Roxey Vail asked tentatively.
Keelhaul de Rosa scowled.
"That swab is already dead," he lied, hoping it would help break the nerve of the beautiful girl.
* * *
THE STATEMENT had an effect exactly opposite. Roxey Vail sprang forward so suddenly that she eluded the pair holding her. She clawed Keelhaul de Rosa's villainous face. She handed him a haymaker that completely closed his left eye."Lay aboard her!" he howled in agony. "Pull her off, you swabs! Keelhaul me, but she's a bloody wild cat!"
His two men secured fresh hold on Roxey Vail, but not before one of them collected a flattened nose. Her arctic life had made a very hard young woman out of Roxey Vail.
The pretty girl now broke into sobs. The reason for her grief was easily understood — she believed Doc Savage was dead. It was incredible that the bronze man, mighty as he was, could cope with such odds as confronted him now.
Suddenly a bellowing voice filled the lounge.
"Boarders!" it roared. "Ben O'Gard and his swabs! They're comin'. aboard by the stern!"
Every eye in the lounge went toward the source of that roaring voice. It seemed to come from a small companionway which led off in the direction of the purser's office.
"It's Ben O'Gard, I tell yer!" crashed the voice. "They're crawlin' up some lines danglin' near the stern!"
Any doubt which might have been arising was dispelled by the loud clatter of a machine gun on deck. The sound came from the stern!
Another rapid-firer joined it. A white man — one of Keelhaul de Rosa's small gang — shrieked a warning.
"Ben O'Gard — " The howling of Eskimos drowned out the rest.
Ben O'Gard was indeed making his attack. "One of you hold her!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "Keelhaul me — I gotta look into this!"
He sprinted out of the room. One of the pair who had been holding the young woman followed him.
Roxey Vail promptly engaged in combat with the single rat who now pinioned her arms. She stamped his toes through his soft mukluks. She did her best to bite him.
Although strong and agile for a woman, Roxey Vail would have been overpowered by the man.
But from the spot where that great voice had first roared a warning, there glided a form that might have been liquid bronze. Nearing the struggling man and girl, this became a giant, Herculean man of hard metal. Hands floated out.
They were hands which could have plucked the very head from the rat now belaboring the poor girl with his fists. Yet those hands barely stroked the man's face.
The thug fell senseless.
* * *
ROXEY VAIL stared at her rescuer. It was apparent she could hardly believe her eyes."You — oh, thank — "
"Listen — here's what you're to do!" Doc interrupted. He didn't like the tearful business of receiving thanks from young women whether they were pretty or not.
"You are to go and get your mother!" Doc told her. "You know where the finger of land juts into the sea half a mile to the north of this spot?"
"Yes."
"Take your mother there. The storm left a floe of ice attached to the point. It is long and narrow. It protrudes out into the sea fully half a mile. The tip is rather rough where ice cakes were piled upon it by the force of the gale. You are to hide, with your mother, among those ice cakes."
Roxey Vail nodded. But she wanted to know more.
"What — "
"No time to explain!" Doc waved an arm in the general direction of the stern. A bloody fight was going on back there, judging from the bedlam.
Doc now grasped the girl. He shook her like a child but not very hard.
"Now get this!" he said sharply. "I don't want any more disobeying my orders just because you think something has happened to me!"
She sniffed at him. Tears were in her eyes.
"I won't," she said. "But my father is — "
"I'll attend to him." Doc gave her a shove. "Scoot, Roxey. And be on the end of that ice neck with your mother as soon as possible. Things are going to happen fast around here."
Obediently, the young woman raced for the bows. These were deserted, due to the fight at the stern. She should have no trouble escaping.
Doc disappeared down a companionway as though in the grip of a great suction. He knew where he was going. He had overheard a chance remark, while skulking aboard the lost liner a few minutes ago, which told him where to look.
He shoved a stateroom door inward. A long leap and he was working over tough walrus-hide thongs which bound Victor Vail.
"They told me you were dead!" Victor Vail choked.
"Have you seen your daughter yet?" Doc grinned.
Victor Vail's long, handsome face now became a study in emotions. His lips trembled. Big tears skidded down his cheeks. His throat worked convulsively.
"Isn't she — a wonderful girl" he gulped proudly.
He had seen her, all right.
"She's swell," Doc chuckled. "She's gone to get her mother. They'll meet us."
At this, Victor Vail could not restrain himself. He broke into open sobs of delight and gratitude and eagerness.
It would be a strange reunion, this of father and mother and daughter, after more than fifteen years. It would be something, in itself alone, worth all the perils and hardships Doc Savage had undergone.
The fight astern was coming closer. Automatics hammered fiercely. Machine guns tore off long strings of reports. Men shrieked in the frenzy of combat. Not a few of them were screaming from their hurts, too.
"We'd better drift away from here!" Doc declared.
They ran down a passage.
An amazing thing happened to a stateroom door ahead of them.
The panel jumped out of the door, literally exploding into splinters. An object came through which resembled a rusty keg affixed crosswise to the end of a telephone pole.
Such a hand and fist could belong to only one man on earth.
"Renny!" Doc yelled.
Big Renny leaped out, somber face alight.
* * *
A GREASY Eskimo now popped through the shattered door. His eyes were wells of terror, and his mouth was a frightened hole. He headed down the passage. He made two jumps.Through the door after him came two hundred and sixty pounds of red-fuzzed man-gorilla.
Monk! He overhauled the Innuit as though the greasy bag of fright were standing still. Both his hands grasped the Eskimo and yanked backward. Simultaneously, his knee came up. The Innuit landed on his back across that knee. He all but broke in halves.
Doc looked into the stateroom.
Ham, not quite the fashion plate he usually presented, was there. Long Tom was astride another Eskimo. The oily native was twice the size of the pale electrical wizard. But he was getting the beating of his life.
Johnny, the gaunt archaeologist, was dancing around with his glasses, which had the magnifying lens on the left side, askew on his bony face.
Doc groped for something that would express his happiness, for he had given these five friends of his up as dead men. The proper words refused to come. His throat was cramped with emotion.
"What a bunch of bums!" he managed to chuckle at last.
"We've been praying for the sun to come out," said Ham. He pointed at a porthole. A strong beam of sunlight slanted through it. "Johnny used that magnifying lens to burn his bonds apart. It's lucky for us our captors stink like they do — they can't smell anything but themselves. They couldn't smell the smoke from the thongs as Johnny burned them through."
The group ran for the stern. Renny secured an automatic pistol from the Eskimo whom Ham had skewered with his sword cane. Long Tom carried another he had seized from his opponent. Monk had obtained a third from his own victim.
"I had written you guys off my books," Doc's expressive voice rumbled pleasantly. "How'd you escape from that burning plane?"
"What d'you think we had parachutes for?" Monk inquired in his tiny murmur.
"But I flew over the ice, and saw no sign of you," Doc pointed out.
Monk grinned widely. "I'm tellin' you, Doc, we didn't linger after we landed. We come down in the middle of a gang of wild and woolly Eskimos. They started throwin' things at us — harpoons mostly. Our ammunition was gone. We'd wasted it all on the plane that shot us down. So we made tracks. We thought the Eskimos was cannibals, or somethin'."
Ham scowled blackly at Monk.
"And you, you missing link, suggested leaving me behind as a sort of pot offering!" he said angrily.
Ham wasn't mad, though. It was just the old feud starting again. Things were back to normal.
"Listen, you overdressed little shyster!" Monk rumbled. "You were knocked cold when your parachute popped you against an iceberg, and I had to carry you. Next time, I'll sure-enough leave you!"
"The Eskimos set a trap for us," Renny finished the story for Doc. "They were too many for us. They finally got us."
* * *
THE BOW of the lost liner Oceanic was deserted. The fight at the stern had drawn everybody. And a bloody fray that was, for the noise of it had become more violent.Doc halted near an ice-crusted, dangling cable which offered safe, if somewhat slippery, transit to the ice below.
"Half a mile north of here, an ice finger juts out into the sea," Doc said rapidly. "Go there, all of you! Roxey Vail and her mother should be there already. Wait for me."
"What are you going to do?" Ham questioned.
"I'm staying behind for a short time," Doc replied. "Over the side with you, brothers!"
Rapidly, they slid over the rail.
Monk was last. His homely face showed concern over Doc's safety. He tried to put up an argument.
"Now listen, Doc," he began. "You better — "
Doc smiled faintly. He picked up the argumentative two hundred and sixty pounds of man-gorilla by the slack of the pants and the coat collar, and sent him whizzing down the icy cable.
"Beat it!" he called down at them, then sank behind a capstan.
They ran away across the ice.
One of the battlers on the derelict liner saw the group. He threw up a rifle and fired. He missed. He ran forward to get a better aim.
The man was one of Ben O'Gard's thugs. He crouched in the shelter of a bitt and aimed deliberately. He could hardly have missed. Squinting, he prepared to squeeze the trigger.
Then, instinctively, he brushed at something which had touched his cheek. It felt like a fly. It was no fly — although the rifleman toppled over senseless before he realized it.
Doc retreated as soundlessly as he had reached the man's side.
Rapidly, Doc removed metal caps from the ends of his fingers. These were of bronze. They exactly matched the hue of Doc's skin, and they were so cleverly constructed as to escape detection with the naked eye. However, one might have noticed Doc's fingers were a trifle longer when the caps were in place.
These caps each held a tiny, very sharp needle. A potent chemical of Doc's own concoction fed through glands in those needles. One prick from them meant instant unconsciousness.
This was the secret of Doc's magic touch.
Doc now saw men gathering astern. They were Ben O'Gard's thugs. Victory had evidently fallen to them.
A captive was hauled up from below. He squealed and whimpered and blubbered for mercy.
Two pirates held him. An automatic in Ben O'Gard's hand cracked thunder. The prisoner fell dead.
The man they had murdered was Keelhaul de Rosa. His proper deserts had at last reached the fellow. As an unmitigated villain, he had been equaled only by the devil who now slew him so cold-bloodedly — Ben O'Gard.
Doc Savage suddenly yelled loudly. His great voice tumbled along the ice-coated deck.
Ben O'Gard saw him, shrieked: "Get the bronze guy, mateys!"
Doc whipped over the rail.
This was what he had remained behind for. He wanted Ben O'Gard and the rest to follow him!
Chapter 18
THE THAWING DEATH
Doc Savage sped away from the lost liner Oceanic. Bullets jarred showers of ice flakes from hummocks behind which he dodged. Other slugs ran about in the snow like little moles that traveled too fast for the eye.
Doc was careful not to offer too good a target. But he showed himself often enough to lure his pursuers on.
Yelling excitedly, huge Ben O'Gard led the pack. The walrus of a pirate was careful not to get too far ahead of his men, though. Once, Doc saw him stumble deliberately so as to permit the others to catch up with him.
The man was cautious. He had felt the frightful strength of Doc Savage once. In fact, he still wore bandages on his hands from that occasion.
Doc's golden eyes ranged ahead. They held anxiety. Had his friends reached the neck of ice?
They had. Doc could see Monk jumping up and down like the gorilla he resembled as he watched the exciting chase. Monk's yells even reached Doc's ears. They sounded like the noise two fighting bulls would make. For a man with such a mild voice, Monk could emit the most blood-curdling howls.
Doc quickened his pace. No doubt the pirates thought he had been going at full speed — for a chorus of surprised shouts arose as they saw the bronze man was leaving them as though they stood still.
"Shake out your sails, mateys!" Ben O'Gard bellowed. He waddled out ahead of his killer gang like an elephant. Then, seized with caution, he was careful to let them catch up.
Doc reached the headland. The ice pack had piled up here. Passing through it was laborious business. It was as though the houses of a great white city had been shoved into one huge pile.
Rifle and submachine-gun bullets swarmed like unseen hornets through the ice hummocks.
Doc finally gained the finger of ice. He sprinted. The footing was only moderately rough here, offering correspondingly less shelter.
There was one point where the ice neck narrowed. Thirty or so steps would have spanned it from one side to the other.
In the middle of this narrow place stood a slightly unnatural-looking drift of snow.
Doc sped past this snow pile without giving it a glance. A rifle slug made such a noise in his ear that he thought he was hit. But the hood of his parka had only been torn.
He doubled low, zigzagged a little — and reached cover.
Here, the ice finger widened again. Doc joined his friends.
Victor Vail stood to one side. He was doing his best to hug both his wife and pretty daughter simultaneously.
"1 hope you got a deck of aces up your sleeve, Doc," Monk said, his voice again mild. "If you ain't, we're in a pretty pickle."
To continue their flight in boats, even should Doc have a craft concealed in the rugged ice near by, was also unfeasible. The pirates would have a perfect chance to riddle them with their machine guns.
Doc Savage showed no concern.
"Keep your shirt on, Monk," he suggested. Then, as a burst of rapid-firer slugs all but parted Monk's bristling red hair, he added: "And your head down!"
"Let the missing link get a lead haircut!" Ham clipped. "He needs barbering."
Monk leered at Ham as if he was trying to think of something — got it, and made his inevitable "Hoinck! Hoinck!" of a porker grunting.
Ham subsided.
Doc was now introduced to Victor Vail's long-lost wife. The introduction lacked something in courtliness, considering that it was made with all of them lying as flat as they could, with flocks of bullets passing but a few inches over their backs.
Mrs. Vail was a tall woman, fully as beautiful as her entrancing blond daughter, although in a more mature way. She showed little effects of her long years of isolation on this barren arctic spot.
Doc turned hastily to his men to avoid the heartfelt gratitude Victor Vail's wife sought to express, as well as the adoring look in pretty Roxey's eyes.
"Let me have a pistol!" Doc requested.
His friends were surprised. It was rarely that Doc used firearms on his human foes.
Renny handed over an automatic he had taken from one of his Eskimo guards.
Doc left them. In an instant. he was lost completely to their sight, so expertly did he conceal himself.
They heard his automatic crack once — then four times more.
They stared at the oncoming pirates. Not a man dropped. This was little short of astounding to the five who knew Doc well. Doc was one of the finest marksmen they had ever seen, even if it was seldom that he fired a shot. They had seen him toss up twelve pennies in a single handful, and using two pistols, touch every one with lead before it fell to earth.
Yet he seemed to have missed the easy targets the pirates offered.
"Hey — look!" Monk howled suddenly.
Behind the pirates, where the finger of ice narrowed, a surprising phenomena was in progress.
The ice was melting at great speed!
Ben O'Gard and his pirates came to a stop. They had discovered the melting ice. That worried them. But their thirst for blood got the better of them. They resumed their charge.
"Come!" Doc called. "And keep down low!"
He led them for the end of the ice finger.
It became noticeable that the whole formation of ice was now in motion. Enough of the narrow neck had dissolved to permit the rest to break free. The whole thing was now an ordinary floe, plaything of the currents of the polar sea.
Doc reached his objective. He pointed.
"How does that look?" he questioned.
Monk grinned from ear to ear. "Heaven will never look any better to this sinful soul!"
The under-the-ice submarine, Helldiver, lay before them. It was moored to deadman anchors which had obviously been sunken in the ice by depositing a bit of Monk's remarkable chemical concoction.
They threw off the moorings, then dived down the main hatch.
Doc started the electric motors — there was no time to get the Diesels going. The Helldiver surged away from the floe.
"How'd it happen to be here?" Monk questioned.
Doc smiled faintly.
"I'm afraid I stole it," he explained. "Ben O'Gard kindly helped me out by leaving no one aboard. But I must say I never put in a busier twenty minutes than I did running the tin whale here single handed."
A sporadic burst or two of bullets rattled on the submarine hull. They did not have sufficient power to penetrate the steel plates, however.
The shooting stopped abruptly.
Renny took a chance and thrust his head out. He was not shot at.
"If any of you guys are interested in stark drama, come here and watch," he suggested.
Doc, Long Tom, Monk, Ham, and Johnny crowded up beside him, along with Victor Vail.
Roxey Vail and her mother, after one glance, could not bear the horror of the sight.
They knew that to drift on the floe did of a certainty mean slow starvation. So they were making desperate tries to reach shore. Some had already plunged into the frigid water, and were battling the strong current
Others, who could not swim, were fighting those who could, trying to make them serve as unwilling pack horses. A few faint shots rang out.
Those swimming began to go down, overcome by the deadly chill of the water, for some distance now separated the floe from land. Their fur garments handicapped them, yet to remove them was to freeze.
After a while, the last man sprang wildly, hopelessly, into the numbingly cold sea.
Two actually reached the ice-rimmed shore. One of these was the walrus-like Ben O'Gard. But they could not climb upon the ice, so depleted was their strength.
Ben O'Gard was last to slip back to his death.
Monk let a long breath swish from his cavernous lungs.
"He'd better get plenty chilled, because it's mighty hot where he's goin'!" muttered the gorilla of a chemist. "He paid a mighty high price tryin' to get the — "
Monk swallowed twice. His eyes stuck out. He whirled on Doc.
"Hey — what about the treasure?" he howled. "Now we're in a nice fix! Everybody's dead who knows anything about it!"
Doc Savage was forced to postpone his answer for a time. Handling the under-the-ice submarine occupied his attention. The tanks had to be trimmed, the Diesels had to be started. He and his five men would have only moderate difficulty piloting the Helldiver southward, although they would be very short-handed.
Monk got his mind back on fifty millions in gold and diamonds.
"Say, Doc, we ain't goin' off an' leave all that money layin' around on that bleak land somewhere, are we?" he asked plaintively.
"Ben O'Gard and his gang moved the treasure from the strong room of the Oceanic when they mutinied more than fifteen years ago," Doc said dryly. "In other words, they filched it from their pals, headed by Keelhaul de Rosa, and cached it in a hiding place of their own."
"Holy cow!" groaned Renny. "Then we have no way of finding that hiding place! Ben O'Gard and his men are all dead."
"We don't care about the hiding pace," Doc assured him. "Ben O'Gard and his gang had recovered the loot before they set out a few hours ago to commit wholesale slaughter on the lost liner."
Monk emitted one of his best howls. "You mean it's — "
"The whole business is aboard this submarine," Doc told him. "To be exact, it's piled some feet deep on the floor of your cabin, Monk!"
It was startling information to Monk. at the end of a most startling adventure. Out of the frozen grip of the North came a fortune in gold and diamonds, saved from the lost liner. But more than that — out of this thrilling adventure came the rescue of two precious lives, and the reunion of a family lost for many years.
To the blind violinist and his reunited family, this was the greatest thing that could have happened, and the battles of Doc and his companions were most marvelous.
But they did not know of the past of Doc and his friends; of the many narrow escapes, the thrilling exploits that were part of their lives.
Neither did they know of the future — the immediate future which held forth adventure and thrills some way connected with the Orient.
Doc himself did not know, and did not care. Somewhere some one else was in danger, some other person needed help. Whatever it was, wherever Doc was needed, there he would go, heedless of danger, conquering all obstacles. And his five companions, adventurers-in-arms, would follow their leader to still greater exploits.
Doc was careful not to offer too good a target. But he showed himself often enough to lure his pursuers on.
Yelling excitedly, huge Ben O'Gard led the pack. The walrus of a pirate was careful not to get too far ahead of his men, though. Once, Doc saw him stumble deliberately so as to permit the others to catch up with him.
The man was cautious. He had felt the frightful strength of Doc Savage once. In fact, he still wore bandages on his hands from that occasion.
Doc's golden eyes ranged ahead. They held anxiety. Had his friends reached the neck of ice?
They had. Doc could see Monk jumping up and down like the gorilla he resembled as he watched the exciting chase. Monk's yells even reached Doc's ears. They sounded like the noise two fighting bulls would make. For a man with such a mild voice, Monk could emit the most blood-curdling howls.
Doc quickened his pace. No doubt the pirates thought he had been going at full speed — for a chorus of surprised shouts arose as they saw the bronze man was leaving them as though they stood still.
"Shake out your sails, mateys!" Ben O'Gard bellowed. He waddled out ahead of his killer gang like an elephant. Then, seized with caution, he was careful to let them catch up.
Doc reached the headland. The ice pack had piled up here. Passing through it was laborious business. It was as though the houses of a great white city had been shoved into one huge pile.
Rifle and submachine-gun bullets swarmed like unseen hornets through the ice hummocks.
Doc finally gained the finger of ice. He sprinted. The footing was only moderately rough here, offering correspondingly less shelter.
There was one point where the ice neck narrowed. Thirty or so steps would have spanned it from one side to the other.
In the middle of this narrow place stood a slightly unnatural-looking drift of snow.
Doc sped past this snow pile without giving it a glance. A rifle slug made such a noise in his ear that he thought he was hit. But the hood of his parka had only been torn.
He doubled low, zigzagged a little — and reached cover.
Here, the ice finger widened again. Doc joined his friends.
Victor Vail stood to one side. He was doing his best to hug both his wife and pretty daughter simultaneously.
"1 hope you got a deck of aces up your sleeve, Doc," Monk said, his voice again mild. "If you ain't, we're in a pretty pickle."
* * *
AS MONK hinted, they were indeed trapped. For it seemed Doc had led them to a spot from which there was no escape. Ben O'Gard and his blood-thirsty pirates had already passed the narrow part of the ice finger. Regaining the shore was now impossible.To continue their flight in boats, even should Doc have a craft concealed in the rugged ice near by, was also unfeasible. The pirates would have a perfect chance to riddle them with their machine guns.
Doc Savage showed no concern.
"Keep your shirt on, Monk," he suggested. Then, as a burst of rapid-firer slugs all but parted Monk's bristling red hair, he added: "And your head down!"
"Let the missing link get a lead haircut!" Ham clipped. "He needs barbering."
Monk leered at Ham as if he was trying to think of something — got it, and made his inevitable "Hoinck! Hoinck!" of a porker grunting.
Ham subsided.
Doc was now introduced to Victor Vail's long-lost wife. The introduction lacked something in courtliness, considering that it was made with all of them lying as flat as they could, with flocks of bullets passing but a few inches over their backs.
Mrs. Vail was a tall woman, fully as beautiful as her entrancing blond daughter, although in a more mature way. She showed little effects of her long years of isolation on this barren arctic spot.
Doc turned hastily to his men to avoid the heartfelt gratitude Victor Vail's wife sought to express, as well as the adoring look in pretty Roxey's eyes.
"Let me have a pistol!" Doc requested.
His friends were surprised. It was rarely that Doc used firearms on his human foes.
Renny handed over an automatic he had taken from one of his Eskimo guards.
Doc left them. In an instant. he was lost completely to their sight, so expertly did he conceal himself.
They heard his automatic crack once — then four times more.
They stared at the oncoming pirates. Not a man dropped. This was little short of astounding to the five who knew Doc well. Doc was one of the finest marksmen they had ever seen, even if it was seldom that he fired a shot. They had seen him toss up twelve pennies in a single handful, and using two pistols, touch every one with lead before it fell to earth.
Yet he seemed to have missed the easy targets the pirates offered.
"Hey — look!" Monk howled suddenly.
Behind the pirates, where the finger of ice narrowed, a surprising phenomena was in progress.
The ice was melting at great speed!
* * *
MONK WAS first to comprehend. "My chemical mixture for dissolving ice!" he chuckled. "Doc put a supply of it under that snow drift. He simply punctured the containers!"Ben O'Gard and his pirates came to a stop. They had discovered the melting ice. That worried them. But their thirst for blood got the better of them. They resumed their charge.
"Come!" Doc called. "And keep down low!"
He led them for the end of the ice finger.
It became noticeable that the whole formation of ice was now in motion. Enough of the narrow neck had dissolved to permit the rest to break free. The whole thing was now an ordinary floe, plaything of the currents of the polar sea.
Doc reached his objective. He pointed.
"How does that look?" he questioned.
Monk grinned from ear to ear. "Heaven will never look any better to this sinful soul!"
The under-the-ice submarine, Helldiver, lay before them. It was moored to deadman anchors which had obviously been sunken in the ice by depositing a bit of Monk's remarkable chemical concoction.
They threw off the moorings, then dived down the main hatch.
Doc started the electric motors — there was no time to get the Diesels going. The Helldiver surged away from the floe.
"How'd it happen to be here?" Monk questioned.
Doc smiled faintly.
"I'm afraid I stole it," he explained. "Ben O'Gard kindly helped me out by leaving no one aboard. But I must say I never put in a busier twenty minutes than I did running the tin whale here single handed."
A sporadic burst or two of bullets rattled on the submarine hull. They did not have sufficient power to penetrate the steel plates, however.
The shooting stopped abruptly.
Renny took a chance and thrust his head out. He was not shot at.
"If any of you guys are interested in stark drama, come here and watch," he suggested.
Doc, Long Tom, Monk, Ham, and Johnny crowded up beside him, along with Victor Vail.
Roxey Vail and her mother, after one glance, could not bear the horror of the sight.
* * *
GRIM FATE had at last grasped Ben O'Gard and his pirates.They knew that to drift on the floe did of a certainty mean slow starvation. So they were making desperate tries to reach shore. Some had already plunged into the frigid water, and were battling the strong current
Others, who could not swim, were fighting those who could, trying to make them serve as unwilling pack horses. A few faint shots rang out.
Those swimming began to go down, overcome by the deadly chill of the water, for some distance now separated the floe from land. Their fur garments handicapped them, yet to remove them was to freeze.
After a while, the last man sprang wildly, hopelessly, into the numbingly cold sea.
Two actually reached the ice-rimmed shore. One of these was the walrus-like Ben O'Gard. But they could not climb upon the ice, so depleted was their strength.
Ben O'Gard was last to slip back to his death.
Monk let a long breath swish from his cavernous lungs.
"He'd better get plenty chilled, because it's mighty hot where he's goin'!" muttered the gorilla of a chemist. "He paid a mighty high price tryin' to get the — "
Monk swallowed twice. His eyes stuck out. He whirled on Doc.
"Hey — what about the treasure?" he howled. "Now we're in a nice fix! Everybody's dead who knows anything about it!"
Doc Savage was forced to postpone his answer for a time. Handling the under-the-ice submarine occupied his attention. The tanks had to be trimmed, the Diesels had to be started. He and his five men would have only moderate difficulty piloting the Helldiver southward, although they would be very short-handed.
Monk got his mind back on fifty millions in gold and diamonds.
"Say, Doc, we ain't goin' off an' leave all that money layin' around on that bleak land somewhere, are we?" he asked plaintively.
"Ben O'Gard and his gang moved the treasure from the strong room of the Oceanic when they mutinied more than fifteen years ago," Doc said dryly. "In other words, they filched it from their pals, headed by Keelhaul de Rosa, and cached it in a hiding place of their own."
"Holy cow!" groaned Renny. "Then we have no way of finding that hiding place! Ben O'Gard and his men are all dead."
"We don't care about the hiding pace," Doc assured him. "Ben O'Gard and his gang had recovered the loot before they set out a few hours ago to commit wholesale slaughter on the lost liner."
Monk emitted one of his best howls. "You mean it's — "
"The whole business is aboard this submarine," Doc told him. "To be exact, it's piled some feet deep on the floor of your cabin, Monk!"
It was startling information to Monk. at the end of a most startling adventure. Out of the frozen grip of the North came a fortune in gold and diamonds, saved from the lost liner. But more than that — out of this thrilling adventure came the rescue of two precious lives, and the reunion of a family lost for many years.
To the blind violinist and his reunited family, this was the greatest thing that could have happened, and the battles of Doc and his companions were most marvelous.
But they did not know of the past of Doc and his friends; of the many narrow escapes, the thrilling exploits that were part of their lives.
Neither did they know of the future — the immediate future which held forth adventure and thrills some way connected with the Orient.
Doc himself did not know, and did not care. Somewhere some one else was in danger, some other person needed help. Whatever it was, wherever Doc was needed, there he would go, heedless of danger, conquering all obstacles. And his five companions, adventurers-in-arms, would follow their leader to still greater exploits.