Sword in Sheath (10 page)

“Like that, eh? No wonder they have that turtle hunter locked up. How are you at diving, Sam? We ought to get in on the ground floor — or the bottom of the lagoon — too. I could do very nicely with several hundred thousand or so to play around with.”

“If s not as simple as that. And you don't find a pearl in every oyster, you know — ”

“Oh, I'm not that greedy. I'll settle for one in twenty. Hello — What's that racket forward?”

There
was
racket forward — both shouts and orders. Seamen leaned over the rail while a smaller group busied themselves with the launching of one of the shallow draught scows which were the usual ship's boats of an island trader. Kane seized on Bridger.

“What's the matter?”

“Driftin’ outrigger. See — over there! Someone in her too, only he's down — !”

In spite of the glare of the sun on water Kane was able to make out a narrow black shadow which rose and fell without direction on the thick green-blue waves.

“Lookout sighted her — said th’ fellow was up then.
He sort o’ waved an’ then jus’ keeled over.”

“Survivor from a wreck?”

“Not in an outrigger. But this is far from land for one o’ those. ’Less it was blown out in a storm. An’ we ain't had any storms — ”

The
Sumba's
boat had reached the outrigger now and the single occupant of the native canoe was pulled limply into the larger craft which then bore back for the side of the freighter at a rate of speed which suggested that help was needed. Van Bleeker was on the bridge, his glasses trained on the boat, but waiting to receive the party below was Felder with the first-aid kit.

As the scow came alongside someone shouted for a sling. Kane and Sam crowded forward as a makeshift stretcher came up and over the rail.

The former passenger of the outrigger was a native with a shock of bushy black hair. A strip of dirty cloth was twisted tight, not about his loins, but around his chest, and it was as stiff as a coat of mail with a great blackish stain over which a fresh wave of red was slowly seeping. Save for this bandage his dark body was bare.

Felder squatted down beside the stretcher and tried to loosen the hands which clawed into the folds of the bandage. He managed to free one, then cut away the cloth. Kane blinked. He had seen wounds like those before — too many times.

“Submachine gun,” half whispered Sam.

Felder dropped the end of cloth, his hand moved to the neck pulse, then he got to his feet.

“He's dead,” the second mate reported to van Bleeker as the captain approached the group. “He was good as dead hours ago — even before he put that on” Felder pointed to the bandage. “There's no hope of surviving that sort of wound — ”

Kane fought down past memories and an odd feeling in his own middle. He knelt down in Felder's place. Sam
was right about what had caused that appalling tear across flesh and bone, there was no need of verifying that. But there was a glint of light from that other fist, the one still gripping the cloth. The American set his teeth and began working at the stiff fingers. One by one he forced them free, first from the edge of the bandage, then open so he could take what had been held fast against death itself.

It was a small glass phial, perhaps once fashioned to hold medicine. But it now contained a bit of some grimy fiber rather like cotton and was firmly stoppered with a dull gray knobby thing which was certainly not a cork.

Van Bleeker's hand was on his arm. “Come, and bring that with you!” the captain snapped.

When, trailed by Lorens and Sam, they reached the bridge and some measure of privacy van Bleeker spoke again, “Open it!”

It took hard tugging to bring the gray stopper out. But with that done Kane was able to twitch loose the fibrous stuff — and from the heart of the roll dropped three spheres of glowing light.

“Good Lord,” breathed Lorens in a tone which approached reverent awe. “That I have lived to see those!”

Kane was cupping in his palm three perfect pearls.

10

NOT ON THE MAP

“Three times nine is twenty-seven,” van Bleeker muttered “Twenty-seven like those — !”

“Twenty-seven!” Kane goggled down at what he held. “There're only three.”

“You don't understand,” Lorens cut in. “That diver was from Borneo, and there they believe in the old superstitions. Every ninth pearl they find is put into a bottle with two grains of rice, the stopper being made from a human finger bone. After certain incatations the pearls are supposed to change the rice grains into gems of equal value. So, if this man was true to the old customs, three pearls in the bottle mean that he had found twenty- seven to begin with. He was diving in a rich and practically untouched bed if he was able to find twenty-seven like those.”

“The question being,” pointed out Sam, “where did he come from? Are there any islands near here?”

“Not marked on the chart, no. How long, Felder, could he have lived with that wound?”

The slim, dark-faced young officer raised his shoulders
in an exaggerated shrug. “How can any man tell, Captain? Those natives have great powers of endurance. The first blood on the bandage was dried, and he must have died just as our men reached him. Three hours, four, maybe more since he was shot. And who knows whether he was just now coming from the pearling bed? He might have brought those up months ago in a very distant place.”

“I think not,” Kane interrupted. “Suppose he was trying to escape from somewhere — maybe last night. He was shot at, made it to the outrigger, and pushed off — Couldn't a current have pulled him out here?”

Van Bleeker hunched over the chart table thumbing a hastily unrolled map. Felder had caught some of the captain's fever and was working out his own calculations.

“There is a drift, sir — “ the Eurasian ventured. “Southeast—”

Van Bleeker stabbed the points of the dividers into the map.

“Southeast shall we try then. But with caution, you understand. And, Felder, take the keys to the gun locker and break out the arms. We have no wish to share the fate of this poor devil.”

The
Sumba
changed course and sailed on. Upon her deck men worked to enfold in canvas the body of the diver, sewing the stuff smoothly about the pitiful form. And van Bleeker came forward when they had finished to read over that narrow bundle the words of the burial service. When it slid overside into the green depths Kane knew a queer feeling of loneliness. They would probably never know the name or history of the dead man; he would become just an entry in the ship's log, to be reported to the proper authorities when the
Sumba
made port again — if she ever did.

Now why should that thought cross his mind at this
time? There was no reason for the
Sumba
to run into trouble. Well armed and manned, the freighter could stand up against anything now cruising these waters since there were certainly no enemy subs or destroyers out — the war was over. Only those wounds — submachine guns were not the usual weapons of peaceful men.

“Land ho!”

The lookout's cry rang down to deck, bringing out passengers and crew alike. Kane hurried to the bridge to find as many of the watch as possible lining the starboard rail, glasses to the eyes of those lucky enough to grab them first.

“I don't see anything!” The American was openly disappointed. Lorens held out his binoculars.

“Over there. It's just a line across the water now.”

But the line across the water grew taller until it became a hump of rough mountain climbing out of the sea The
Sumba
proceeded cautiously forward at a reduced speed. Van Bleeker had no mind to pile her up on some uncharted reef. Because this sea-borne mountain was not on any of the maps he had routed out from their cases in the chartroom.

Below the crew was busy about one of the landing scows, and Kane saw three men come along the deck, submachine guns balanced across their arms. Felder stood by the linesman in the forepart of the ship, and his clear reports of the bottom came up easily to the little group on the bridge.

Van Bleeker put down his glasses at last with an air of decision

“Part coral, part volcanic, I should say. Which may mean a lagoon. We'll cruise off here and send the boat in to leeward where there might be an entrance. Order it away now, Mister,” he said over his shoulder to the ever-silent first mate, a Malay-Chinese. “Tell them to keep
clear of land, just take soundings and find us an anchorage.”

The mate touched his cap and was gone. Then the boat was swung over and men slid down into her. Kane padded away to his own cabin, only to discover that Sam had beaten him to it and had already taken out the Reisings.

“Expecting resistance in force?”

Sam shook his head. “Only being prepared. You saw what that diver got. I’m not asking for a sample of the same — if that is what the inhabitants of this beauty spot are handing out to one and all Jungle up and down that mountain — we could use some barrage to soften it up before we hit the beach — ”

Kane grinned. “And where are you going to get the big guns for that? No, we ‘does’ this strictly small style, we ‘does’ — ”

“And I never did like tramping through jungles. I suppose we're to go in on the first wave?”

“Yeah, regular shock troops. Only no fruit salad on the chest afterwards for this little job.”

“Who wants a battle star when he can get one of those pearls?” countered Sam. “All set? Then let's go.”

They tramped back to the bridge. But Lorens was there before them. He wore the lizard-skin belt Hornhoven had given him, but now it supported the holster of a Luger. And, as he turned, the shirt flattened across his shoulders so that an outline stood out clearly beneath the thin cotton stuff. Kane glanced for the second time at that tell-tale bulge. A knife in a collar sheath — he'd bet even money that that handsome pig-ticker Hornhoven had parted with was now riding comfortably between its new owner's shoulder blades. A collar sheath! Which told a lot about a man who chose to wear it. Lorens hadn't been kidding when he said that this sort of work was old stuff to him.

All they could do now was await the return of the boat and speculate as to why that green-clothed hump was not charted.

“Maybe it just bobbed up a short time ago,” was Kane's suggestion. “Don't volcanic islands have a habit of doing that?”

“Overgrown with vegetation like that?” scoffed Lorens. “It is manifestly a volcano cone, yes. But there are no signs of recent eruption and with these coral reefs around it — no, this has been here a long, long time. It is well off the regular trade routes, and if it lacks fresh water and good anchorage it might well be unknown. You can see no trace of man along the shore.”

“From here it all looks straight up and down — no room to perch a village,” was Sam's comment. “At last, here comes that boat! Now we'll know when we can put in — ”

Yes, Felder reported, there was anchorage on the leeward of the island, deep enough within the encircling arms of the reef. They had made soundings and were ready to guide the
Sumba
in.

So for the next hour the engine room telephone heated up with a barrage of orders, as the freighter edged through the break in the reef into a lagoon where a tiny strip of beach backed up against an upsweep of dense greenery.

The two Americans eyed that shore line dubiously.

“For mountain goats only — that must be close to a forty-five degree rise.” Sam tried to measure with his eye the precipitous slope where bald rock showed now and again through the mass of vine, bush and tree.

“I don't know. If we come in from the corner of the beach— it doesn't seem to shoot right up there, more of a slope. And if we
could
get to the top we'd have a good chance to see the whole place. Sort of a bird's-eye view—

“Only we aren't attached to wings — even tin ones.
This begins to remind me strongly of the good old days in the Owen-Stanleys.”

“At least it isn't raining. And we can't really tell what it's like from this distance. Wait until we get ashore before you start crabbing — ”

But Sam had already turned his attention from the shore to the lagooa

“Wonder if this is the pearl factory. Care to go down and look around a little?”

“Do you wish a run ashore?” Lorens joined them. “Capt. van Bleeker proposes to lead a party in person.”

“Now why do you suppose we have our scout uniforms on? Sure, we've taken an option on the front seats in the first boat to push off — ”

They weren't able to get the front seats Kane had mentioned so confidently, but they were in the shore-going party which pulled away from the freighter a short time later. And they were right on the captain's heels when van Bleeker splashed through the few inches of water to the white coral sand of the sliver of beach.

“It would take one of your bulldozers to break through this— “ He waved toward the jungle. But the Nisei shook his head.

“No, it's not so bad really. In fact we can wriggle through right here. That's the stuff, Fortnight — just what we need for this job!”

The Samoan came ashore carrying bolos, two of them — jungle knives which had been designed to fight nature long before the Moros had learned to turn them against human flesh. Sam took one and gave it an experimental swing to test the balance.

The
Samba's
captain turned to Kane. “You have had experience in jungle fighting, you and Marusaki. Are you willing to try to get high enough on the mountain to find a lookout — if that is possible? Felder, van Norreys and I with the men shall round the lagoon. I need not warn you
about taking care — ”

Sam laughed “Take care? This sort of a set-up is old stuff to us, Captain. When you've harried the Nips through as many birds’ nests like this one as we have, you, too, can get a diploma in skulking. Well, Dutch, do we charge?”

They fell into the old single-file pattern, the lead man swinging a bolo. Oddly enough it was Sam, small and slight as he was, who kept the best pace, his regular swinging strokes falling with a rhythm which never lagged. For Fortnight, in spite of his strength, it was a hard task. While Kane, until muscles unused for months got grimly to work again, found it plain drudgery.

Not that it was just a woodhcopper's holiday. There were places where the native rock of the mountain had broken through the lush vegetation. And there progress was a matter of scrambling, digging in toes and fingers, scraping hands and arms on sandpaper-faced stone. At the end of twenty minutes Kane leaned panting against a convenient rock. His shirt was plastered to his aching body with his own sweat, one nail had been torn from a finger, and the feel of knife-edged lava was so deeply cut into his palms that he would never forget it. But when Sam started on again he was ready to follow.

Their second rest was beside a slide of tumbled rock where the rotting wood of imprisoned trees showed between stone and earth.

“Landslide, maybe even an earthquake” — Fortnight pointed out the evidence — “a long time ago. We had better go around this; there is still danger in loose stones.”

But going around took time, a lot of it. And on the other side of the slide they were faced by a nasty bit of climbing up a ledge which narrowed almost to a crack as they advanced. It was then that the Samoan produced rope from a neat belt of it around his waist, and they tied
themselves together.

Fortnight, in the lead, pulled himself up to a higher ledge, then jerked the rope to bring up the Americans. They hauled themselves over the lip of a wide cut in the mountainside, a cut which sloped gradually up toward the left. Here the overgrowth of green stuff was thin, and the Samoan stood up, examining the rocky breast of the mountain at their backs.

“Look here — and there also!” He picked away with the point of his bolo. “This is tool work — all of this. A road cut out of the rock!”

“Road — ?”

But it was true. Kane could see for himself the marks the other had cleared.

“But — why a road here?”

“To reach a city, a temple up above — who knows? But much work went into the making of this, a long time ago.”

“How long do you suppose?” Sam was scraping the soil back from the ledge under them, trying to uncover the surface of the ancient way.

“A very long time. See, down there trees have taken root across this path.”

Kane and Marusaki followed that pointing finger with their gaze. The old road wound down along the mountainside toward that portion of the island which lay on the opposite side from the
Sumba's
anchorage. They could trace its curve for some distance before the jungle swallowed it altogether.

“Suppose we stay with it the rest of the way up,"suggeted Sam. “It'll be a lot easier than traveling like mountain goats.”

“If it hasn't been used for so long, the Johnnies, who may or may not be playing around with machine guns, don't walk it So I vote yes.” Kane looked to Fortnight, and the big man nodded.

“I have seen no signs of recent use. And it will make
our task easier.”

It was still necessary to use the bolos now and then, but with better footing and no rock climbing they kept a faster pace until, upon rounding a curve, Fortnight jerked back with a cry of dismay, forcing the others with him to halt. When Kane elbowed himself forward again he was on the edge of a sheer drop, looking down into a cup of jungle hundreds of feet below.

The American jumped back. “What happened, d'you suppose?” If Fortnight had not been careful where would they be now — down in that mess below? The Samoan must have been sharing that mental picture of disaster. There was a beading of moisture around his hair line, heavier than any the climb had produced.

“Earthquake, I think.” Sam was nearer to the break but looking up, not down. “It looks as if a big slice of the mountain just scaled right off here. Well, what do we do now? I had a feeling that this road was too good to last.”

Kane had turned to the mountain wall. It seemed rough enough to offer foot-and hand-holds. And it was the only answer to Sam's question.

“Get out the rope, Fortnight,” he said over his shoulder. “Here we go again.”