Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (24 page)

He sat up, and peered about. His tiny eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Where the heck am I?” he muttered to himself.

Sitting up, the hairy chemist saw that he lay in darkness. He looked to the left.

There Ham Brooks lay sprawled, apparently slumbering. For the sound of his regular breathing was audible.

Over to the right, Long Tom Roberts was likewise asleep.

Since the undersized electrical expert was closest to hand, Monk reached out with one of his overlong arms and gave him a hearty tap.

Long Tom was no heavy sleeper. The slap jarred him awake, and he jumped to his feet, wielding the first thing he could get his hands on, which proved to be a thorny stick of some sort.

Long Tom almost brained Monk Mayfair before the hairy chemist sprang to his own feet, waving his arms, saying, “Whoa! It’s me—Monk.”

It was dark, and there was a moon. The moonlight probably saved Monk Mayfair from one of the most serious beatings of his entire life. For Long Tom Roberts, while he could be classified as a bantamweight, was known to take on four or five grown men at a time and beat them within an inch of their lives. He had quite the temper.

“Where are we?” Long Tom demanded when he got control of himself.

“Beats me,” admitted Monk.

Long Tom noticed that his nose and throat felt scratchy. He gave the air an experimental sniff.

“Smells like we landed in Hades,” Long Tom ventured uneasily.

Monk said, “I smell fire all right, but not the brimstone part.”

They searched their clothing and discovered they had no weapons. Long Tom produced one of the tiny flashlights that Doc Savage and his men always carried. These were operated by a spring-generator that required only a brisk winding to produce strong illumination.

After digging it out of his sock, where it had been secreted, Long Tom speared illumination all about.

At first, it looked as if they had landed in some kind of charcoal pit. The ground was charred and blackened by fire. The fire was recent, for the stink of burning wood hung heavily in the warm night air.

Investigating, Long Tom discovered what he initially mistook for a great horny tentacle, that ran for some length around and along the ground. It, too, was black and charred. Casting about, he discerned more of them, traveling in all directions. It was as if great beanstalks had caught fire and fallen in tentacular profusion. The sprawling protrusions had an otherworldly look to them.

Monk walked up to the ugly thing, and rubbed it with his hairy paws.

Burnt charcoal resulted, smearing the palms of his hands. Monk sniffed them.

“Smells like creosote, or something like that,” Monk said.

They woke up Ham Brooks, who started awake with wide eyes, the expression on his handsome face suggesting he had been having nightmares.

Looking about, the dapper lawyer saw and smelled that they were no longer aboard the
Stormalong.

“Where are we?” he began thickly.

“Your guess is as good as ours,” Long Tom informed him.

Ham got up, found no trace of his sword cane or any weapon on his person and began flapping his hands, which he did whenever agitated or feeling helpless. The lack of a sword cane always made Ham feel helpless. The others suspected that he slept with the thing under his pillow.

They began exploring, guided only by the penetrating ray of Long Tom’s flashlight. He had to stop and wind it periodically, but unlike a battery-powered torch, the device would never fail to produce illumination.

As they walked along, they began coughing and hacking, the result of continuing to inhale the low-lying haze that had been produced by what had apparently been a very recent fire.

“What the heck happened here?” Monk wanted to know.

Long Tom said, “I think I see water ahead.”

They followed him, craning their heads this way and that, unsure what to expect.

Every man remembered the seemingly miraculous appearance of the Count who had sauntered up from the hold of the
Stormalong,
as dry as a flag, and overcame them all with his trick cane.

Now they were here—wherever “here” was. They had no idea. Nor did they know how many hours had passed since they had fallen into laughing fits, followed by a black unconsciousness.

At last they came to shore, and their feet crunched on the immaculately white sand that suggested crushed sea shells.

They followed the pearly beach for a bit, and soon the moonlight showed them the
Stormalong,
which was lying at anchor, as calm as can be.

“Our cruiser!” Ham bleated. “What the devil is it doing here?”

Long Tom said sourly, “The better question is—what are
we
doing here?”

Since no one had an answer for that, they decided to investigate the cruiser.

They had to roll up their pants legs and wade out to the vessel. The water was very cold, but tolerable.

MONK arrived first, and boarded by the simple expedient of climbing the anchor chain. He reached the foredeck in jig time, clambering into the bridge.

Long Tom followed, and Ham came last, apparently reluctant to commit himself to the indignity of climbing the cumbersome links. He worked around and used the pilot’s ladder.

Once on deck, they initiated a thorough search.

The boat appeared for the most part to be intact, but Long Tom started swearing when he discovered that the radio tubes had been smashed.

Many things were missing—weapons and other equipment that would prove useful. Miraculously—at least according to Ham’s lights—he discovered his sword cane. It was lying in two sections, blade and barrel.

Picking them up, the dapper lawyer made the stick whole. His handsome features grew very pleased.

Monk commented, “A lot of good that done you against that Count’s trick walkin’ stick.”

“I will know what to do next time,” Ham said stiffly.

Going below, they discovered Doc Savage, lying on the floor near the diving well. The bronze giant appeared to be asleep.

Monk attempted to rouse him, but Doc slumbered on.

He placed one hand over the bronze man’s chest, and felt a very strong, steady heartbeat. He appeared very relieved.

Monk offered, “Doc musta gotten a bigger dose than the rest of us. Normally, he’s the first one to come out of anything.”

The hairy chemist fidgeted uneasily, and looked around some more.

Detecting scratching sounds from the lazaret door, the simian chemist threw it open. Out popped Habeas Corpus, the pig. The homely shoat had taken to sleeping in the space, and no doubt had passed the last few hours therein.

“Hog,” said Monk proudly, “leave it to you to stay out of trouble!”

The pig jumped into Monk’s waiting arms and cast a beady glare in Ham’s direction. This made Monk suddenly suspicious.

“Shyster, did you lock him in there?” he demanded of Ham.

“Nonsense,” denied the elegant attorney. “That misbegotten insect is smart enough to hide from trouble on his own account.”

This unexpected compliment made Monk’s tiny eyes narrow and his suspicions grow.

“It appears as if the vessel has been stripped of anything in the nature of weapons,” Ham observed, veering away from the subject of Habeas.

“Yeah,” allowed Monk. “But how did it get here? How did
we
get here?”

Again, there were no answers.

Monk sat down and waited for Doc Savage to come back to life. Ham and Long Tom went topside to continue their investigation.

After a while, they discovered the Diesel fuel tanks had been drained.

“Bone dry,” reported Long Tom in a dispirited voice.

“That means we’re stranded,” said Ham grimly.

“Marooned is the technical term,” Long Tom corrected sourly.

Ham stood watch while Long Tom went back below and waited for Doc Savage to return to consciousness.

Impatiently, Long Tom asked Monk, “Isn’t there some stimulant you can give him?”

Monk shook his bullet head. “No. We ain’t got any idea what Doc was dosed with. No tellin’ what reaction he might have if we try. Better to let him wake up on his own account.”

ANOTHER hour passed before the bronze man showed signs of activity. He began to stir. His eyes snapped open, came into clear focus.

Without a word, Doc stood up, looked around, but said nothing. Not even his customary trilling issued forth.

“We’re stuck on some Hellforsaken island somewhere,” Monk informed him.

Doc Savage seemed not to hear. Despite the clearness of his eyes, he seemed a little out of sorts, as if still half-asleep.

“You O.K.?” Long Tom asked him.

Finally, Doc Savage spoke.

“Precautions are not always sufficient,” he said simply. There was a trace of disappointment in his metallic tones.

Monk said, “It got us all. The heck of it is, we don’t know how we landed here, how our boat got here, but they took away anything we could fight with, and drained the fuel tanks to boot.”

Doc Savage seemed to want to unburden himself of something. The bronze man addressed no one in particular. He simply began speaking.

“I took the precaution of swallowing an oxygen tablet before donning my gas mask. I assumed that would protect me from the laughing vapor, in the event the mask was breached, or the period of exposure went on too long. I was in error.”

“What happened?” Monk asked him.

“I followed the Count down below, but apparently he escaped through the diving well. When I looked down, his sword stick licked up and ripped my mask. Then came the jet of vapor which produces uncontrollable laughing, followed by unconsciousness.”

“Yeah?”

“The oxygen tablet allowed me to continue breathing without having to respire normally.”

Monk grinned. “Yeah, they are handy little gadgets at that.”

“Unfortunately,” added Doc Savage, “they are only good for twenty to thirty minutes. I feigned unconsciousness, awaiting another move by our enemies.”

Long Tom looked interested. “What happened?”

“As I lay there, playing possum,” reported Doc, “the sounds of strange flopping feet on deck came. I could hear things moving about. But I saw nothing, of course.”

Doc seemed to be searching his memory.

“I waited for a chance to make a move. I feared doing so prematurely, lest any of you be harmed in your helpless condition.”

“So what happened?” pressed Monk.

“Our adversaries are as clever and determined as before,” Doc said with a trace of ill-concealed disgust. “While there was scurrying about above deck, someone tossed a jar of the vapor down the hatch, introducing a great quantity of the stuff below decks. I decided it was necessary to enter the water, but before I could do so, I was overcome by laughing. I had only pretended to laugh loudly the first time I was gassed, but the second time I was not in control of myself, so consciousness was lost, with the end result that I accomplished exactly nothing.”

Monk clucked, “Well, you gave it the old college try.”

Doc Savage seemed not mollified by the homely chemist’s pronouncement. Moving suddenly, he went topside, and made a thorough investigation, verifying the fact that the tanks were empty and the vessel stranded. He looked about him in the night and saw the dark shape of a mangrove-covered island.

Doc took to the rail, went into the water, and waited until the others followed him, Monk carrying Habeas the pig above his blunt head triumphantly.

They reached the beach of pearly white sands without incident.

Doc Savage had borrowed Long Tom’s generator flashlight and was using it to pick his way around the island.

Monk offered, “This hickey on the Caribbean looks like a stray patch of Hades.”

Doc Savage said nothing, merely worked his way around, examining the burnt terrain, the great charred profusion that resembled horny, groping elephant trunks reaching everywhere.

Then the bonze man looked up and began studying the waning moon and stars.

After a while he ventured, “A day has passed. It seems that we are still in the Caribbean.”

“What part, though?” wondered Long Tom. “That takes in a lot of territory.”

Doc Savage did not answer directly. Rather, he said, “This island appears to have been fire-blackened and scorched by a recent lightning strike. The blaze has burned itself out, but the air remains heavy with the resulting smoke.”

That explanation relieved their minds no end, since their initial impression suggested that they had been deposited into some kind of Purgatory.

They were on the flat side of the island, which sloped upward to a kind of broad hump covered in unchecked green growth. Doc Savage ignored the rise, and simply walked around the beach, which soon became obstructed by tangles of thorny brush, some scattered cactus, and woody mangrove roots. One end of the isle was choked with red mangrove swamp, whose tough, twisting roots dipped into water’s edge as if attempting to escape the awful place by walking into the sea.

There was absolutely no life. No birds. No insects. No tropical lizards of any kind.

It was a little uncanny.

Reversing course, the bronze man followed the beach around in the other direction, only to discover another tangle of mangroves.

There was no point in attempting to negotiate the tough root system, so Doc began mounting the high summit of the island.

Glancing about, Ham Brooks ventured, “There doesn’t seem to be any kind of lagoon here.”

“Why does that matter?” asked Long Tom peevishly.

“With all the talk of lagoons,” Ham explained, “this might be the place to find one. But there’s nothing of the sort along the shore.”

Doc Savage led them up the rise, which was thick with grass, and when he got to the top, his eerie trilling began to filter through the night air. It wafted briefly, trailed off in an intrigued, curious sound.

When the others joined Doc, they discovered the reason for this expression of surprise.

What they took to be a hill was in fact a great hollow crater, at the bottom of which lay a pool of placid water, dark and unmoving in the moonlight.

“Blue hole,” said Doc Savage.