Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (12 page)

He employed this to fend off the first knife man. The tube was swiftly hacked to fragments, but this maneuver bought the bronze man sufficient time to pick up a fallen
mandau
and begin hacking.

The longer sword made short work of the
duku
wielders. Using his superior strength, Doc lopped off hands at the wrists, literally disarming his swarming foes.

More blades came up. Hands grasped for bare bronze arms.

Doc shook them off, removed a head with a sidewise swipe. It splashed into the water, rolling wildly like a buoyant ball.

By now he had a curved
mandau
in one hand and a thorn-like
duku
in the other. He used the latter as a throwing knife. It was not made for that purpose, but his superior size and strength allowed him to pierce an ink-decorated chest with his first throw.

Picking up another, Doc clove a skull at its crown, exposing living brain.

In the close quarters of the benched-seated boat, fighting was not easily accomplished. So it was that the Dyaks began retreating from this bronze-skinned giant who dwarfed them all.

Above, Captain Savage leaned over and began raining hot lead upon the combatants. They began falling with surprised grunts and outcries of mortal pain.

Soon, the waters around the outrigger were floating with the dead and wounded.

Doc ended the battle by inserting a
mandau’s
sharp tip into the face of the apparent captain of the outrigger, transfixing him. The Dyak sat down hard, keeling over with his dark eyes rolled up into his blank-faced skull until only the whites showed.

A silence ensued. The groaning of the wounded punctuated it at intervals.

Doc looked up.

Captain Savage stood at the rail, weathered brassy face a frown, a smoking pistol in each fist.

“Hold your position,” Doc called up. “I will be back directly.”

“Son. This is madness. There is no catching her! The
Orion
has the wind at her back.”

“No other choice,” called back Doc.

Inserting a
duku
knife into his belt, he returned to the water and struck out in the wake of the fleeing schooner. The grisly gray blades of cruising shark fins came and went, vanishing below to feed on hapless dead flesh.

IT was not so mad as it seemed, this plan of Doc Savage’s.

The bronze-skinned Hercules knew he could not overhaul the
Orion
in a race. But this was not a simple contest, as he saw it.

The
Orion
had sailed off in order to isolate them aboard the
Courser.
When the Dyak outrigger failed to follow, Doc judged, whoever now commanded the schooner would surely turn back to seek the fate of his fellow warriors.

It was a fair guess. And it proved accurate.

After an hour, the schooner tacked about clumsily. The sails had not been raised correctly. Whoever had control of the wheel was attempting to turn the boat by brute force alone.

This meant that headway would be lost.

Sure enough, the luffing canvas lost their wind, collapsed. The
Orion
began to wallow.

At that point, Doc began swimming in earnest. He kept an eye out for sharks, but encountered none. They would follow the blood, and the bronze giant, entirely unscathed, was swimming away from the gory patch of death and dismemberment.

Nearing the schooner, he paused, treading water.

There were no signs of a crew of any size. Three dark heads moved about the deck, one at the wheel. There had been three empty seats on the
bangkong,
so Doc was reasonably certain that he faced only a trio of foes.

Moving on an intercept course with the approaching
Orion,
Doc charged his lungs and submerged.

He floated beneath the waves until the dark prow came knifing in his direction.

Doc allowed the copper-sheathed hull to pass over him, then kicked for the surface, head emerging at the stern, where the Dyaks would be unlikely to be watching.

A line trailed in the water. It was not regulation marine line, but a hand-woven fiber cord. No doubt it was an artifact of the process by which the
Orion
had initially been boarded.

Doc seized this cord, testing it, and determined that it might hold his weight.

Hand over hand, he ascended. The crude line strained. Fibers popped and parted. It began to look as if he would not make it.

With a snapping snarl, the line finally gave under his 200 pounds of rock-hard muscle.

By then, Doc had neared the stern rail and quickly transferred his grasp to its smooth brass. It was slick with some sticky fluid, and Doc had to scramble to keep his grasp.

Coming over the rail, Doc knelt, allowed the last brine to silently string off him. His metallic hair was already become dry, a weird property it possessed. He saw that his hands were ensanguined with fresh blood.

When he was ready, Doc moved forward, gleaming
duku
in hand.

He passed a welter of blood by the starboard stern. That told a grisly tale and redoubled his resolve to retake the
Orion,
and so to avenge his father’s slain crew.

The Dyak at the wheel stood closest. He was jerking it back and forth, as if testing its response. He seemed to be enjoying himself, for he bounced on the balls of his bare feet, like a boy playing with a new toy.

But he died like a man.

Doc stole up behind him and smothered his mouth with terrible digits of bronze. The other brought up the sharp
duku
knife and slit his tattooed throat lengthwise.

Doc lowered the squirming body, stood on it to keep spasmodic death throes from hammering the deck and alerting the others. He swiped the blade clean of gore, lest dripping blood drops give away his position.

Doc moved for the next man, keeping close to the deckhouse walls.

That stealthy approach did not go so well.

Doc made no sound, but the Dyak was pacing the foredeck restlessly, looking ahead with jet eyes that combined a penetrating fierceness with an incongruous blankness due to their lack of eyebrows, vainly in search of the war canoe that had been left behind to finish off the last of the
Orion
crew.

Taking a turn about the forecastle, the warrior suddenly spotted the bronze giant approaching in the shadow of the deckhouse. Perhaps the sudden scent of fresh-spilt blood alerted him.

Doc rushed forward to meet him, a terrible, towering figure. The Dyak squealed, shrank back. That alerted his brother pirate.

Suddenly, both were plunging in Doc’s direction,
mandaus
out and flashing menacingly.

A knife against two long swords does not favor the man armed only with the shorter blade. But Doc Savage was no ordinary man.

He lifted both arms, making himself look even larger than he was. He vented a war cry he had learned in Arabia—one that started deep in the pit of his stomach and seemed to scrape the eardrums with its piercing howl.

This had a decided effect on the others.

They abruptly recalculated the odds. One backed up. The other attempted to dodge to one side on bare feet.

As it happened, the latter veered in the direction of the port rail and Doc Savage swept a hand up and sent the
duku
blade sizzling after him.

The blade struck in the shoulder with a meaty bite, and the man pitched over the rail, trailing a satisfying scream.

The surviving Dyak, seeing that the bronze colossus was no longer armed, discovered his mistake. He came in again,
mandau
waving menacingly.

Doc dived for a coil of heavy line, brought it up in both hands, then flung it with strength that was prodigious.

The swordsman caught the heavy mass full in his unprotected chest and had the wind knocked out of him. He also lost his sword. It went skittering and spinning along the deck.

Struggling to extract himself from the hempen tangle, the Dyak scrambled in search of the fallen blade.

He discovered it when the blade tip suddenly appeared under his sagging chin. Doc raised the man’s head, gave him the full power of his golden gaze.

Seeing those terrible aureate orbs, the Dyak screamed.

Doc addressed him in Malay.

“Adakah terdapat lebih anda di atas kapal?”
Are others of your breed aboard?

The man hesitated.

Doc employed the head-taking
mandau
sword to raze the eight hornbill feathers sticking up from the Dyak’s sweat-stained headband. This produced a sudden change in attitude.

“No, no!”

“Terima kasih.”
Thank you. Doc removed his head with a swift, sidewise swipe.

The man never knew what happened. His rolling face remained as blank after death as it had been before.

Doc picked up the bisected body and disposed of it over the side. It wasn’t long before shark fins were slicing toward the spot, which soon began boiling with the fury of their feeding.

By that time, the
Orion
was tacking back toward the derelict clipper ship. Soon, she was coming up alongside the
Courser.
Doc Savage had cleaned the decks of blood and bodies. His face was very resolute.

Chapter XIV

CAPTAIN CLARK SAVAGE, SENIOR, took command of the schooner
Orion
with a stern visage and a mouth that was like the cold edge of a sword blade.

He seemed at a loss for words. Finally, his snapping eyes met those of his son.

“Your training has repaid all the wealth I have poured into it,” he said stiffly.

Doc Savage said nothing.

“Put another way,” he added, his voice thick with clogged emotion, “you have exceeded my expectations, Mister Savage. Congratulations on a job masterfully accomplished.”

“Thank you, sir,” returned Doc, inwardly gratified even if his outward mask registered nothing of the sort.

“There will be heads on board,” Captain Savage said, upon surveying the deck.

“What makes you say that, Captain?”

“My eyes. There were none in the war canoe. I see none on this deck. Therefore, they must be below. Dyaks do not waste trophy heads, which they consider to possess supernatural power.”

“I will investigate,” said Doc.

“I am the captain. This is my solemn duty.” He surged for the deckhouse companion.

Doc followed him below.

They expected to find utter ruination, but there had been no time for that.

On the dining table reposed three fresh heads and a fourth that was dry and shrunken, its eyes and mouth sewn shut. It rested upon a pewter platter.

Grimly, Captain Savage examined the fresh specimens first. He recognized them as Ikan, Kish, and Ichik.

“Where is Chicahua?” wondered Doc.

“That remains to be discovered,” Savage Senior said gravely. “But we will accord these sad remains the proper burial at sea that they deserve for their loyal service and sacrifice.”

“Aye, Captain.”

They turned their attention to the fourth head. It was not freshly-taken. Withered and black with age, it brooded, eyes closed, mouth sewn shut. Yellowish teeth showed dimly behind coarse black thread.

In the gloom they thought it might be a human head that had become bloated and deformed in its death corruptions.

“Looks to me to be a man of Africa,” pronounced Captain Savage. “Possibly a Zulu.”

“No,” said Doc. “Not a man. An ape.”

Captain Savage examined it with undisguised distaste. “I stand corrected. A Kongo gorilla, from the size of the beast.”

“No gorilla ever grew so large,” countered Doc Savage.

Captain Savage cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “What is it then?”

Employing a knife, Doc picked at the head, testing it for flexibility. It had been taken long ago, he decided.

Doc paid special attention to the top of the skull. He found a lack of bone there, but upon further probing, decided that the bone plates were floating free.

Doc’s peculiar trilling wandered the scales for a period of time.

“What is it, son?”

“This gorilla is a juvenile. The skull plates have not yet fused.”

“Nonsense! Observe its prodigious size. Larger than the head of a full-grown man.”

Doc employed his blade tip to lift a flap of scalp. The brains had been removed and the brain pan stuffed with dried grass, but the bony crown had not been disturbed. The top of the skull was composed of separate plates.

“A youth,” decided Doc at last. “Not more than three years old.”

Captain Savage snorted. “What manner of ape would this be?”

Doc did some fast mental calculations. “One that, when fully grown, might stand a dozen or more feet tall.”

“Absurd! Science has catalogued no such creature. The prehistoric record is silent on this score.”

“Only a juvenile would have such an arrangement of skull plates,” insisted Doc. “They fuse after several years. This is a young specimen of an anthropoid unknown to the Twentieth Century.”

Silence held them for over a minute.

After due consideration, Captain Savage intoned, “We will dispose of it with the others.”

Doc said swiftly, “Captain, please reconsider. This head may be of great value to anthropologists.”

“Such a foul thing does not belong on a clean ship like the
Orion,
Mister Savage.”

“I will keep it in my cabin,” promised Doc.

“Very well. If you must. But we have a crew member to find. See to the sails, while I undertake the task.”

DOC returned to the deck and examined the canvas while his father rummaged below. They were intact, although they drooped from lack of maintenance. The rigging was a limp mess.

After a period, Captain Savage came clumping up. Doc turned, startled—for he heard two sets of footfalls.

A prolonged trilling signaled his surprise. For Captain Savage emerged with the last member of the crew, Chicahua, who served as boatswain to the late crew.

“Where did you find him?” asked Doc.

“In my secret hiding hole. He discovered it.”