Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (7 page)

After a time, shouts could be heard. They were coming from the deck of the
Orion.

“Clark! Clark!”

Doc Savage declined to answer to his old name.

“Where are you?”

Doc lay on his back, floating calmly, watching the moon slowly rise. It was a very spectacular moon. It gave him a cool feeling after the heat of the day. He felt no urgency to respond to his father’s frantic calls.

Gobbling talk went back and forth. The Mayan language, no doubt. It sounded like the guttural tongue the crew spoke. When they deigned to talk, which was seldom.

Captain Savage’s voice called out again. “Clark! Clark!
Son!”

Underwater, Doc Savage smiled. Pleased bubbles dribbled out from between his teeth.

After a suitable interval, Doc Savage began to strike back to the
Orion.
He found the line he left trailing from the stern and climbed it with the smooth agility of a long-armed baboon.

Topping the deck, he made his appearance. His bare chest looked metallic in the moonlight, like bronze dusted with silver.

“Did you call?” Doc asked pleasantly.

Captain Savage’s golden eyes stared coldly. “Where did you get to, Mister Savage?”

“I went for a swim.”

“In these villainous waters?”

“They felt refreshing.”

“I expect my First Mate to remain on board until I give him permission to leave.”

The worry on his father’s face more than made up for the shaking anger in his voice, Doc thought. It gave him a satisfied feeling.

Doc asked, “Did you look for me in your secret hiding place?”

“Of course. It was the first place I looked. Did you figure out where it was?”

“Not yet.”

The captain squinted one eye until it became a mere glint of gold. “I gather that you imagine that we are square now,” he said evenly.

“Furthest thing from my mind, Captain,” said Doc, poker-faced.

“Well, we are. So leave it at that. I’m giving you the next watch. Fetch your weapon.”

Doc went below and got his automatic. Checking the action after inserting a magazine, he stuffed it into the waist of his pongee pants, at the small of his back where it would not inhibit movement.

NIGHT stole along like a black blanket being dragged about. The moon came and went. Cloud scud swallowed it, disgorged it again, and fresh scud came to gobble the lunar crescent once more. Light therefore was a haphazard thing.

Doc Savage had learned to see exceptionally well in the dark. Some thought he had freak eyes, like a lion or a tiger. Their gold color gave rise to that belief. In actuality, it was only that nature had given him excellent visual acuity and he had learned all the tricks of perceiving by night.

So it was that during one of the periods of no moonlight Doc spied a dugout canoe come stealing in the direction of the
Orion’s
stern.

Six men huddled in the low craft. Paddles made stealthy sounds as it was pushed along.

Hardwood tubes longer than a tall man were lifted as the craft approached. Blowpipes. Fierce weapons in the night. Silent and very deadly.

Moving to the stern, Doc brought a Very flare pistol.

As the low craft drew near, Doc lifted the Very pistol. Before pulling the trigger, he aimed carefully, then shut his eyes to protect them from the incipient glare.

The muzzle vomited a rocket that burst into a star shell overhead. Night was splashed with chemical day.

From the craft erupted loud sounds of surprise and outright consternation. Dark heads ducked as if from grenade shrapnel.

Opening his eyes, Doc sent a .45 slug in their direction. He picked his shot well. It snapped a thick blowpipe from the fist of a startled warrior.

That was enough to change their minds. Digging hard with their paddles, they turned the dugout about, fleeing toward shore like a skimming ghost.

Captain Savage appeared on deck, a revolver clutched in his raw red hand.

“Trouble?” he demanded.

“Nothing a star shell and a well-placed lead slug couldn’t deflect,” said Doc.

Captain Savage watched the dugout disappearing into the murk of night.

“One may mean others. Keep a sharp watch, Mister Savage.”

“You get some sleep.”

“I will. If a wind should spring up, I want you to raise the crew. Catch that wind and get us out of this foul spot.”

“I rather like it,” said Doc.

“Trouble is nothing to borrow in the Java Sea.”

Doc almost smiled. “I don’t want to borrow it, but rather send it back where it came from. With interest.”

Sparks stirred in the old man’s golden eyes. “War has got into your blood, I see.”

“Adventure has gotten into my blood. Turn in and I will see you in the morning.”

Captain Savage went below. Doc moved to the bow, searching the Java Sea with the eyes of an eagle and a swelling heart. The trip was becoming interesting.

Chapter VIII

OVER BREAKFAST, DOC SAVAGE described the occupants of the dugout which had attempted to steal up on the
Orion
’s stern.

“They were tattooed, and their skins were shades of brown, with a tinge of yellow,” finished Doc. “Their faces were blank of expression, and hairless. It appeared that they shave their eyebrows, as well as their faces. They wore red headbands, from which long feathers stuck up.”

Captain Savage took this in, remained silent. After pondering a while, he spoke.

“Sea Dyaks. Bad customers, if they are on the war path.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Fierce warriors. More burly of build than the average Malay. Sometimes Sea Dyaks will join Malay pirate crews, as oarsmen. But they prefer to stick to their own kind. Their weapons are the
duku
chopping blade, curved
mandau
long sword, an iron-tipped spear they call a
lonjo,
and the
sumpitan.
That latter is a blowpipe, which has no equal in all the world. In the bad old days, they took heads.”

“They might still,” remarked Doc.

“That they might. Whether pirates or headhunters, the sooner we are out of these waters, the better I will feel. If a
balla
fell upon us, we would very shortly be in a bad way.”

“Balla?”

“A war fleet of
bangkongs
—long shallow craft, stealthy and fleeter than the Malay
proa.
Eighty feet long with a ten-foot beam. Ninety men at oars. Muzzle-loading brass guns positioned in the bow and at the sides. They run covered with a roof of
nipa
palm leaves, which extends the length of the craft. When they attack, the raiders climb onto the roof and attack from that position, leaping onto the decks of the victim ship, yelling like Comanches, which incidentally they resemble when they are in dark war paint and feathers.”

“My Annihilator gun would make short work of them,” said Doc firmly.

“One boat, yes. Perhaps two. But twenty? With each one crammed to the gunwales with blowpipes spitting sudden death at you?”

Doc said nothing. It was a sobering mental image.

His thoughts suddenly leapt to another subject, one that had been bothering him since he first set foot upon the
Orion.

“It is perhaps acceptable to speak of this now, since my training is now behind me. Do you think my mother would have approved of your plan?”

“I
know
she would have approved,” Savage Senior said shortly.

“How can you say this with such certainty? She passed on just as it began.”

“It was her idea as much as it was mine,” snapped the elder Savage.

Doc was shocked speechless for a moment. The thought had never occurred to him, never crossed his imagination as a possibility. He had always assumed—presumed—that the decision to place him in scientific hands had been his father’s—a result of or reaction to her unexpected death.

After a moment, a strange ululation began issuing from Doc’s parted lips. It began as an undertone, a faint whisper of sound. Soon it built, note upon note, into a musical cadence that filled the room with a haunting half-melodic refrain.

Captain Savage looked about perplexedly. “What is that peculiar noise?” he muttered.

Doc abruptly compressed his lips. The sound ceased.

His father eyed him dubiously. “Did you make that… that whistle?”

“I confess that I did,” said Doc, coloring slightly.

“Explain it, please.”

“You will recall, Father, that when I was young I went to India.”

“It was part of the master plan for you. Yes, I recall it.”

“There, an old Hindu yogi taught me many skills. The power to control the mind. How to repress the emotions. To be master of one’s own body and brain.”

“It was a subject thought fit to study—although I recall some dissent among the more rigidly scientific advisors,” allowed the captain.

“The yogi was very skilled in the suppression of his own emotions,” continued Doc. “But he had a habit. He trilled like a songbird when he was excited by something.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

“I picked up the habit from him,” explained Doc.

“Well, get rid of it!”

“I have tried. But much of the time I don’t know that I am doing it. When I notice, I can shut it off. But not before.”

Savage snapped, “It is a ridiculous and unbecoming sound for a grown man to make, Clark.”

“I do not disagree,” replied Doc. “But I’m afraid that it has become a part of my mental makeup.”

The elder Savage stared at his son a long time with his striking golden eyes, as if seeing him clearly for the first time in a very long while.

“Perhaps it is a good thing that your training was interrupted,” he muttered at last.

“How so?”

“You are at risk of becoming a freak. It is not too late to school some of this infernal freakishness out of you.”

Doc said nothing. He did not think that his trilling habit was that unfortunate—merely a strange side effect of a fantastic upbringing. He had long ago let go of the notion that he was a normal man. Savages were not normal. He was something more. Supernormal, possibly.

After a while, Doc remarked without emotion, “I am what I am. I am the alloy that your single-minded will made of me.”

“Room for improvement always exists,” said Savage Senior, pushing his plate back and rushing from his chair. “Let us be about our day, Mister Savage.”

“Aye, Captain.”

EMERGING onto the deck, they found the crew going about their business like the mute automatons that they were.

Captain Savage took the wheel. He drew in a great breath, held it, and released it slowly, like a man exhaling the smoke of a particular flavorful and aromatic cigar.

“First Mate, mark this air well.”

Doc glanced over. “Sir?”

“Draw it into your lungs. Hold it there.”

Doc did so. He held it a long time before releasing it.

“What do you smell, Mister Savage?”

“Copra. Fish. Salt. Human sweat.”

“Yes, yes. But the mixture. Commit the mixture of these smells to your memory. Your grandfather taught me to do this. You could place him on any deck in any sea on God’s green footstool and he could tell what part of the Arctic Ocean or the Banda Sea he was transiting by its unique conglomeration of local odors.”

Doc inhaled a second time. This time, he let the aromas of the Java Sea pass more slowly along his olfactory receptors.

“Give the mass a name,” Captain Savage suggested. “One that will fix the combination in your mind for future reference.”

“I will call it ‘Java.’”

The captain shook his head. “No. Too broad. This is but a part of the Java Sea. There are other parts. You must learn them all.”

“To what end, Captain? I do not foresee a life on the sea.”

“Your future is a blank slate—a
tabula rasa.
This knowledge will do you no harm and it may do you a great deal of good.”

“Very well. ‘Middle Java’ it is.”

“Carry on, Mister Savage.”

Doc went in search of something to do. The Mayans ran the ship so tightly it was difficult to keep his hands busy during a normal passage.

THEY passed northwest through the Greater Sunda Islands and into the Karimata Strait, into the lower reaches of the South China Sea. Doc tasted the air at every stage, committing it to memory, wondering what had been the life of his Grandfather Stormalong.

He recalled hearing of a mythical Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, a New England sailor, of whom tall tales had been told. Captain Stormalong was a giant, a nautical Titan standing some thirty feet tall, who captained a clipper ship so large that its masts were hinged so they didn’t catch on the moon. It was named the
Courser.
Doc had assumed—again wrongly—that his father’s father was named after the imaginary seaman. But further investigation showed that the myth had been inspired by the living man. It had made a tremendous impression on young Clark when he first learned that. It was like discovering that your grandfather had birthed the legend of Paul Bunyan, or Robin Hood.

Past Singapore on the starboard side and Sumatra to port, they went up the Strait of Malacca where pirates were rumored to lurk in hidden coves amid mangrove swamps.

“Here is where we may be tested,” Captain Savage cautioned him.

“Pirates don’t frighten me.”

“Overconfidence does not become a Savage.”

Doc swallowed a mild rejoinder that came to mind. He had just emerged from a great war, an undertaking so vast that mere freebooters seemed no more dangerous than flies. But it never paid to imagine one’s unfought battles as victories before they were had. So he followed his father’s advice—even if it rankled him.

“The Great War was a far cry from the wars in which you fought, Father,” Doc said calmly. “Those wars were fought on land and at sea. Now we fight in the air and under the sea as well.”

“We are not at war now. We are on a sacred mission.”

“Where are we bound?”

“Up the Strait of Malacca to the Nicobar Islands.”

Doc nodded. He had only a vague idea of the Nicobar Islands. But he liked the sound of them.