DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (16 page)

The march was cumbersome. The pirates stood much shorter than Doc Savage, and so were forced to carry the dead weight on their shoulders.

Nevertheless, they got underway successfully.

It was the deepest part of the night and the jungle was unutterably quiet. Palms rustled vaguely. That was all.

Tropical bats known as “flying foxes” flew overhead, silent and watchful, in search of jungle insects to consume. The crescent moon had climbed as far as it was going to and peered down thinly at the shaggy hump of land known as Pirate Island.

The going was difficult. Doc Savage seemed tireless. Not so Dang Mi’s cohorts. From time to time, one stumbled, forcing the procession to halt long enough to allow him to get organized.

Dang showed increasing impatience.

“Make haste, you heathens,” he snapped in their native tongues, in which he showed a rough fluency.

As they moved along, Dang kept his half-slanted eyes open.

“I’m thinkin’ you must’ve stashed that infernal box somewhere close to this spot,” he grumbled.

Doc Savage vouchsafed no reply. His flake-gold eyes were very active, however.

“Once I get my hands on that contraption, there won’t be any stoppin’ Dang Mi. Dang my sunburnt hide, there won’t.”

Before long the oppressive heat, combined with ceaseless exertion, brought the burdened pirates stumbling and sinking to their knees.

Carefully, Doc let the pale snake down to permit a moment of rest. He looked unaffected by the arduous trek.

Dang Mi whipped out a superfirer and shot two laggards.

“We ain’t stoppin’ for nothin’!” he roared. “I want that box, and this is how I’m gonna get it.”

Seeing that there was no reasoning with the man, Doc Savage took up the python in two metallic hands and draped the long constrictor serpent across his powerfully-muscled shoulders.

Saying, “Come on then,” he continued on his way.

Eyes popping out of his head, Dang Mi watched the Herculean bronze man walk away as if momentarily forgetting that he—Doc Savage—was his prisoner.

His pirates were struck dumb by the sight.

“
Gangsa syaitan
,” one breathed. “Brazen devil!”

“Not human,” another muttered in his mother tongue.

“Belay that,” Dang Mi thundered. “He’s human. Or close to it, anyway. Come on—follow him.
Chop-chop!”

The pirate cohort of Dang Mi followed after the bronze giant with a nervous alacrity. It might be seen that they were losing some of their respect for their captain, while fear of the bronze man was growing apace.

Eventually, they came to the guarded pit. Doc Savage stood over the rim looking down at his men, the insensate serpent still draped across his shoulders.

“We’re okay, Doc,” Monk called up. “Is that breakfast?”

The others were also present. Ham stood with Renny. The Chans were hunkered down in the manner of their Asian ancestors, placid faces composed.

There was an unconscious pirate lying in the pit with them.

“What happened?” Doc demanded.

“This one accidentally fell in,” Ham explained, “and Monk brained him with his shoe!”

“I was half asleep, and I thought he was a wild boar or somethin’ that had fallen in,” Monk explained blandly.

“Out! Get out, all of you!” bellowed Dang Mi. “And you, the hairy one. You carry my bully boy out with you!”

They clambered up, Monk lastly. He dropped the senseless man from his long hirsute arms. The corsair landed on his face.

Monk spanked his hands together, as if satisfied that he had accomplished something worthwhile. Dust flew from them.

Dang Mi turned to Doc Savage.

“Get down in that pit and carry that blamed python in with you.”

Doc Savage did not immediately respond.

So Dang Mi signaled to his men and the bronze man was unceremoniously pushed into the pit. It took five rovers to do it and it might be suspected that Doc, had he simply made a greater effort, could have stood his ground indefinitely.

Landing, Doc untangled himself from the limp python and found his feet. He looked up, meeting the pirate leader’s eyes with metallic regard.

“How long until that python wakes up?” demanded Dang Mi.

“That will be up to the python,” Doc ventured.

“Well, in that case we’re gonna wait as long as it takes. Everyone settle down. It may be a long night.”

It was. The night crawled along like a tired thing.

Jungle sounds kept them awake, even if the situation was not exactly conducive to sleep. Monk dropped off once or twice. Ham elbowed him awake, disturbing his snoring.

“Can’t a guy get some shuteye?” Monk demanded of Ham.

Ham undertoned back, “Do you want to miss the escape?”

Monk blinked slumber from his tiny eyes. “Huh?”

“Doc’s been acting deucedly passive,” Ham explained. “I think he’s got something up his sleeve. We should be ready for it.”

Over the course of the next few hours, Dang Mi called down threats upon the heads of Doc Savage; the bronze man seemed unmoved by it all.

“When that dang monster reptile wakes up, it will be quite an occasion,” Dang suggested. “A regular rhubarb.”

Monk snorted. “I’ve seen Doc fight pythons before. A whole nest of them. That snake is outnumbered.” 

Thinking back to the events of the night, Dang Mi seemed to take the hairy chemist’s words seriously.

He sent a runner to the junk
Devilfish
, after first whispering hushed instructions.

After a time, the Malay came back carrying a pair of good old American boxing gloves that were tied together by their rawhide lacings.

Clutching these, Dang Mi climbed into the pit personally.

“Put out your hands,” he invited.

Doc did so.

Dang jammed one glove into Doc’s right hand and stuffed his left into the other.

When that task was accomplished, he began lacing the gloves tight so they could not be easily removed.

When he stepped back to survey his work, Dang Mi chortled, “Let’s see you stun that snake with your fingers covered up with those leather babies.”

“Your idea is that I cannot render the python unconscious by chiropractic manipulation?” Doc questioned.

“I don’t know what you just said exactly,” Dang admitted. “But I think you got the general idea.”

Doc Savage shrugged as if unconcerned. He started to turn away.

Then one gloved fist lashed out and rocked Dang Mi’s head back on his shoulders. The rest of him followed. The pirate chief landed on his back against the rim of the pit and slid insensate to a sitting position.

No second blow was required. Dang was out.

Rifles poked over the edge of the pit and Doc Savage was ordered to step away from the fallen corsair leader.

Doc obliged them.

Two men scrambled down and heaved Dang up on their shoulders, clumsily bearing him out of the pit.

DAWN was creeping on when Dang Mi sat up and began shaking his head violently. A few seconds of this convinced him that it was exactly the wrong thing to do. He became violently sick.

Water was brought to him cupped in a palm frond and he drank of this greedily.

“What happened?” Dang muttered, looking around.

“
Gangsa
devil, he sucker-punch your lights out,” Dang Mi was told. “Down you go, senseless.”

Dang winced. “Is the dang snake awake?”

“Not yet, O brave one.”

“Well, it can’t be long. Come on, let’s get down to serious business.”

So saying, Dang Mi started to climb to his feet. He got half way, then his knees went wobbly, as if they were balloons filled with water. He sat down hard.

“Help me up, dang it!” he raged.

Two pirates performed the duty. When Dang was back on his feet, he took an experimental step, tottered. It was as if he had lost his sea legs, except that he was safely on dry land.

Stumbling over to the pit, he found several of his men hunkered down in the dirt instead of attending to guard duty.

Dang broke up this activity with a sturdy kick of his boot. Pirates scrambled to their feet.

“What the dang-blasted hell are you up to? Gamblin’, when you should be guardin’!”

“We were wagering on the fate of the demon man of bronze,” a Dyak explained.

“Yeah? What odds?” asked Dang Mi, who like to gamble himself.

“Fate favors the man that be-bronze, it is believed,” Dang was told.

Dang looked about ready to explode. His face flushed, then darkened, then flushed again. If steam could be emitted from a man’s ears, as it sometimes is in movie cartoons, Dang was about to burst forth with scalding clouds of it.

“No man can stand up to a bull python when there’s no way out,” Dang bellowed.

“He is a man of much magic,” one pirate insisted.

“I’ll magic him!” Dang blustered. “Two of you get down there and strip him of his clothes. Two more of you, follow me! We’re going foragin’.”

THEY were gone an hour and when they returned they carried in a galvanized steel pail a concoction that looked as if it were composed of equal parts cranberry juice and tree sap.

Setting this down, Dang Mi unholstered his six-guns and trained them into the pit.

“A ladder is comin’ down and you’re comin’ up,” he growled. “No tricks. We wanna see if we can revive that python.”

Bare-chested now, Doc Savage climbed out of the pit. The boxing gloves still encumbered his powerful hands. Dang Mi inspected the lacings carefully. They were tight, showing no signs of tampering.

While this inspection was going on, two Malays climbed into the pit with the sloshing steel pail and several natural sponges.

Unseen by any of the prisoners, they began slopping the potion onto the dozing white python’s scaly hide. They did this carefully, running out thick strings of the stuff from the back of the head to the tip of the tail. Juice ran down both sides.

With sticks, they prodded the snake onto its long spine, exposing its pale belly. They repeated the operation, taking care not to spill any of the red stuff on their own persons.

Through it all, the snake slumbered oblivious.

When the pail was empty, they brought it back up, taking the same care as if even the dross at the bottom of the pail was something they dared not splash about.

Bowing and cupping their hands in unison, they indicated to Dang Mi that it was accomplished.

“Now back into the pit, Savage,” Dang ordered. “We just gave that snake a great big bath to wake him up. It won’t be long now.”

Dang paused. He eyed the bronze giant. “Unless you care to break your dang silence?”

Doc Savage shook his head. He got back down into the pit. He managed the ladder just as well going down as he had coming up, in spite of his encumbered hands.

Whatever the cranberry-colored concoction was, it did not appear to act rapidly. For another hour or so, the alabaster serpent slept on. The sun began to grow hot and the juice commenced steaming. Exotic birds came to life. Somewhere a tiger snarled.

Dang Mi watched the proceedings with eager eyes.

“That bug juice we concocted should do the trick,” he told one of his men.

The other nodded sagely. “Yes. Even drying as it is now, it will be fatal to the touch.”

Dang fell to whispering. “So even if Doc Savage does figure out a way to fend him off, all the snake has to do is rasp his scales against him here and there and Savage will come into contact with the poison. Paralysis starts right off. It won’t affect the snake because he’s covered in scale. But porous human skin is a different matter.”

They watched as the dazed constrictor snake began to stir.

Doc’s men were nudged over to the edge of the pit to watch.

Dang Mi lifted his voice.

“Hey, Savage! This is your last chance. When the snake is done with you, your men go in, one at a time. You know how a python operates. It wraps itself about a man’s chest and commences to squeeze the life out of him. They say the last thing you hear before you stop breathin’ is your rib-cage cracklin’ like kindling.”

Doc Savage appeared not to be listening. All of his attention was upon the stirring reptile.

FIRST, the tail began to jitter. Then the white head came up. It took a while for the major portion of the python to come to life. The ghostly gleaming coils began to roll and writhe, causing the cherry-red coating to drip and splash like so much blood. The great serpent’s mouth yawned wide, disclosing a pale inner mouth and two rows of impressive teeth.

Amber eyes raised on a wedge-shaped head began pointing in the direction of the Man of Bronze.

Doc set himself.

But the python did not approach. Its orbs had a filmy quality, as if it were sick. The triangular head writhed about, as if seeking something else. Its thin whip-like tongue flickered in and out.

Reptiles by reputation have a lazy way about them—at least when they are not motivated by hunger. This one seemed to partake of that legend.

It writhed and curled in on itself, slowly forming a mound like a coil of fat rope. When it had accomplished this, the python pulled its head in and closed its gemlike eyes.

It was soon fast asleep.

Dang Mi roared, “Get up, dang you! Get up and fight like a man!”

But the gory reptile refused to respond. It continued to slumber peacefully.

A cheer went up among the pirates. Money quickly changed hands. Congratulations were called down on the bronze man in many languages.

“The ghost snake is afraid of the bronze devil! It will not fight!”

“The golden-eyed giant has the touch of gold! Nothing can withstand him!”

Seeing that the tide was turning against him, Dang Mi shouted, “Fetch up a tiger. Go on! Get a net from the boat and bring back a hungry man-eater. I don’t care how many of you brown blokes get mauled in the process.”

A contingent of pirates reluctantly betook themselves away.

It was full light now and any tiger in the vicinity would have returned to its den to sleep off his evening meal, if any. Tigers are nocturnal by nature.

Dang Mi called down to Doc Savage, “I ain’t through yet. Not by a long shot.”

“The poison you used might have worked,” Doc pointed out. “But for one thing.”