Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 15) (30 page)

McCullum groaned again, and it was difficult to tell whether it was a moan of relief or disappointment.

Looking about for something to break the handcuffs proved to be a waste of time, so Seaman Worth said, “I’ll be back for you with the cutting tool.”

The Skipper nodded and his head fell back on his pillow as if it had been a major exertion to keep it raised.

Rushing down to the innards of the vessel, Don next bumped into Leander Tucker, who had collected Seaman Goines from somewhere.

“Where did you find him?” Don demanded.

“In the brig. But let him tell it.”

JURY GOINES rapped out a rapid explanation. “I had powerful trouble trying to find a place to hide, then I thought of the brig. I locked myself in there, figuring what was the worst that could happen? After a while, one of the pirates pressed his nose to the cell-door window, looked in, saw me sitting there and figured he might as well just let me be. So there I sat until Funny found me.”

“I’ve been trying to shake that nickname,” Seaman Tucker inserted seriously. “Call me Tuck.”

“We need every hand we can get,” Don told Goines. “Here’s the way it shakes down. A pirate named Diamond and his crew have taken off part of the crew. We are on a reef. The other part of the crew have been hot-welded into their accommodations. Getting them out is going to be a job.”

“I have handled an acetylene torch in my time,” volunteered Goines.

“Good. That’s going to be our first duty.”

Seaman Goines led them to the place where such equipment was stored, and on their way they encountered B. Elmer Dexter and Morris Byron. Both sailors look dejected.

“We didn’t find anybody else,” Mental reported glumly.

Don nodded. “Well, let’s see if we can free the crew.”

When they reached the storage locker, it appeared to be cleaned out. There was no acetylene torch.

They stood there for a few minutes. Then Donald Worth had an idea.

“If he heard my signal, Doc Savage may return at any minute. Maybe we can get a message to him.”

Mental Byron said quickly, “The Aldis lamp!”

“Exactly.”

They charged up onto deck, turned on the semaphore signal blinker stationed near the bow, and Don Worth pointed in the opposite direction of where Diamond was taking the crew on the general but sound theory that it was less likely to be seen since Doc Savage would be coming from more or less the opposite direction.

Don manipulated the Aldis lamp’s steel shutters, batting out a rapid message.

Huddled around it, the others peered out to the impenetrable darkness. They were silent. And when Don was finished, they remained that way.

The mournful call of a whippoorwill soon followed.

“That means he saw it!” Don exulted.

Jury Goines peered around in the inky night. “I heard plenty about this Doc Savage,” he ruminated. “Hope he’s all he’s cracked up to be.”

“Don’t worry, he is,” proclaimed Leander Tucker confidently.

While they were waiting, a sharp report carried through the tropical night. Followed by another.

They listened for more shots, but none came.

“I am afraid,” Donald Worth said, “that someone just got shot.”

“It’s too much to hope that it might have been a pirate, I guess,” chimed in Seaman Goines.

“Their turn will come,” promised Bosun Worth.

Chapter XXXV

OMINOUS ATMOSPHERE

DOC SAVAGE DID not break his stride when the first stuttering flashes of the signal blinker interrupted the undivided blackness that was the Caribbean night.

He studied the semaphore message, reading it as easily as he would the moving electric headlines that paraded around the New York Times Building.

Monk and Ham also knew semaphore code. They understood its import.

“Blazes!” exploded the hairy chemist. “It sounds like Diamond has organized a kill party for the crew.”

Doc Savage said, “That remains to be seen. But there is no time to be lost.”

Picking up his pace, the bronze giant swiftly put Monk and Ham behind him. They sloshed along in his wake.

It was difficult going. The warm water was up to their knees, the footing unsure. Lava rock was cutting into the soles of their shoes. Here and there, a thin bubble that had hardened untold years ago, broke under their feet—making an unsettling crunching sound.

From time to time, they almost tripped over one of the upraised hands that was so much like the clutching members of drowning sailors who had petrified in death.

It was an unnerving trek, made possible only because Doc Savage gripped his flashlight in one big fist, which showed an eerie reddish glow that was filtered by the meat of his hand. His rather large finger bones showed grayly, as if in an X-ray machine.

Doc Savage knew that he would need to reach the stranded vessel before he could pick up the trail of Diamond and his prisoners. So he headed directly for the spot where the semaphore blinker flashed.

Soon, the
Northern Star
loomed ahead like a great wall of gray-painted steel. The vessel canted slightly, proving that she had been reefed badly.

Reaching her first, Doc worked his way around toward the cocked bow and discovered the knotted man ropes that had been lowered for disembarking.

Seizing one line with both massive hands, he went up hand over hand, as if climbing a simple ladder. Monk soon followed, showing fabulous upper body strength combined with a monkey-like agility in the way his preposterously long arms worked, but Ham Brooks struggled, in all falling back twice before achieving any progress.

In turn, Doc, Monk and Ham topped the rail, doffing their plastic hoods, which permitted their heads to be seen. They were soon met by Don Worth and his fellow sailors. Seaman Jury Goines was a dark tower in the vague light.

“So you’re the afraid-of-nothing Doc Savage,” grunted Goines, apparently unimpressed by the weird sight of the bronze giant, who appeared to be nothing more than a floating head.

“Watch your loose talk, sailor,” growled Monk.

“I ain’t afraid of you, either. I grew up in Chicago—in Bronzeville.”

Monk and Goines glowered at one another to no particular purpose, all but sticking out their chests and baring their teeth. Monk had removed his garment and was now fully visible.

Doc and Donald Worth conferred quickly.

“We heard a shot,” explained Don. “We think something bad must have happened.”

Doc nodded grimly. “At present, the important thing is to hold the ship. Monk and Ham will assist you in that. I will go after Diamond.”

“Alone!” several voices chorused at once.

“Trailing Diamond’s gang must be done carefully so as not to incite a shooting affray,” explained Doc. “There has already been one massacre. We cannot afford additional bloodshed.”

It made sense, and they did not wish to imperil more crewmen.

“Can you find a way to release the remaining crew?” asked Doc.

“Not unless we locate that missing acetylene torch.”

“Do your best,” encouraged Doc. He drew back on his plastic hood. Suddenly, he stood there, nothing more than two vague patches of yellow floating where his eyes should be.

Seaman Goines regarded this performance with new respect coming into his dark eyes.

“You are one mighty tall bag of tricks, aren’t you?” he said at last.

No reply came. The bronze man had already departed. Soundless as a cloud, he went down one of the heavy cargo ropes.

They searched for him with their eyes, but of course little was to be seen in the oppressive tropical darkness other than his shadow, which itself was a fitfully intangible patch.

There was some brief splashing as Doc’s feet landed in the water. When he moved on, even that noise dwindled to nothing.

Donald Worth looked at his watch.

“Let’s hope he makes good time,” he murmured. “Dawn is less than two hours off.”

Sniffing the air like a hound dog, Monk remarked, “The way this salt air makes me feel, that dang hurricane ain’t too far away, either.”

To which Ham Brooks said acidly, “You would bring that up, you miserable ape!”

“Miserable or not,” Monk retorted, “if we get hit, there’s no tellin’ what will happen to this tub and everybody around it.”

Donald Worth reminded, “We have work to do, and we better be about it.”

Chapter XXXVI

FORCED MARCH

THE PIRATE—he was nothing more nor less than that—who styled himself Diamond was pleased with his progress. Almost to their destination and they only had to shoot one sailor, a Naval Armed Guard ensign who had made a lunge for a grease gun that had gotten within convenient reach.

Diamond had had his eye on the man, and could see what was coming. So when the Navy officer made his move, Diamond had already picked out a spot in the center of the man’s back where he drove a single bullet, snapping the brave but foolhardy fellow’s spine.

The ensign had arched his back as the bullet turned him half around. He was not a big man, but he managed to stagger briefly before falling on his face in the shallows.

Diamond called a halt, and made everybody watch the air bubbles rising from the man’s submerged mouth and nostrils until the last tiny bubble broke the surface and silence followed. Unnecessarily—other than to impress the others with his cruelty—Diamond kept the man’s head under water with one hard shoe.

“Let no one else make any such foolhardy move,” he called out. “This is a work party, nothing more. Now march!”

The procession resumed, waterlogged shoes sloshing, but there were no more attempts to escape.

The crew of the
Northern Star
trudged on as would men who had been condemned to death. They knew that they were on some type of submerged reef, but the play of flashlights showed nothing but open water in all directions. The oppressive tropical heat did not help their mental states.

So they marched, wooden of face and limbs.

Someone remarked rather ghoulishly, “A bullet in the back is better than a torpedo amidships, I guess.”

No one bothered to agree or disagree.

After considerable marching, the ground sloped upward and eventually they were on dry land.

Flashlights showed that the spit on which they found themselves was an ugly expanse of hardened lava. Some of the sailors knew the Bahamas and understood that this was not a charted formation.

A seaman took a guess. “Earthquake must’ve lifted this up from below. I never seen anything like this.”

“You guessed right,” growled one of Diamond’s men. “A seaquake flung it up.”

They commenced climbing a low hill that made them think they were ascending a volcanic cone of the shallow variety. The Caribbean Sea has more than a few of these dormant features.

Pointing flashlights showed only the convolutions of the rise of land. What their destination might be, it was impossible to say. The night continued to be black as pitch.

“Hell must look something like this,” a Merchant Mariner commented, trying to avoid sharp projections that resembled shark fins made of glassy obsidian.

“Enough talk!” barked out Diamond. “Come to a halt, every one of you lubbers.”

A surly voice in the darkness objected, “We ain’t landlubbers!”

Diamond let that pass. He began issuing orders to his men, and out of their pockets came a profusion of cloth scraps.

“We don’t want you boys to see the next stage of this operation. So we’re issuing blindfolds. Tie them fast and no backtalk.”

“What do we need blindfolds for?” asserted a sailor. “We can hardly see a thing.”

“Morning’s coming along. Now clam up!”

The blindfolds were issued. These amounted to rags. Reluctantly, the crew of the
Northern Star
began tying them in place, and after this was done, the blindfolds were inspected by Diamond’s gang.

“They’re on tight,” reported Weedy.

“All right then,” Diamond said loudly. “Resume marching. Gun muzzles at your backs will guide anybody who wanders off of the straight and true.”

“They’re going to execute us for sure,” muttered a man.

“Sure looks like that way. The damn yellow cowards.”

“Who are you calling a coward?” one of the Diamond gang snapped. “This ain’t what it seems, but if you want it that way, I’ll pick out a bullet I can scratch your name on first.”

The complainer subsided and the marching continued.

Slowly, the crewmen trudged uphill, stumbling a little, losing their footing, showing no rush to get to their destination, which many assumed was oblivion.

Finally, Diamond called for a halt, announcing, “This is it.”

He was immediately misinterpreted. A man gasped. A few bit out sailorly oaths. One attempted to run then, thinking a bullet was coming his way. He was tripped and someone sat on him to hold him down.

Diamond growled, “I told you men that this is not a kill party. Now listen up. We’re going to enter a place. Get that? Once we’re all inside, the blindfolds come off and you will receive instructions as to what to do next. Follow those instructions to the letter, or you will receive bullets. But not in the back. We will just blow your stupid brains out on the spot. Get me?”

No one said a word. The mariners were resigned to their fate or duty or whatever the vicious buccaneer band had in store for them.

Chapter XXXVII

DEVILISH REEF

EVEN IN THE smothering darkness, trailing the Diamond contingent through the tropical night was not difficult for a man such as Doc Savage.

For one thing, the group made a continual splashing with their feet. The heat and humidity also wrung the sweat from their bodies, leaving a salty-smelling trail that the bronze man’s sensitive nostrils could follow with ease.

Doc did not use his flashlight in stalking them. He dared not. Although he was enveloped in the translucent garment that reduced him to nothing more than two floating yellowish eye spots, the bronze man knew that worried men moving in the darkness frequently glanced behind them.