Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 15) (37 page)

This was not rainwater carried by the storm, Doc knew, but ocean water. A storm surge had arrived. No doubt Satan’s Spine was entirely underwater now.

Grimly, Doc Savage dragged the remaining pirates to the walls and set them upright in the hope—vain he knew—that the water would not fill the entire chamber. But that hope was soon dashed by a roaring cascade.

Waves of rushing brine continued swirling down the ramp, crashing when they reached bottom, the water level mounting and mounting until it crept to his knees. The men to whom he had fed the pills were quickly submerged, and even in their weakened state, they were floundering frantically.

The lack of air did not seem to affect them. Astounded expressions overtook their faces as they realized this. Naturally, being under water they held their breaths, awaiting the inevitable. But it did not come. Their lungs did not strain for air.

For the pills that Doc had provided them contained a concentrated chemical mixture which introduced oxygen into their bloodstreams. They were in no danger of drowning. No immediate danger, that is. For each pill was good for twenty to thirty minutes, depending upon a man’s physical exertions.

That might or might not be a sufficient interval to carry them to the surface, but there was yet time to worry about that later.

Doc was trying to keep the undosed pirates’ heads above water, but the water would not be denied. The filthy stuff mounted and mounted and there were too many pirates to attempt to save.

Doc Savage did his best, for even though these men were callous killers, and this was wartime, the bronze giant was loathe to abandon them to their fates.

Weakened by the uncanny influence that drained the iron from their bodies, and lacking their ordinary muscular strength, the unprotected corsairs succumbed with little resistance. Seven perished that way.

DOC SAVAGE turned his attention to the remaining survivors.

They were discovering that they were at risk of drowning. Even with the chemical from the pills suffusing their systems, this was still a possibility. For, if they took seawater into their lungs, nothing could save them.

Shucking off his plastic hood, the bronze giant quickly revealed himself to the foundering sailors. He began grabbing them, hauling their heads above the surging waterline so they could hear his words.

“This chamber is about to be flooded to its roof line,” he rapped out. “But there is no danger of drowning. Each of you has been given a chemical pill that permits your bodies to survive without recourse to natural respiration. Simply hold your breath, do not breathe or take in water. This will feel very strange, but it can be done. You all know who I am. You can trust me.”

This was easier said than done, of course. Doc Savage was forced to take two sailors in hand, when, in their panic, they ingested seawater with disastrous results. Vigorous lifeguard artificial respiration techniques applied by the bronze giant soon cleared their lungs.

As Doc had suspected, the entire chamber quickly filled. Abandoned flashlights, which were not waterproof, went out. Darkness clamped down.

The bronze man brought forth his own spring-generator flashlight, which was waterproof. This produced a narrow beam, which he quickly widened by manipulating a ring over the lens.

By this time, the floodwaters had ceased cascading down and they were simply immersed in unsavory brine.

Pointing the light upward, Doc Savage signaled for the survivors to swim up the spiral, which was settling down now that all the water permitted had collected in the chambers. Doc gave several men hard shoves upward, keeping the light trained so that they could find their way. After the last of them had departed, he kicked backward through the strange doorway that suggested a satanic quarter moon.

Shining the light around, the bronze man found that the chamber was in the nature of a treasure house. Stacked everywhere were statuary and ingots of the strange reddish-gold metal that he did not recognize.

His flake-gold eyes became very animated as he swept the light around, taking in all details. There were other objects, some gigantic. An idol constructed of the weird super-refracting crystal, as tall as a two-story house, possessing a single orb in the center of its forehead on either side of which jutted up-curved horns that brought to mind the now-shattered black tower. In the questing flash ray, portions of the statue slipped in and out of visibility. Doc Savage could not discern its features, but they smacked of the bestial.

It was from this hideous thing that the uncanny wave of coldness emanated. As Doc attempted to glean a clear picture of its imposing lines, he could make out a rime of ice congealing around it. That was how cold the thing was. Very soon, the bronze man realized with a start, the entire chamber would be encased in solid ice….

Time was short and with great regret, Doc Savage retreated, started swimming upward through the corkscrew ramp that was now a water passageway, using his great bronze arms to shove aside the staring-eyed corpses of the drowned impeding his progress.

The things he had beheld, however, filled him with a kind of wonder.

Chapter L

THE DROWNED ONE

THE CIRCULAR SWIM up the ancient lava tube that had been shaped into a winding ramp was not without its challenges, Doc Savage discovered.

Had it been simply vertical, the bronze man could have kicked upward in a straight line, counting on his natural buoyancy to carry him to the surface. But the ramp formed a continuous corkscrew, forcing Doc into the curving walls, from which he rebounded painfully a time or two.

At those points, he used his hands to feel along, pushing away from its gritty surface in order to resume his dizzying ascent. It was uncomfortable going. The only light was hazy, despite the fact that it was daylight above.

Finally, the bronze giant approached what amounted to a flooded cellar hole, which was all that remained of the great horned tower of basalt that had been carried away by the fierce storm.

Doc had expected the entrance to be choked with swimmers. But he found none. No dangling or kicking feet, and the bronze man began to fear for the safety of the survivors he had propelled ahead of him.

The fury of the storm lashed the water’s surface to a frenzy, so Doc arrested his ascent by finding a fresh fracture in the ramp wall, and holding himself anchored there. Looking up, he saw nothing but a churning froth of spume and seawater. Waves were running high and as pale as seashells. Even through the insulation of the waters around him, the deep continual moaning of the wind could definitely be heard.

Doc Savage held his breath pent within him. Long practice in the use of the miraculous oxygen lozenges enabled him to resist the perfectly natural urge to inhale, which would have been fatal.

Doc understood that he could not remain submerged a great deal longer. And yet to surface would put him at the mercy of the screaming winds, which were powerful enough to carry him aloft, much like a land tornado flings trees and automobiles about like toys.

Finally, knowing that he had only minutes of concentrated oxygen reserve left, Doc took the chance.

When his metallic face broke the surface, he felt a driving horizontal rain slamming into the back of his head. This was no accident. The bronze man had calculated the likely direction of the winds, and turned his face away from them.

Immediately, the howling smote his eardrums. Opening his eyes accomplished absolutely nothing. Wind, pelting rain, particles of what felt like needles but were probably sand, swirled all about him.

It looked and felt like a force 11 blow, according to the Beaufort Wind scale. Perhaps it was. That would mean the winds were blowing at some sixty knots. No place to be at their mercy.

Taking in a lungful of air, Doc plunged back down.

What he had experienced gave him little hope for the men who had gone before him—the
Northern Star
crew and their erstwhile pirate captors.

In one pocket, Doc carried a simple emergency gas mask, consisting of a cellophane hood, which sealed at the neck with an elastic band sewn into it. Removing this, he got the transparent sack over his head, wondering why he had not thought of this before.

Emerging once more, Doc was forced to hold the hood in place with one hand, but the flimsy device worked. It kept wind and airborne detritus out of his eyes. Now he could see around him after a fashion.

Not that the bronze man could make out very much. The world was a maelstrom of screaming wind and white water, and even with the cellophane hood he dared not face into the teeth of the gale. Although it was tropical morning, the hurricane seemed to have sucked much of the sunlight out of the vicinity. All was a gloomy gray chaos.

SEARCHING with his eyes, Doc could not make out the
Northern Star—
or much of anything else. A jumble of tumbled stone loomed nearby, giving the bronze man a sense of where he treaded water.

Several rocks did not look recognizable. Rather, it seemed as if the hurricane had pushed scattered large stones into a mass.

Men were clinging to this agglomeration of rock like frightened barnacles.

Seeing that the stony group afforded the only shelter in the immediate vicinity, Doc Savage struck out in that direction.

Had he been attempting to swim in the face of the hurricane, no amount of muscular strength would have permitted the bronze giant to reach his goal. Doc was helped by the fact that the wind was pushing at the back of his head.

Very quickly, he reached the tumble of stone, and, groping about, found a handhold by which to anchor himself.

Investigation revealed that this had been a popular idea among the sailors and corsairs alike. Doc counted six men without hardly trying. No doubt that very same phenomenon had happened to the luckless men clutching the cluster of basalt rocks. The hurricane had pushed them to temporary safety.

One individual was hugging a low outcropping, while swearing inarticulately in sobbing bursts. This fellow was one of the pirates, specifically the one dubbed Weedy. He seemed half out of his mind.

There was nothing that could be done for him, for Weedy was convulsed in an utter panic. Doc looked to the others.

And so it was that his flake-gold eyes met and locked with the amber orbs of the kingfish corsair himself.

Diamond possessed more than a measure of courage to go with his feline strength. He was holding on rather tightly, and holding up equally well.

When he saw Doc Savage, a kind of tigerish rage came into those amber eyes. A snarl warped his lean-cheeked features. Reaching into his flapping clothes, he dug out his marlin spike—the smooth steel fang of a thing sailors employ to work their complicated maritime knots.

Grabbing this in one fist, Diamond attempted to work his way toward the bronze man, the object of his wrath.

Instead of retreating, Doc Savage advanced to meet the man’s approach. The two soon came within striking distance of one another.

Diamond wasted no time. He attempted a fast feint designed to insert the marlin spike into Doc Savage’s abdomen. Doc slapped the spike-wielding fist aside, producing a great deal of pain and wringing a vulgar curse from the head pirate’s lips. This was the hand that the bronze man had earlier injured when he knocked an automatic from the man’s fist with a thrown ingot of metal.

Undeterred, Diamond tried again, holding onto the rock with one hand and this time going for Doc Savage’s jugular vein.

Doc was not so gentle this time. One bronze hand, looking as if it was made of living metal, snapped out and snagged the knotty forearm back of the wrist.

The bronze giant gave a twist, which brought a shocked expression to Diamond’s hard lean features. The marlin spike slipped out of fingers that seemed to have lost all of their iron.

As Diamond watched in horror, Doc Savage applied finger pressure that was like that of a vise. The skin at the tips of the pirate’s fingers swelled, puffed up, and split, unable to withstand the crushing grip. Drops of blood popped up and were swept away by the wind.

Now Diamond’s eyes sprang wide, his cruel mouth growing slack and shapeless. Previously, he had suspected the extent of Doc Savage’s muscular strength. But the undeniable power of the bronze giant’s metallic thews left him speechless and astonished. All fight fled from him.

Doc Savage finished the job by shifting his grip and finding the long bones that comprised the man’s forearms—the ulnar and the radius—applying sudden, sharp pressure. The distinct crack of two bones surrendering could not be heard above the horrific howling. But both men felt the bones break.

That left Diamond with only one good hand with which to maintain his precarious position. Thoughts of his inevitable defeat worked his strained features into grim lines, and amber eyes slitted like those of a surly tomcat. The pirate made a decision then. He knew that he had been soundly defeated, and evidently had no further use for his own life.

“Damn you, Savage!” he raged. “Damn you to hell!”

Letting go of the great stone, Diamond kicked off with both feet and let the wind and the churning surf carry him away.

Doc Savage made a sudden swipe to arrest his escape. He managed to snag a bit of shirtsleeve. But the cloth tore, and the corsair was borne off into the howling bone-white eternity that was the all-engulfing hurricane.

Recognizing the futility of attempting to rescue the man, Doc Savage concentrated on holding onto his own stony perch with all of his considerable might.

The wind continued to cascade around him, roaring and whining and making other unearthly sounds, as if wailing demons had been let loose upon the world.

Chapter LI

WATER ESCAPE

THE HURRICANE HOWLING went on for an eternity of minutes.

The fury of the thing was beyond belief. Doc Savage could feel the stone to which he clung grinding and moving. In a lifetime of adventuring around the globe, the bronze giant had seen many strange spectacles. Tropical storms were not a new experience for him. He had witnessed the aftermath of the great Labor Day hurricane that had swept the Florida Keys, twisting railroad ties into fantastic shapes, and pushing a tugboat over four miles inland. Flimsy houses had been obliterated by the storm surge and men and women drowned by the score, helpless before the elemental onslaught.