The Polar Treasure - Robeson Kenneth. Страница 27

Silence fell, except for the moan of the blizzard.

Was it a low, mellow, trilling sound, remindful of the song of some exotic bird, which mingled with the whine of the wind? Or was it but the melodious note of the gale rushing through the neighboring pinnacles of rock and ice?

A listener could not have told.

Doc's strange sound sometimes came when he had accomplished some tremendous feat. Certainly, there was ample cause for it now.

No man, bare handed, had ever vanquished a more frightful foe.

Doc skidded the huge, hairy animal to a near-by pock in the bleak stone. He searched until he had found boulders enough to cover the cache of potential food and bedding. He did not want other bears to rob him.

He now hurried to get Victor Vail.

He reached the crevasse where he had left the violinist.

Ten feet from it, a gruesome red sprinkling rouged the ice. Blood! It no longer steamed. It was frozen solid, crusted with flakes of snow.

Scoring in the ice, already inlaid with snow, denoted a furious fight.

No sign was to be seen of Victor Vail!

Chapter 14

CORPSE BOAT

LIKE A hound in search of a scent, Doc set off. He ran in widening circles. He found faint marks that might have been a trail. They led inland. They were lost beyond the following within two rods.

Doc positioned himself in the lee of a boulder the size of a box car. Standing there, sheltered a little from the blizzard, he considered.

An animal would have devoured Victor Vail on the spot! There had been no bits of cloth scattered about, no gory patches on the ice, such as certainly would have accompanied such a cannibalistic feast.

Something else loomed large in Doc's mind, too. The odor his supersensitive nostrils had detected at first!

Doc's mighty bronze form came as near a shiver as it ever came.

There had been a bestial quality about that scent. Yet it had hardly been that of an animal! Nor was it human, either. It had been a revolting tang, reminiscent of carrion.

One thing he began to realize with certainty. It had not been the polar bear!

Doc shrugged. He stepped out into the squealing blizzard. Inland, he journeyed.

The terrain sloped upward. The glacier became but scattered smears of ice. Even the snow did not linger, so great was the wind velocity.

Doc crossed a ridge.

From now on, the way led down. Progress was largely a matter of defying the propulsion of the gale.

Snow was drifting here. This was a menace, for it covered crevasses, a fall into which meant death. Doc trod cautiously.

In a day or two, perhaps in a week, when the blizzard had blown itself out, the haze above would disperse, and let the everlasting sun of the arctic summer beat down upon the snow. This would become slush. Cold would freeze it. A little more would be added to the thickness of the glacier. For thus are glaciers made.

Warily, Doc sidled along. He let the wind skid him ahead when he dared. Had he been a man addicted to profanity, he would have been consigning all glaciers to a place where their coolness probably would be a welcome change.

A hideous cracking and rumbling began to reach his ears. He could hear it plainly when he laid his head to the ice under foot.

It was the noise of the icepack piling on the shore. This uncharted land must be but a narrow ridge projecting from the polar seas.

Doc neared the shore.

An awesome sound brought him up sharp. It split through the banshee howl of the blizzard. It put the hairs On Doc's nape on edge.

A woman's shrieking!

DOC SPED for the sound. The snow collapsed under him unexpectedly. Only a flip of his Herculean body kept him from dropping to death on the snaggled icy bottom of the wide crevasse far below.

He ran on as though he had not just shaken the clammy claw of the Reaper.

A white mass hulked up before his searching golden eyes. It looked like a gigantic iceberg cast upon the shore. But it had a strangely man-made look.

A ship!

The ice-crusted hulk of the lost liner Oceanic!

Doc raced along the hull. It canted over his head, for the liner was obviously heeled slightly. A hundred feet, he ran. Another!

He came to an object which might have been a long icicle hanging down from the rail of the liner. But he knew it was an ice-coated chain. The links were a procession of knobs.

These knobs enabled Doc to climb. But the mounting was not easy. A greased pole would have been a stairway in comparison. The blizzard moaned and hooted and sought to pick him bodily from his handhold.

The woman was no longer shrieking.

Doc topped the rail. A scene of indescribable confusion met his eyes. Capstans, hatches, bitts, all were knots of ice. The rigging had long ago been torn down by the polar elements. Masts and wire-rope stays and cargo booms made a tangle on the deck. Ice had formed on these.

The forward deck, it was. A frozen, hideous wilderness! The gale whined in it like a host of ravenous beasts.

Doc reached a hatch. It defied even his terrific strength. The years had cemented it solidly.

The deck did not slope as much as he had thought. It was not quite level, though. He glided for the stern.

An open companion lured him. Snow was pouring in. Half inside, he saw the floor was seven feet deep in ice — snow which had formed a glacial mass through the years.

Doc tried another companion. The door was closed. It resisted his shove. His fist whipped a blow which traveled a scant foot. The door caved as though dynamite had let loose against it.

Doc pitched inside.

A wave of pungent aroma met his nostrils.

It was the smell of the thing which had stalked them on the glacier! It was horrible — yet there was a flowerlike quality to it.

Gloom lurked in the recesses of the cabin where he stood. Formerly, it had been a lounge. But the once luxuriant furniture was now but a rubble on the floor. Some fantastic monster might have torn it to bits, as though to line a nest.

Bones lay in the litter. Bones of polar bear, of seal. Flesh still clung to some. Others were half-eaten carcasses.

Doc sped ahead. He shoved through a door.

A SHUFFLING movement came from across the room. Doc charged the sound.

There was a squealing noise, ratlike, eerie. A door slammed. Doc hit the panel. It was metal. It smashed him back. His fists could not knock down an inch of steel. He wrenched at the lock. That defied him, too.

Doc sought another route for pursuit A companionway deposited him on a lower deck. He went forward.

It was more gloomy here. Doc's capable bronze fingers searched inside his parka. They brought out a flashlight of a type Doc himself had perfected.

This flash had no battery. A tiny, powerful generator, built into the handle and driven by a stout spring, supplied the current. One twist of the flash handle would wind the spring and furnish light current for some minutes. A special receptacle held spare bulbs in felt beds. There was not much chance of this light going out of commission.

The flash sprayed a slender, white-hot rod. Doc twisted the lens adjustment to widen the beam.

Doc went on. His flashlight cast a funnel of white. He stopped often to listen.

The derelict liner seemed alive with sinister shufflings and draggings. Once a bulkhead door banged. Again, there came another of the ratlike squeals.

Even Doc's sensitive ears could not tell whether that squeal was human! The flowerlike odor was stronger.

He came to a long passage. It was painted white. It might have been used but yesterday. For wood does not decay in the bitter cold of the arctic.

He reached the third-class dining room.

Here his eyes met a sight that would make any man cringe. It was the explanation of the loss of the Oceanic.