The Polar Treasure - Robeson Kenneth. Страница 33

This, Doc believed, was the true explanation of their presence on land.

Ben O'Gard was preparing to slay every one on this forlorn spot!

No blood-bathed Jolly Roger ever held more frightful ambitions.

Doc's great bronze form traveled like the wind. He had much to do — not much time in which to accomplish it.

Doc had formulated a plan of action which boded ill for his enemies.

Chapter 17

THE CAPTIVES

IT WAS midnight, but the sun shone brightly. The storm had abated as swiftly as it had arisen. Snow no longer swirled. Such drifts as had gathered glittered like tiny, ridged diamonds in the solar rays.

Around the uncharted arctic land, the short, terrific gale had made a startling change. It had pushed the ice pack away. For miles in every direction, comparatively open water could be seen. This was spotted with a few vicious-looking blue growlers, but no ice floes of any size.

In the main lounge of the lost liner Oceanic. Keelhaul de Rosa walked angry circles, kicking chairs out of his path.

"Keelhaul me!" he bellowed. "The bloody treasure has gotta be somewhere!"

He came over and planted himself in front of pretty Roxey Vail. He glowered at the young woman. He had a face that mirrored indescribable evil.

Two rat-faced thugs held Roxey Vail. Their bony claws dug painfully into her shapely arms.

"Where's the swag?" Keelhaul de Rosa roared at her.

"I don't know anything about any treasure!" the girl replied scornfully.

It was perhaps the fiftieth time she had told her captors that.

"You an' your maw swiped the gold an' diamonds!" snarled Keelhaul de Rosa.

Roxey Vail made no answer.

"The Eskimos told me all about you an' your maw," the hulking pirate chief informed her. "Where's she hidin'?"

The young woman gave him a look of scorn. If she had practiced all her life squashing mashers on New York streets, she couldn't have done it better.

"C'mon — cough up!" the man hissed in her face. "Where's your old lady hangin' out? I'll bet she's sittin' right slap-dab on the bloomin' treasure! Keelhaul me if I don't think that!"

"You're wrong!" the girl snapped

"Then where is she?"

Roxey Vail tightened her lips. That was something she would never tell. No horror they could inflict upon her would bring the information from her lips.

"You'll spill the dope, sister, or I'll cut that swab of an ol' man of yorn to pieces right here in front of you!" gritted Keelhaul de Rosa. "I'll start by puttin' out the ol' geezer's bloody eyes again!"

Roxey Vail said nothing to this. What could she say? Her cheeks became pale as damask, though.

Keelhaul de Rosa kicked over a couple of additional chairs. He picked up a book that had lain on a table for more than fifteen years, and threw it at a greasy Eskimo.

Coming back the pirate chief tried softer arguments.

"Listen, sister," he purred, "gimme the swag an' I'll see that you an' yer ol' man gets safe passage back with me an' my crew."

"How can you escape?" Roxey Vail questioned curiously. "Your plane is destroyed. You have no submarine."

"I'm makin' the Eskimos haul the swag to Greenland for me."

"Then you'll kill them, I suppose," the young woman said coldly.

The way Keelhaul de Rosa gave a guilty start showed the young woman's guess had been close to the truth.

"Will you spare the life of the bronze man, also?" Roxey Vail asked tentatively.

Keelhaul de Rosa scowled.

"That swab is already dead," he lied, hoping it would help break the nerve of the beautiful girl.

THE STATEMENT had an effect exactly opposite. Roxey Vail sprang forward so suddenly that she eluded the pair holding her. She clawed Keelhaul de Rosa's villainous face. She handed him a haymaker that completely closed his left eye.

"Lay aboard her!" he howled in agony. "Pull her off, you swabs! Keelhaul me, but she's a bloody wild cat!"

His two men secured fresh hold on Roxey Vail, but not before one of them collected a flattened nose. Her arctic life had made a very hard young woman out of Roxey Vail.

The pretty girl now broke into sobs. The reason for her grief was easily understood — she believed Doc Savage was dead. It was incredible that the bronze man, mighty as he was, could cope with such odds as confronted him now.

Suddenly a bellowing voice filled the lounge.

"Boarders!" it roared. "Ben O'Gard and his swabs! They're comin'. aboard by the stern!"

Every eye in the lounge went toward the source of that roaring voice. It seemed to come from a small companionway which led off in the direction of the purser's office.

"It's Ben O'Gard, I tell yer!" crashed the voice. "They're crawlin' up some lines danglin' near the stern!"

Any doubt which might have been arising was dispelled by the loud clatter of a machine gun on deck. The sound came from the stern!

Another rapid-firer joined it. A white man — one of Keelhaul de Rosa's small gang — shrieked a warning.

"Ben O'Gard — " The howling of Eskimos drowned out the rest.

Ben O'Gard was indeed making his attack. "One of you hold her!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "Keelhaul me — I gotta look into this!"

He sprinted out of the room. One of the pair who had been holding the young woman followed him.

Roxey Vail promptly engaged in combat with the single rat who now pinioned her arms. She stamped his toes through his soft mukluks. She did her best to bite him.

Although strong and agile for a woman, Roxey Vail would have been overpowered by the man.

But from the spot where that great voice had first roared a warning, there glided a form that might have been liquid bronze. Nearing the struggling man and girl, this became a giant, Herculean man of hard metal. Hands floated out.

They were hands which could have plucked the very head from the rat now belaboring the poor girl with his fists. Yet those hands barely stroked the man's face.

The thug fell senseless.

ROXEY VAIL stared at her rescuer. It was apparent she could hardly believe her eyes.

"You — oh, thank — "

"Listen — here's what you're to do!" Doc interrupted. He didn't like the tearful business of receiving thanks from young women whether they were pretty or not.

"You are to go and get your mother!" Doc told her. "You know where the finger of land juts into the sea half a mile to the north of this spot?"

"Yes."

"Take your mother there. The storm left a floe of ice attached to the point. It is long and narrow. It protrudes out into the sea fully half a mile. The tip is rather rough where ice cakes were piled upon it by the force of the gale. You are to hide, with your mother, among those ice cakes."

Roxey Vail nodded. But she wanted to know more.

"What — "

"No time to explain!" Doc waved an arm in the general direction of the stern. A bloody fight was going on back there, judging from the bedlam.

Doc now grasped the girl. He shook her like a child but not very hard.

"Now get this!" he said sharply. "I don't want any more disobeying my orders just because you think something has happened to me!"

She sniffed at him. Tears were in her eyes.

"I won't," she said. "But my father is — "

"I'll attend to him." Doc gave her a shove. "Scoot, Roxey. And be on the end of that ice neck with your mother as soon as possible. Things are going to happen fast around here."