Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 111 - Pirate Isle

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THE PIRATE ISLE
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
? Chapter I
? Chapter II. THE SHAPING OF SOMETHING
? Chapter III. THE BRONZE MAN
? Chapter IV. PARACHUTE SNIPERS
? Chapter V. DISTRESSED LADY
? Chapter VI. LORD LONDON
? Chapter VII. SHIP TO NOWHERE
? Chapter VIII. PLANE DOWN!
? Chapter IX. JINX!
? Chapter X. NEAPED
? Chapter XI. HALF A LOAF
? Chapter XII. PUZZLE ON JINX
? Chapter XIII. THE LAGOON
? Chapter XIV. JOHNNY HAS A STORY
? Chapter XV. A PARROT NAMED THEM
Chapter I
THE first officer of the City of Tulsa sprinted across the deck. He climbed the steps to the boat deck
with pounding haste. He stumbled on the top step, lost his uniform cap. He was a cheerful-looking man;
that is, he was cheerful-looking when he was not wearing the kind of expression that was on his face,
now. He swore, recovered his cap and galloped for the bridge.
“Captain Hardgrove!” he squalled.
There was plenty of blue Pacific ocean around the City of Tulsa. About half of the Pacific was ahead of
her bow, between it and San Francisco. The other half was behind, between the stern and Brisbane,
Australia, the port of Mbau, Viti Levu Island of the Fiji group, and other points of call. The old hooker
was about half of her long way home.
“Captain Hardgrove!” yelled the officer.
Captain Hardgrove was chewing up a two-months-old Los Angeles newspaper and shooting the paper
wads thus obtained at his parrot. He did not like being disturbed on so warm a day.
“Yes, yes, Mr. Weed!” he snapped at the officer.
“For the love of Bess! You won't believe this!” panted First Officer Weed, stumbling onto the bridge.
“Won't believe what?” asked Captain Hardgrove bitterly.
“It's the man up the mast,” puffed Mr. Weed.
The paper wad Captain Hardgrove was about to launch at his parrot slipped out of the rubber band and
was propelled back into his own face, smacking him on the nose.
“Ouch! Damn!” he said. “What was that?”
“What was what?” asked the rattled Mr. Weed.
“What is up the mast, Mr. Weed?” the skipper inquired patiently.
“A man.”
“A four-legged man?"
“Yes, sir. I mean—no, sir. He has two legs.” Mr. Weed put his hat on his head—absent-mindedly
backward. “He is throwing snowballs at the crew!”
“Snowballs?”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Hardgrove of the City of Tulsa was an unshakable man. He always thought twice and counted
ten. He never let a snap judgment push him into anything.
He put the rubber wad-shooting band carefully around two brass buttons on his uniform-coat cuff. He
swallowed. He went over and looked at the thermometer. The thermometer said a hundred and two. A
hundred and two was probably an understatement. Captain Hardgrove closed his eyes and counted ten.
“Mr. Weed,” he said. “It says a hundred and two, fahrenheit. Hell is two degrees less hot.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Hardgrove pulled in a deep breath.
“Snowballs?” he said, inquisitively.
“Yes, sir.”
“Snowballs?” asked Captain Hardgrove gently.
“Yes, sir"
Captain Hardgrove's voice made just a shade less noise than an earthquake. “Damn it to hell and blazes,
Mr. Weed! You're drunk, mad, crazy! I'm in no mood for jokes!” He threw the copy of the newspaper
in a corner. “If this ark has driven you crazy, it is understandable; but please don't inflict it on me!”
Mr. Weed wiped off sweat.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Would you care to look for yourself.”
Captain Hardgrove stared at him. His face got flat with surprise.
“Well, love a little goose!” he said. “I believe you mean that, Mr. Weed.”
He grabbed absently for his own uniform cap, missed it, then started for the foredeck without it. His
parrot squawked warningly and said a fairly understandable, “Mabel loves you, big boy!”
THERE was glazed heat and a motly assortment of commercial sailors on the foredeck of the ship. They
stood around trying to get their eyes in the shade of the cargo booms while they peered upward.
There was no activity visible in the crow's nest at which they looked. The nest was just a barrel-wart, up
above the signal crosstree, a somewhat cramped place for a man to be. It was slightly in need of paint.
The deck was wet, the scuppers running water. The wetness was the result of washing down the deck.
Evidently, a sailor had been engaged in this task when interrupted by the snowballing, because a hose
was lying on deck where it had been dropped, its valve-equipped nozzle spewing a small stream of
water.
“Did this have a beginning, Mr. Weed?” asked Captain Hardgrove.
“That one—“ Mr. Weed pointed at a sailor, then looked more closely at the man, changed his mind, and
indicated another sailor. “No, it was that one.” To the sailor: “Wasn't it you who started up to paint the
mast?"
“Aye, sir,” said the sailor.
“He started up the mast,” explained Mr. Weed. “It is a calm day. I gave orders to smear a little paint on
the mast. So he got his bucket—“ To the sailor: “You had your bucket of paint, didn't you?"
“And my brush,” said the sailor.
“And he started climbing up the mast,” finished Mr. Weed. “On the inside, of course. There is a ladder, a
steel one, up the inside of the hollow steel mast, and—“
“Damn it, Mr. Weed, I am vaguely familiar with my own boat,” said Captain Hardgrove. “I know it has a
hollow mast. I wonder if the same thing applies to some of the heads around here.” He looked upward.
“When did the snowballs start falling?"
“After I climbed about twenty feet,” said the sailor.
“What did you do?"
“I climbed right down again.”
“What did you think about the snowballs?” asked Captain Hardgrove.
“I didn't know what to think,” said the sailor.
“You and I,” said Captain Hardgrove, “have the same reactions. What did you say?"
“Say?"
“Did you,” asked Captain Hardgrove patiently, “have anything at all to say on the occasion? Any
comment at all?"
The sailor nodded. “I asked what in the blank-blank name of blankety blank was going on up there in
that blank-blank crow's nest.”
Captain Hardgrove smiled. “You actually supplied the blanks?” he inquired.
The sailor told what he had actually supplied. The real words.
“It's a wonder the paint didn't all peel off the mast right after that,” said Captain Hardgrove admiringly.
He began looking around underfoot and shaking his head.
“What are you looking for, sir?” asked Mr. Weed.
“The snowballs, Mr. Weed. The snowballs.”
“It is a very hot day—“
“And they melted?” snapped Captain Hardgrove. “Is that what you are telling me in your modest way?"
Mr. Weed's neck got red.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I agree with you that it is a bit wacky, sir.”
CAPTAIN HARDGROVE peered upward, shading his eye with a hard brown hand. “Climb up there
and bring down this Eskimo and his snowballs,” he ordered.
The three sailors included in the order hastily pretended they had not heard and picked up deck mops
and buckets.
“Get up there,” said Captain Hardgrove, “before I put my boot to the parts of you that get the most use.”
With manifest reluctance, the three entered the little hatch in the side of the hollow steel mast and began
the long climb up the ladder.
“Their lack of enthusiasm for that job,” remarked Captain Hardgrove, “is somewhat noticeable. To what
do you attribute it, Mr. Weed?"
“Conceivably it might be the excellent pitching arm of the fellow up there,” suggested Mr. Weed.
“What manner of looking gentleman is he?"
“He has a long arm and a more than fair eye. A bit of baseball in his past, I would say.”
“Does he have four eyes or two mouths or any other peculiarities, Mr. Weed?"
“No, he is just a white man. Rather an elongated one, from what I saw. It was hard to tell, since I just
saw the parts of him that stuck out of the crow's nest when he threw.”
Captain Hardgrove inspected Mr. Weed very thoughtfully. At length, he asked, “You still insist, Mr.
Weed, that there were snowballs?"
“Yes, I do!” snapped the officer.
“All right, Mr. Weed, I merely wished to be certain.” Captain Hardgrove gestured with one hand. “Could
you tell me where they went, please?"
“They melted.” Mr. Weed added pointedly, “It is a hot day, sir.”
“To be sure.” Captain Hardgrove smiled faintly. “Can you as glibly explain where they came from?"
Mr. Weed's neck became encrimsoned once more.
“Snowballs,” he said, “are an impossibility. And you know it, sir. On a day like this, I mean. A day this
hot.”
A commotion came out of the hollow mast. It was muffled because it came all the way down from the
crow's nest. But then it clarified, for it began coming through the air. Captain Hardgrove and Mr. Weed
stepped back, so the bend in their necks would not be so sharp to look upward. They saw a hat sail out
of the crow's nest. It belonged to a sailor.
“Good mercy!” gasped Mr. Weed.
A sailor seemed about to follow the hat. The sailor fought furiously to avoid doing this. He hung to the
crow's-nest rim with his left arm and used his right arm to club at someone.
“Ahoy up there! Ahoy! Avast and belay that!” bellowed Captain Hardgrove in the voice he could employ
to stand on the bridge and make a sailor jump a foot on the taffrail deck. “Stop it! Stop whatever's going
on up there!”
The fight up in the crow's nest pursued its uninterrupted course to a conclusion. After it ended, a sailor
thrust his head over the rim.
“We got the swab,” shouted the sailor. “He seems to be a bit ting-a-ling.”
“A bit what?” roared Captain Hardgrove.
“Crazy, sir.”
“Naturally, he would be,” commented Captain Hardgrove. “Are there any snowballs left?"
“No, sir. No snowballs.”
“Any ice machine—or snow-making machine?”
“No, sir. Nothing of any kind.”
“Search him,” snapped Captain Hardgrove, “and see what you find.”
“Not necessary to frisk him,” the sailor called down. “The bird is wearing what I've heard called a
birthday suit.”
THEY brought the man down from the crow's nest, lowering him in a sling after trussing him up in a
blanket. The transfer from crow's nest to deck was easily managed without tumult, since the man had
been knocked out by one of the sailors.
“Take him to the hospital,” ordered Captain Hardgrove. “By the way, what's that?"
“This?” one of the sailors said. “Oh, it was up there in the crow's nest with him.”
The skipper extended a brown slab of hand. “Let me see.”
The object that had aroused Captain Hardgrove's curiosity was not quite three feet square.
“Know what it is?” the skipper asked.
“Handkerchief, sir,” decided the sailor. “Probably belonged to the poor nut.”
A muscle twitched at the corner of Captain Hardgrove's left eye, but his face showed no other
expression. “I will keep this,” he said, “if you don't mind.”
The sailor didn't mind. One formed the habit of not minding many things when one sailed with Captain
Hardgrove for a while.
Captain Hardgrove watched the sailor walk away, then turned to the first officer. “Mr. Weed, do you
think it is a handkerchief?”
“No, I don't,” said Mr. Weed. “But I wouldn't exactly know what it is.”
The skipper flourished the square of material he had taken from the sailor.
“The laws of Manu,” he said, “ordained that a Brahman purposing to end his life in religious meditation in
the forests should clothe himself in this material.”
Mr. Weed scratched his head. “I don't believe I get you.”
“Ficus
cloth.”
“Eh?"
“Made from the banyan or the so-called sacred fig tree.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Weed, suddenly comprehending. “Bark cloth, you mean.”
“Exactly. Bark cloth.”
“Why take such a long way around to say so?” inquired Mr. Weed, quarrelsomely. “Or does the laws of
Manu, meditation and sacred fig trees have something to do with it?"
“I doubt if they do,” admitted Captain Hardgrove. “However, those little stray facts just happened into
my mind. This is bark cloth, all right. The art of making it is not as much practiced through the South Sea
Islands as it once was.”
“Meaning?"
Captain Hardgrove shrugged. “Just aroused my interest, is all. Only worldly possession of the man in the
crow's nest—a scrap of bark cloth. Rather unique, wouldn't you say?"
The first officer leered maliciously.
“Don't,” he said, “forget the snowballs.”
The skipper's eye narrowed. He folded the panel of bark cloth carefully and thrust it into his jacket
pocket. He jerked his head slightly, then wheeled on his heel. Mr. Weed took the movements to mean
that he was to follow. So he trailed Captain Hardgrove, whose destination proved to be the hospital.
The hospital was a cabin so poorly located and ventilated that the company had not been able to sell it to
a passenger. It was not an advantageous surrounding for an illness, so the percentage of patients who
made a quick recovery was large. The hole was unwillingly presided over by Dr. Cunico.
“Get out of here!” directed Dr. Cunico, as soon as the captain and Mr. Weed entered the hospital.
“Either that, or grab this stomach pump and work it for me.”
“How is he?” asked the skipper.
“Fine,” said Dr. Cunico. “A fine example of how skinny a man can be and still live.” He whipped back
the sheet which was spread over the patient. “Look at him.”
The man from the crow's nest was extraordinarily long and unbelievably thin. His bones were coming
through. Not, however, from starvation. A perambulating skeleton seemed to be the shape which nature
had planned for him.
“Mercy!” said Mr. Weed.
“Hell's fire, he's not one of my passengers,” said Captain Hardgrove, vastly astonished. “I never saw him
before. I wouldn't forget a beanpole form like that. I thought he was one of my silly tourists. But he isn't. I
wonder who in the blasted rap-rap he is.”
“Stowaway?” suggested the first officer.
The skipper scratched his nose. “Obviously, Mr. Weed. Obviously.”
“With snowballs,” added Mr. Weed wearily. “I am beginning not to understand this at all.”
Dr. Cunico looked up with a frown. “Snowballs? What the hell! It's only a hundred and twenty around
here today.”
“A hundred and two, the thermometer says,” corrected Captain Hardgrove vaguely.
Dr. Cunico considered the point, then rendered an opinion. “You sound as crazy as the patient. What is
it, an epidemic? I've always expected one of such a nature on this twentieth-century Noah's Ark.”
“You think he is nuts, then?” asked the skipper judiciously.
“You think there were snowballs?” countered Dr. Cunico.
The skipper rubbed his jaw. “He thinks we are touched, Mr. Weed. Shall I tell him you were the one
who saw the snowballs?”
Dr. Cunico made an impatient gesture. “Will you take this bag of tricks and get out of here. I think this
man had some ribs broken by your sailors. I want to take some X rays.”
The captain and the first officer stepped outside, having learned the state of the man from the crow's nest,
which was what they had come to learn. The fellow probably had broken ribs.
“One thing we didn't find out,” said Mr. Weed as they walked toward the bridge. “Did Dr. Cunico think
he was crazy?”
The skipper grunted. “I don't know what he thinks. I know what I think.”
HALF an hour later, Dr. Cunico appeared on the bridge with a request. “I would like to use the
ship-to-shore radio and charge it to the company. What about it?"
Captain Hardgrove shook his head. “The company would scream its damn head off. You know that.”
Dr. Cunico looked at the captain steadily. “I got the fellow's stomach in one of those X-ray pictures,” he
said. “I think I had better use the ship-to-shore radio.”
The captain grimaced. “You want to ask a better doctor than yourself what to do, eh? I always did think
you were incompetent.”
“I'm incompetent in this case,” said Dr. Cunico, and there was a strangeness in his voice that did not miss
the skipper.
“Go ahead and use the radio,” Captain Hardgrove said narrowly. “Then report back here.”
Dr. Cunico was gone a full hour. Then he came back.
“You been on the radio all this time?” the skipper demanded.
“Practically,” admitted Dr. Cunico.
“The company will cough up its gallstones when it gets the bill,” said Captain Hardgrove bitterly.
Dr. Cunico's face was serious. He said, “That X ray showed a metallic object in the man's stomach. I
extracted it. This is what it was.”
He exhibited a wrist identification tag, a small one, designed to be fastened about a wrist with a slender
chain.
The inscription read:
The Explorers League, New York
No. 341
“I called the Explorers League, ship-to-shore,” Dr. Cunico explained. “The man from the crow's nest is
named William Harper Littlejohn. He is a great archaeologist and geologist.”
“That explains it,” said Captain Hardgrove.
“Explains what?"
“Anyone with those two words for a business—well, you would expect to find him in a crow's nest.”
Dr. Cunico shook his head. “The man is known all over the world.”
“He is, eh?"
“Furthermore,” said Dr. Cunico, “he is a close friend and associate of a man named Clark Savage, Jr.,
better known as Doc Savage.”
CAPTAIN HARDGROVE walked over and hung an oilskin over the cage of his parrot. The
expression—mixed startled interest, greed—was gone from his face when he turned.
“So?” he asked.
“Haven't you ever heard of him?"
“Who? The fellow you mentioned—Savage? No, don't recall the name.”
“He is an amazing man in many ways, I've heard,” said Dr. Cunico. “I happen to know that no living
surgeon claims to be able to touch him in ability. I understand he is equally good in other lines. His
avocation, if not his main business, is trouble. Strange trouble. In strange parts of the world.”
Captain Hardgrove considered that. “Would you call this a strange part of the world, my good doctor?"
Dr. Cunico looked steadily at Captain Hardgrove. Cunico had never quite made out Captain Hardgrove.
He did not like the man. He sometimes suspected that everything inside Captain Hardgrove, everything
that did not show on the surface, was completely evil.
“I would call snowballs on the hottest day of summer a trifle strange,” he said.
With no expression, Captain Hardgrove asked, “Did you try to get hold of this—what is his
name—Savage?"
“I did. I failed. He was not in New York, where he has his headquarters.”
“Dr. Cunico.”
“Yes?"
“Don't you think this matter was one that actually fell within the realm of duties of the master of this
misbegotten tub?” asked Captain Hardgrove.
“Possibly.”
Captain Hardgrove still had no expression.
“The correct answer is certainly!” he said. “Dr. Cunico, will you kindly remember that, in the future.”
Dr. Cunico knew then that the skipper was as evil a man as he had thought he was. It came upon him as
a mortal certainty, and it made him feel cold, standing there in the heat.
Chapter II. THE SHAPING OF SOMETHING
THE radio operator was found dead that evening.
Captain Hardgrove was on the bridge. The ship's clock was striking two bells at the time—nine o'clock.
The skipper was deviling his parrot. Or rather, getting even with the parrot.
The parrot had just said, “Mabel loves Charlie, you dope!” Charlie was not the skipper's name. So by
way of revenge, Hardgrove removed the rubber band from his sleeve buttons, began chewing up pieces
of newspaper and popping the parrot. The parrot took it unpleasantly.
Mr. Weed came on to the bridge and said, “Sparks is not in his shack.”
“Sparks” was the nickname given to most marine radio operators.
“Then send a man to hunt him!” snapped Captain Hardgrove.
“I did.”
“Then don't bother me about it!” Captain Hardgrove drew a deliberate bead on the parrot, and the bird
cursed in a deep-throated voice.
“I noticed,” remarked Mr. Weed, “that you engaged some of the crew in conversation.”
The skipper grunted. “Your eyes are too big.”
“I heard the word 'snowballs' mentioned.”
“Your ears are too big.”
Mr. Weed went over and closed and locked the exit door from the bridge. Then he bit the end off a cigar
and lighted it. Smoking while on duty on the bridge was against the rules.
“I looked up this fellow from the crow's nest, William Harper Littlejohn, in 'Who's Who,'“ Mr. Weed
said. “He has a write-up as long as your arm. But this Clark Savage, Jr. has a write-up as long as your
leg.”
Captain Hardgrove missed with a paper wad.
Mr. Weed added coyly, “I noticed you also got the copy of 'Who's Who' from the library.”
“Your mouth is too big, Mr. Weed.”
Weed chuckled. “We shouldn't kid each other, you and I. We have sailed together too much.”
“You forget yourself, Mr. Weed,” Captain Hardgrove said in a low voice.
“No, Joe. I haven't forgotten the Western Star and that bank shipment from Shanghai—“
“Shut up!”
“I was just—“
“Shut up! Don't call me Joe! Joe isn't my name any more!” Captain Hardgrove sounded as if cloth were
tearing deep inside his chest.
They were silent. The moon was a hot thing in a warm night sky. The City of Tulsa plowed through a
sea that was utterly a black mirror for the platoons of stars overhead. From the aft lounge came the
dance music of the vessel's small orchestra.
“I won't remember again,” said Mr. Weed.
“O. K.” Captain Hardgrove breathed inward deeply. “Don't!”
Mr. Weed rolled his cigar across his lips.
“By the way,” he said, “you didn't by chance take a pair of binoculars and look at the crow's nest before
the sun went down?”
The skipper whirled suddenly. “Why should I?"
摘要：

THEPIRATEISLEADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI?ChapterII.THESHAPINGOFSOMETHING?ChapterIII.THEBRONZEMAN?ChapterIV.PARACHUTESNIPERS?ChapterV.DISTRESSEDLADY?ChapterVI.LORDLONDON?ChapterVII.SHIPTONOWHE...

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