Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (25 page)

Farther along, Doc spotted a glint of metal in the tree. It was dull, but metal nevertheless.

Going in that direction, moving from springy branch to springy branch, he discovered the object.

It was his Annihilator! Someone had left it there, wedged in the crook of a forked branch, its lanyard still clinging to it.

Slinging it over his shoulder, Doc waited for Chicahua to catch up, then pointed due west.

They made good time—or would have if they knew where they were going.

A fresh slash in a tree suggested a knife cut. Another farther along, caused Doc to alter direction.

Following the slashes—some of which dripped sap—Doc worked his way deeper into the jungle. He felt that he was getting somewhere. But in the back of his mind was the fear that the slashes had been made by the feathered enemies, and that he was being led into a treetop trap.

So when he came within sight of the tree house, the bronze giant was vastly more relieved than he was surprised.

The thing had been built by men. It sprawled across the adjoining tree, and boasted three stories. Many months had been spent in creating it. Ratlines and other bracing cords made it look vaguely like a ship.

Doc approached to within hailing distance and cupped huge hands before his mouth.

“Ahoy the tree house!”

“Ahoy back,” called an unfamiliar voice.

“Who are you?”

“Have you not figured that out?” returned the age-cracked voice.

Suddenly, the welcome tones of Captain Clark Savage issued forth.

“Never mind all that now. Permission to come aboard is hereby granted. We are about to enjoy lunch.”

“Father!” breathed Doc in a tone so low even Chicahua did not detect it.

They picked their way along the fat supporting branches to the vast mansion in the trees.

THERE were no doors, of course. Everything was open to the air, although there was flooring, and roofing after a fashion. Most of it had been constructed of split bamboo—decking, uprights and, where it was practical, walls. Dried palm fronds constituted the thatching.

In a central chamber—if it could have been styled that—Captain Savage stood over a rough-hewn table set low like a Japanese taboret, around which several cushions were arrayed.

Captain Savage reposed on one and called over, “Come! You are just in time.”

Doc approached, Chicahua hanging cautiously behind.

“Permit me to introduce to you your illustrious paternal grandfather, my immediate forebear, Captain Stormalong Savage,” the elder Savage said grandly.

The coppery old man of the trees, his face a profusion of white whiskers, eyed Doc Savage with orbs that were a startling yellow hue.

“I see you found your Gatling gun,” he remarked.

“Yes, thank you.”

Doc did not know what to say to the old man. He was not eight foot tall, as Chicahua had described. But he was easily seven. Doc had never met a man so vertical in his construction. He was garbed in a nautical uniform of an earlier day, patched in places with exotic hides. Incongruously, he was barefoot.

“I can see how the legend of Captain Stormalong got started,” said Doc.

“See if you can surround some of this food,” grunted Doc’s father.

Doc took a seat, as did Chicahua, who remained mute throughout. The food consisted of fruit and vegetables, many unfamiliar to Doc, who thought that he had sampled every exotic viand from armadillo meat to turtle stew.

There were portions of white meat in the center of each plate. They steamed aromatically.

Doc took some into his mouth, and chewed it experimentally. He liked what he found.

“What is this?”

“What does it taste like?” returned Stormalong.

“It reminds me of coconut, except that it is plainly meat.”

Captain Savage said dryly, “And what do you deduce from that datum, Mister Holmes?”

Doc considered briefly. “Coconut crab.”

Old Stormy grinned in his beard. “They taste like their diets, do they not?”

“They do,” agreed Doc, taking more.

They consumed their food in silence for a while, as the very hungry often do.

Finally, Doc made conversation. “This place would impress Tarzan of the Apes.”

A feline yellow eye regarded him quizzically. “Eh?”

Captain Savage explained, “A literary allusion that I fear is lost upon you, father, having been marooned here these many long years.”

“Oh. I myself am partial to Shakespeare.”

Doc started. Did his father not say those very words to him? Well, the apple did not fall far from the tree, usually.

Captain Savage spoke up. “My son, your grandson, has a taste for cheap popular fiction.”

“I seem to recall your addiction to dime novels far back,” Old Stormy remarked.

“A youthful one, which I have long since put behind me.”

Stormalong Savage bent a bright eye on Doc. “Did you ever hear of Nick Carter, young man?”

“Yes.”

“That was your father’s idol when he was not much younger than you are today.”

“I would prefer to speak of the present, if all are agreeable,” inserted Captain Savage with a thin trace of stiffness.

“Very well. You may begin by informing me how you discovered my hiding place,” invited Stormalong.

“It is very simple, Father,” returned Captain Savage. “I found the map you had secreted in the lower mast of the
Courser.
”

“That map,” said Old Stormy, “was all but useless.”

“I will not quibble with that assessment, for most of it was obliterated. But it showed a prominence I dubbed Death’s Head. We searched for that.”

“And found it, I see,” muttered Stormalong Savage. “I rue that day I set eyes upon its deathly countenance.”

They finished their meal, which they washed down with coconut milk, served in their half shells.

“How did you come here, Grandfather?” asked Doc, getting straight to the point.

“How I came and why I stay, may be two entirely different things.”

“I would like to hear both.”

“As would I,” added Captain Savage.

“It was when I was among the Malays that I heard talk of an uncharted island they called
Tengkorak Pulao.
”

“Skull Island,” translated Doc.

“Mount Skull Island, as the Atu natives term it. My days carrying cargo from San Francisco to Siam were behind me. The day of the clipper ship was over, but I still had the
Courser,
and the will to profit from it. You see, unlike your father, who liked to gallivant around the world, doing good deeds and not profiting by them, I was a merchant man by temperament. I sought treasure.”

Doc nodded, fascinated.

“What I heard of Skull Island intrigued me. A place where animals dwelled who no longer lived. Imagine the price some specimens would fetch. But when I made landfall, I discovered greater treasure than those uncatchable beasts.”

“Such as?”

“Have you not seen them for yourself?”

“If we have,” interjected Captain Savage, “we have not recognized them.”

“The jungle, man. The trees! Trees such as modern man has never felled. Teaks. Hardwoods.
Et cetera.
Man alive! Magnificent timber that, if carried off as cargo, a canny soul might name his own price.”

“I see,” said Doc, slightly disappointed. He had expected an explanation more romantic than valuable hardwoods.

“I suspect that you do not have all of my blood,” clucked Old Stormy.

Clark Savage, Senior, offered, “He has a glint of your eyes, Father. And the Savage wanderlust, without a doubt.”

“He reminds me more of his mother than he does you.”

“Did you know my mother?” Doc asked quietly.

“Let us stick to the point,” suggested Captain Savage.

Old Stormy said, “I met your mother only once, then I saw her no more. Alas.”

A moment of awkward silence ensued.

Captain Savage picked up the dropped threads of the conversation.

“How did you come to be marooned here?”

“In the beginning of my great misadventure, I was not. My crew and I decided to study this island, the better to decide what to take from it. The days stretched to weeks, then to months. Do you know that there are the ruins of a high civilization not far from here?”

“We saw the wall,” said Doc.

“That is but one manifestation. I refer to a ruined city, now crumbling to blocks. A mighty nation formerly resided here once, so long ago that one can scarcely credit the antiquity of it.”

Doc perked up. “What happened to them?”

“What happened to Egypt? To Rome? They fell into decline, entered into internal disagreements, and began warring amongst themselves. The baser remnants—the Atu— dwell on the other side of the great wall. For generations, the high-minded survivors of the Tagu eked out an existence on this side, called the Plateau of the Skull.”

“They made that mountain?”

“Their ancestors took what had been a suggestion of a skull and made it sharp and definite, carving where they could and employing the same durable mortar that faces the great wall on both sides. Passing time has eroded it.”

“Why did they build the fantastic wall?” asked Captain Savage.

Stormalong Savage was a long time answering that question. For a while it seemed that he wouldn’t.

“Kong, I imagine.”

“I have heard of Kong,” said Doc. “I met an old woman who called herself Penjaga the Keeper.”

“I know her. She lives atop the gate. Penjaga is the last of the Tagu, custodian of her race’s knowledge and history. She knows all the stories, but most of all she knows the story of Kong.”

“I have difficulty imagining a gorilla as large as a small mountain,” Captain Savage said frankly.

Stormalong again fell into silence.

“Kong is the reason I am still here on Skull Island ,” he finally offered.

“Go on,” prompted Doc.

“I have told you that I sought treasure, but I never carried any out. Not a splinter of wood, or pinch of minerals. All because of Kong.”

They waited for him to continue.

“We had been on Skull Island more than a year before it happened. I will not tell you the full story now. It would take too long. But Kong had run afoul of a raiding party of headhunters.”

“Dyaks?”

Stormalong nodded, fingering his beard. “Sea Dyaks. Nasty fellows. They were out headhunting. I do not know how they came all this way from Borneo. Blown off course, or responding to some ancestral call, I suppose. But they arrived one day. War broke out between the Dyaks and myself.”

Lowering his cracked voice, Stormalong fixed them with his amber orbs.

“In the middle of that war came Kong. The Dyaks had taken for a trophy the head of a young female of Kong’s line. The only other survivor of his mighty line, to the best of my knowledge. This enraged the beast-god, who then went on a rampage, when he discovered the pitiful, desecrated remains.”

Doc advised, “Dyaks have returned to Skull Island. They have brought back that ape skull. Now they want the head of Kong.’’

“Fools. Sheer folly. But to my story. In his understandable rage, Kong came upon the
Courser
lying at anchor. He knew ships. Others had been to the island before us. Pirates, I imagine. Kong knew that ships such as the
Courser
carried white men to Skull Island and white men usually brought death and destruction to his domain. The Atu opened the gates of the great wall to permit him to reach Skull Lagoon. So Kong waded out to the
Courser
one day when my crew and I were reconnoitering the plateau. We saw him from an escarpment. He strode out into the water and snapped the masts off the
Courser
as easily as you and I break tree branches. The sails were naturally furled. He tossed the masts into the lagoon and gave the dear old lady a shove that sent her out to sea, alas—and away from my sight forever.”

Captain Savage said solemnly, “We found her adrift last month. I regret to inform you that we thought it best to scuttle the
Courser.
”

A gloomy silence fell over the table. No one spoke.

“After that,” resumed Stormalong Savage, “we were forced to dwell here, awaiting the day of rescue when a ship blundered along, by accident or design.”

Captain Savage laid a gentle hand upon his father’s amazingly long arm. “Well, we have found you and we will carry you back to civilization as soon as you are ready to depart.”

Stormalong looked into the eyes of his son. A curiously sad light leapt into them.

“I do not know about that, for I doubt that I will ever leave Skull Mountain Island.”

Chapter XXXI

CAPTAIN SAVAGE SPOKE gently to his father.

“I have my schooner anchored not far off. Of course you may come along with us.”

“I know that I can,” countered Stormalong Savage. “But I do not think that I will. For I have lost my ship. I am a captain with neither vessel, nor crew. At my age, where will I find another, and what would I do with it?”

No one had a good answer for that.

“Excuse me,” inserted Doc, “but you have been marooned here for some twelve years. Where is your crew?”

“Dead. All dead. Their ready luck ran out.”

Doc pressed the point. “When we discovered the
Courser
drifting on the high seas, there were signs that heads had been taken from crewmen not long before.”

“When Kong consigned the
Courser
to the mercy of the Indian Ocean, I had men posted on board, on guard.” Stormalong sighed deeply. “What became of them, I do not know.”

“Twelve years is a long time,” said Doc.

“Kong separated the
Courser
from her captain less than four years ago,” Stormalong corrected.

Captain Savage muttered, “It is possible for a crew of men to survive on the open seas for that length of time adrift and without the means to make for land, surviving on rain water and such fish as they could catch.”

“Only to fall victim to marauding Sea Dyaks,” added Doc. “The Indian Ocean is so vast that one could drift for years before encountering another vessel, except by chance.”

Captain Savage nodded. “Far-fetched, but we are in a far-fetched predicament.” Turning to his father, he said, “Why did you not leave Skull Island before the loss of the
Courser?
I count eight years.”