Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (27 page)

“Perhaps he was intrigued by your long white beard,” suggested Captain Savage.

“Perhaps Kong was. You will have to ask him, if you ever obtain the opportunity.” And Captain Savage authored a secretive laugh that made Doc Savage and his father exchange fresh glances of worry. Their meeting eyes seemed to ask,
Is he mad?

In the jungle, they encountered nothing more remarkable than something that resembled a nest of ostrich eggs.

“I see that you could not have lacked for variety in your diet, Grandfather,” noted Doc.

“Game is plentiful, if unusual. Smaller dinosaurs taste rather like game fowl. I have yet to encounter an ox or beef suitable for a steak. But I have made do.”

As they passed the nest, Doc noticed one of the eggs was broken. An oversized rat had inserted its long snout into the cracks and was taking nourishment.

“That is the first mammal I have seen on this island,” remarked Doc.

“They came with the ships,” explained Stormalong. “They like the eggs the dinosaurs lay. If they keep up their raiding, before long the dinosaurs will be no more.”

“Ironic,” commented Captain Savage. “A mighty population of monsters, felled by low vermin.”

“It is the way of the world,” clucked Old Stormy.

They continued their trek, watchful for danger. But even four pairs of eyes could not look in all directions continually.

Something high in a tree shook the top of a palm, taking them by surprise. They froze in their tracks, forming a back-to-back circle.

The shaggy palm shook again, like an angry fist of green.

Carefully, Doc approached, Annihilator muzzle raised high.

“’Ware, son,” warned Captain Savage.

Doc eased up to the palm, which was shivering madly now.

Another one also began quivering. Then on the opposite side, still another. It was as if the groves of coconut palms were being shaken by a mighty wind. But here was no wind. Only a sultry sea breeze.

Suddenly, purple-blue shapes began scrambling down from the shivering crowns.

At first, their striking size and coloration made Doc think slashers were dropping from the sky. But these were not feathered, but armored monsters.

For the palms were raining gigantic coconut crabs!

They scuttled down with the single-minded determination of mad things, using their pointed middle legs to clasp the boles. Each one was the size of a full-grown man.

Doc elevated his submachine gun, then realized it would be wasteful in this encounter. Too many bullets would be expended too rapidly, so he dropped it.

Doc had reloaded his Colt and this came up in his fist. Captain Savage had his revolver out and was already picking a target.

They began firing at the descending monsters.

The bullets, aimed true, split carapaces and shot off waving claws. But the coconut crowns continued to shake with fury. Soon there were more of the crab monsters than they could count.

Emptying his Colt, Doc reholstered his weapon and brought up the Annihilator. He drew back on the charging handle.

Pointing the muzzle at one crab midway down a bole, he squeezed the firing lever. The weapon shook and stuttered. Only the merest touch of the trigger, and the crab creature flew to meaty pieces, the palm trunk sheared along its width. It toppled with a splintering groan.

Turning, Doc aimed at a crab now on the ground and charging forward with remarkable speed, despite its massive foreclaws and its clumsy construction.

This, too, flew apart before a storm of .45 caliber lead.

Doc swept about the clearing, seeking another.

Two more were down on the jungle floor and slipping along the ground, looking like horny tarantulas constructed of purple shell.

Doc emptied the last of the big ammunition drum he had fashioned into them with the inevitable result. The substance of their inner matter splashed the surroundings.

The drum was now empty. Doc extracted it, hastily inserting the magazine clip, worrying that he had already wasted too much precious ammunition.

Once he had it firmly in place, Doc yanked the charging handle. Aiming for the handiest target, he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened! The weapon had jammed!

Hastily, Doc switched back to his automatic, reloading with a spare clip, resumed blazing away. He wasted no more rounds. Each target took only one slug to stop dead.

Doc looked about him. Stormalong Savage was leaping about like a man possessed, bolas whirling madly, pummeling into ruin any lobster-like crustacean he could smash. His father had accounted for two of the horny blue brutes. But more of the many-legged monsters were coming.

There seemed to be an endless supply of them. They emerged from the jungle, wriggling eyestalks regarding them with sullen interest.

Flinging his battered bolas at a descending crab, Stormalong managed to wrap one flailing monster around a palm trunk. Turning, the spindly giant barked, “Too many to bother with. But follow me. I know of a way to defeat the things.”

Having no other reasonable course of action, they followed the nimble old man, whose long whiskers flapped in his hurry.

Stormalong Savage soon led them to an azure pool known as a blue hole.

He waved them along. “Into the water. Come.”

Old Stormy leaped in first. Doc’s father followed, then Chicahua the Mayan. Doc dropped such weapons on the dirt that could be recovered later, because once immersed in water, they would be useless.

Doc was the last to go. He turned to see a small horde of crabs ambling along like beetles out of prehistory. They seemed determined to attack.

Doc paused to charge his lungs with air as much as he dared. He hoped that the passage would not be a long one. He felt a stab of disquiet about entering the pool, but charged that off to childhood memories of his first forced swim.

PLUNGING into the pool, Doc found it cool, but not cold. This was a surprise. Almost immediately, the light became a dim cobalt, then it shaded to a darker hue like the night sky just after dusk.

He spotted the flashing limbs of others. Stormalong seemed to be leading them.

The bronze giant swam by kicking his feet and propelling himself with great sweeping motions of his hands.

They passed through a narrow dark tunnel of what felt like volcanic basalt, into a wider passage which became very dark before it shaded into a pale blue that grew brighter and brighter with each lively kick of his feet. A light source ahead!

Abruptly, a hazy glow showed over his head, and Doc realized he was alone in the water. He swam upward. His smooth head broke the surface, golden eyes searching.

Overhead, light was splintering down from a narrow crack high in a rocky ceiling far above. This illuminated the place.

The others had already pulled themselves onto a subterranean rock ledge, just above.

“Underground grotto,” explained Stormalong, grinning down at Doc.

The bronze man climbed up. Taking a seat beside the others, he saw that the chamber was a natural one, but also that there appeared to be no other exit than the one they had employed in their escape.

“I imagine a return by this route is out of the question,” said Captain Savage.

Stormalong said, “Not if the creatures run true to form. For they are likely to follow us.”

It was true. Before long, a purplish monster appeared in the water, scuttling along the floor of the underground river tunnel.

It reached the edge of the ledge, where the tunnel stopped, and seemed at a loss for what to do next.

Others promptly arrived. They, too, began to skitter about aimlessly.

“They appear dumbfounded by the barrier,” commented Captain Savage.

Stormalong smiled mischievously. “The ledge forms a lip. They cannot climb it, even if they could see us. Which they cannot.”

“So what do we do?” asked Doc.

“We wait patiently.”

“For what do we wait?” asked Captain Savage with a trace of impatience.

“We wait for them to face their inevitable and unavoidable fate,” said Stormalong Savage in an unconcerned tone of voice.

Chapter XXXIII

WHAT STORMALONG SAVAGE meant by waiting for the coconut crabs to face their fate was over an hour in revealing itself.

In the interim, an unceasing tide of the purplish-blue crustaceans arrived and began crawling atop one another. For a time, it seemed that they might by this ingenious method form an armored pyramid and, in this fashion, clamber atop one another until they reached the lip of the rocky ledge on which the Savages sat, with Chicahua the Mayan squinting stark-eyed beside them.

But that was not their intent. The truth was that the confused crabs were at a loss for a way out of their predicament. They began to panic. It showed in their flailing limbs, the manner of which their claws snipped blindly at nothing.

“The coconut crab is a distant relative of the hermit crab,” Stormalong was saying to pass the time. “The hermit crab, as you may know, is perfectly at home in the water. These creatures are not. They are entirely terrestrial.”

A gleam of understanding coming into his golden orbs, Captain Savage suddenly said, “I see it now! They cannot swim. They do not possess gills.”

Stormalong fingered his beard. “Precisely. Even as we watch them flounder about, they are drowning.”

“Remarkable,” said Doc.

“Not really,” returned Old Stormy dryly. “This is how I have caught many a meal. I merely lure one of these thieves into a pool and await his inevitable and lamentable demise.” Stormalong chuckled deliciously. “Then he is mine.”

“There are too many to eat,” pointed out Doc.

“No matter,” said Stormalong. “In another hour, it should be safe to exit the way we entered.”

The hour came and went. By this time, the crabs had ceased their aimless panicky scuttling. Their feelers began to droop, the nervous snapping action of their foreclaws growing feeble.

Soon they were still, although some continued stirring longer than others.

During the wait, Doc Savage thought of a question to ask his father.

“Captain, I am still curious. How did you know that first robber crab we encountered was a juvenile? I studied it carefully, and failed to discern your reasoning.”

Before Captain Savage could reply, Stormalong inserted a question.

“Why do you call your own flesh and blood by that honorific, Doc?”

Captain Savage interrupted this time. “It was at my insistence, Father. I thought it best to maintain shipboard discipline. Inasmuch as we are among family, I will temporarily suspend the requirement.”

Old Stormy remarked, “I do not recall ever requiring that curious custom when you sojourned on the
Courser,
Clark.”

There followed an uncomfortable silence.

Captain Savage cleared his throat and replied to Doc’s question.

“The reason you failed to discover the truth was twofold. First, you observed carefully, but you did not investigate. Had you tested the carapace of the crustacean in question, you would have discovered its undeniable softness.”

“You
did not,” Doc pointed out.

“Correct. I did not because I needed not. For I did not study the crab, but its surroundings. And do you know what I discovered?”

“No,” Doc admitted.

“I discovered what you failed to perceive, that nearby lay a tortoise shell. If you knew the habits of your coconut crabs, you would know that juvenile specimens are compelled by the instinct of survival to carry about a protective coconut or snail shell they scavenge. This, to protect themselves from predators until such a time that their own natural shells harden in adulthood.”

“As Holmes would say, ‘Elementary,’” murmured Doc.

Captain Savage reminded, ‘‘‘It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.’”

“Are you quoting Doyle again, Father?”

“I am citing common sense,” snapped Captain Savage. “Now, shall we endeavor to escape these dank confines?”

“Capital idea!” said Stormalong, who had been an interested listener throughout the exchange.

They returned to the water, swimming over the charnel house of dead crabs and feeling their way through the dark tunnel of rock until they saw the light streaming down from the opening that was the blue hole ahead. It was an easier passage on this second trip, the terror of the darkness and the unknown no longer before them.

Emerging onto dry land, they reclaimed their weapons and resumed their course.

DOC SAVAGE was concerned about the long treacherous climb back to the waiting
Orion,
but said nothing about it. They would confront that instance when they came to it. No sense in risking the possibility of objections beforehand.

As they moved from savannah to jungle, Doc observed his grandfather. He was still getting used to the man’s freakish height. It was rare that the bronze giant had been put into the position where he had to look up into another man’s eyes.

Otherwise, Stormalong seemed spry enough, and had adapted well to jungle living. He was more akin to Robinson Crusoe than Tarzan of the Apes, of course. It was remarkable how the old man had taken to the hardships and privations of his exile.

Or was it an exile?

“Grandfather,” Doc asked, “how has the living been here?”

“I lack for nothing except human companionship. That, I get from Penjaga whenever our paths cross. They seldom do. She keeps to herself and I hold firmly to my own preserves.”

“Are there others such as her?”

“No, she is the last of her people. A once proud and mighty race, as I understand it.”

Captain Savage spoke up. “We should preserve a greater silence, lest we awaken predators.”

They fell quiet, the wisdom of the Clark Savage, Senior’s words being as pointed as his tone.

The path soon took them to the edge of Skull Island, and the sheer plutonic cliffs that looked down upon the anchored schooner.

AS they approached, an unease fell over them. Doc and his father were of one worry. Was the schooner still there?

Coming to the lip of the edge, they peered over.