Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (31 page)

Grunting and cheeping, Kong looked about his domain.

There were shelves arrayed on the other end. Dimly, Doc could see that mummified bodies lay there in the clotted shadows, carefully arrayed in a neat row. His mind went back to what his grandfather had told him about the maidens who had been sacrificed to the so-called beast-god, whom Kong had kept as souvenirs—or whatever idea was harbored in the brute’s dim brain.

Only Kong’s brain did not appear to be so dim, after all. He showed a simian intelligence, but also something beyond that. His use of the dead palm bole smacked of the use of tools—a trait that Science insisted was limited to humankind.

As much as he desired escape, Doc Savage continued to study the chamber of Kong. There would be plenty of opportunity for escape later, after the beast retired for the night.

Especially intriguing was the apparent fact that Kong showed all outward signs of loneliness and the desire for companionship. Bereft of others of his kind, the titanic creature evidently considered Doc, and his grandfather before him, to be kindred beings, if only by virtue of the amber eyes and similar body shape.

NIGHT began creeping along, and the stupendous ape started showing signs of fatigue, or just the natural urge to go to sleep when the sun set.

After ambling over to see that Doc Savage was safely ensconced in the safety of his ledge—Doc could not help but feel like a toy on a shelf—Kong sat down and began scratching the rocky floor aimlessly.

It dawned on Doc Savage that the two bonfires had been constructed from dried palm fronds that Kong had arranged as a rude pallet on which to sleep—another sure sign of intelligence.

Various expressions played over the great ape’s sometimes comical face. He grunted, seemed uncertain. Doc sensed that he was considering a climb down to harvest fresh fronds.

But having been denied the sanctuary of his lair by the fires, Kong was evidently too tired to execute the thought.

Slowly, laboriously, Kong laid his head down and began to drift off into slumber.

It was, until this point, the most incredible situation in which Doc Savage had ever found himself. Nothing that had transpired during the Great War equaled it. And that was a conflict that had shaken the world.

In time, the great creature turned over and cupped his head in his folded hands, very much like a child might. It was disconcerting.

Doc Savage allowed an hour to pass before making his move. He knew that sleep would be lightest in the early hours of the evening.

Examining his perch, the bronze man found that he stood easily a dozen feet over the floor of Kong’s lair. It was not impossible to climb down if one were athletic. But the rocks were unstable. It was too easy to dislodge one. Doc had to employ great caution.

Removing the ammunition clip from his pocket, Doc removed each shell individually, left everything behind. He could hardly afford to abandon precious ammunition, but there was no choice in the matter.

It was time to start. The increasing darkness did not help. But after a time, moonlight began weaving spectral cobwebs here and there. Doc’s eyes began adjusting to the wan lunar light and he felt confident in his plan of escape.

The bronze man did not climb down. He clambered up. There were cracks and crevices everywhere. He used them as handholds for his steely-string fingers—mentally thanking the human fly who taught him to scale brick buildings using only the indentations between the bricks—and soon reached a point where he could not be easily seen by the inquisitive ape.

His plan was simple. He was going to fling stones in the direction of the great opening in Skull Summit through which the beast-god came and went. His intention was to trick Kong into thinking that Doc had managed to escape, when in reality the bronze man remained concealed from those enormous amber orbs.

If the ape acted true to form, he would go off in search of his prize. Doc could escape Kong’s fantastic aerie at his leisure.

But Fate has a way of foiling even the simplest and seemingly foolproof of plans.

Doc had collected several rocks of various sizes, filling his uniform pockets with them so he had a goodly supply of ammunition.

The bronze man never got to cast that first stone.

A new sound came to his ears—a scratching, stumbling kind of commotion.

Someone—or something—was climbing the side of Skull Mountain!

Chapter XXXVIII

MIGHTY KONG ROUSED. He shifted, snuffled noisily, and seemed on the verge of turning in his sleep, but subsided, like a mountain settling after an earthquake. Only in this case the mountain was the earthquake—a lumbering force of nature on stubby bowed legs, carrying in his upper body the power to destroy anything man had ever created, and much of what nature had wrought.

The skittering sound came again. Through Doc Savage’s mind came a parade of thoughts, imagining what might be seeking the summit of Skull Island. A scuttling slasher? A serpent? Perhaps it was his own father, seeking Doc’s fate.

After a time, a dark figure poked its head in, peering around.

In the dim light, Doc made out the movements, but failed to immediately discern what manner of creature possessed such a curious head.

After a minute, something entered on padding feet, sounding rather like a great cat.

Following it with his acute eyes, Doc soon realized that this was a lone Dyak scout. He wore only his hide loincloth and a brass-wire bracelet on one bicep. No tall feathers adorned his head.

Seeing Kong’s bulk looming in the murk, the Dyak shifted to the rock walls and began working his way around, keeping to the stony crevices.

Doc watched him carefully from his shadowy coign of vantage. The man carried no blowpipe. He clutched a charcoal-dulled knife in one hand, but made no move to use it. It would have been less than a thorn to Kong, anyway.

As Doc followed his progress, the Dyak made a circuit of the lair and, returning to the entrance, slipped out as silently as he had come. More silently, for so much as Doc Savage listened for it, no sound of the man’s going reached his ears.

This forced Doc to wait even longer than he wished, but it had the added advantage of assuring him that Kong had lapsed into his deepest slumber. He never roused.

Time was now of the essence. Unless the bronze man was very much mistaken, the Dyak scout was rushing off to report that Kong had returned to his lair. Before long, a headhunting party would be arriving.

Doc Savage had no desire to face them alone, in this place of high peril.

Moving from crack to crevice in the riven rock, the bronze man reached the edge of the lair and climbed down until he stood on the solid ground of the great fanged cliff. Looking out, he ascertained that the sheer face of the mountain was clear of raiders. Then he slipped over the edge and began working his way to the rock-strewn base of Skull Mountain.

Doc no longer wore his Triceratops-hide poncho. But his bronze physique was still caked with dried mud. This served to keep off jungle insects and camouflage him where necessary.

The going was rough and, when he found the bottom, Doc slipped into the surrounding underbrush. There he merged with the waving ferns and dark brush of midnight, began making his careful and stealthy way to the coastal escarpment of the island.

REASONING that it would be better to locate the
Orion
than embark upon a far-ranging and possibly futile search for his father and Chicahua, Doc cut a straight line through wilderness to the northern cliff, then worked in the direction of the spot where the
Orion
lay coved.

He found it without incident. Peering over the edge, Doc spotted the grappling hook, still lodged in place. Naturally, his father would leave it there for him, even if he had returned.

Looking beyond it, Doc spied no lights on the
Orion.
Safety demanded that none be lit, so Doc took no special meaning from that bare fact.

Starting down, Doc went carefully. The day had been arduous and his muscles felt stiff. It was not cold, but it was much cooler, which had a strange effect upon him.

Doc reached the grapnel and transferred to the rope. He lacked the strength to slide down the rope, as much as he preferred to skid down it as fast as possible.

Instead, he dropped down in measured jerks, finally reaching the deck of the rocking schooner.

Before he reached it, Doc smelled blood.

Dropping to one knee, he touched the deck. There were blood spots everywhere.

Moving carefully, he found them wherever he went, even around the deckhouse, whose door was closed.

Rushing to the taffrail, Doc failed to find any clots of blood suggestive of a hasty beheading frenzy. He felt great relief, although it failed to register on his perpetually impassive countenance.

Moving back to the deckhouse, Doc attempted to ease open the door. It refused to budge. That meant someone had locked themselves in.

Doc evoked his musical trilling, let it run. It traveled up and trailed about the bare masts, seemed about to exhaust itself when a cracked voice called up from below.

“Is that you, grandson?”

“Yes,” Doc called down. “Where are you?”

“Hiding in the cofferdam.”

“The what?” asked Doc.

After a few minutes, feet tramped up the companion. After a rattling of a latch, the deckhouse door opened.

Stormalong Savage poked his grizzle-bearded head out. He peered about guardedly.

“Are they gone?”

“Who?”

“The Dyak boarding party.”

“I see nothing but spots of blood,” admitted Doc.

Old Stormy emerged on deck, looking a bit like an elderly giraffe. An old cutlass thorned one fist. “Watch out for tacks.”

“Sir?”

“Carpet tacks. I smelled the Sea Dyaks coming, so I sprinkled the deck with tacks.” He cackled. “Points uppermost, naturally. Then, I secreted myself in the cofferdam, and enjoyed their howls of consternation.”

“Your scheme worked,” Doc told him. “They must have stepped on the tacks and ran back to their dugouts. There are no Dyaks hereabouts, and hardly any tacks, for that matter.”

“Dyaks, like Malays, always enter the water feet-first,” explained Old Stormy. “Doubtless they swam back to the dugouts, there to remove the offending objects and lick their wounds. Back in the ’80s, I used that trick to repel a felucca of buccaneers while sailing through the Milky Way breakers off Cape Horn. Won’t work on boot-shod boarders, but most Asian pirates go barefoot like alley cats. Long ago, I instructed your father that a canny seaman always carried a ready supply—advice I am pleased to report he heeded.”

“My father did not return?” asked Doc.

“No. And I would have climbed up that infernal rope to fetch you all, had I been free to undertake the task.”

“Do not worry.” After a pause, Doc said, “I encountered Kong. He carried me off to his lair, but I escaped.”

“Then you are a better man than I, for it took me all of eight years.”

“I understand now why Kong took you—and me, for that matter.”

“Well, enlighten me.”

“His eyes are virtually the same color as ours.”

Old Stormy winked one yellow orb. “Nature plays queer tricks, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. Where did you say you were hiding?”

“In the cofferdam. It’s a void.”

“Show me,” directed Doc.

Stormalong led him below and to the rear of the hold, where the auxiliary gasoline engine stood in its enclosed compartment.

“A cofferdam,” said Stormalong, “is a space between bulkheads. In these new-fangled ships, they are built around the engines so that spilt fuel doesn’t mix with other substances, causing trouble.”

“I have never before heard that term,” admitted Doc.

“You sound surprised by your own ignorance,” clucked Old Stormy. “I imagine that you considered yourself educated because you attended a university.”

Doc said nothing. Penjaga had intimated the same disconcerting opinion.

The cofferdam lay under the steel plate supporting the engine housing. There was a bit of molding and when Old Stormy pressed it, a long and narrow panel fell forward. Doc stooped and saw that an agile man could hide within, if he managed to squeeze himself through the opening. It was no spot for the claustrophobic, thought Doc.

Shutting the panel, Doc stood up.

“I have to find the others,” he announced.

“Bring me along.”

“Someone has to guard the ship,” Doc reminded.

“You left it unguarded when you found me, didn’t you?”

Doc admitted that was the case.

“I know Skull Island better than anyone. You cannot deny that.”

Doc nodded. “The Dyaks seem bent on bearding Kong in his lair.”

“They want his head,” returned Stormalong. “Kong will pull theirs off their thieving necks and return each one to them, in his illimitable way.”

“We can stop them, if we find the others.”

“Agreed. Let us be about that undertaking, then.”

Then, to Doc Savage’s everlasting astonishment, Stormalong went to the dangling line and began to climb it hand over hand, showing that more corded strength and dexterity than he could ever imagine resided within the rawhide frame of his alarmingly-tall grandfather.

“I have always been better at going up the mast than clambering down it!” Old Stormy chuckled.

The old rascal!
thought Doc.

The bronze giant was forced to wait on deck until the spindly giant reached the grappling hook and transferred to the rocks. After that, Doc commenced his climb, feeling considerably less spry and agile than his well-rested grandfather.

Chapter XXXIX

UPON REACHING THE cliff top, Doc Savage discovered his grandfather crouching down amid the tumbled rocks that fringed the high rim of the plateau.

“Is something wrong?”

“As I normally stand, I make a tempting target for snipers,” replied Old Stormy in a reasonable voice.

Doc decided to follow suit. He, too, crouched as they surveyed the shaggy hump of island that stood before them.

Skull Mountain brooded some miles distant, no less foreboding because moonlight ensilvered its gloomy countenance.