Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (32 page)

“You see the hollow where he dwells?” asked the old sea captain, pointing a long finger at the landmark’s right eye socket.

“Yes.”

“In the other hollow are strange artifacts of a dead civilization. Treasure. Statuary. Other bric-a-brac. A great people shaped that prominence. They left behind their detritus, which would be worth millions to European museums.”

“Who were they?”

“I do not know,” confessed Stormalong. “But I have often wondered if, in times unrecorded by history, some of the people who still come to this island, the Malay and the Dyaks, might not be following some ancestral memory of a time when their distant cousins came and settled here.”

“Difficult to imagine any civilized people colonizing an island filled with crawling death as this one,” remarked Doc.

“Stranger things these eyes have seen in my sea-roving days,” clucked Stormalong.

Moving into the jungle, the old man picked his way cautiously, as if hunting something.

He found a trailing vine and, after shinnying up a tree, cut the creeper down. Moving along, he began collecting stones. Three of them.

“When I was young, I spent some time down in the Argentine.”

“So you said,” reminded Doc.

“Eh? Yes, that’s right, I did.”

The long-limbed clipper captain sat down with his jungle salvage and got to work binding the stones until each was attached to a vine. Then, he tied the ends of the weighted cords to a central hub.

When he was finished, Stormalong Savage had made a rude bolas.

“A formidable weapon, if thrown properly,” he said, upon standing up.

Doc nodded. He had experimented with them, too. They could be dangerous if not controlled properly. If wielded without care, a man might stave in his own skull.

They marched along, skirting the trees and walking along winding jungle lanes, sometimes crossing open areas.

“Venomous things drop out of the branches by night,” Stormalong explained. “I do not refer to the redoubtable robber crab.”

After a while, there were no paths and they were forced to make do by infiltrating through the jungle. The same trees Doc had traversed by day now felt weird and clutching by moonlight.

Overhead, he saw bats, then wondered if they might not be infant pterosaurs, disturbed from their roosts. They moved out of sight so rapidly, there was no being certain.

Once, they happened upon a gauzy web so large and thick it was like a cloud squatting on the ground.

Stormalong pulled Doc back, hissing, “We will go around that snare.”

Doc kept his eyes sharp for the weaving spider. He saw nothing, but a clicking as of hungry mandibles made the skin on the back of his neck prickle unpleasantly.

Old Stormy warned, “That web’s tougher than rawhide, more sticky than saltwater taffy. Even a grown man would be hard-pressed to extricate himself.”

Doc began recognizing landmarks. A certain tree. An outcropping of rock in the shape of a natural anvil. A stand of rattan-choked bamboo trampled by dinosaur feet.

Before long, they came to the spot where Kong had rescued him from the slasher pack. The damaged trees alone told the tale.

There, they halted.

Doc Savage spoke in a hush. “The last I saw of my father, he stood under this canopy,” he whispered. “We might pick up his trail from this point.”

But Stormalong was already sniffing his way ahead.

Moving quietly, Doc caught up with him.

“I see no sign,” he admitted.

“Close your eyes and employ your nostrils,” came the reply. “I am following scent.”

Doc did so, and was immediately surprised at how much easier it was to discern individual odors without the distraction of paying attention to what his eyes told him.

“This is impractical,” offered Doc, peeking often in order to avoid obstacles.

“But effective.”

Doc’s silence was his affirmative assent.

“The brain is so often filled with the world that we see,” explained Old Stormy, “we do not fully comprehend the universe of its smells until we shut out the realm of sight.”

Doc, who had spent some weeks in a school for the blind, learning the art of navigating the world while blindfolded to simulate loss of vision, suddenly realized that test had been one lesson where experience had not fully educated him.

Still, this jungle was no place to go about sightless. He opened his eyes and let his grandfather lead him, rather like a bloodhound—if bloodhounds could be imagined to stand nearly seven feet tall.

There was a renewed strength and vigor about his grandfather now. His energy seemed inexhaustible. Was it his old seaman’s courage coming back, or did the quest for his lost son restore him? Doc couldn’t tell. But it was a remarkable transformation. He could see how legends had sprung up around the man and his deeds. He was a giant in more than stature.

From a distance, a sound rolled across the treetops. It caused them to freeze in their tracks.

This was a roar. Bloodcurdling, bestial, and so great in volume it might have emerged from just over the rise. But it did not.

It was coming from the orb-like cavities of Skull Mountain, a massive moonlit sentinel in the distance.

“Kong,” intoned Doc. “He is awake.”

“Or he has been awakened,” suggested Old Stormy.

“Which do you think it might be?” asked Doc.

“Kong has his ways. We will leave him to them. I smell humans. We will follow that olfactory track.”

Before they had gone a few rods, Doc smelled them, too. Very faintly. His grandfather’s sense of smell was astounding, exceeding his own, it seemed.

A shuffling of something alive and prowling sounded in the brush ahead.

They were upwind of it, so no scent carried to their distending nostrils.

They listened.

“Not human,” decided Old Stormy.

“We will skirt it.”

“And have it stalk us? No! In this jungle, you strike first—or end up in someone’s belly. Follow me, grandson. I will teach you a thing or two about surviving on Skull Mountain Island.”

Doc followed, not liking it one bit.

IT happened so fast that Doc had no time to react. Then it was all over.

Old Stormy had the lead. He was creeping up on the rustling sound. Abruptly, the unfamiliar noise turned to a mad dash.

Out of the thicket came a yellow-and-black slasher, mouth sealed, trying to be quiet. Picking his way forward, the ungainly two-legged thing displayed uncanny stealth. But little rain had fallen in recent days. The underbrush was dry. Detritus rustled beneath its stalking talons.

The slasher froze, emulating utter stillness. Its bright orange eyes sealed to slits in an effort to mask its presence.

It was all for nothing.

Old Stormy lifted his bolas and began spinning it, quickly shifting the deadly blurred disk over his head. When he let go, the whirling mass of balls wrapped themselves around the suddenly churning legs and brought the slasher stumbling down in a flash of feathers.

Coming in behind it, Stormalong Savage smashed its skull with a rock he picked up on the fly. The creature keeled over, began flailing, attempting to rise. But its cord-tangled feet were held fast. It screamed.

Stepping up, Old Stormy removed its head with a quick chop of his cutlass, which he pulled from his belt.

“That,” he said, walking back to Doc, “is how things are done around here.”

Doc stared. Speech was momentarily driven from him. He had just seen an elderly man conquer a vicious dinoavisaur with a blinding series of maneuvers.

Stormalong had not emerged from his battle entirely unscathed, however.

The force with which the gangling giant had wielded his cutlass had bent the blade severely. Noticing this, Old Stormy frowned unhappily, and tossed away the now-useless blade.

“Pity,” he clucked. “I presented your father with it on the occasion of his taking possession of the
Orion.
”

Doc gave the slasher a careful examination, paying particular attention to its prehensile three-fingered talons, then to the two-toed feet, which its retractable center claw capable of rending any living foe to ribbons.

“These claws are sharp as razors,” he observed.

Stormalong said, “They make good weapons, if we had the means to wrest them loose.”

Doc knelt, withdrew his Bowie knife and attempted to cut the middle sickle-like claw out. It was no easy task. The anchoring cartilage was tough.

But after a bit of red work, he had it free.

Standing up, Doc held the thing. He wrapped his belt around the base, to make a thong handle of sorts.

Then, he presented it to his grandfather. “For you. I have my Bowie blade.”

“Gratefully accepted, sir,” said Stormalong. “And well done, I might add.”

After a time, they came upon Doc’s Annihilator submachine gun, lying where it had fallen.

Doc looked at it, then picked up the weapon. He examined it carefully. It would need to be cleaned, he saw.

“I thought this was going to make me master of this island,” Doc said thoughtfully.

“It failed you?”

“Not exactly. It discharges so many bullets that I ran out before I finished the job.”

“That is the trouble with firearms,” grunted Old Stormy. “No matter how sound the weapon, without ammunition it might as well be a lead ballast for all the good it will do you.”

Doc considered the weapon. There were fresh .45 caliber rounds in his automatic. But only a few. Not enough to be worth the trouble to reload the drum. The submachine gun would spit them out in a quarter-second and leave him defenseless. The Colt was a better tool, owing to the fact that one could release each bullet individually.

“A gun is only as useful as its supply of bullets,” Stormalong Savage observed. “A knife or cutlass will stay sharp longer than lead will fly. You would do well to remember this simple truth.”

Doc left the Annihilator where he found it. It would only slow him down now.

They pushed on.

Another roar rolled out into the night, sounding like savage thunder. It hurt the ears, made them ring.

“Kong is angry,” Stormalong said flatly.

“He may have discovered that I got away.”

Stormalong squeezed his yellow eyes into slits. “That he might. And woe betide whoever gets in his way. For you and I have seen Kong at his best—curious, friendly, half-mortal. But there is another Kong—elemental, unreasonable, beyond bestial. He will slay anything in his path. He does not fear the Tyrannosaur, or the Triceratops. Men are like ants to him. Even the lightning avoids his fury.”

Doc eyed his grandfather skeptically. “The lightning?”

Old Stormy grinned fiercely. “Possibly I exaggerate a bit. But Kong is—well, the Malay used to call him
Buhan
Kong. Lord Kong. Or perhaps the proper translation would be ‘God Kong.’ He is absolute lord and master of Skull Island.”

As he spoke, the coppery giant fingered his long ivory beard. Discovering something within, he suddenly reached behind his neck and lifted off a thonged pouch that had been hidden beneath the profusion of whiskers.

“Penjaga gave me this long ago,” he said, holding it by the hide-string loop that had supported it. “It contains herbs that Kong finds unpleasant. She said it would ward him off. I do not know if they work, but Kong has yet to recapture me. I want you to wear it now.”

Doc accepted the pouch, sniffed it, and decided it might be some sort of herbal irritant. He had to resist the sudden urge to sneeze.

Doc donned it to humor the old man.

“We will find the others and get off this island as soon as possible,” he said.

Stormalong did not respond to that. Doc could tell that he had other plans—for himself.

As if fearing his imminent loss, Doc said suddenly, “Grandfather, I never knew my mother.”

“That is too bad. She was a splendid woman. Kendra Robeson. That was a fitting name for her. Did you know that Kendra means ‘wise woman?’”

“Yes. Also, ‘champion.’ I looked it up once. But what I am trying to convey is that, other than my father, you are the only relative I have ever met. I do not want to lose you.”

“I have another son. Alex. You should seek him out. I named him after the celebrated Alexandre Dumas, whose
Count of Monte Cristo
I have read many times.”

“Grandfather, I think you should return with us,” Doc said gently.

Stormalong growled, “Let us worry about surviving this adventure before we concern ourselves with the disposition of the survivors. If any.”

And that seemed to close the book on the subject, so far as Stormalong Savage was concerned.

They pressed on in a silence punctuated by Kong’s terrible roars of rage. They put the grinding crack of thunder to shame. Doc began to wonder if the lightning might not be afraid of the beast-god, after all.

Chapter XL

MONYET, SON OF RAMBA, prince of the Iban of Skrang, lay in a bamboo platform high in a sprawling tree. Here he had been placed by his warriors, where he would be safe from the dragon-lizards of Skull Island.

His lungs still ached. His brain throbbed. He had nearly drowned, there on the beach when the brazen devil with the golden eyes and the iron lungs had engaged in a contest of wills and lung prowess.

Monyet had lost. He had been shamed. He would avenge that shame, if it took him until the day of his death. This he vowed on the head of his father’s greatest trophy.

One fortunate thing had come out of the terrible trial. In the confusion of the attack by the Atu natives, the trophy head of the young kong had been left behind by the white devils. A loyal man of Monyet’s band had bravely captured it and brought it to the
bangkong
in which Monyet, sick and dazed, had been spirited away.

Now that sacred head sat at his side, where its fierce spirit would protect him until his scouts returned with news of their enemies.

The wait was long. Things scuttled through the sheltering tree branches. Once, a slender serpent slithered up the trunk beneath him, flicking its liver-colored tongue. The stealthy noises it made in its ascent were very odd.

Peering down, Monyet saw that it was creeping up the tree trunk, climbing in some strange fashion. Some moonlight filtered down through the thick whispering leaves. But Monyet could not make out the way of the serpent. He could only see that it was the color of mud, streaked with yellow.