The lost liner Oceanic lay like something that had died.
Wind still boomed and squealed in the forest of ice-coated, collapsed rigging, it was true. The sand-hard snow still made a billion tiny tinklings as the gale shotted it against the derelict hulk. But gone were the uncanny whisperings and shufflings which had been so unnerving.
Doc Savage went below, moving silently, as had become his habit when he trod the trails of danger. His flashlight beam dabbed everywhere. Sharp, missing nothing, his golden eye took stock of his surroundings. He was seeing everything, yet speeding along at a pace that for another man would have been a lung-tearing sprint.
A squarish, thick-walled little bottle chanced to meet his gaze. He did not pick it up. Yet the printing on the label yielded to his near-telescopic scrutiny.
It was a perfume bottle. Two more like it reposed a bit farther down the passage.
Here was the explanation of the flowery odor of the Eskimos which had so baffled description. To the characteristic stench of blubber, perspiration and plain filth which accompanied them, they had added perfume. The whole had been an effluvium which was unique.
Doc opened the clothes hamper where he had left unconscious Roxey Vail.
Emptiness stared at him.
Doc dropped to a knee. His flashlight beam narrowed, becoming intensely brilliant. The luminance spurted across the carpet on the passage floor. This looked as though it had been laid down yesterday. But the years had taken the springiness out of the nap, so that it would retain footprints.
The girl had gone forward-alone. This told Doc some of the Eskimos had not remained behind and seized her.
"Roxey!" he called.
Doc's shout penetrated the caterwauling of the blizzard in surprising fashion. A sound expert could have explained why. It is well known that certain horn tones, not especially loud, will carry through the noise of a factory better than any others. Doc, because of the perfect control he exercised over his vocal cords, could pitch his voice so as to waft through the blizzard in a manner nearly uncanny.
"Here!" came the girl's faint voice. "I'm hunting my father!"
Doc hurried to her. She was pale. Terror lay like a garish mask on her exquisite features.
"My father — they took him with them!" she said in a small, tight voice.
"They didn't have him when they fled a moment ago," Doc assured her. "I watched closely."
Her terror gave way to amazement.
"They fled?" she murmured wonderingly. "Why?"
Doc neglected to answer. How he produced that mysterious unconsciousness with his mere touch was a secret known only to himself and his five friends.
But no. Doc shivered. His five friends had met their end in the burning plane. So the secret was now known to but one living man — Doc Savage himself.
"The Eskimos must have removed your father before they attacked me," Doc told Roxey Vail.
He wheeled quickly away. The glow of his flashlight reflected off the paneling of the lost liner, and made his bronze form seem even more gigantic than it was. Fierce little lights played in his golden eyes.
"Where are you going?" questioned his entrancing companion.
"To get Victor Vail," Doc replied grimly. "They took him away, and that shows he was alive. No doubt they took him to Keelhaul de Rosa."
ROXEY VAIL hurried at his side. She was forced to run to keep abreast.
"You haven't told me how you happen to be here," she reminded.
In a few sentences, as they climbed upward to the ice-basted deck of the lost liner, Doc told her of the map on her father's hack which could only be brought out with X rays, of the efforts of Keelhaul de Rosa and Ben O'Gard to kill each other off so one could hog the fifty-million-dollar treasure, and the rest.
'But where is the treasure?" asked the girl.
"I have no idea what became of it," Doc replied. "Keelhaul de Rosa expected to find it in the strong room, judging from his actions as you described them to me. Too, it looks like he suspects the Eskimos of moving it. That's why he gave them liquor. He wanted to get them pie-eyed enough to tell him where they hid it."
"They didn't get it." Roxey Vail said with certainty. "It was removed before the mutineers ever left the liner, more than fifteen years ago."
They were on deck now. Doc moved along the rail, hunting a dangling, ice-clad cable. He could drop the many feet to the glacial ice without damage, but such a drop would bring serious injury or death to the girl.
Roxey Vail was studying Doc curiously. A faint blush suffused her superb features. To some one who had been with Doc a lot, and watched the effect his presence had on the fair sex, this blush would have been an infallible sign.
The blond young goddess of the arctic was going to fail hard for big, handsome Doc.
"Why are you here?" Roxey Vail asked abruptly. "You do not seem to be stricken with the gold madness which has gripped every one else."
Doc let a shrug suffice for an answer.
Probably it was a brand of natural modesty, but Doc did not feel like explaining he was a sort of supreme avenger for the wrongs of the world — the great Nemesis of evildoers in the far corners of the globe.
They found a hanging cable. It terminated about ten feet from the ice. With Roxey Vail clinging to his back like a papoose, Doc carefully went down the cable.
Into the teeth of the moaning blizzard, they strode.
An instant later, Doc's alertness of eye undoubtedly saved their lives. He whipped to one side — carrying Roxey Vail with him.
A volley of rifle bullets spiked through the space they vacated.
The Eskimos had returned, accompanied by Keelhaul de Rosa and four or five riflemen and machine gunners.
AFTER THE flashing movement which had saved their lives, Doc kept going. He jerked the white hood of the girl's parka over her face to camouflage the warm color of her cheeks. He shrugged deep in his own parka for the same reason.
He wanted to get the girl to safety. Then he was going to hold grim carnival on the glacier with Keelhaul de Rosa and his killer group.
For his share in those hideous murders aboard the Oceanic, Keelhaul de Rosa would pay, as certainly as a breath of life remained in Doc Savage's mighty bronze body.
Another fusillade of shots clattered. The reports were almost puny in the clamor of the blizzard. Lead hissed entirely too close to Doc and his companion.
Doc's fingers slipped inside his capacious parka, came out with an object hardly larger than a high-power rifle cartridge — and shaped somewhat similarly. He flipped a tiny lever on this article, then hurled it at the attackers. The object was heavy enough to be thrown some distance.
Came a blinding flash! The glacier seemed to jump six feet straight up. A terrific, slamming roar blasted against eardrums. Then a rush of air slapped them skidding across the ice like an unseen fist.
There had been a powerful explosive in the little cylinder Doc hurled at his enemies.
Awful quiet followed the blast. The very blizzard seemed to recoil like a beaten beast.
A chorus of agonized squealings and bleatings erupted. Some of the enemy had been incapacitated. They were all shocked. The Eskimos felt a vague, unaccountable terror.
"Up an' at 'em, mateys!" shrilled a coarse tone. "Keelhaul me, but we ain't gonna let 'em get away from us now!"
It was Keelhaul de Rosa's voice. He, at least, had not been damaged.
More lead searched the knobby glacier surface. None of it came dangerously near Doc and his fair companion. They had gotten far away in the confusion.
Doc suddenly jammed the young lady in a handy snowdrift. He wasn't exactly rough about it, but he certainly didn't try to fondle her, as a man of more ordinary caliber might have been tempted to do. And it wasn't because the ravishing young woman would have objected to the caresses. All signs pointed to the contrary.
The big bronze man had long ago decided a life of domestication was not for him. It would not go with the perils and terrors which haunted his every step. It would mean the surrendering of his goal in life — the shunning of adventure, the abandoning of his righting of wrongs, and punishing of evildoers wherever he found them.
So Doc had schooled himself never to sway the least bit to the seductions of the fairest of the fair sex.
"Stay here," he directed the entrancing young lady impassionately. "And what I mean — stay here! You can breathe under the snow. You won't be discovered."
"Whatever you say," she said in a voice in which adoration was but thinly veiled.
She was certainly losing no time in falling for Doc.
The giant bronze man smiled faintly. Then the storm swallowed him.
KEELHAUL DE ROSA was in a rage. He was burning up. He filled the blizzard around about with salty expletives.
"Ye blasted swabs!" he railed at the Eskimos, forgetting they did not understand English. "Keelhaul me. The bronze scut was right in yer hands, an' ye didn't wreck 'im!"
"I tell ya dat guy is poison!" muttered a white gunman. "He ain't human! From de night he tied into us outside de concert hall in de big burg, we ain't been able ter lay a hand on 'im!"
Another white man shivered. He was fatter than Keelhaul de Rosa or the other gunmen. It was to be suspected he had some Eskimo b!lood in his veins.
As a matter of fact, this fellow was a crook recruited in Greenland. He knew the arctic. It was he who served interpreter in all discussions with the Eskimos.
"Dat bane awful explosion a minute ago." this man whined. "Aye sure hope we bane get dat feller damn quick."
"Scatter!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "We'll get the swab!" The Eskimos spread out widely. The white men kept in a group for mutual protection.
One Eskimo in particular rambled a short distance from the others. He floundered through a snowdrift.
He did not see a portion of the drift seemingly rise behind him. No suspicion of danger assailed him until hard, chill bronze fingers stroked his greasy cheek with a caress like the fingers of a ghost. Then it was too late.
The Innuit collapsed without a sound.
Doc pounced upon the inert Eskimo. From his lips came a loud shout-words couched in the tongue of the native.
Excitement seized the white man who understood the Eskimo lingo, and he listened intently to the distant voice.
"Dat Eskimo bane kill the bronze feller!" he shrieked. "He bane say come an' look!"
Three men sprinted for the voice they had heard.
The interpreter glimpsed two figures. One was prone, motionless. The second crouched on the first. That was about all Doc Savage could see in the flying gale.
"There they bane!" he howled.
They charged up. Two of them prepared to empty their guns into the prone form. just to make sure.
The crouching man heaved up. Strikingly enough, he seemed to grow to the proportions of a mountain. Two Herculean bronze fists drove accurate blows. Both gunmen described perfect flip-flops in mid-air — unconscious before their feet left the glacier.
The interpreter whirled and ran. He knew death when he saw it. And big Doc Savage was nothing less.
Doc did not follow him. For to the bronze man's sensitive ears came a stifled cry.
Roxey Vail was being seized!
EVEN AS he raced toward where he had left her, Doc fathomed what had occurred. She had disobeyed his injunction to stay hidden. The reason — she had heard the shouted information that Doc was dead. She had started out with some desperate idea of avenging him.
Doc appreciated her good intentions. But at the moment, he could have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of turning her over his knee and paddling her.
A bullet squeaked in Doc's ear. He folded aside and down. A machine gun picked savagely at the ice near him. He traveled twenty feet on his stomach, with a speed that would have shamed a desert lizard.
"Take the hussy to the boat!" Keelhaul de Rosa's coarse voice rang. "Step lively, me lads!"
Doc tried to get to the hideous voice. Murderous lead drove him back.
He was forced to skulk, dodging bullets while Roxey Vail was taken aboard the ice-coated hulk of the lost liner.
More Eskimos soon arrived. Keelhaul de Rosa was arming some of them with guns. The interpreter instructed the Innuits on how to operate the unfamiliar firearms.
The natives were far from effective marksmen. More than one greasy eater of blubber dropped a big pistol after it exploded in his hand and ran as though the worst tongak, or evil spirit, were hot on his trail. But the guns made them more dangerous, for wild shots were almost as liable to hit the elusive figure of Doc Savage as well-aimed ones. In fact, they were worse. Doc couldn't tell which way to dodge.
The heat of the hunt finally drove Doc to the remote reaches of the glacier and rock crest of the land.
There he replenished his vast reservoir of strength by dining on frozen, raw steaks he wrenched with his bare, steel-thewed fingers, from the polar bear he had slain.
The mighty bronze man might have been a terrible hunter of the wild as he crouched there at his primeval repast. But no such hunter ever possessed cunning and knowledge such as Doc Savage was bringing to bear upon the problem confronting him.
But caution remained uppermost in his mind. He had been crouching with an ear pressed to a pinnacle of rock. The stone acted as a sounding board for any footsteps on the surrounding glacier.
Noise of men passing in the blizzard reached Doc. There seemed to be four or five in the group.
Doc fell in behind them. He followed as close as was possible without discovery. Growled words told him they were white men.
"De skipper says for us to take de stern of de liner, mateys," one said. "Our pals will join us dere. Everybody's helpin' in dis party, even de cook."
"We'd better throw out an anchor," another grunted. "Keelhaul an' his whole bloody crew, together wit' de Eskimos, is movin' bag an' baggage onto de liner. We wanta give 'em time to get settled."
Doc Savage sought to get even closer. He was not three yards away as the group of men came to a stop in the shelter of a rock spire. There were five of them.
What he was hearing was most interesting!
ONE OF the five men laughed nastily.
"De bronze guy has just about got Keelhaul de Rosa's goat!" he chuckled. "To say nothin' of de panic de Eskimos are in. Dat's why they're all movin' onto de liner. Dey figure dey can fight 'im off better."
Another man swore.
"Don't forget, pal, dat we gotta smear de bronze guy ourselves before we leave here!" he growled.
"Time to begin worryin' about dat after we got Keelhaul an' all de others croaked!" another informed him.
"Yer sure Keelhaul an' his gang don't suspect we're around?"
"Dey sure don't. I crawled up close an' listened to 'em gabbin'. Here's what happened, pal — de bronze guy got de idea we had croaked. He tol' de skoit dat. De broad, she up an' told it to Keelhaul when they caught her. An' he believes her."
Once more, an evil laugh gurgled in the blizzard.
"Well, Keelhaul is sure due to change his mind!" sneered the one who had laughed.
"Yeah — only he won't have the time to change 'is mind before we boin 'is insides out wit' Tommy lead."
"How long yer figure we'd better wait here?"
"About an hour."
A brief silence ensued.
"I don't like dis ting much," muttered one of the five uneasily. "We could light out wit'out all dis killin'."
"Yah — an' have somebody from dis place show up in a few years an' spill de woiks to de law," was the snarled reply. "We gotta clean up de loose ends, pal. We ain't leavin' nothin' behind but stiffs. We're playin' safe."
Once more there was quiet. One of the evil gang broke it with a startled ejaculation.
"What was dat?"
They peered at each other, turtling their vicious faces forward to see in the blizzard.
"I didn't hear nothin'!" muttered one.
"Sounded like de wind," suggested another.
They got up and circled their shelter. They saw nothing. They heard only the hoot of the gale. They gathered behind the outthrust of stone once more, huddling close for warmth.
They had dismissed what they heard as a child of the storm.
Indeed, it almost could have been some vagrant creation of the wind — that strange, low, trilling note which had come into being for a moment, then trailed away into nothingness. However, it was Doc's sound which they had heard.
Doc was now scores of yards away. He had much to do for he had learned a great deal.
The five were Ben O'Gard's thugs. And Doc's listening ears had detected enough to tell him the submarine had not met disaster, as he had thought. Yet he had carried the all-important valve with him in the folding seaplane!
The survival of the Helldiver without the valve could be explained, though. Ben O'Gard's crew had simply fashioned a substitute valve. There was a small machine shop aboard the underseas craft which they could use for this purpose.
No doubt they had started work on the substitute shortly after they marooned Doc on the iceberg during the walrus hunt. It had not been finished in time to use when they were so nearly trapped in the ice. But they had completed it while Doc was locked in the compartment aboard the Helldiver.
This, Doc believed, was the true explanation of their presence on land.
Ben O'Gard was preparing to slay every one on this forlorn spot!
No blood-bathed Jolly Roger ever held more frightful ambitions.
Doc's great bronze form traveled like the wind. He had much to do — not much time in which to accomplish it.
Doc had formulated a plan of action which boded ill for his enemies.