"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-12 The Fantastic Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

Right now, the yacht was rolling in a huge ground swell, rolling alarmingly. Rivets strained and bulkheads creaked. There was at least half a gale blowing, and it made noises in the rigging like the sighs of dying men.

Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks was commonly called "Ham," a name which he did not like. He now frowned darkly and made his way to the pitching bridge.

"This is dangerous," he snapped. "We may run onto a reef any minute."

"Don't I know it?" a surprisingly childlike voice retorted from the semidarkness of the bridge. "This ground swell is bad -- mighty bad. When it piles up like this, it means the water is getting shallow."

Ham snapped, "But I thought you said -- "

"Something screwy," piped the childlike voice. "According to your log, we're supposed to have more than a hundred miles between us and the. nearest land."

A young woman joined them on the bridge. She was a very striking young woman to look at, having not only a lovely face, but hair of a very unusual bronze color and eyes which actually looked golden. She was Patricia Savage, who loved excitement.

"I wish you'd ask your old ocean to behave," she requested, cheerfully. "I've been thrown out of my bunk three times in the last fifteen minutes. I gave it up."

"Something is wrong, Pat," Ham told her. "We're getting into a big ground swell. That means we are near land, or at least in shoal water. And that is very much impossible."

Pat walked over to the second man on the bridge.
"Just what is the trouble, Monk?" she asked.

The man addressed as "Monk" sat in the shadows, hunched like a bulky Buddha over an audio-frequency amplifier. His thick hands indicated the apparatus containing vacuum tubes for increasing the voltage and power of radio beacon signals.

"These direction-finding doodads have gone plain haywire," he insisted in that small squeaky voice.

Ham joined them and listened to the signal pulsations coming from the loudspeaker. He said, "The beat frequency is sounding just as it should. We are certainly not off the course as broadcast to us from the government radio beacon in the Canal Zone."

"We're right in the beam, all right," Monk grunted. "The A wave is jammed with the N waves so you don't hear any dots -- just a blur of dashes. We can't be off our course, but we must be."

"Impossible!" snapped Ham. "Our goniometer, with its new type amplifier developed by Doc Savage himself, insures that the direction finder couldn't go wrong. And the United States government station is transmitting the beam to us."


THE word exchange had the rather unexpected effect of throwing Monk into what looked like a very violent rage.

"You tellin' me, you courtroom fop?" Monk growled belligerently at Ham.

"Don't get tough with me, you missing link," Ham snapped. "I'll make shark bait out of you!"

Monk pushed back from the radio apparatus and squared off threateningly before Ham.

"Who says I'm wrong?" he demanded in a voice no longer mouselike.

"I did, you ape," Ham snapped.

"You're a liar besides bein' a shyster lawyer," Monk bellowed. "I'm right, and you know darned well that I'm right!"

Pat said dryly, "I wonder if you know what you're quarreling over."

The two men pretended not to hear. Ham and Monk seemed always on the point of taking each other apart violently. The mildest word from one was likely to set the other off in a rage; but it was only on rare occasions that their enmity extended beyond the talking stage.