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

Under the red lightning glare, surf on all sides broke against hidden reefs, churning the water to a bloody froth. But Pat and Ham came through the barrage of wave-dashed rocks and reeled, half drowned and gasping, onto a mangrove-studded beach. Monk swashed ashore close behind them, holding the squirming Habeas Corpus under an arm with difficulty.

"That hog'll kick a rib out for you some day," Ham warned, breathing hard.

"Lay off Habeas Corpus," Monk gasped, "or I'll be kickin' out some ribs on my own account."

The red luminance bloomed again against the clouds. It crawled and writhed, disappeared, and blanketed out again like a bloody mist floating in air.

"What is it?" Pat demanded, shivering in spite of the sultry night.

"Nothing supernatural," Ham explained. "You notice the color on the clouds does not seep through from above. The light is reflected from underneath -- "

"There's an active volcano somewhere on the island," Monk summed up.

Pat pressed water out of her drenched hair. "Do you suppose here's where Johnny is?"

"We'll have to find out," Ham said, grimly.

"One thing I'd like to clear myself on," Pat said earnestly. "The shipwreck. I was holding dead in the middle of the channel when it happened."

"Yeah," Monk agreed, "it wasn't your fault."

"This shipwreck was arranged," Ham said, ominously.

"Some one on this island set those lights so we'd run slam on the reef, you mean?" Monk muttered.

Ham said soberly, "Some one drew us a hundred miles off our course and wrecked us. We're up against something really sinister."

"Kinda wish Doc was here," Monk announced. The next moment he was wishing it even more violently.

Attracted perhaps by the blue-white searchlight beam which had lanced out from the Seven Seas a moment after she had gone on the rocks, shadowy man-figures loosened from the darkly entwined mangrove thicket and bore down upon the castaways, brandishing short clubs and shrieking a harsh un intelligible gibberish.



Chapter II

ISLAND OF HORROR


THE dimly seen attackers, twenty or more, rushed out of the mangroves in a solid wave. Ham and Monk thrust Pat behind, then met the attack -- Ham with his sword cane, Monk with his granite-knuckled fists.

Ham dropped two of the assailants with deft thrusts of the sword cane. He was careful not to allow the valuable cane, tipped with the unconsciousness-producing chemical, to be struck; in fact, Ham was more regardful of the cane than of himself.

Unexpectedly, there was an ugly-sounding whack, and Ham staggered back groggily from a club which had bludgeoned past his guard. Dazedly, he saw the club lift again. But it did not descend. Not with any weight behind it. There was a rap of knuckles against a jaw as Monk's long arm jabbed out and knocked the club-swinger off his feet.

Ham recovered his balance and got his deadly sword cane into use again.

"Let's charge 'em," Monk squawled.

"Righto," Ham agreed. "We'll try to break through into the mangroves!"