"034 (B014) - The Fantastic Island (1935-12) - Ryerson Johnson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Patricia Savage cast an idle glance around the horizon, She started violently.



"Look!" she cried. "Ahead there, a bit to port. Green and red lights!"



"Huh?" Monk jerked around. "Channel lights that sounds like."



Ham stared intently, forgot himself and his feud with Monk. "Channel lights they are, but they were not there a minute ago."



Monk's small eyes blinked rapidly. "It ain't possible."



"Some mistake," Ham muttered. "No lights are indicated on the chart."



Pat pointed at them and said, "There they are," with inescapable feminine logic.



Ham and Monk crowded forward for another inspection of the charts. They offered a strange contrast in appearance, these two men. Ham was meticulously attired in a blue marine uniform, a blue cap with its insignia in gold set jauntily on his head. He carried a slender black cane. He was handsome, lithe, and wore his clothes like a fashion plate.



Monk, on the contrary, wore a not too white pair of duck pants, wrinkled across the thighs and bagged at the knees. An enormous green-and-white-striped undershirt fitted around his barrel chest like a circus tent slipped on over an elephant. Rusty hair stuck out on his bulletlike head like mashed bristles on a wire brush. The hair grew low down on his forehead, half burying his ears, almost meeting his scrubby eyebrows. His homely face was mostly mouth and flat nose. His body was nearly as wide as it was long and his fists hung down almost to his knees. In fact, he did not look like a man. He resembled an amiable ape.



It was a mistake to judge either of these two by appearances. Ham was no fop. He was one of the most astute lawyers Harvard had ever turned out. And Monk, as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Biodgett Mayfair, was recognized as one of the greatest, living, industrial chemists.



The greatest claim to distinction of these two men, however, was that they were members of Doc Savage's group of five remarkable aids. That alone made them unusual, for each of the bronze man's five aids was a master of some particular profession.



Pat went over now and disconnected the robot control which had been steering the ship.



"Shall I hold to the channel lights?" she asked, swinging the wheel slightly over.