"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 029 - The Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The bearded pirates now threw the engineer overboard, and he swam to the dragon ship.

The Sea Scream made several wild circles, while the hairy thieves danced and howled on deck, and
apparently experimented with the modern steering apparatus.
It was during this that the golden-haired girl was glimpsed.

DESCRIPTIONS OF the fair companion of the bearded freebooters, as later given, varied greatly. The
lady off the yacht declared she was a she-tigress with the devil written all over her, and as homely as sin.
But most of the men turned in a favorable report on her charms. in fact, they agreed generally that she
was very personable, entirely too sweet a thing for such company as she was keeping.

The engineer, who had been taken aboard to start the yacht, made a startling revelation. He had seen the
girl at close range. She was a knock-out.

Furthermore, the young woman was an unwilling guest of the whiskered men. They were leading her
about by a long thong tied to one of her ankles.

At any rate, the Sea Scream was soon lost to sight of her frightened owner, who with his guests had been
left aboard the dragon ship. The yacht, all noted, was headed toward New York City.

About noon, a breeze came up. The yachtsmen sailed the dragon ship into a harbor near the tip of Long
Island, finding in doing so that the ship was extremely seaworthy.

The yachting victims of this twentieth century Viking raid promptly found themselves, once they
convinced their listeners they were not crazy or lying, objects of feverish interest, both to the Coast
Guard, and the newspapers. A swarm of photographers and reporters arrived. A news reel cameraman
came in a plane. He got shots of the dragon ship, and his plane flew them back to New York, where that
very night they were shown in the movie theaters.

The news reel shots of the Viking dragon ship got William Harper Littlejohn interested. William Harper
Littlejohn was a very erudite gentleman, but he occasionally attended the cinema for relaxation.

Johnny was archaeologist enough to recognize, even in the news reel shots, the undoubted genuiness of
the Viking dragon ship. He left the theater in haste.

He called Doc Savage. Doc was out of town. Johnny took a plane, the next morning, for the harbor
where the dragon ship lay.

THE ARRIVAL of Johnny on the scene created a furor among the newspapermen, who needed new
angles for their stories, anyway, since absolutely no trace had been found of the yacht Sea Scream. The
Sea Scream had vanished as completely as if sunken.

Appearance of Johnny, to the newspapermen, meant Doc Savage was on the job, for every one knew
Johnny was associated with Doc. And Doc Savage, man of bronze, mental wizard, physical giant
extraordinary, was big news, all the more so because Doc shunned publicity most effectively.

Johnny did not even bother to deny that Doc was interested in the Viking dragon ship. He went ahead
and examined the craft. He used his monocle magnifier on the ponderous oars, almost too heavy for one
man to lift, and on various hammered copper cooking utensils. He scrutinized the plank fastenings. He