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

Johnny digested those two reports. They intrigued him. It seemed the dragon ship had come down from
the north, had met the Sea Scream, and the freebooters had traded their craft for a more modern one
which did not depend on the wind.

The upshot of it was that, some days later, Johnny was alone in a plane flying along the Labrador coast.
Johnny had many accomplishments besides big words. Flying was one of them. Doc Savage had taught
him, and Doc had an amazing faculty of transferring some of his own skill to those whom he instructed.

It was late afternoon. A snow blanket was beneath Johnny's plane. To the right lay a jagged, rock-fanged
shore line. This was a wilderness, primeval, cold, unpopulated. A fishing village, passed hours ago, had
been the last sign of human habitation on the bleak Labrador coast.
Johnny peered overside often. He used binoculars. His ship cruised along a bare five hundred feet above
the white terrain.

An ice floe out at sea held his attention for a time, mainly because of its ominous aspect, and also
because there was a school of seals on its edge. Natural life always interested Johnny.

Johnny was not quite sure what he was looking for, so he kept an eye open for anything of interest. That
was why he went to investigate the smoke column.

The smoke was actually not a column. It was small, a gray yarn which whipped in the frigid Arctic gale.
But it was the only trace of life the bony archaeologist and geologist had seen in hours. So he banked his
plane over in that direction.

The fire was in the lee of a cathedral-like spire of stone. Snowdrifts were all about. The beach was close,
a necklace of rocks, ice-crusted, which rimmed the shore line.

Johnny was close overhead before he saw the man.

The man lay on his back and the snow was red beside him. His arms made feeble, horrible motions,
movements that were not a supplication to the plane above, for the man seemed not to know that the ship
was moaning over him.

The man on the snow was obviously in a bad way. The red patch was certainly leakage from a wound.
No dogs, no sleeping roll, could be seen.

Johnny now made one of the biggest mistakes of his life. He landed his plane.

Chapter 2. THE DEVILS OF QUI
IT WAS a rocky region, but there were stretches free of boulders. The snow was deep, and obviously
covered with a hard crust. The wind - it was a fair breeze - was picking the loose flakes up and carrying
them along in small, detached clouds. Johnny looked at the plane thermometer and saw that it was very
close to zero - cold for this time of year, even this far north, since down in New York, it was early
summer.

Johnny landed by the simple expedient of cranking the streamlined landing gear up. He absent-mindedly
cranked it partially down before he thought and sat the plane down on its belly. The craft was designed
for that, but the nose had to be kept up throughout to protect the propeller. Johnny had not landed on
snow for a long time, and he miscalculated the distance the plane would slide, with the result that he