The attendant did not answer at once.

"Give the pa.s.sword," he shouted then.

There was silence. "Pa.s.sword, h.e.l.l!" said one of the men in the planes. "We haven't got it. We've got to have gas-"

"Brother, give the pa.s.sword," yelled the attendant. "Or don't set foot ash.o.r.e."

The man on the plane yelled, "Oh, nuts! I'll show you our papers and-"

The attendant made a lunge, scooped up his machine gun from where it had been concealed nearby. He fired a short burst. The bullets. .h.i.t the water near the planes, knocked up a procession of small geysers.That started a commotion in the planes. They began sticking rifle barrels out of the windows.

The attendant headed for cover. He did not go into the shack, but went across the sand, going so fast that he seemed to have wings.

He got out of sight behind a pile of metal drums.

The rifle muzzles in the plane windows began letting out fire and noise.

Sand jumped up in many places around the pile of fuel drums, and bullets. .h.i.tting the drums made hard, ironlike spanking noises.

The attendant's light machine gun let out four brief bursts, about six shots to the burst, but the bullets seemed to accomplish nothing but knock up more water.

Suddenly fire sheeted over the fuel drums. But in a moment there was more smoke than fire. Infinitely more smoke, the very black product of fuel oil, burning.

"d.a.m.n the luck!" yelled a voice in one of the planes. "The muzzle blast from his machine gun set the oil on fire!"

THE smoke crawled out of the oil drums as black as a polecat and became in size a cow, an elephant, a house. It rolled and tumbled and stuck close together the way oil smoke seems to stick.

In the smoke, the attendant's machine gun gobbled indignantly a time or two.

The breeze took the smoke and carried it toward the planes. The smoke kept close to the ground, spreading more to the sides than up and down, it seemed. It reached the seaplanes and enveloped them.

There was profanity and disorganization around the planes for a few moments. Then a man got the crews organized.

"Scatter and rush that pile of oil drums," the organizer shouted.

They did that. They piled out of the two beached seaplanes, yelling the way men like to yell when they are going into danger in a group.

They shot into the oil drums and the smoke and the sand and the bright Caribbean sky.

The echoes, and there were echoes although there seemed to be nothing from which echoes could bounce, whooped and gobbled. A horde of sea birds, gulls and pelicans with sacklike chins, were in the air like leaves in a whirlwind, making outcries.

"Careful," roared the spokesman for the group from the two seaplanes.

They held their guns ready and alert, and rounded the pile of oil drums.

There was n.o.body there. No attendant.

They thought for a while that he had in some fashion dodged around and hidden in the smoke. But before they could investigate that possibility, one yelled and pointed, "There he is! The motorboat! There he goes!"They should have heard the motorboat. They could hear it now. And they could see the gasoline dump attendant, standing erect in the boat, steering with his knee, and drawing a bead on them with the little submachine gun. He fired, and the bullets made ugly, hard-footed running sounds in the sand around the men.

The attendant got down out of sight in the launch. The launch picked up its nose, dug its stern into the water and drew a streak of foam across the clear blue water.

There was some shooting, but the men did not stop the launch.

"All right, get the high-test gas in the plane," the leader said.

By that time, Doc Savage was safely concealed in one of their seaplanes.

THE trick had worked very well, as well as Doc and the attendant had hoped when they rigged it.

There had been two possible holes in the scheme. First, the planes might not beach in the right spot when they came in; but this chance had been negligible, because actually there was only one good spot for beaching the ships close to the gasoline shack. Doc and the attendant had rolled a few coral rocks on the beach in the edge of the water at other points, to make everywhere else look even less desirable.

Second, they might have left a man with each of the planes. But they hadn't. There had been too much excitement.

Doc had been concealed under the sand. First, he had dug a hole in the sand, then the attendant had put stout brown wrapping paper over him, and sand over that to a depth of a couple of inches, leaving a hole for breathing.

It was perfect camouflage and Doc had been close to the edge of the water, near the planes, and in the path the smoke from the burning fuel oil drums was sure to take.

The attendant had only to draw attention, start the shooting, fire the fuel oil drums, and escape. Under cover of the smoke, Doc simply climbed into one of the planes.

He had only one piece of bad luck.

Major Lowell was not in the plane into which he clambered.

He took a little time to make sure, and then he jumped out of the ship, but had to climb back in again, for the wind shifted and the smoke moved away from the craft, so that it was not safe to make a dash for the other plane.

In a seaplane of this type, one with a deep hull, there was baggage stowage s.p.a.ce under the floor boards, a long compartment which was large enough to hold him.

He pulled up one of the flimsy but strong hatches of aluminum alloy, found the spot loaded with food and boxes that were not labeled, and tried another hatch. There was s.p.a.ce under that one.

He inserted himself in the cavity and closed the hatch.

The radio which he had brought along, a more or less standard walkie-talkie, except that it was very compact, he wedged in beside him. Now was a good time to talk, so he switched it on.He got Johnny Littlejohn, and said, "I am aboard one of their planes. I will switch on this radio outfit each twenty minutes and leave it on for thirty seconds, so you can get a radio-compa.s.s bearing on the signal.

You can follow us in that fashion."

"I'll be superamalgamated!"

Johnny said. "What about Monk and Ham and Renny, in the other plane?"

"Contact them," Doc said, "by radio. Tell them what I've just told you-"

"Won't be necessary, Doc,"

Renny's bull-throated voice interrupted. "We're receiving you, Doc."

"Good!"

"Any idea what it is all about?"

Renny asked.

"Not yet, except that it obviously involves either Happy Bones Island or Geography Cay."

"Have they got Major Lowell aboard, or have they killed him and tossed his body overboard?"

"Not sure yet," Doc admitted.

He was sure a moment later, though. He heard men outside, and lay very still and quiet, switching off the transmitter and receiver of his tiny radio combination.

In the other seaplane, someone cursed loudly, and there was a commotion.

"What's wrong?" somebody demanded.

"Major Lowell was sawing against a sharp metal edge," a man yelled, "and had his hands loose."

"Rap him on the head and put him to sleep for a while," the other said. "That'll teach him to pull such stuff."

Evidently they did that.

Then they refueled the planes and took off.

Evidently they circled with the hope of shooting the attendant in the launch. But Doc had taken care of that possibility in his plan. Nearby there was a smaller island with a great deal of mangrove growth, an impenetrable tangle where the attendant would be safe.

He was obviously quite safe, because there was not even any shooting.

Chapter IX. HAPPY BONES.

DOC SAVAGE knew that safety, or the feeling of safety, can be as soothing as a drug. He had seen it demonstrated more than once in the case of individuals. It was not alone a failing of individuals, but it could be national, as in the case of the United States caught napping at Pearl Harbor. So he should not have been feeling as safe as he was feeling after they had been in the air several hours.

He was taken completely by surprise. It amounted to that. Such a thing did not happen to him often, and his first emotion when it did happen was one of shame.The long monotonous flight had not dulled him or lulled him, because he had the physical stamina to cope with a great deal more than had happened so far. He should have been alert. There was no excuse. He should have been expecting something to happen, and particularly he should have been on the alert for the unexpected. But he was not. He was not even alert.

He was lying on his back in the baggage s.p.a.ce under the floor of the plane, and he was wide awake.

Being awake made it doubly embarra.s.sing for him, although it should not have been much different if he had been asleep. He had developed-or, rather, he had been taught by an old Ubangi hunter in the Dar El Kuti, upper Belgian Congo-the facility of sleeping and yet being awake.

The Ubangi had lived to be a very old hunter because he had that facility; the Ubangi was going on ninety years old; whereas the average life span of men in his tribe and trade was not much more than twenty-four years. The surprising thing about the facility of sleeping in this fashion was that it refreshed you, after you mastered it, the same as ordinary sound slumber. It was psychology more than a physical art, and Doc had always owned to a sneaking suspicion that the old man of the jungle was a little bit of a psychic doctor himself, or he could not have imparted the art as he had.

The totally unexpected always had a strange effect on Doc Savage. He hoped that was because he planned so carefully, because he tried to foresee everything and overlook nothing, and long practice and grueling attention to the business of being safe at all times had made him rather expert at seeing trouble ahead.

The unexpected always jarred him, made him wonder if some mental ability had slipped down a notch, made him wonder if he was over a peak and becoming less efficient. He preferred to call the feeling wonder, but some of it might be plain, unadulterated fear.

If he became a man who was careless without being able to help it, when he was not wanting to be careless, it would be as bad as an incurable disease. It would be fatal. Quite fatal and probably not long about it. Carelessness would not go together with his strange career, the career of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in the far corners of the earth. Or pursuing adventure. The pursuit of adventure was doubtless a better description of it.

Not as romantic, of course, the plain designation of adventurer. But it might amount to that. There was no denying that pure love of adventure was at the bottom of much of his career. And surely it was the thing that held his five aides to him so inseparably. They were also held together by friendship and mutual admiration, but those things were not the real glue. Those things were the ingredients of peace and quiet, whereas the thing that made this organization was more dynamic, volatile, explosive, breathless. It was a liking for adventure that was never fully satisfied.

Anyway, when they opened the hatch, he was taken by surprise.

AND what was more, the two men who had opened the hatch got over their astonishment before Doc recovered. They fell upon him. If he had been less man, they would have had him then. They should have held him and someone else would have shot him, or fell on him with a knife.

As it was, Doc began trying to get up.

He put one foot under him and shoved to get up. The foot was against the hull skin of the plane. The skin split, his one foot went through.

The two men who had hold of him were bellowing. Drawn by their outcry, two more men fell upon themand tried to help.

The added weight split the hull skin more and Doc went through with both legs, down to his waist. From his hips down, his body was out in s.p.a.ce.

"Bring a rifle!" a foe shrieked. "A rifle! Hurry, d.a.m.n it!"

They should have devoted themselves to pushing him through the hole into s.p.a.ce. They could have done that.

Instead, they brought a rifle. It was a good automatic rifle, American. A stout piece. Built to take a bayonet and stand up under much use.

The roaring rush of wind from the propellers and from the fast pa.s.sage of the plane through the air battered Doc's legs about and pulled at them with force.

They shoved the rifle muzzle down at him just as he had one hand free. So he got the rifle muzzle. He pushed it to one side, and the holder yanked the trigger rapidly. One bullet went into a man's foot, and the rest through the plane hull into s.p.a.ce.

Doc got the gun and jammed it across the struts. It made a bridge, something to hold to, something to keep him from being forced out into s.p.a.ce.

They fought then for a while in what was really silence, although there were tearing sounds of cloth and other tearing sounds that were like muscles rending, and gasping and breathing that was like sheets of sandpaper rubbed together. There were no words, nothing but straining force. But Doc Savage got the rifle barrel fixed across the struts, and slowly he climbed upon it, bearing up against the weight of the men above.

They fought to hold him, and when they lost their grip and he got loose, it was as sudden as a dam breaking. He was up into the cabin, and free.

They had loaded spare gasoline into the plane cabin in five-gallon cans, lashing the cans in place, wedging them in a high wall across the rear of the plane cabin.

Doc went to the cans. He hit one with his fist. It was fat and full, and it split at one seam like a fat man laughing. The high-test gas sheeted out.

Doc tore that can loose and hurled it down the cabin aisle. It bounced off seats, turned and skipped and hopped. Wet gasoline flew up on the walls and ceiling. Gas fumes filled the cabin.

"If you shoot," Doc shouted, "the flash of your guns will set the gasoline on fire. Blow us to pieces!"

A LOT depended on them getting the idea of gun flash and the gas fumes. They had to get the idea quickly. Doc hoped they would, thought it reasonable, because fresh in their minds would be the matter of the flash of the rifle of the attendant at the gas dump, on the island, lighting the fuel oil leaking from the fuel drums.

The truth was that the fuel oil back there on the island had not been ignited by a gun flash. The muzzle flash from a firearm would not as a rule ignite modern fuel oil. A match had started that fire, but they had not seen the match.As was the practice of the manufacturer when building this particular type of seaplane for civilian use, there was a part.i.tion, a dividing bulkhead, between the cabin and the smaller compartment where pilot and copilot-navigator sat.