THE BREAK
The night was extremely dark, due to the height of the frowning walls of the crack and the absence of a moon.
Two hours after dusk Doc’s outfit thrust hands into their ragged breechclouts and each produced two or three diamonds. Not for nothing had they rushed the gem trays at the pulsators. Their act had not been rowdyism, but had been deliberately planned, so as to get their hands on these stones.
They had selected brilliants with sharp edges. They set to work on the chain links. The task was not difficult. Few substances are better cutters than diamonds.
Doc Savage was the first to free himself. He stood erect. He had cut through the link which hooked the connecting chain to his iron collar. The collar was still about his neck, so tight it was half buried in his hard bronze flesh.
“You birds know what you are to do?” he breathed.
“I’ll tell a man,” Monk chuckled, dryness of tongue making his whisper sandy.
Each move they were making was part of an elaborate plan they had formulated during the afternoon of striking in the diamond mine.
“We’ve got to move fast!” Doc warned. “Some of these guards may come in at any time to take a look at us!”
After the admonition, he glided away in the murk, stepping over sleeping slaves, after first carefully feeling out where they lay.
Doc was making for the side of the stockade where he had, on his nocturnal foray of the night before, buried the package. He had the location accurately in mind.
An electric lantern blazed outside the stockade as a watchman made his rounds, inspecting the tethers of the blood-hungry vampires.
Abruptly, the man came and popped his light through the compound piles. No doubt, he wanted to gloat a little over the bronze giant who had caused so much trouble.
Doc thought the jig was up.
But the alertness of his five men saved the night. They had the foresight to be standing in a compact group about the mooring post, thus masking the fact that Doc was not among them.
The sentry finished his circuit.
Doc continued to advance. It was no mean foresight on his own part that he had thought to bury the package inside the stockade. He had done so on the bare chance that need for it might arise. And it certainly had!
The packet contained articles which he believed would enable them to make their escape. Certainly, they stood scant chance of getting away without the bundle contents.
Doc found the burial spot. His tendon-wrapped bronze hands dug in. The ground was soft, showing he was at the right place. He scraped more swiftly. His fingers encountered hard earth. The bottom of the hole!
The package was gone!
* * * *
During a period of perhaps a minute, Doc Savage crouched there in the hot African night, thinking as he had seldom thought before.
The very fact that the hole had been filled in by whoever had taken the packet, caused him to reach his decision. The finder was none of Yuttal’s men. Those fellows would not have bothered to refill the hole.
It must have been one of the slaves! Probably one which had seen the burial.
Doc glided swiftly to the nearest human chain. He awakened one of the linked men, managing to prevent the chap from emitting a noise.
“Were you fellows staked to this post last night?” he breathed.
“No,” was the reply. “We don’t have any regular stations.”
“Do you know what group was here last night?”
The man—puzzled—considered. “Why—I think it was the gang who are nearest the gate to-night.”
“Thanks!” Doc whispered. “And you might as well stay awake. You’re going to see some excitement before long.”
Making his precarious way to the ten captives chained closest to the stockade entrance, Doc began awakening them. It was no mean task to do this and at the same time maintain silence. But he finally accomplished it.
“Did any of you fellows dig up a package near the wall last night?” he asked them.
The end man on the chain had the big news. “I did. I thought it was somebody trying to slip us something. I couldn’t see who was burying it!”
“Where did you put the bundle?”
“I buried it again—right beside the post we were anchored to,” the man replied. “I looked in it, but there wasn’t anything but some bottles of stuff.”
“I hope you didn’t break the bottles, or empty them?”
“Oh—no!”
Five minutes later, Doc Savage had his packet.
* * * *
The sharp-pointed poles of the stockade were designed to offer an insurmountable obstacle to any man of ordinary agility. But Doc was far from falling in that category.
A crouch, a silent spring upward, and he had grasped the top, calculating neatly enough to avoid the needled tip. An acrobatic swing put him over, still without noise.
He dropped and cushioned his landing with great leg muscles, the power of which had been lessened hardly at all by the hardships encountered during recent hours.
Creeping forward, his keen nostrils soon advised him of the location of a fetid-smelling vampire. Now came a ticklish job. He had ordinary chloroform in one of the bottles. With this, it was necessary to stupefy the bat long enough to get past it, yet not cause the thing to pass out entirely, as that would attract notice from the next guard who made a round of inspection.
Doc solved the problem by dousing chloroform on a rag torn from his breechcloth. He did the tearing with care. The instant the cloth was soaked, he tossed it at the vampire.
There was a snapping sound as the creature grabbed at the fabric, under the impression that it was something alive.
Doc waited a few moments, then took a chance and glided forward. He found the hideous bat too stupefied to attack.
Recovering the cloth for future use, Doc went ahead. He headed for the long, thatched shed which held the supply of wicker cages. Once there, he entered and worked rapidly.
With a swab already contained in one of the bottles which had been in the buried package, Doc daubed chemical on each of the cages.
He worked swiftly, but the number of the rattan baskets made the job tedious.
When he had finished, he worked toward the more pretentious hut where Yuttal and Hadi-Mot had their quarters. Outside the door, Doc found two rattan cages. He painted a bit of his chemical on each.
He operated with greater speed now, prowling about in the gloom, working upon each basket he located. He even succeeded in getting to the cages which the stockade guards kept close at hand. Finally, he made for Lady Nelia’s prison.
The young woman was awake when Doc entered. Her chain rattled. Not being able to see him, she gave a gasp of fright.
“Sh-h-h!” he warned. She had been working on her chain padlock.
“Oh!” She had recognized him. “I’ve been trying to pick this lock with a hairpin, as you did. But I can’t make a go of it.”
“There’s a trick to it,” Doc said softly, making no effort to keep admiration of her courage out of his voice.
He took the hairpin and opened this padlock as easily as he had the one in the dirigible, at the time of the first rescue.
“You’re lucky,” he whispered. “They did not padlock the chains to our necks—they riveted them! We used diamonds to cut the links.”
She managed a low, somewhat shaky sound of attempted mirth. “You fellows must have cut up terribly this afternoon. I heard Yuttal and Hadi-Mot talking. They’re afraid you will spread your mutinous attitude to the other slaves.”
“We’ll spread more than that, if we have decent luck!” Doc assured her grimly. “Come on!”
They stepped to the door together—and halted.
A light was bobbing toward them. One of their enemies approaching!
“A guard comes here every half hour or so to see that I am safe,” Lady Nelia breathed. “That must be him!”
* * * *
Doc Savage urged the young woman back, directing: “Arrange the chain as if you were still fastened!”
He did not wait to see if the command would be complied with—he knew it would be, for Lady Nelia was certainly not going to become hysterical under this minor stress.
Doc glided around the corner of the hut and lurked there.
The sentry approached, swinging his electric lantern and making a low humming sound under his breath. He was entirely unsuspicious. He cast his light into the hut.
“Ya inta!” he called loudly. “Oh, you!”
His purpose seemed to be to destroy whatever chance Lady Nelia might have had of slumbering. He was still grinning cruelly over his little joke when a mighty hand of metal clasped his throat. Air, which he tried to expel in a shriek of terror, only pumped up and down in his lungs.
The fellow sought to fire his rifle.
Doc delivered a snapping blow with the edge of one bronze hand. The thud as it landed was not loud, but the victim collapsed instantly. Doc had struck for the temple nerve center.
Doc now did a somewhat inexplicable thing. He placed the unconscious sentry on the floor and covered him carefully with a sleeping mat which had been provided for Lady Nelia.
“Why take all that trouble?” the young woman whispered.
“I’d rather not see an unconscious man die with no chance to aid himself,” Doc replied.
The bronze giant did not elaborate his explanation. Grasping one of Lady Nelia’s hands—something the young woman did not mind at all—he led her toward the stockade.
A few score of feet from the inclosure, just outside the area paced by the sentries and guarded by the vampires, Doc left his pretty companion. But first, he found her ear in the murky night.
“Stay right here!” he warned. “I’ll be back soon. And be ready for action!”
A watchman came tramping around the compound, dangling a light beam over the bats.
Even as the man passed, Doc was soaking his fragment of rag with chloroform. He tossed the cloth—a vampire snapped at it. The bats possessed eyes more adapted to the darkness and could see the fabric. Doc let this bat go into a permanent sleep from the anæsthetic effects.
Whipping forward, Doc plucked softly at the gate fastenings. These consisted of a heavy sliding bar and a peg to hold it in place. Doc extracted the peg.
“Anybody there?” he asked softly.
“Me!” came Renny’s harsh whisper. “We’re all set in here! Got the chains holding every single group of slaves cut through at the anchor posts. It was a dickens of a job, though. But everybody is ready for the break!”
“Here we go, then,” Doc told him. “Tell them to run straight out from the gate. The vampire immediately in front is out of commission.”
* * * *
The gate could not be opened without noise—Doc had noticed this when they were put in the compound at sundown. So he made no effort at silence. Slamming back the bar, he wrenched the great portal open. Crude hinges squeaked loudly!
“Eysh huwa!” bellowed a sentry. “What is this?”
Out of the gaping gate plunged Renny and the others. Behind them surged the slaves, still chained in groups of ten.
Doc and his men scattered, each charging a shouting sentry.
“Make for the airship!” Doc barked at Lady Nelia.
The slaves had also been instructed to race to the Aëromunde. They did so, not understanding what good that would do, since the dirigible was not yet airworthy. But the leadership of this giant bronze man and his hard-boiled, devil-may-care companions offered the only real chance of escape which had come their way. They were glad to take orders.
“Eysh huwa?” howled the guards. “What is this? What is happening here?”
About the gate, all was chain-clinking confusion. Some of the linked men were sobbing in their excitement. Not a few forms, slaves ill almost to death, were being carried.
The guards approached, using their electric lanterns.
Doc and his men had been foresighted enough to circle a bit, coming upon the sentinels from the sides.
A bearded fellow dropped under the mallet of Doc’s big fist without ever knowing what had occurred.
An automatic rifle chattered. Another!
A man squawled as Renny’s big hands found his neck.
Ham’s sword cane spitted one of the riflemen through the shoulder, dropping the man in a writhing pile of agony.
With a ghostlike clanking of many chains, the slave groups retreated through the darkness toward the Aëromunde.
Over toward the sleeping quarters, men were piling out of bunks to seize their arms.
Light brightened the doorway of Yuttal and Hadi-Mot’s hut. Then both leaders bounded outside, waving flashlights.
Bayoneted rifle thrust out, a sentry charged Doc.
Nimbly, Doc evaded the ugly blade. Lunging in, he seized the man and flung him against another, who was clipping fresh ammunition into his rapid-firer. Both went over in a kicking, swearing pile.
Doc pounced upon them, fists driving expertly.
A watchman, who had been stationed around at the rear of the stockade, arrived on the scene. Glimpsing Doc, he flung up his rifle. The muzzle of the weapon, glinting nastily in the gleam of the man’s electric lantern, was beaded upon Doc’s back.
Lady Nelia Sealing then paid whatever debt of gratitude she might have owed Doc. She had not retreated to the Aëromunde—for once disobeying Doc’s orders. She had gathered up a pair of rocks and waited, hoping she might be of some aid.
She flung one of her rocks—and missed. Her second heave, however, was a bull’s-eye. Hitting the watchman in the center of his whiskered features, the stone bowled him over!
The fellow’s rifle cracked, and so narrow was the margin of escape that the slug blew cold air on Doc’s features!
“You’re sure handy to have around,” Doc chuckled, reaching the young woman’s side and carrying her along toward the dirigible.
Over his shoulder, Doc roared: “C’mon, gang!”