THE TORRENT
Under Doc’s direction, his five men stationed themselves at regular intervals around the rocky island. The two-score individuals rescued from the city carved in rock, unfamiliar with firearms, were virtually useless in any but hand-to-hand combat.
From that moment, the morning air was rent by an occasional rifle shot or the moan of a machine pistol. The latter weapons, in the hands of Mohallet’s men, did little damage. The range was too great.
The canyon sides could be reached by the rifles Doc’s men held, but effective return fire could not span the distance.
Moreover, their pursuers did not dare paddle past the isle and attempt to surround them. The canyon walls, too steep for climbing at this point, prevented their foes landing and carrying their clumsy pneumatic rafts downstream.
“We’re snug as bugs in a rug!” Monk grinned, interrupting his diversion of teaching Habeas Corpus to shake hands.
“Until our grub and water run out,” Long Tom reminded. “Say, I’ll scout around and see if I can’t find something to feed that pig. If we can fatten him up, he’ll do for eating!”
“Nix!” Monk growled. “You’ll eat me before you touch Habeas!”
“That’s a very good idea!” Ham said nastily.
Ham, for once in his life, was without his sword cane. His captors had taken it. Its absence did not help his humor.
Monk, leering cheerfully, proceeded to address the pretty Ja on his fingers. Ham looked on, carelessly at first, then with sudden rage.
“You homely missing link!” he screeched. “You’re telling her that lie about me having a wife and thirteen nitwit children!”
The pair began making fierce faces. An onlooker would have thought sudden death impended for somebody.
Attractive Ja evidently thought so. She settled things by promptly leaving them both. She went in search of Doc. The bronze man, carrying his mysterious box, had gone off by himself.
Ja found Doc on a sector of the isle where the rock was solid. He had opened the box; an array of intricate apparatus was disclosed. Tubes, batteries, and coils were assembled compactly. A large piece of mechanism was affixed tightly to the rock. Doc wore a headset.
The white-haired girl gave Doc a ravishing smile. The response to this, as far as she could see, was none. She covered her disappointment by looking with pretended interest at their surroundings.
The sun was hotter. Down the chasm, in the direction of the underground-river entrance, the other island reared. Much of it had been covered by water. It was a rock hump, bare of shelter or life.
Beyond that, the maw of the cavern no longer yawned. It had been covered completely by the rising marsh waters.
Ja, after gazing some seconds, again tried her wiles on Doc. Once more, the results were negligible.
Doc was not unaware of the young lady’s entrancing beauty, or her sly purpose. He was simply giving her no encouragement. He downed an impulse to tell her to go talk to Monk, who was always appreciative of the company of a pretty girl.
Quite disgusted, Ja whirled to flounce away.
“Will you make a round and tell every one to maintain absolute quiet for a short period at an interval of every ten minutes,” Doc called after her. “No moving around. Every one is to remain absolutely quiet. And no shooting.”
The girl nodded stiffly, then went on the mission. She did not understand the purpose of the unusual request. Nor was she alone in her puzzlement. The others did not understand it, either.
* * * *
The entire day passed without a happening of importance.
Mohallet and his allies seemed to have settled for a siege. They had sought to dive to the submarine to replenish their stock of weapons. It was evident, though, that they had not been able to enter the Helldiver.
“I locked all the hatches but one from the inside,” Doc explained. “Then I put a padlock on that one. They will have difficulty breaking in, working under water.”
Boulders offered some shelter from the midday heat. The water was rationed as sparingly as possible.
Night came, the heavens again brilliant with stars and moon.
“If you ask me, we oughta try to do ourselves some good!” Monk grumbled. “Sittin’ around this way, we’re playin’ into this guy Mohallet’s hands, if you ask me.”
“Use your head!” Renny boomed.
“Why suggest the impossible?” Ham sneered. “He hasn’t any!”
“What’re you drivin’ at?” Monk asked Renny, ignoring Ham’s jab.
“I mean that Doc must have some plan,” explained the big-fisted engineer.
“But we ain’t got a chance of gettin’ out of here!” Monk persisted.
“I’m betting Doc does!”
Monk grumbled: “I don’t see how you——”
“Will somebody knock the gorilla in the head so I can get some sleep?” Ham requested.
Monk bristled indignantly. “By golly, you ain’t kissed Habeas Corpus yet? You’re gonna do it now!”
The homely chemist, seizing his pig, prepared to leap upon Ham and force fulfillment of their bargain.
“Quiet!” Doc called from the distance.
Silence instantly fell. No one moved or spoke. They had been observing these intervals of stillness all day, none knowing the reason therefor. So far, nothing had come of them.
But this was the exception.
“All right!” Doc yelled loudly. “Onto the rafts! Everybody! Make a great deal of noise! We want our enemies to come close enough that we can talk with them!”
Their foes evidently saw the first inflated camel-hide craft as it put off from the isle. Mohallet himself paddled within shouting distance.
He yelled in Arabic: “If you will surrender, you will be allowed to live——”
“We’re not surrendering!” Doc’s mighty voice volleyed back. “We’re moving away from here! And if you follow us, it will mean your death! That’s a warning!”
“Wallah!” roared Mohallet. “Lies! Try to flee and we will follow and kill you!”
“You follow us and it’ll be your finish!” Doc repeated earnestly.
“You’re wasting your time trying to talk him out of it!” said Johnny, fiddling with his glasses.
“I’m afraid so,” Doc admitted. “But he was warned!”
By now, all the inflated skins were afloat. Doc clambered on the last one and shoved off. He did not have Ja for a passenger this time.
The young lady had dismissed as a hopeless task her efforts to snare Doc. She was riding with the homely but happy Monk.
“Where do we go?” called Long Tom.
“To the other island—the bare one!” Doc replied.
“Holy cow!” Renny boomed. “There ain’t a sign of shelter there! They’ll pick us off!”
“Put some action into those paddles!” Doc commanded. “You fellows may not think you’re in a hurry, but you are!”
* * * *
The bare hump of rock for which they were headed was nearly half a mile distant. They worked furiously to reach it, as Doc had directed.
Behind, a swarm of puffy skin rafts bobbed in pursuit.
Shouting, Doc warned them to go back.
A chorus of fierce shouts was his answer. Mohallet and his allies thought they saw the finish of their quarry.
When nothing had happened by the time the bleak rock knob was reached, Doc’s men exchanged uneasy glances, wondering if they had not made their position hopeless.
The rafts of their foes crowded in. Haunting the shadows banked against the sheer canyon walls, they were enabled to come within range. The chasm was narrower here.
Bullets began snapping spitefully against the rocky spire, leaving gray smears. Doc’s men returned the fire, shooting as accurately as they could from the rocking skin boats.
Renny rumbled: “This is bad! If something doesn’t——”
“It’s happening now!” Doc rapped. “Take a look at the water!”
Renny stood up to peer at the surface. His eyes popped. He smacked his huge fists together. His yell romped like thunder in the confines of the chasm.
“It’s moving! The water’s moving!”
The river had started flowing. Slowly at first, the water crept along; then its speed increased. Current ripples appeared. They mounted. A roar, starting as a dull whisper, loudened to a great babble of sound.
“The barrier at the outer end of the underground stream has just broken down!” Ham barked.
“Not ‘just’!” Doc corrected. “It gave way some time ago. The movement of the water has just reached here.”
“How’d you know that?” Ham demanded.
“The apparatus I’ve been using all day,” Doc told him. “It is simply a powerful amplifier to pick up earth sounds. It works on the principle of a seismograph, utilizing sensitive microphones and audio amplifiers. It picked up the rumbling as the barrier gave way, and the jarring of the flood through the underground cavern.”
Ham pondered. He realized now that Doc had been certain the barricade would collapse: their flight from the Phantom City had been guided by the supposition that it would.
“How’d you figure it would give way?” he demanded.
“You’ll recall I spent some time going over it,” Doc reminded him. “The barrier obviously wasn’t strong enough to hold against great pressure. There were rifts through which water could pass. This was eventually certain to loosen the whole mass. It was a question of time. We could have held out for days on the other island, waiting for it.”
Talk ceased. They fell to watching Mohallet and their other enemies.
* * * *
The river had become a torrent of doom. Mohallet and nearly all the rest were afloat on the inflated camel-hide rafts. The craft were too clumsy to cope with a moderate current.
This was no current of moderation. Foam covered the whole surface by now. Waves fought each other. Small riffles came into being, grew into convulsing monsters that tossed a dozen feet upward. Swirling and roaring, the flood converged on a great whirlpool which marked the maw of the cavern.
Helpless in the abrupt rush of waters, Mohallet was among the first to be carried into the vortex. Such was the power of the sucking current that his raft was crushed, drawn from view together with its rider.
“He won’t have a chance in there!” Monk said.
Monk did not sound gloomy. He was hardened to violence and sudden death. And no one had ever earned his end more thoroughly than Mohallet.
Other rafts were pulled into the spinning gullet. Wailing, those who rode them fought the current. They might as well have tried to battle Niagara with a toothpick for a paddle. They were swallowed in rapid succession, many even before they reached the full force of the whirlpool.
Some managed to land on the bald rocky spire which harbored Doc and his companions. These were glad to surrender their weapons in exchange for safety.
Half an hour saw the chasm clean of camel-skin rafts. Of the horde who had besieged them, only a few score on shore, and others who had made the isle, remained alive.
They had met a fate, these men, which had a way of seizing upon those who opposed Doc Savage. They had gone to join others who had come to an end in like fashion—caught in a sudden reversal of some trap they had been closing upon the giant bronze man and those who helped him.
Throughout most of the night, the torrent moaned and rushed. For a time, there was no appreciable lowering of the marsh level. There was a great deal of water to be drained, water fed by other briny swales on higher levels.
By dawn, the water was falling, leaving a crust of brine which dried white in the hot sun.
By noon, the river had become sluggish. It would not fall much more. And they could work upstream with their clumsy inflated rafts.
Doc allowed five hours more, for safety’s sake. Then they put off, paddling upstream.
Such of their enemies as had reached the isle, they left behind. These could swim ashore, to mingle with the other survivors. The chief of the White Beasts and the more fierce of the warriors had gone to their death in the cavern. The power of the savages was broken.
They came within sight of the spot where the Helldiver lay.
“Holy cow!” exploded Renny. “Have we got luck!”
The brine had lowered enough so that the long steel spine of the sub was fully exposed.
* * * *
“All we’ve got to do is open the hatches and bail her put!” Renny declared. “She’ll float, then! Even if she don’t, it’ll be a simple matter to rig winches and cables, and slide her into the water.”
“Think we can get out through the cavern—the way we came in?” Monk asked Doc.
“Not a doubt of it,” Doc assured him. “From the way the water went out, it’s almost certain the channel is cleared of obstructions.”
Monk grinned at pretty Ja. “Great! We’ll float the sub, and ferry these white-haired people out.”
“Maybe they’d rather stay here,” Doc reminded.
A conference followed. To Monk’s infinite disgust, it developed that Ja and her people elected to remain in their strange city carved from stone.
From what Ja had seen of the outer world, and the men who dwelt there—Mohallet, for instance—she did not think highly of it.
“This is their home,” Renny said thoughtfully. “They probably wouldn’t be satisfied away from it.”
Arms and ammunition aplenty would be left in the Phantom City, it was decided, and the inhabitants instructed in their use. This would guarantee against any future threat by the White Beasts.
Doc was taking no part in the consultation. He had dropped off one of the air-filled camel skins and was examining the Helldiver. The hull was intact. She could be floated in a few hours—made ready to take them back to civilization.
Civilization! Doc smiled faintly, wryly. The word was not a synonym for safety or security to himself and his five men. It meant simply that they would be on deck for more trouble—for some call which might take them to the far corners of the earth.
Monk’s voice reached Doc. “Now, let’s see if we can’t trade these people something for a little of that good platinum——”
“You’d better forget the platinum,” Doc told him.
“Huh?”
Doc addressed the white-haired girl, using the deaf-and-dumb dialect on his fingers that his friends might comprehend what was being said between the two of them.
“You were wearing a bracelet when Mohallet found you,” he signaled. “Where did you get it?”
“From the stranger who came here years ago—the man who taught us the talk of the hands,” the girl replied. “It was the case of a watch, which he melted and beat into an armlet.”
“Say!” Monk ejaculated. “A watch! A watch case! Well, for——”
“Mohallet saw the bracelet,” Doc explained. “It was platinum. He asked Ja if there was much similar metal here, and she told him there was a great deal of the shiny stuff. Mohallet made the natural mistake of presuming it was all platinum.”
Monk gulped and swallowed several times. “You mean to tell me——”
“Did you look closely at the metal of those gates?” Doc asked.
“Only close enough to see that it was shiny and soft, like platinum,” Monk admitted. “Was it?”
“It is lead,” Doc told him dryly. “The kind you make bullets out of!”