Kenneth Robeson - The Pirate of the Pacific

"More than that. I want every person aboard questioned closely, and those who cannot prove they have been engaged in legitimate enterprises for the past few years are to be thrown in jail. Can you swing something that radical?"

"I can. And that should trap Tom Too."

"It'll at least put a crimp in his style," Doc smiled. They repaired at once to the presence of Captain Hickman. The commander of the Malay Queen expressed vast astonishment at sight of Doc.

First Mate Jong, looking up from the binnacle, registered popeyed surprise.

"We wish to use the radio apparatus," Doe explained. "Perhaps you had better come along, captain, in case the radio operator should object."

Captain Hickman had suddenly started perspiring. The mere sight of Doc seemed capable of making him break out in a sweat.

"Of course — of course!" he said jerkily.

First Mate Jong left the bridge at this juncture.

"Just a moment, please!" gulped Captain Hickman. "I must give an order. Then we shall go to the radio room."

Crossing to one of the apprentice seamen always on duty on the bridge, the commander spoke in a low voice. The words continued for fully a minute. Then Captain Hickman hurried back to Doc, apologizing for the delay.

They moved toward the radio cabin. The door of the apparatus room appeared before them.

Renny started violently — for he was suddenly hearing a vague, mellow, trilling sound that ran up and down the musical scale in a we[rdly tuneless fashion. It was a melodious, inspiring sound that defied description. And it persisted for only an instant.

Renny knew what it was — Doc's tiny, unconscious sound, which he made in his moments of greatest concentration, or when he had come upon a startling discovery, or as danger threatened.

Instinctively Renny looked around for the trouble. He saw it. Wisps of smoke, yellowish, vile, were crawling out of the wireless-room door.

Doc went ahead, a bronze flash of speed. He veered into the radio room. Two operators manned the instruments at this hour. Both sprawled in puddles of scarlet. They had been stabbed to death.

The wireless sets — both telephone and telegraph — had been expertly wrecked. They were out of commission.

Whoever had done the work was gone.

RENNY flung into the radio room. "Now if this ain't a fine mess!" he rasped hoarsely.

Captain Hickman had not entered.

Doc stepped to the door, looked out.

Captain Hickman's revolver blazed in his face.

Doc moved swiftly, as swiftly as he had ever moved before. Even his incredible speed and agility would not have gotten him in the clear had he tried to jump back. But he did duck enough that the bullet only scuffed through his bronze hair.

Before the treacherous skipper's gun could flame again, Doc was back in the wireless cabin.

Renny had whirled with the shot. "What is it, Doc?"

"It's Captain Hickman!" the giant bronze man said with a sort of blazing resonance in his voice. "He's on Tom Too's pay roll!"

Renny sprang to the door. The snout of a machine gun bristled from either fist. He shoved one into the corridor and let it drum briefly.

A man shrieked, cursed — his profanity was singing Kwangtungese.

"That wasn't the captain!" Renny rumbled.

He listened. Speeding feet slippered in the corridor from both directions. They were coming nearer. Shots roared.

"They're closing in on us, Doc!"

Doc picked a glass globule of anaesthetic out of a pocket. But he did not use it. Renny could not hold his breath the three or four minutes necessary for the air to neutralize the stuff.

"Use the guns, Renny. Cut our way out of here!"

Renny sprang to the wall. Beyond lay the deck. He shoved one of the little machine guns out, tightened on the trigger, and waved the muzzle with a circular motion.

The terrific speed of the shots made a deafening moan. The bullets worked on the wall like a monster jig saw. A segment larger than the head of a barrel was cut almost completely out. Renny struck the section with his fist. It flew outward.

Renny and Doc pitched out on deck. Only a few startled passengers were in sight.

Doc sped to the nearest companionway. He reached the deck below in a single prodigious leap. Renny followed, waving the guns wildly for balance as he negotiated with three jumps and a near headlong fall the distance Doc had covered in one spring.

Passengers saw the guns and ran shrieking for cover.

HAM and Mindoro came up the grand staircase, shoulder to shoulder, guns in hand. Ham had his sword cane.

A bullet fired from the upper deck screamed past them. Somewhere in the dining saloon the slug shattered glassware. More lead followed.

"Watch it, Doc!" Ham yelled. "A herd of the devils are coming up from below!"

The words were hardly out his lips when snarling yellow faces topped the grand staircase.

Ham's gun hooted its awful song of death. The faces sank from view, several spraying crimson.

"I'm low on cartridges!" Renny boomed. "Ammunition goes through these guns like sand through a funnel!"

"My baggage is in the hold!" Doc said swiftly. "We'd better get to it There's two cases of cartridges in the stuff."

They raced forward along a passage, Doc in the lead.

Slant-eyed men suddenly blocked their way. Eight or ten of them! They corked the passage.

Hissing, one man struck at Doc with a short sword. But the blow missed as Doc weaved aside. The force of the swing spun the Oriental. His sword chopped into the passage bulkhead and stuck there.

Doc grasped the swordsman by the neck and one leg. Using the man as a ram, he shot forward like a projectile. Orientals upset, squawling striking. Pistols flamed — nasty little spike-snouted automatics which could drive a bullet a mile.

Then Ham, Renny and Mindoro joined the fray. Their super-firing machine guns made frightful bull-fiddle sawings. Before those terrific blasts of lead, men fell.

It was too much for the corsairs. Those able to do so, fled.

Continuing on, Doc and his men descended a companionway to the forward deck. Doc wrenched open a hatch which gave access to the hold. He descended.

The Orientals caught sight of them. They fired a coughing volley. Slivers jumped out of the deck. Slugs tapped the iron hatch. A bullet hit Ham's sword cane and sent it cartwheeling across the deck.

Ham howled angrily, risked almost certain death to dive over and retrieve his sword cane, then popped down the hatch. By a miracle, he was unscratched.

"You lucky cuss!" Renny told him.

"That's what comes of leading a righteous life!" Ham grinned.

They were in the luggage room of the hold. Trunks and valises were heaped about them. Doc dived into this stuff, hunting his own luggage, which had been put aboard in San Francisco.

At the same time, Doc kept a watch on the hatch.

Grimacing in aversion, Ham ripped off his flashy coat and vest. He had already lost the villainous green hat. He took off the blood-colored shoes and flung them out of the hatch.

"I'll go barefooted before I'll wear them another minute!" he snapped.

Renny snorted mirthfully as, an instant later, the red shoes came flying back down the hatch, hurled by some Oriental.

SILENCE now fell. This was broken by singsonged orders. Ham and Renny listened to these with interest. The yellow men seemed to be speaking a half dozen tongues from Hindustani, Mongol dialects, and Mandarin, to Kwangtungese and pidgin English.

"There must be riffraff from every country in the Far East up there!" Renny boomed.

"I'm surprised at that," Ham clipped "Tom Too's men in New York were all Mongols or half-castes with Mongol blood."