Kenneth Robeson - The Pirate of the Pacific

Panic grew.

"The outer air is sweet, my brothers!" shrilled a voice in Mandarin.

No other impetus was needed. The Mongols headed for the door like skyrockets. Reaching the street, each vied with the other to be the first around the nearest corner.

The old hag lookout, who had made her nut-cracking a signal, had been bowled over in the rush. But now she legged after them.

MONK, Long Tom, and Johnny were scrambling about in their excitement.

"Hold still, you tramps!" Doc chuckled.

Doc's casehardened bronze hands closed over Johnny's handcuffs. They tightened, strained, wrenched — and the links snapped.

Johnny was not surprised. He had seen Doc do things like this on other occasions. Long Tom's bracelets succumbed to the bronze man's herculean strength.

Monk's irons, however, were a different matter. Monk himself possessed strength far beyond the usual — sufficient to break ordinary handcuffs. His captors must have discovered that — the time he broke loose to write the message on the mirror — and decorated him with heavier cuffs. The links that joined them were like log chains.

"They moved you to various parts of the liner, so I couldn't find you, didn't they?" Doc asked.

"We were changed to different staterooms half a dozen times," Monk told him. "Doc, I don't see bow you lived through that voyage. Practically every man of the crew was on Tom Too's pay roll, to say nothing of the swarm of pirates that were among the passengers."

Doc went to work on the locks of Monk's enormous leg and arm irons. They were not difficult. Within thirty seconds, they fell away, expertly picked.

"This place isn't healthy for us!" he warned. "TomToo's men will swarm around here in a few minutes."

Searching, they found a back exit.

"This place was a sort of headquarters for Tom Too's organization in Mantilla," said Johnny.

Johnny seemed little the worse for his period of captivity. His glasses, which had the magnifying lens on the left side, were missing, however. That was no hardship, since Johnny had nearly normal sight in his right eye.

The pale electrical wizard, Long Tom, had a black eye and a cut lip as souvenirs.

The furry Monk showed plenty of wear and tear. His clothes now amounted to little more than a loin cloth. His rusty red hide was cut, scratched, bruised; his reddish fur was crusted with dried blood.

"They pulled a slick one when they caught us in New York," Monk rumbled. "One of them came staggering into the skyscraper office with red ink spilled all over him, pretending he'd been stabbed nearly to death. He got us all looking down in the street to see his assailant. Then his pals walked in and covered us with guns."

Persons stared at the four men curiously. Thinking the cop bad arrested the other three, some sought to follow. But they were soon outdistanced. Doc hurried the pace.

They returned to Mindoro's hide-out by a circuitous route.

THERE was a hilarious reunion when they all met in the secret, sound-proofed room. Renny cuffed Johnny and Long Tom about delightedly with his huge paws, rumbling, "I'll teach you two guys to go and get yourselves caught and cause us so much trouble!"

Monk leered at his old sparring mate, Ham, rubbed his hairy paws in anticipation, and started forward.

Ham flourished his sword cane menacingly. "I'll pick your teeth with this thing if you lay a hand on me, you ugly missing link!"

Mindoro stood to one side. He was smiling a little, the first time his face had registered anything but gloom for some days past. The fact that this remarkable group of fighting men were together again had heartened him.

"I had a lucky break in hunting them," Doc told Mindoro. "They were being held at the place where I was taken to be put on Tom Too's pay roll. I expected a more difficult hunt."

The big policeman with whom Doc had changed clothes was still present. Doc gave him back his garments.

The boisterous greeting subsided. Doc put questions to the three he had rescued.

"Did you overhear anything concerning Tom Too's plans?" he asked.

It was Johnny, the bony archaeologist, who answered. "A little. For instance, we learned how he is going to take over the government of the Luzon Union."

Johnny's information jibed with that obtained by Mindoro, it developed as he talked.

"Tom Too's more villainous and ignorant followers are going to stage the rioting," Johnny continued. "They must be a mighty tough crew, because he hasn't dared to let them come into Mantilla. They're camped on a small island to the north, the whole lot of them, waiting for word which will bring them here."

"He hasn't let them come into Mantilla because he's afraid they'd start looting ahead of time," Long Tom put in. "I don't think he has any too strong a hold over the pirates camped on the island."

"I know he hasn't!" interposed Monk. "I heard talk which revealed the pirates on the island are tired of waiting, and are on the point of rebellion. They figure themselves as liable to get shot in the rioting, so they're not so hot about their part in the whole plot. There was talk that they intended to make a raid of their own on Mantilla, in the old-fashioned pirate way."

"They must be ignorant!" Ham snapped. "Otherwise, they'd know a thing like that won't work in this day and age."

"Of course they're dumb," Monk grinned. "Tom Too went up there the minute he landed. He knows he's got to calm them down, or his scheme to seize the Luzon Union is shot."

Mindoro put in a sharp query. "What does Tom Too look like?"

"We didn't see him," Monk said sorrowfully. "We've got no idea what he looks like."

"How did Tom Too go to the island?" Doc asked sharply.

"By boat."

"You sure?"

"I sure am!"

"That's swell."

"Huh?" Monk grunted wonderingly.

"We can get hold of a plane and beat him there," Doc said grimly. "Provided you heard the name of the island?"

"Shark Head Island."

"I can mark the spot on a map!" declared Mindoro eagerly. "The place is an all-night run up the coast by boat."

THAT night, a ceiling of black cloud hung at ten thousand feet. Under this, darkness lurked, thick and damply foul as the breath of some carnivorous monster.

The hour was early. Lights glowed through the open walls of huts. Here and there a torch flared as some native went about night duties.

A mile high, just below the cloud ceiling, a plane boomed through the night. Exhaust stacks of its two big radial motors lipped blue flame occasionally. The tips of the single far-flung wing and the spidery rudder mechanism bore no distinguishing lights. The craft was an amphibian — the landing wheels cranking up into wells on the hull when it was desired to make a landing in water. In a pinch, the craft could carry sixteen passengers.

It carried only six now — Doc Savage and his five friends.

Mindoro had remained behind in Mantilla. He had been unwilling to be the stay-at-home, at first. But Doc had pointed out it was highly important that Mindoro assembled his loyal forces and prepare to resist Tom Too's coup.

Mindoro's first move would be to throw a dependable guard around the president of the Luzon Union, so there would be no poisoning. The doctors who had been bribed by Tom Too's men to proclaim the poison death a case of heart failure, were to be disposed of. Doc hadn't inquired just what the disposal would be. It probably would not be pleasant.

It had been a simple matter for Mindoro to secure the plane for Doc's use.

Renny was navigating the plane. This was not an easy task, since they could not see the heavens, or the contour of the land below. Renny, thanks to his engineering training, was an expert at this sort of thing.