Kenneth Robeson - The Pirate of the Pacific

"He's a rotten flyer!" Johnny declared.

"A kiwi!" Monk agreed.

The plane headed directly for the laboring raft.

Monk reached up and clawed his hair down over his eyes to keep the sun out. "I don't like this! That bird is going to crawl up. He may be the world's worst flyer, but I don't like it!"

RENNY followed Monk's example in getting his hair down on his forehead to shade his eyes from the sun. It was the next best thing to colored goggles. They'd have to look up to fight the plane. And gazing into the tropical sky was like looking into a white-hot bowl.

"We left machine guns on the plane!" he muttered. "It's gonna be tough on us?"

Johnny poked another shark in its blunt, tooth-pegged snout.

Doc Savage seemed unworried. He sat well forward, driving his paddle with a force that made the stout wood grunt and bend. So that his mighty strokes would not throw the raft off course, he distributed them on either side with scarcely an interruption in their machinelike precision.

Renny shucked out his pistollike machine gun and rapped a fresh cartridge clip in place.

"You won't need it," Doc told him.

"No?" Renny was surprised.

"Watch the plane!"

The amphibian came howling toward them. Tom Too was Dot trying for altitude; he wanted to be low enough to use his machine gun with effect — for no doubt he had found the rapid firers in the plane. His altitude was no more than five hundred feet.

"It's about time it happened!" Doc said grimly.

Doc's prediction was accurate.

Both motors of the amphibian suddenly stopped.

Tom Too acted swiftly. He kicked the plane around and headed it back for Shark Head Island. His banking about was sloppy; the ship side-slipped as though the air were greased.

"He can just fly, and that's all!" Monk grinned. "What stopped the motors, Doc?"

"I plugged the fuel lines close to the tanks," Doc replied. "The carburetor and fuel pipes held enough gas to take the craft upstairs, but no more."

The big bronze man neglected to add that it would have been simpler to cut off the fuel at the carburetors, but that this would not have left enough gas available to get the plane off should circumstances have sent them to the craft in such a hurry that they would not have had time to unplug the fuel lines.

Tom Too was gliding the dead-motored plane at a very flat angle, getting the maximum distance out of his altitude. Probably this was by accident rather than flying ability.

"Holy cow!" groaned Renny. "Is he gonna get back to Shark Head?"

"He will come down about a hundred yards offshore," said Doc after a glance of expert appraisal.

The estimate was close. With a sudsy splash, the amphibian plunked into the sea. It pushed ahead for a time under its own weight. It stopped a bit less than three hundred feet offshore.

Then the ship began to move backward — blown by the offshore breeze.

"He'll be blown right into our hands!" Ham ejaculated.

"Or he'll find the plugged fuel lines!" Monk pointed out.

TOM Too wasted no time hunting for what had silenced the motors, however. Probably he was no mechanic. He appeared atop the amphibian cabin.

He was too distant for much to be told about his appearance. Even Doc's sharp vision could not distinguish the fellow's features.

One thing they did note — Tom Too carried a large brief case.

The pirate leader reached up and struck savagely at the plane wing. There was a knife in his fist.

"Hey!" squawled Monk. "He's lettin' the gas out of the tanks!"

It was worse than that. Tom Too backed up, struck a match, and flung the flame into the petrol drooling from the punctured tanks.

Flame gushed. It wrapped the amphibian until the craft was like a toy done in red tissue paper. Yellow smoke tossed away downwind, convulsing and boiling in the breeze.

Tom Too sprang into the sea. He swam madly for the shore of Shark Head Island.

Johnny gazed at the sharks cruising about the makeshift raft, then at the distant splashes that marked Tom Too's progress.

"That guy has got nerve!" grunted Johnny.

"Fooey!" said Monk. "A rat will fight a lion if he's cornered."

Doc Savage was standing up, still paddling, the better to watch Tom Too's progress.

Renny also watched. His eyes were second in sharpness to Doc's.

"There goes a shark for him!" Renny bawled suddenly.

They all saw the triangle of lead-hued shark fin cutting toward Tom Too.

"There ain't nothin' I like less than sharks!" Monk chuckled. "But I'm gonna find it hard to begrudge that one his meal!"

Tom Too had;seen his danger. He swam desperately. But he did not lose his head. He kept his eyes on the approaching fin. It disappeared.

Tom Too promptly stopped. Doc caught the faint glitter of a knife in the pirate king's hand.

"He's going to handle the shark native fashion!" Renny grunted.

Distance hampered their view of what happened next. But they knew enough shark lore to guess. Sharks do not have to turn over to bite an object in the depths, but commonly do so to seize a man swimming on the surface. The pale bellies offer a warning flash,

Tom Too disappeared from sight momentarily. There was a splashing turmoil in the water. Tom Too's knife struck repeatedly.

The pirate leader appeared. He swam for shore with renewed energy.

"He got the shark — dag-gone it!" Monk wailed.

TOM Too reached the beach without further incident. He sprinted for the jungle.

Doc's sharp eyes noted something the others missed — Tom Too no longer carried his brief case. Evidently he had dropped it in his short fight with the shark.

The plane was burning briskly. Flame ate into the fuselage. A Fourth of July uproar came as heat exploded machine-gun bullets in the craft.

The ship sank suddenly.

Tom Too vanished into the jungle.

Doc and his men continued to bend their paddles.

They reached the spot where the plane had gone down. A score of yards beyond, the shark Tom Too had slain floated near the surface. The water lashed in turmoil about the carcass — half a dozen other sharks were devouring it.

"Whoa!" said Doc.

Monk wore in his belt a knife he had picked up somewhere. It was a serpentine-bladed kris.

Doc grasped the knife, clipped the blade between his strong teeth, and dropped off the shaky raft. He disappeared in the depths.

"Jiminy!" Monk gulped. "With all these sharks around, Daniel in the lions' den was a piker!"

They waited anxiously. Bubbles gurgled up from the sunken plane. A minute passed. Sixty feet away, cannibal sharks fought with horrible splashings. Another minute groped into eternity.

Doc did not appear.

On the shore, coarse-voiced tropical birds cried like hideous harpies.

Three clapping shots interrupted the birds. Monk ducked as a bullet made cold air kiss his furry neck, nearly lost his balance on the ramshackle raft, but recovered himself.

Tom Too had fired at them — water does not wet the powder in modern pistol cartridges.

Doc's five men sprayed lead at the jungle. There was nothing to show they hit Tom Too. But they kept him from shooting again.

Renny glanced at a waterproof wrist watch. He nearly screamed.

Doc had been beneath the surface a full four minutes!

Ten seconds later Doc's bronze head split the water beside the raft. Doc's bronze hair and metallic skin had a strange quality; it seemed to shed water like the back of a duck; he could immerse himself, and his skin and hair would not seem wet when he reappeared.

Doc's shirt front bulged more than his chest should have made it.

Doc's five men wiped cold sweat off their foreheads. The fact that Doc had remained under water so long was not in itself alarming. They had seen the giant bronze man stay below for incredible intervals. But the sharks made these waters reek death.