Chapter 13

ICE GHOSTS

THE FUEL had run out. Doc realized this — and slammed the nose down.

Practically no height for maneuvering lay below. The little flivver, due to small wingspread and not inconsiderable weight, would glide about as well as a brickbat.

The only landing place was the lead which had swallowed the remains of the shabby seaplane flown by Doc's friends. And that had hardly the width of a city street. It was about half a block long.

Had Doc Savage's hand on the controls been a whit less masterful than it was, the rent in the arctic ice would have claimed his life. Nothing short of a miracle was the landing Doc made in the cramped space.

Above one end of the lead — smaller than many a private swimming pool — the plane abruptly turned broadside in the air. As swiftly, it turned to the other side. This fishtail maneuver lowered air speed to near the stalling point. With a sizable splash, the floats dug in the icy water. They plunged so deep the plane wetted its bottom.

Doc had known from the first he was due for a crack-up. He was not wrong. The plane sloughed for the wall of ice. Doc vaulted out of the cockpit

Only fractional seconds elapsed between the time the plane plumped into the water and the instant it smashed into the icy bank of the lead. It taxed even Doc's blinding speed to get out of the control bucket in time. He leaped. His feet landed on the ice. He slid a dozen yards as though on skates.

The plane hit. There was a jangling crash remindful of an armload of tin cans dumped on a concrete walk. Metal rent, crumpled. The plane sank like a monkey wrench.

By the time Doc had ceased sliding and wheeled back, the craft was gone. The repellent water boiled as in a hideous cauldron. Big bubbles climbed to the surface with ghastly glub-glubs. It was as though a living thing was drowning in the depths.

Doc Savage turned away. The valve from the submarine had gone down with the plane. So had the machine gun.

Doc stood on the menacing arctic ice pack armed only with his tremendous muscles and his keen brain. He had no food. He had no tent, no bedding, no boat to cross leads in the ice.

Probably no one could have understood more fully than Doc the meaning of this. He was in a region so rugged, so bleak, that out of countless expeditions traveling on the ice and equipped with the finest of dog teams and food, few escaped a dire fate.

Yet one beholding the quiet composure of the bronze man's features would have thought he didn't realize what he was up against. Doc's giant figure was striking, even swathed as it was in fur garments.

He roamed the vicinity of the wrecked planes for an hour. Nothing did he find to indicate his five friends still lived. So Doc went to meet Victor Vail.

VICTOR VAIL was above the average physically. In an ordinary group of men, he would have stood out as being rather athletic.

He had progressed a scant half mile from where Doc had sighted him from the plane. His breath sobbed through his teeth. He tottered, near exhaustion. He was indeed glad to see the bronze man.

Doc Savage had covered thrice the distance negotiated by Victor Vail. Yet Doc's bronze sinews were unstrained. He breathed normally. He might have been taking a stroll down Park Avenue.

"Your friends!" gasped Victor Vail. "Did you find them safe?"

Doc Savage shook a slow negative. "I found where their plane sank through a hole in the ice. That was all."

Victor Vail sagged down wearily, disconsolately.

"I heard the plane crash," he murmured. "I was making for the spot. I could not see the crash, because of the haze. But Keelhaul de Rosa's hired killers shot them down."

Doc made no sound. Victor Vail nipped his lips, then continued.

"Your five friends forced me to leave the plane by parachute — to save my life," he murmured. "Others of the five could have escaped. Yet they chose to fight together, to the end. They were brave men."

Doc still made no sound. The moment was too pregnant with sorrow to be shattered by cold words.

"What do we do now?" Victor Vail queried at length.

"We'll find the lost liner Oceanic," Doc replied. "And we will find Keelhaul de Rosa."

The chill ferocity in the bronze giant's expressive voice made Victor Vail shiver. At that instant, he wouldn't have traded places with Keelhaul de Rosa for all the wealth in the world, with a safe return to New York City thrown in. Keelhaul de Rosa was going to feel the kind of justice this mighty bronze man dealt.

THEY SET a course for the uncharted land.

"What about Ben O'Gard?" questioned Victor Vail. "Do we still have him and his crew of devils to fight?"

"The Helldiver submerged with all aboard," Doc replied. "I had that valve off the tanks with me."

Victor Vail gestured as if tossing something away. "We're rid of them, then. Water will flood the submarine through the hole left by the missing valve."

A vast quaking and rumbling seized the ice pack. They became aware that a wind had sprung up. This gave signs of increasing to a gale. The ice was beginning to shift. It was as though they strode the white, heaving, crusted paunch of a great monster of cold.

A crevice opened unexpectedly. Victor Vail toppled on the brink. He slipped into space. But strong bronze fingers snatched him back.

The crevice closed as swiftly as it had opened. It made a ghastly crunching. Chunks of ice flew high in the air. The frozen monster might have been angry at being cheated of a victim, and was spitting its teeth out in a rage.

It was several minutes before Victor Vail could still the trembling of his knees.

"What a ghastly region!" he muttered.

"There must be a hard storm to the southward," Doc explained. "It is causing a movement of the ice field."

The going was incredibly rough. Sheer blocks of bergs jutted up everywhere. Many were as large as houses. Occasionally these toppled over. Sometimes they piled one atop the other after the fashion of cards shuffled together. These occurrences were without warning.

Twice more, Victor Vail was saved by his giant bronze companion.

"I shall never be able to pay my debt of gratitude to you," the violinist said feelingly.

Doc had a two-word reply to all such protestations.

"Forget it," he said.

As they neared land, the seemingly impossible happened — the going became harder. The arctic ice pack was at its worst. Summer, such as it was, was in full swing. The sun had been shining steadily for two months. This had rotted the ice enough that it broke up under a brisk blow.

Doc now virtually carried Victor Vail. Time after time, ice pinnacles crashed upon the very spot where they stood. But in some magic manner, the mighty bronze man always managed to get himself and the violinist in the clear.

The air was filled with a cracking and rumbling so loud as to almost produce deafness. They might have been in the midst of a raging battle.

"You can tell your grandchildren you went through about the worst danger nature can offer," Doc said grimly. "For sheer, terrifying menace, nothing quite equals a storm with the arctic ice pack breaking up under foot."

Victor Vail made no reply. Doc glanced at him sharply.

Tears stood in Victor Vail's eyes.

Doc's chance remark about grandchildren had made Victor Vail think of his long-lost daughter, Roxey.

THEY BRAVED an inferno for the next few minutes; an inferno of ice and wind. Pressure was forcing the pack ice high on the shore of the uncharted land. Frozen death crashed and lurched everywhere.

Doc Savage made it through in safety. He carried Victor Vail under one thewed arm, seeming not to feel the burden at all.

"We licked it," Doc said dryly. "The storm accounts for the thick haze we've had the last few days."

They hurried inland. Their mukluks stilt trod ice. It lay below to a depth of many feet. Occasional ridges of dark, impermeable stone rammed unlovely fangs out of the white waste.

The wind hooted and shrieked. Sometimes it whirled the two men along like crumpled balls of paper.

They mounted higher. The glacier thinned. The dark stone reared in greater profusion.

Doc Savage halted suddenly. He poised, motionless, metallic. No breath steam came from his strong lips.

"What is it?" breathed Victor Vail.

Doc released breath from his mighty lungs. It made a spurting plume that frosted on the fur of his parka. The air was turning colder.

"Something is stalking us!" Doc said dryly.

Victor Vail was astounded. His own senses were very keen — made so by the years when he had been blind, and depended upon them. But he had heard nothing.

"I caught the odor of it," Doc explained.

Amazement gripped Victor Vail. He had not known this strange bronze man, through unremitting exercise, had developed the olfactory keenness of a wild thing.

Doc Savage pressed Victor Vail into a convenient crevasse. "Stay here!" Doc commanded. "Don't leave the spot. You might become lost!"

The void of shrieking wind swallowed Doc's bronze form. He glided to the right. His speed was amazing.

A few flakes of snow came sizzling through the gale. More followed. They were hard as fine hailstones. When Doc flattened close to a rock spine to listen, the snow sounded like sand on the stone. He heard nothing.

He crept on. The snow shut Out visions beyond a few yards. It stuck to his bearskin trousers. It rattled off his metallic face like shot;

Suddenly he caught blurred movement in the whistling abyss. He flashed for it. His hands — hands in which steel bars became plastic as tin strips — were open and ready. His charge was that of a mighty hunter of the wild.

The next instant, Doc became quarry instead of hunter.

It was a polar bear he had rushed!

The animal bounded to meet Doc. It seemed clumsy. The awkwardness was only in its looks, however. Its speed was as tremendous as its size. It was the most terrible killer of the arctic!

Doc sought to veer aside. The footing was too slippery. Straight into the embrace of the polar monster, he skidded!

SOME MEN acquainted with the arctic regions maintain the polar bear will flee from a human being, rather than attack. Others cite instances when the bruins were known to have taken the aggressive.

The truth of the matter is probably covered by the words of a certain famous arctic explorer.

"It depends on the bear," he said.

The bear Doc had met was the attacking type.

It erected on its rear legs. It was far taller than Doc. It flung monster forepaws out to inclose Doc's bronze form. A blow from one of those paws would have crushed down a bull buffalo.

Twisting, half ducking, Doc evaded the paws. His sinewy fingers buried in the fur of the polar monster. A jerk, a lightening flip, put him behind the bear.

Doc's fist swung with explosive force. It seemed to sink inches in the fat flesh of the animal. Doc had struck at a nerve center where his vast knowledge told him there was a chance of stunning the monster.

Bruin was not accustomed to this style of fighting. This small man-thing had looked like an easy quarry. The bear snarled, showing hideous fangs. With a speed that was astounding, considering the size and weight of the beast, it whirled.

Doc had fastened himself to the back of the animal. He clung there solely by the pinching power of his great leg muscles. Both his arms were free.

He struck the polar bear just back of the small head. He slugged again, hitting a more vulnerable spot.

Snarling horribly, the terror of the northern wastes sank to the glacier. The animal had met more than its match.

Doc could have escaped easily. But he did not. They needed food and a sleeping robe. Here were both. Doc's metallic fists pistoned a half dozen more stunning blows. Slavering and snarling, the bear stretched out.

Doc's mighty right arm slipped over the bear's head, just back of the ears. It jerked. A dull pop sounded. A great trembling seized all the great, white monster. The fight was over.

Silence fell, except for the moan of the blizzard.

Was it a low, mellow, trilling sound, remindful of the song of some exotic bird, which mingled with the whine of the wind? Or was it but the melodious note of the gale rushing through the neighboring pinnacles of rock and ice?

A listener could not have told.

Doc's strange sound sometimes came when he had accomplished some tremendous feat. Certainly, there was ample cause for it now.

No man, bare handed, had ever vanquished a more frightful foe.

Doc skidded the huge, hairy animal to a near-by pock in the bleak stone. He searched until he had found boulders enough to cover the cache of potential food and bedding. He did not want other bears to rob him.

He now hurried to get Victor Vail.

He reached the crevasse where he had left the violinist.

Ten feet from it, a gruesome red sprinkling rouged the ice. Blood! It no longer steamed. It was frozen solid, crusted with flakes of snow.

Scoring in the ice, already inlaid with snow, denoted a furious fight.

No sign was to be seen of Victor Vail!

Chapter 14

CORPSE BOAT

LIKE A hound in search of a scent, Doc set off. He ran in widening circles. He found faint marks that might have been a trail. They led inland. They were lost beyond the following within two rods.

Doc positioned himself in the lee of a boulder the size of a box car. Standing there, sheltered a little from the blizzard, he considered.

An animal would have devoured Victor Vail on the spot! There had been no bits of cloth scattered about, no gory patches on the ice, such as certainly would have accompanied such a cannibalistic feast.

Something else loomed large in Doc's mind, too. The odor his supersensitive nostrils had detected at first!

Doc's mighty bronze form came as near a shiver as it ever came.

There had been a bestial quality about that scent. Yet it had hardly been that of an animal! Nor was it human, either. It had been a revolting tang, reminiscent of carrion.

One thing he began to realize with certainty. It had not been the polar bear!

Doc shrugged. He stepped out into the squealing blizzard. Inland, he journeyed.

The terrain sloped upward. The glacier became but scattered smears of ice. Even the snow did not linger, so great was the wind velocity.

Doc crossed a ridge.

From now on, the way led down. Progress was largely a matter of defying the propulsion of the gale.

Snow was drifting here. This was a menace, for it covered crevasses, a fall into which meant death. Doc trod cautiously.

In a day or two, perhaps in a week, when the blizzard had blown itself out, the haze above would disperse, and let the everlasting sun of the arctic summer beat down upon the snow. This would become slush. Cold would freeze it. A little more would be added to the thickness of the glacier. For thus are glaciers made.

Warily, Doc sidled along. He let the wind skid him ahead when he dared. Had he been a man addicted to profanity, he would have been consigning all glaciers to a place where their coolness probably would be a welcome change.

A hideous cracking and rumbling began to reach his ears. He could hear it plainly when he laid his head to the ice under foot.

It was the noise of the icepack piling on the shore. This uncharted land must be but a narrow ridge projecting from the polar seas.

Doc neared the shore.

An awesome sound brought him up sharp. It split through the banshee howl of the blizzard. It put the hairs On Doc's nape on edge.

A woman's shrieking!

DOC SPED for the sound. The snow collapsed under him unexpectedly. Only a flip of his Herculean body kept him from dropping to death on the snaggled icy bottom of the wide crevasse far below.

He ran on as though he had not just shaken the clammy claw of the Reaper.

A white mass hulked up before his searching golden eyes. It looked like a gigantic iceberg cast upon the shore. But it had a strangely man-made look.

A ship!

The ice-crusted hulk of the lost liner Oceanic!

Doc raced along the hull. It canted over his head, for the liner was obviously heeled slightly. A hundred feet, he ran. Another!

He came to an object which might have been a long icicle hanging down from the rail of the liner. But he knew it was an ice-coated chain. The links were a procession of knobs.

These knobs enabled Doc to climb. But the mounting was not easy. A greased pole would have been a stairway in comparison. The blizzard moaned and hooted and sought to pick him bodily from his handhold.

The woman was no longer shrieking.

Doc topped the rail. A scene of indescribable confusion met his eyes. Capstans, hatches, bitts, all were knots of ice. The rigging had long ago been torn down by the polar elements. Masts and wire-rope stays and cargo booms made a tangle on the deck. Ice had formed on these.

The forward deck, it was. A frozen, hideous wilderness! The gale whined in it like a host of ravenous beasts.

Doc reached a hatch. It defied even his terrific strength. The years had cemented it solidly.

The deck did not slope as much as he had thought. It was not quite level, though. He glided for the stern.

An open companion lured him. Snow was pouring in. Half inside, he saw the floor was seven feet deep in ice — snow which had formed a glacial mass through the years.

Doc tried another companion. The door was closed. It resisted his shove. His fist whipped a blow which traveled a scant foot. The door caved as though dynamite had let loose against it.

Doc pitched inside.

A wave of pungent aroma met his nostrils.

It was the smell of the thing which had stalked them on the glacier! It was horrible — yet there was a flowerlike quality to it.

Gloom lurked in the recesses of the cabin where he stood. Formerly, it had been a lounge. But the once luxuriant furniture was now but a rubble on the floor. Some fantastic monster might have torn it to bits, as though to line a nest.

Bones lay in the litter. Bones of polar bear, of seal. Flesh still clung to some. Others were half-eaten carcasses.

Doc sped ahead. He shoved through a door.

A SHUFFLING movement came from across the room. Doc charged the sound.

There was a squealing noise, ratlike, eerie. A door slammed. Doc hit the panel. It was metal. It smashed him back. His fists could not knock down an inch of steel. He wrenched at the lock. That defied him, too.

Doc sought another route for pursuit A companionway deposited him on a lower deck. He went forward.

It was more gloomy here. Doc's capable bronze fingers searched inside his parka. They brought out a flashlight of a type Doc himself had perfected.

This flash had no battery. A tiny, powerful generator, built into the handle and driven by a stout spring, supplied the current. One twist of the flash handle would wind the spring and furnish light current for some minutes. A special receptacle held spare bulbs in felt beds. There was not much chance of this light going out of commission.

The flash sprayed a slender, white-hot rod. Doc twisted the lens adjustment to widen the beam.

Doc went on. His flashlight cast a funnel of white. He stopped often to listen.

The derelict liner seemed alive with sinister shufflings and draggings. Once a bulkhead door banged. Again, there came another of the ratlike squeals.

Even Doc's sensitive ears could not tell whether that squeal was human! The flowerlike odor was stronger.

He came to a long passage. It was painted white. It might have been used but yesterday. For wood does not decay in the bitter cold of the arctic.

He reached the third-class dining room.

Here his eyes met a sight that would make any man cringe. It was the explanation of the loss of the Oceanic.

The room was filled with bodies — bodies of the passengers and crew of the ill-fated ship. Bullets had done their work, and the northern cold had kept this tableau of carnage inviolate!

Doc thought of Victor Vail.

So this was what had happened during the time the blind man was unconscious!

Pirates, human fiends, had taken over the Oceanic. They were as bloodthirsty a gang as ever swung a cutlass or dangled a victim from a yardarm on the Spanish Main. Wholesale murder, they had committed.

Keelhaul de Rosa, Ben O'Gard, Dynamite Smith — greater villains never trod a deck. And, like the corsairs they were, they had fallen out over the loot.

The whole thing might have been lifted from the parchment chronicles of another century and transplanted to our time.

Doc quitted the hall of murder.

Uncanny whisperings and shufflings still crept through the lost liner. Yet Doc saw nothing. it was as though the tormented souls of those butchered here were holding spectral conclave.