The Polar Treasure - Robeson Kenneth - Страница 26
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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.
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