Doc Savage - Mystery On Happy Bones Part 12

"Cross your fingers," Hannah added.

Doc seized her. He picked her up bodily, hauled her out of the pilot seat, back into the cabin. As far back in the cabin as he could get.

A lot of bullets, three or four hundred, went through the pilot compartment where the girl had been. The other motor stopped. Some of the bullets were incendiaries. The wing fuel tank took fire.

The other seaplane, all flaps set, moaned past very slowly, not more than fifty feet above them.

"Into the water," Doc said.

The water felt hot. Almost scalding hot. That was probably due to the nervous condition of their bodies.

Doc kept hold of Hannah until he saw that she was an expert swimmer.

Hannah said, "The south end of the cliff seems nearer."

"That is right," Doc agreed, and they swam.

The seaplane circled back. They did not let it get too close before they dived. For a while, the drumming of bullets on the water was hard on their eardrums.

On top again, they swam hard. A few rifle shots were fired at them from the seaplane as it circled frantically to get at them again. They ignored those, then dived as the craft got close enough for the machine guns, 45-caliber weapons, to start emptying.

THEY got ash.o.r.e during the next breather. There was a beach of dark coral sand, big volcanic boulders, and jungle. They ran and climbed for a while.

The seaplane landed on the sea and began picking up the parachutists.

"The luck of Happy Bones," Hannah said, as if the statement should mean something.

Doc asked, "What do you mean?"

"The reputation of the place," she told him. "A legend that has been the heritage of Happy Bones Island for at least two centuries. A legend that says only the evil are lucky here. They say that Happy Bones is the devil's own and that he looks after his own while they are here."

"This is Happy Bones, then?"She glanced at Doc Savage. She smiled ruefully. "Look, I know what you are thinking. Why don't you say it? Why don't you say, what are you doing here, skunk? Go ahead!"

"You took off from Was.h.i.+ngton with sparks and brimstone," Doc said.

"And now I've got repentance. That's right." She sighed. "Do you ever hit people in the eye for being fools? If so, I offer an eye. Go ahead and swat me."

"What changed your notions?" Doc inquired, curiously.

"Thought," she said. "Thought is great stuff, if you get around to it in the right places. That's my trouble. I never indulge in any in the right places."

The plane had picked up four men and was after the others.

"You decided," said Doc, "that I was not a crook."

"I don't know whether you are a crook and I might not care," Hannah told him. "The point is, I decided you were not out to hang a shandy on me."

"That is a strange viewpoint."

"The crook part? Me not caring whether you're a crook? Oh, I didn't mean that literally." She shrugged.

"A crook is a comparative state. Depends on how you think. All of my ancestors have been pirates, and they thought pirates were O. K. O. K., but you had to watch them."

"I see."

"No," she said. "No, you don't. And don't start bothering me. Don't get me to thinking about it."

"Why not?"

"Because," she said, "it worries me. It gets me to wondering if I'm normal like other people. I haven't had a normal upbringing, and I know that makes me a funny kind of goat. But I don't like to think I'm crazy, or something."

Doc's face was expressionless, to hide a grin. He rather liked the girl, which was a little surprising, because usually he was scared of them for one reason or another.

"All right," he said. "It was nice of you to land and try to rescue me."

"It was nice of you to haul me out of the pilot's seat before the machine-gun bullets got there," she said.

"Now that we've scratched each other's backs over the mutual life-saving, I will answer the question you asked awhile ago."

"What question?"

"Yes, this is Happy Bones Island."

THEY climbed for a while. The going was steep, very rough. The boulders were enormous, the jungle remarkably thick.

The lava formation, Doc noted, was unusual. He was something of a geologist expert. His knowledge ofthe field probably was not as specialized as that of the gaunt, big-worded Johnny Littlejohn, but it was fully as broad. The lava was not all the conventional type. Some of it was; even the greater part was. But there were unusual characteristics. He was interested.

"Unique formations," he remarked.

"Made for unique people," Hannah said. "You should see the little caves all over the place."

"Unusual?"

"Supposed to be. I've heard about them. The pirate Smiths used them in the old days. Occasionally, a government would send an expedition to get revenge for s.h.i.+ps they had looted. When the worm turned on them, the Smiths would hide out."

"But you have not seen much of the island?"

"This," said Hannah, "is the first time I have ever been here. But I have flown over the island. The last time, they shot at me!"

"With rifles?"

Hannah laughed grimly.

"With a rifle," she said, "that fired a bullet about three inches thick."

"Antiaircraft? What were they doing with antiaircraft guns on the island?"

"They just had one." Hannah did not think it was unusual, apparently. "Stony Smith is liable to have anything unusual. If he thought he wanted an antiaircraft gun to play with, he'd buy one. And to see how it worked, he'd probably take pot shots at the first plane that came past."

They came to a point from which the water was visible through the jungle. Hannah's plane had burned almost to the water now, not sinking, but burning like a boat. It would go down shortly.

"Thirty-six thousand dollars," she said. "And secondhand, at that."

"The plane?"

"Yes. It was almost new, though. Millionaire got it, then got mad because the government wouldn't let him fly around wherever he wanted to. I paid thirty-six thousand. It cost him about seventy."

They climbed some more.

The seaplane had about finished the job of picking up the parachutists.

Hannah looked all around, listened. "Strange," she remarked, "that no Smiths have shown up. They are thicker than fleas on Happy Bones."

"What Smiths?" asked Doc.

"The black ones."

Doc showed by his expression that he did not understand.

"The natives of the island are black. Slave descendants. Their parents were brought from Africa, or stolen from s.h.i.+ps on which they were being brought from Africa, long ago. As far as I know, the onlywhite resident on the island is Stony Smith."

"You think they should be around by now?"

"Of course," She nodded vehemently. "The black men on these islands are the most curious people in the world. They would have rushed over here to investigate."

"Is there a village?"

She nodded. "On the other side of the island. But they have had time to get to us."

Doc made no comment.

"It's very strange," Hannah insisted.

THE seaplane now finished its rescue work. The last parachutist was hauled aboard. After that, the plane sat for a while on the sea. They were probably having a conference inside.

"I'll tell you why I was flying around here when this thing started," Hannah said. "It was because I am convinced that Stony Smith is at the bottom of the mystery."

They watched the seaplane start moving. Blasting noise of its motors came to their ears. The craft gathered speed, began hitting the tops of waves, finally bounced into the air.

"Now they'll come back and try to machine gun us," Hannah said. "When that fails, they'll get the blacks on our trail."

But the plane kept going. It bored into the west. It climbed a little, but not much, as if it did not have far to go and was wasting no time getting there.

It did not come back. It was still going into the west when sight and sound of it were finally lost.

Doc Savage looked at Hannah.

"What island," he asked, "lies to the west?"

She stared at him as if the answer was going to make her ill.

"Geography Cay," she said.

"Your island?"

"Yes."

"Do you," Doc asked, "have the slightest idea of what this is all about?"

"No."

"You say," Doc persisted, "that you did some thinking on the flight down from Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"Yes."

"Did you happen to think of what the green parrot and its nest could mean?"She shook her head mutely. She did not look as if she had words.

Chapter XI. ERROR, NOT SLIGHT.

COLONEL JOHN-RENNY-RENWICK was a very large man, but no one ever noticed his size because of three other freaks about his appearance. First, he had a perpetually long and sad face, a face invariably wearing the expression of a man who was about to attend the funeral of a good friend. Second was his fists, which would hardly go in gallon pails. And third, his voice, which was something t.i.tanic. It was a voice that had been known to startle an auditorium filled with engineers who were used to loud noises. Renny was in best voice as he bellowed into the radio microphone, "What's gone wrong? Why aren't we hearing any word from Doc?"

Ham put his fingers in his ears, asked, "Why use the radio? Johnny's plane is only a mile away."

Monk also had his fingers in his ears.

The two pets, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry, went under different seats in the plane.

Into the microphone, Renny bellowed, "What- Oh, that was just Ham being what he thinks is smart.

What about Doc? I know you said he was going to hide in one of the seaplanes of this gang."

In the other plane, Johnny Littlejohn was uncomfortable. He told Renny over the radio, "Well, something maybe went wrong."

"This is a h.e.l.l of a time for something to go wrong! Holy cow!"

"The reason I called you,"