Страница 21 из 38
That job completed, he extracted a large leather pouch from the plane. It was this which contained the stuff Doc had told Joh
"Doc foresees about everything!" he declared.
Joh
The unique weapon was the invention of Doc Savage. They were manufactured secretly for him. Only his five friends and aids were supplied with them.
Joh
THE swamp was an indescribable tangle. Vines and creepers made a more impenetrable mass than any barbed-wire entanglement Joh
In the next hour, Joh
"I can see why a criminal fleeing into this district would be safe!" he muttered. "Nobody could get in to grab him!"
Joh
It was dark. Although moonlight pressed brightly upon the top of the jungle mat, few of the beams penetrated to the treacherous mess of foul water, mud, roots, and creepers that formed the earth.
Joh
He wet his lips. The 'gators had a grisly way of grabbing a man's leg, then whirling over and over until the leg was torn completely off.
Then, in the neighborhood, Joh
Apparently it was a child sobbing. He strained his ears. It was a child sobbing!
Puzzled, wary, Joh
Huddled in the middle of the glade, as if seeking the moonlight, was a small boy. The tot could not be more than four. He was scared. An owl hooted stentoriously at the glade edge, and the little boy emitted a series of squawls. He could not have made a bigger racket were he being devoured alive.
There seemed to be no one else near.
Joh
The little boy saw him. His sobbing stopped. He raced for Joh
"Ise losted!" he proclaimed in a small and trembling voice.
"That's tough, skipper!" Joh
"How did oo know?" the tot inquired blankly.
Joh
However, Joh
Racking his brain, Joh
They had covered most of a mile when affairs took a surprising turn.
A flashlight sprayed against Joh
"There he is!" bellowed a coarse voice. "It's what I told you! That dirty, voodoo worshippin' swamp man kidnaped him! Lucky we happened onto him before he got away with the kid!"
"Daddy!" cried the tot at the coarse voice.
"Put the kid down!" snarled a second man behind the flashlight.
Joh
Joh
"Teach 'im to go kidnapin' kids!" bellowed the coarse voice. "Kill 'im! Blow his head off!"
A shotgun loosened a terrific gush of flame almost in Joh
Chapter X. VOODOO'S DOMAIN
JOHNNY thought faster than the man with the gun—by about eighteen inches. The shotgun charge missed him that much. With a bound, he was out of the flashlight glare.
The flash stabbed wildly in pursuit of him. In his excitement, the man who held it let his finger slip off the button. Darkness clapped down.
It was the rush of sepia blackness that gave Joh
Why was this father so enraged and so certain his small son had been kidnaped? What had caused him to leap to the conclusion so swiftly? Why had he been determined to slay Joh
What made the enraged man act as if Joh
The wrathful father had mistaken Joh
The father thought his tot was being seized for a hideous voodoo ceremony!
Joh
He darted forward. He scooped up the small boy. He sprang into the brush. The father dared not shoot, even should he have had the chance, for fear of hitting his offspring.
The shaver was quiet. He seemed to be enjoying the excitement. This was not to Joh
"Bellow for your dad, skipper!" he commanded. "Make him think I'm eating your ears off!"
Obediently, the boy let out a piercing howl for "Daddy!"
"He's over there!" shouted the frenzied father. "Follow him! Don't let the voodoo devil get away with my son!"
Joh
"Kinda onery to fool your old man like this," he told the shaver. "But maybe it'll teach him not to be so sudden on the trigger. If I had jumped a little less quick, the world would have lost its second best geologist."
Joh
A few minutes later, he stopped his dawdling. He put every ounce of effort into racing through the swamp with the small boy.
For bloodhounds were now on his trail! Evidently they had been secured from the trading post. His trailers gained rapidly!
"This isn't quite so fu
Mile after mile, Joh
He reached a break in the jungle where moonlight poured down like transparent silver.
Suddenly a man appeared before him. The fellow jabbed out a long-barreled squirrel rifle.
"Who yo' be?" he rumbled.
JOHNNY carefully kept his face expressionless. This was exactly what he had been hoping for! The man was one of the yellowish-brown, monkeylike swamp clan!
True, the fellow was the largest of the tribe Joh