by George Worts
Back went his little pale-blue eyes to Julie. His straw-colored lashes flickered. “What happened?”
“He insisted on sleeping ashore, in a little stone cabin that was built on the edge of the lagoon by a Dutchman who mysteriously vanished twenty-six years ago. You can see the cabin through those palms — that little gray block. It has stone walls three feet thick and a reinforced concrete roof eighteen inches thick. He was locked behind a steel door an inch thick — the only door. There are no windows. A little after two this morning we heard him screaming and firing a sub-machine rifle. This morning when we went to look for him he was gone. The thing, whatever it is, crawled through a three-inch peephole in the steel door, killed and ate him, and got out again.”
Mr. Barling had stopped pouting. His face had gone slack, open-mouthed, with incredulity. He looked stupid.
“Somebody is playing a trick on you. A — a practical joke. Isn’t it obvious? Your one-legged man himself! Wasn’t it on the strength of his wild story that you came here?”
Julie said patiently, in a tired voice, “Hector, these are his teeth. Lucky — Captain Jones — locked him into that room last night. The padlock was on the outside. There was absolutely no way for Pegleg to get out. Houdini couldn’t have gotten out. We found the monster’s tracks in the sand, running from the lagoon to the cabin.”
“It’s utterly too fantastic to believe,” he panted. “A three-inch hole! It defies every natural law!”
Senga, at the crosstree, interrupted with a yell. He babbled in Malay.
Mr. Barling gasped. “What’s that? What’s he say?”
“He says watch the lagoon.” Singapore answered. “He says the seagulls are vanishing in the lagoon!”
Julie ran to the rail. The others joined her. They lined up along the rail and stared at the lagoon and the flock of seagulls wheeling and diving and raucously crying above it.
They saw a seagull drop down to the water. They saw it paddling about, looking for whatever food it had seen from the air. Suddenly, with a flapping of wings, a screech, the seagull vanished under water. It was as if an invisible hand had reached up and seized it!
Chapter 15: Into the Lagoon
THEY watched the spot where the gull had gone under, but the bird did not reappear. Sam watched the spot with his binoculars. The seagulls were flying wildly about, wildly screaming. They dived and swooped, but they did not alight. Sammy saw one of them coasting along a few inches above the water. In midflight, it stopped. With frantically beating wings, it went under.
Julie screamed: “What is it, Sam?”
“I can’t see anything!”
“Something must have reached up and grabbed it!”
Julie was beating on the rail with her fists. “Bryce, do you still call it an octopus? Do you realize those two gulls went under at least a hundred feet apart?”
“The octopus we’re dealing with might have a stretch of a hundred feet.”
“Did you see it send up a tentacle?”
“It might have been too quick for the naked eye.”
“Nonsense!” Mr. Barling blustered. “I was looking at that bird — at that precise spot. Whatever it was that grabbed that bird was invisible!”
“You can’t see it,” Pete Cringle said defiantly. “And you’ll never see it.”
The serang gave another yell.
The black dorsal fin of a large shark was slicing the surface in the inlet. It was traveling rapidly toward the center of the lagoon. They could see its body. It must have been fully twenty feet in length — a sleek brown shadow.
The black fin sliced through the water toward the spot above which the squawking gulls were still wheeling. The fin suddenly went under. And there was immediately a violent agitation in the water where the fin had last been seen. The deep blue of the lagoon at that spot became a churning of foam.
Sammy kept his glasses trained on that spot. The tail of the shark suddenly appeared above water. It seemed to slide into the air, as a sunken plank will rise from depth, as if propelled by a hidden force.
Up and up rose the slim, brown shape, with its tremendous flukes. Most of the shark was out of water now — fully fifteen feet of it. The flukes lashed about, the slender brown column shaking and heaving in a frenzy of fury. It was being held there as if by some irresistible, immovable force. For fully forty seconds it remained there, lashing about helplessly. Then, suddenly, the long brown body was brought smashing down upon the water. Spray shot fifty feet into the air.
Sam said quietly, “That broke its back.”
The great fish had vanished into the welter of foam. The agitation subsided. Pinkness stained the snowy foam. That area quieted until only a pink patch on the blue water remained to mark the site of that battle of giants.
Bryce Robbins said huskily, with the accents of relief, “It ate the shark.”
“Hector,” Mrs. Farrington sobbed, “we are leaving instantly.
“The tender will take you,” Mr. Barling panted. “I am staying. You men may go with Mrs. Farrington. Julie, that shark was all of twenty-five feet long!”
Julie helped her mother aboard the tender. When it had gone, Mr. Barling lit a cigar and walked excitedly up and down the deck, watching the lagoon. His face was flushed and perspiring. He said presently, “This is stupendous! It’s absolutely stupendous!”
He wanted to know more about Pegleg’s death: He asked numerous questions. Julie had never seen him so excited.
“I’d like to see that cabin.”
“Too dangerous,” Singapore said. “You’ve seen that thing in action.”
“But it doesn’t come ashore in the daytime.”
“It might,” Julie said. “And the natives are cannibals.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’re a hard man to convince,” Sam said.
“But, my dear fellow, cannibalism is a thing of the past! Years ago, there were cannibals in the South Seas. But these islands have all been civilized.”
“Little Nicobar,” Singapore said, “isn’t civilized. It’s too far off the beaten path.”
The patent medicine millionaire looked expectantly along the shoreline, the wall of the jungle with its many shades of green. He had an uneasy look. His pinkness had gone. He was pale and nervous. He was falling victim to the threat of danger that hung over Little Nicobar like a haze. He said suddenly:
“Let’s kill that thing! Let’s blow it to smithereens!”
“The purpose of this expedition,” Bryce Robbins said coolly, “is to bring it back alive. It is, under no circumstances, to be killed.”
Mr. Barling became thoughtful. Those who knew him well, his mannerisms, his tricks of eyes and mouth and hands, would have said that he was applying his genius to a problem.
He said suddenly, “Gentlemen, as I understand it, you have come here because of a report that Gurt Vandernoot left hidden a considerable fortune in pearls. Is that correct?”
“Only partly,” Bryce Robbins said, “I am primarily interested —”
“Yes. I know. Bringing it back alive. You take the monster — Mr. Shay takes the pearls. Frankly, I’d like to get in on this. I’d like to help.”
Bryce was coldly eyeing him. “How, Mr. Barling?”
“What we have here,” Mr. Barling said briskly, “is a somewhat complex problem. The problem is, to outwit and capture an amphibious creature of which we so far know very little. In spite of the most plausible theories, no one has yet advanced a plausible description. We know that it is powerful enough to kill a thirty-five foot shark, swift enough to pluck birds from the air, and ingenious enough to kill a man locked in a room the only access to which is a three-inch hole. We know, in short, that we are dealing with a devilish creature.”
“So what?” Lucky drawled.
“So this: We cannot capture the creature with ordinary nets or tackles. We must have elaborate equipment. We may have to charter a fleet of amphibian planes. And that is where I come in. I have thought i
t over, and I will gladly back this expedition to the limit.”
“You apparently haven’t heard,” Bryce Robbins said frigidly, “that I am underwriting this expedition.”
“Personally — or as the representative of some foundation?”
“Personally.”
“But, my dear fellow, you can’t possibly afford it. If necessary I can comfortably afford to spend a hundred thousand dollars, perhaps even more.”
“Why?” Bryce asked.
“Why? Why not? It would be a pleasure to contribute such a sum to such a worthy cause!”
“Applesauce! You want your name in the papers. That’s all. You want to be known as the patron of the Bryce Robbins Expedition to Little Nicobar!”
The patent medicine king said angrily, “Young man, it is sometimes inadvisable to look a gift horse —”
“Hector,” Julie said wearily, “Professor Robbins is the Rockefeller Institute man who inherited a fortune six months ago from an uncle. Don’t you remember discussing it at the time?”
The patent medicine monarch suddenly looked tired and old. But he rose nobly to the occasion. “I hope,” he said, “you won’t mind my staying and just looking on, professor?”
“As long as you don’t interfere.”
“I might even be helpful! Gentlemen! I have an idea! Under the Wanderer’s afterdeck is a big swimming tank. This tank is thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, and ten feet deep. The deck lifts out in sections and is stored, aft. It would contain your monster! And I would be delighted to put the Wanderer at your disposal.”
Julie said, without attempting to conceal her disappointment: “Then you aren’t pulling out?”
“Not much! None of you object, I hope.”
“If you play ball,” Sammy said, “nobody will object. This island is a Dutch possession. The Dutch are touchy about their islands. Once let them get wind that an American outfit is monkeying around Little Nicobar, and this place will crawl with gunboats. We’ll get bogged down in a million yards of red tape. While you’re here, don’t use your wireless transmitter.”
Mr. Barling cried affably, “That’s a promise, Mr. Shay! Anything else?”
“You’d better take Julie aboard the Wanderer.”
“Never!” Julie squealed. “I’m a member of this crew!”
“No, Julie. I promise we won’t sail off. We’re going to stay here to the finish. Do you mind telling me, Mr. Shay, what your plans are?”
Singapore Sammy had been gazing dreamily at the stone cabin. “We’re taking the Blue Goose into the lagoon tonight. We’re going to find out what that thing looks like.”
Julie wailed: “Without me?”
“Yes — without you; it’s too dangerous. We don’t know what we’ll be up against.”
Mr. Barling protested: “But can you see it at night?”
“Yes, better than in the daytime. This lagoon is so bright with phosphorous at night you can almost read a paper by it. Did you ever look at your hand with an X-ray machine? You get the same kind of effect. Anything moving in the lagoon you can see as a clean-cut shadow against the green glow. We’ll find out what this thing is, then we can make plans for trapping it.”
As if she were being prepared for sea battle, the Blue Goose was made ready for that dubious expedition into the lagoon. The deck was cleared of all unnecessary objects. All the firearms on board were brought on deck, oiled and loaded. The cutlasses were sharpened.
Each man was assigned his station, and Sammy gave them station drill.
He said, “We don’t know what this thing is going to be. We will probably get the scare of our lives. This isn’t going to be a Sunday-school picnic.”
Bryce said, “Remember this: the creature is not to be killed.” He objected to the use of pistols, revolvers and Thompson guns. “It looks to me more like an errand of slaughter than an expedition of investigation.”
“Don’t worry,” Lucky said, jeeringly, “we’ll promise to handle it with kid gloves.”
The remainder of the day was spent in bolting into place all the rail bayonets that had not been used — on the theory that if the creature could send a tentacle through a three-inch peephole, or thrust its entire body through a six-inch space between the bars was too generous.
When this task had been finished, the sun was setting. Ah Fong served supper on deck. The crew of the Blue Goose, pale and apprehensive, ate little. They watched night creep over the lagoon. Mist appeared in wisps and banners. As the darkness increased, the smoky green of the phosphorescence glowed more and more brightly.
The tide would turn at a few minutes after eight. It was Sammy’s intention to take the Blue Goose into the lagoon at precisely eight-thirty.
Sammy had a final talk with the assembled men. He said: “There’s no telling how dangerous this will be, because we don’t know what we’re up against. If any of you think we’re running too big chances, you can duck now — and nobody will hold it against you. You can stay on the Wanderer. Speak up!”
No one spoke. He said: “Don’t kid yourselves. This is dangerous. None of us may come back alive. The thing may even sink this schooner. And it wouldn’t be a pleasant death. I’m not trying to scare you, but I’m telling you — it’s dangerous.”
Still no one spoke. Every man was gazing through the black night at the swimming green haze of the lagoon.
Lucky said, “It’s eight-thirty.”
Singapore asked him if he had checked the engine thoroughly.
“Yeah. Every inch of her. Senga — Oangi — Pete! Stand by to raise the anchor.”
Lucky went below and started the engine. The muttering and blubbering of the exhaust drowned the sound of oars alongside. Sammy did not know that Julie was anywhere in the vicinity until he saw her blonde head shining like a halo in the light of the deck lamp.
A moment later Mr. Barling came aboard from another boat.
Julie was looking about her with shining, excited eyes. She saw men, like the ghosts of pirates, flitting about the deck. They were stripped to the waist. Each had a cutlass in his hand, a revolver or pistol strapped to his waist.
Sammy reached her just as Mr. Barling, puffing and gasping said, “Julie! This isn’t fair! You promised —”
“I promised to sleep aboard the yacht. I’m needed here. If any of these men get hurt, there’s no one to nurse them.”
Singapore told her curtly to get off the ship. Julie ran forward and hid in the shadows. A rumbling forward indicated that the anchor was up. A moment later Pete Cringle yelled: “She’s up and down.”
Senga, having returned aft, advanced the throttle and let in the clutch. The schooner forged ahead, the bows dipped slightly, then the anchor came clear of the bottom, and the chain was windlassed in.
Julie could not be found. Sam barked at Mr. Barling: “You’d better clear out, mister. We’re going into the lagoon.”
He saw that the patent medicine king was sweating and white. Mr. Barling was scared. Mr. Barling was terrified.
“I’ll s-stay!” he chattered.
Julie did not reappear until the schooner was well into the inlet. Sam said: “The place for you, baby, is in the crosstree. Scramble up there and keep a look-out.”
She picked up a cutlass and climbed to the crosstree. Sammy took a quick turn about the deck, to make sure everything was in readiness. Lucky Jones and Ah Fong were stationed in the bows. Sam gave Mr. Barling a station amidships, and furnished him with cutlass and revolver. Oangi and Pete Cringle were stationed amidships, one on the port, one on the starboard side. Senga was at the wheel. Bryce and Larry were at the taffrail.
Sammy had no station. He would go where he was needed.
With engine at slow speed, the Blue Goose entered the lagoon.
Chapter 16: The Monster Strikes
SINGAPORE SAMMY moved restlessly about the deck. The thin sinister mist dimmed the stars and reduced the glittering lights of the Wanderer, at anchor a mile away, to a blur.
At the crosstre
e, Julie suddenly cried: “Something in the water dead ahead! Moving this way! Coming to meet us!”
Sam shouted: “Can you make it out?”
Her answer was a hysterical scream: “No! No! It hasn’t a shape!”
He had run forward. Standing beside Lucky, he stared into the swirl of the mist, illuminated by the phosphorescence as if by green hell-fire.
Perfectly silhouetted against the bright green depths was the clear-cut black body of a small shark. It streaked off to starboard, leaving a trail of black bubbles in the green, and a swirling of the luminous water marking its passage.
Lucky said tensely: “I can’t see it!”
And Sam called: “Julie! Do you make it out?”
She cried: “It — it seems to be everywhere — a weird kind of dark — writhing around. But I can’t make it out. We’re on it!”
She stopped. In the emerald green effulgence he could see her slim body clearly. She was holding to the shrouds, leaning out, staring.
The schooner seemed to stagger slightly.
Lucky roared: “We’re aground! Senga! Hard a-starboard!”
And Sammy shouted, “No! Steady on’!”
Ah Fong, that placid Chinaman, suddenly uttered a scream. And Sammy simultaneously made a hideous discovery. A slimy ooze was creeping up about the ship, sliding up the sides, sliding between and past and over the steel bayonets!
Slipping, sliding, oozing through the bristling row of bayonets, the slime came aboard. It gleamed and glowed with a pale green fire of its own. It formed tentacles. These instantly became snakes, or eels, without heads, without eyes, without apparent guiding intelligence. The air was filled with that strange acid stench.
Sammy started aft at a run, shouting: “Full speed ahead! Shake this thing off!”
Behind him, Lucky yelled, “Good Lord, what is it?”
All about the ship men were shouting and hacking at the writhing, snake-like tentacles. As Sammy raced aft, he saw a great colorless column rise out of the sea at least twenty feet astern. It resembled a water-spout. It was a pillar of the smoldering green slime! It rose up, headless and horrible, just as the bodies of legendary sea serpents were said to rise.
