The Adventure Megapack

by Wildside Press

  Gibbs watched the three white men with rolling eyes, his blubber lips seldom opened in speech. He was the slave of them all, rowing hour after hour while they lolled in the stern sheets, catching their provender, cooking it, and dreading more and more, as they worked up to where they thought the island lay, that the voodoo of the dead man and the skull would surely be worked upon him for coming back into its province.

  * * * *

  Two more days passed, spent in coasting islands and looking through Gibbs’s eyes for familiar signs, searching the trees for one that bore a white object. Their cocksureness faded; they accused Gibbs of misleading them, of deliberately passing signs he knew, threatening him, shaking with malaria, burning with fever, their bones aching with the back breaking dengue.

  It was Raxon who, at dawn one morning, shook the rest—save Gibbs—and pointed out, across a wide stretch of golden water, an island with a ridge running lengthwise. The ridge was set with pines and on one of these, near the center, something caught the early light and flared like a ball of fire, then faded to white as the sun rose and the light slid down from the tree-tops.

  They gazed at it with jaws agape and straining eyes. It was the island of the skull!

  “Say nothing to the black till we get him ashore,” whispered Raxon. “He’ll not notice it if we set our course right. If he knew it he might balk.”

  “Let him,” said Skinner. “Let him try to thwart us.”

  But they took Raxon’s advice, distracting Gibbs’s attention till they had started when he, with his back to the bows of the pinnace, could see nothing. Yet he sensed something. As they neared the shores and looked for a landing, he suddenly stopped rowing.

  “Go on,” ordered Skinner, but the negro’s face seemed to have fallen in, the broad nostrils seemed pinched, the cheeks hollowed, and the flesh was gray and beaded with sweat.

  “It de place,” he muttered. “Voodoo brought us here.”

  “Is that the creek you rowed up with Swayne and Hoyle?” demanded Skinner. Gibbs nodded mutely. “Then go up it.”

  “No, suh. If I go ashore dat place I die fo’ suah. No, suh! I don’ go.”

  Skinner whipped out the pistol he had primed and kept beside him on the stern seat.

  “You’ll die now, if you don’t go on,” he said grimly. “Row.”

  “Buccra,” pleaded Gibbs, while the tide set them down, past the creek entrance. “Voodoo on dat place. You all die suppose you go. I not go.”

  His oars trailed. Skinner raised the pistol. The flint lifted. “Take up those oars, you dog!”

  Gibbs looked pleadingly at Raxon and Tremaine, but got no sign of pity. The same thing was in the mind of all of them. They had sighted the skull. They could find the excavation that had never been filled in. He could do little more for them. They had never meant him to share the loot and become a danger to them. He was doomed.

  Suddenly the negro sprang up and leaped overside, swimming out into the channel. Skinner sighted deliberately and fired. The bullet struck Gibbs at the base of the skull and he sank instantly.

  “Let the ’gators eat him,” said Skinner. “Tremaine, will you row.”

  The giant pulled vigorously and they passed in, landing at what seemed a convenient place. Through cactus and agave, through thickets of palmetto and thorny briars, they fought their panting way each intent, in that mad race, on reaching the ridge and finding the pine, heedless of the others. Once they passed a pool where alligators floated like great logs and, skirting it, Skinner narrowly missed being bitten by a water moccasin. He slashed off its head with the cutlass he carried as a brush cutter.

  The fever caught Tremaine and he pulled up, shaking and spent. The others did not heed him until they heard his exultant shout. He had found the hole dug by the four men who had died. It was half full of water.

  Now they hunted under the hot sun like dogs on a rich scent, thrashing through the brush, seeking caves in a likely looking ledge of sandstone. Noon came and exhausted, torn, bloody, grimed and soaking wet with their own hot sweat, their tongues hanging out of swollen lips, they still pursued the quest, crawling into smothering holes, prodding others with boughs.

  There was no sound from the skull that now and then attracted their glance. Once Skinner shook his fist at it, swearing the thing was set there to mock them. They had brought nothing to eat or drink from the boat and none would go back for it, slaking thirst in a hole dug beside a pool too foul for them to risk without some filtration. By mid-afternoon they were done and they flung themselves down exhausted.

  The sun began to sink and a wind rose, moaning through the pines. Alligators began to bellow in the lagoons, mudhens called weirdly and once again the long flights of cranes commenced, with the ducks coming in for the night feeding. The buzzards they had seen all day, whenever they happened to look skyward, were still circling, soaring on extended pinions, effortless, afloat rather than flying, watching for carrion.

  Tremaine was close to Raxon, who was sick with disappointment and fatigue, sick with the fever, despondent, realizing that they were practically castaways in these fever-ridden, mosquito infested swamps.

  “The black was right,” said Tremaine huskily. “This place has a conjure, or a curse, or both, upon it. We’re fooled. Skinner made hint to me, if we should find the loot, that there would be more for two than for three. But I checked him and he saw I was not with him. You were right, Raxon, he is a scoundrel.”

  “Aye—did he not want me to join with him against you? Now he turns to you to help him against me. If either one of us fell for his plans he would murder the survivor in his sleep. ‘All for one and that one, Skinner,’ is his motto. Much good it will do him. There’s nothing to divide.”

  “It must be hereabouts,” said Tremaine doggedly, “but we can’t find it after dark and ’twill be that in an hour. Better get back to the boat. I’m famished and my throat aches for a swig of liquor. Come on.”

  They both spoke to Skinner who grunted and slowly followed them down. Tremaine led, traversing the ridge to avoid much of the worst of the thorny, prickly undergrowth and to strike down some gully to the creek.

  * * * *

  The twilight purpled, the sun swimming in a mist that turned it to a scarlet disc, then to a crimson, lighting luridly bank after bank of clouds that reached half-way to the zenith. The wind soughed mournfully, coming from the southwest with sudden piping gusts. The air seemed cold.

  Tremaine turned into a sandy draw and abruptly halted with an exclamation. Fairly in their path was a chest, metal bound, substantial, big enough to hold the ransom of three kings. With hoarse shouts they all raced toward it, trying the lid, flinging back the hasp before they noticed there was no padlock.

  The chest was empty—empty as a broken gourd!

  A gust of wind came whistling down the draw, driving grains of sand before it. Suddenly a high-pitched scream sounded, exultant, mocking, devilish. Instinctively they looked around and up. Plainly from the head of the gully where they stood they could see the dead pine. The skull seemed to gaze in their direction, the sunset dying it blood-red from dome to gaping jaws, the eye sockets purple.

  Again the scream came and Tremaine wheeled and started to bolt down the draw, plunging through the soft sand like a startled bullock. Skinner stood with his face turned up, snarling half in defiance, half in fear, while Raxon’s little eyes glittered in his weasel face like those of a trapped animal.

  With that fearful cry the buzzards seemed to wheel lower, the sky to darken. Slowly Tremaine came back as the screams ceased, half ashamed of his panic. The wind was still blustery and all about them the palmettos thrashed as the three stared at the empty chest, the end of their hopes.

  “’Tis Swayne’s folks! They’ve beaten us to it,” croaked Skinner. “And you to blame or ’t, Raxon!”

  “You lie!” It needed but small spark to set the tinder of their tempers aglow.

  Skinner caught up his cutlass and leaped at Raxon, the blade gleaming
red in the rays that streamed into the mouth of the gully, his shadow springing grotesque in front of him. Raxon drew his pistol from his belt and fired it pointblank, but the priming was poor, dampened, perhaps by the sweat that had poured out of him all day. There was only a fizz and a flash in the pan. With a squeak of terror he flung the useless weapon at Skinner, turned and ran, dodging behind Tremaine.

  Raxon was no fighter.

  Furious, frenzied with disappointment, Skinner cursed at Tremaine for being in his way, and cut at him as he seemed disposed to shield Raxon. The blow sank deep in the giant’s defending forearm and the hot blood spurted. With a roar of rage, the gunner caught the cutlass blade, regardless of its edge against his palms, and wrested it away. Then his bleeding hands clutched at Skinner’s throat, choking him.

  Skinner’s own hands sought to tear away the frightful grip that shut off blood and breath. He wheezed as his eyes seemed popping out, his body writhing while he strove to reach Tremaine with kicks that the other did not feel. The strangling appeared for the moment to deprive Skinner of reason; he fought without thought of weapons, striving only to loose the vise about his neck.

  Raxon stood apart, watching the struggle. There was barren gain for him now in what he had meant to bring about, but he exulted in Skinner’s plight. Tremaine’s strength could be used to good advantage in getting away from the place.

  Suddenly Skinner fell, limp to all seeming, and Tremaine fell over him to his knees, shaking him as a bulldog might shake its victim. Blood was pouring out of Skinner’s mouth and nose; his face was almost black. Yet he had one blow left in him, a last convulsive attempt to best the other. Tremaine’s grip may have slackened in the fall. Skinner’s groping hands found the hilt of Tremaine’s two-edged dirk that slid easily from its sheath. Deep into Tremaine’s belly Skinner thrust the keen steel. The gunner toppled forward, fairly on top of his victim. His grasp on Skinner’s throat relaxed as the blood gushed from him, but those steel-strong fingers had done their work. The last of Skinner’s strength went in that stab.

  Raxon watched Tremaine writhing on top of the other until he stretched out, shuddered and lay still. He had retrieved and reprimed his pistol and now he carefully sent a bullet crashing through Skinner’s forehead.

  His face was that of a balked devil as he turned to go down to the boat, leaving the two behind him on the blood-soaked sand. The last of the sun had left the gully. It was swiftly dark. All about him the palmettos rustled and clashed as the wind whooped. Out of the darkness the two buzzards had dropped and lit at the head of the draw.

  Raxon struggled on as best he could toward the creek, sure that Tremaine had chosen wisely when he picked the gully and that he had only to follow it down to find the water and then the boat. He looked forward to a great draught of brandy. He was in bad shape and felt the fever coming on as he staggered and stumbled through the brush, tripping, held back by thorns, stumbling into bayoneted agaves.

  On the brink of the creek, now at low tide, something rustled and struck at him through the soft leather of his Spanish boots. He felt the blow and then the fangs and, though he saw nothing, he visioned a stumpy serpent gliding away. He knew what it was—a moccasin—perhaps the very snake that had slipped out of the skull.

  Swiftly the virus ran through his tired body. He felt sick and weak and sat down on a log. Instantly it moved and, with frightful swiftness, flailed with an armored tail that smote Raxon from his feet, his legs broken. Then the bull alligator clamped his jaws upon his prey and waddled toward the creek, dragging the clawing thing that gibbered until first mud, then water, filled its mouth.

  High up on the ridge, as the ripples spread out, the palmettos clashed together, the wind whooped, and, high above it, a scream came from the top of the pine where the skull dimly showed. It startled the gluttonous buzzards for a moment; then they went on tearing, gobbling in the dark.

  * * * *

  A week later, a turtling sloop from Georgetown came to the island and the brother of Swayne’s widow, with a cousin and the younger brother of Hoyle landed. They did not go near the gully, where the buzzards had gathered and glutted themselves on rare food, but passed the excavation and, without looking for the chest, went on to the tree of the skull. There was a fair breeze in the pinetops. The three men rolled up the sleeves of their shirts, two took up axes, while the third glanced aloft.

  “I thought you said it screamed when the wind blew?” he asked Swayne’s brother-in-law.

  “It does, but the wind has to be from the southwest and this has quartered from the usual. Moreover it has to be almost a gale to make the device work. It’s simple enough. Swayne wrote that he had borrowed it from the Indians of the Isthmus, who use it on the tree-graves of their chiefs. The skull sets in a fork and they made the whistle of a tube, a funnel and a tongue of thin metal, to rest in the crotch below it.

  “Swayne wrote he never meant to bury the chest in the hole he made them dig, lest they blab about it, but he did not think of the tree until he had climbed it with the skull he meant to set there as both guide and warning. You have to mount half-way before you note the opening that tells you it is hollow. They could not see him from the hole where they were busy digging and he had Hoyle send up the contents with rope and a sack he made of his shirt. Swayne hauling and pouring the stuff into the hollow of the tree. Well, let’s get at it. It should be but a light task.”

  The keen blades bit into the dead wood fast and, presently, the pine toppled and fell crashing to the ground, hollow for half its length. The stump was a heaped casket of objects that gleamed and shone and sent off dancing rays of colored light. From the trunk there rolled other precious things, while more remained within. Gold and jewels winked more brightly as the dust settled.

  Through it one of the three saw the skull bound from the ground and, after its leap, go rolling down into a nearby gully. Then he started to help gathering up the loot.

  SIX SHELLS LEFT, by Allan R. Bosworth

  When he shipped into the navy that bleak December morning, “Soapy” McDowell wasn’t half as anxious to serve his country as he was to leave it. You know the old gag that ninety-nine out of a hundred recruits pull—about enlisting two jumps ahead of the sheriff? Well, it was largely true in the case of Soapy—known professionally as Professor J. Pendleton McDowell, medium.

  It wasn’t Soapy who made up his mind regarding a naval career. It was Chief Boatswain’s Mate Hank Miller. On recruiting duty, strolling down the dimly-lighted street on the way to his boardinghouse, Hank was suddenly attracted by sounds of a near riot in the crumbling old house that sat back behind the chinaberry trees. The structure was dark, and Hank paused at the sagging gate and listened.

  “Fake!” someone shouted. “Grab him!”

  “Just a moment, please—”

  “Police! Police!”

  Lights flashed on suddenly, and pandemonium broke loose with a crash of overturned chairs and sudden, profane cries. A woman screamed and a solemn-toned bell rang out, then fell to the floor with a flattened, discordant note.

  Hank Miller had been on recruiting duty two months and he chafed for action. He bounded up the walk. There was so much noise within that no one heard him leap upon the porch and throw open the door.

  Against the farther wall a tall, pasty-faced man shrank. A dozen men and several women moved toward him menacingly; they laid hands on him and dragged him across the overturned table.

  “Hold on a minute!” shouted Hank in a voice such as only boatswain’s mates can develop. It boomed out over the sounds of conflict, carrying an authoritative note. The embattled ones turned and the sight of a man in uniform calmed their anger. An ominous quiet fell for a few seconds, then everyone tried to speak at once.

  “Pipe down!” ordered the sailor. He indicated the tall man. “What’s going on here?”

  The tall man bowed. “We were in the midst of a seance,” he explained. “We were communicating with a departed spirit—this lady’s Uncle Abner, I beli
eve it was. Suddenly someone broke the chain and accused me of faking. They threw over the table and turned on the light. They seized me.”

  “He was ringing the bell and operating the thingamajig that raps on the table,” accused a shrill-voiced woman. “He was doin’ it with his toes. Look!”

  She indicated Professor McDowell’s feet. Hank Miller looked down and saw there was no shoe on the right one. The sock ended about midway to the toes, and somehow, those toes appeared extremely capable and dexterous. They undoubtedly were longer than the average toe is wont to be.

  “He’s a fake, all right. We’re going to turn him over to the police,” a man asserted.

  Hank saw the pleading in the tall man’s eyes.

  “Wait a minute, folks,” he answered. “Maybe he is a faker, but I don’t guess any crime has been committed, and this is no time to be putting able-bodied men in jail for nothing. Let me take him in charge. Clear out of here and I’ll make a sailor out of him tomorrow. He’ll return your money cheerfully, won’t you, doc?”

  “Er—not doctor, my dear sir, not doctor,” the tall man protested. “Professor, if you please, Professor J. Pendleton McDowell.”

  “You’ll return the money—cheerfully?” insisted Hank.

  “Well, not exactly cheerfully,” admitted the professor. “But I shall return it. Kindly step forward, folks. Fifty cents each.”

  The crowd left. McDowell looked at Hank Miller.

  “Well?” the Professor asked.

  “Well, it’s up to you!” the sailor answered. “Somebody’s going to report this to the police. There’s the jail—and here’s the navy. You’re within draft age, and the army’ll get you in the long run. Why not get in a good outfit?”

  “I’ll choose the navy!” McDowell said. “Let’s go.”

  He limped across the room to where his other low-cut shoe lay. Much to Hank’s amazement, he thrust his foot within it without so much as stooping to hold it or untie its laces.