"I certainly do. I must confess my contact with you thus far has been very enjoyable and the excitement highly exhilarating. I should like to continue in your company. My experience on the expedition which I took to New Zealand with Jerome Coffern should render me of some value."
"You speak any of the native dialects?"
"One or two."
To Doc’s lips came words of a language native to the South Seas. Bittman replied, although rather uncertainly, in the same tongue.
But Doc still hesitated. He did not want to lead this man into danger, although the fellow seemed pathetically eager to go along.
"Perhaps I can assist in finding natives who accompanied Jerome Coffern and Kar to Thunder Island," Bittman said hopefully. "Talking to those men should help us."
That decided Doc.
"You shall go with us if you wish," he said.
PREPARATIONS were pushed swiftly. Doc’s five men knew what they might possibly need.
Monk took a unique, extremely portable chemical laboratory which he had perfected.
Long Tom took some parts from which he could create an astounding variety of electrical mechanisms.
Renny, the engineer, took care of charts and navigation instruments, as well as machine guns — for Renny was a remarkable rapid-firer marksman.
Johnny posted himself on the geology and natives of the district they were to visit, while Ham cleared up aspects of law.
"We’ll have to wait two days on a liner from the Pacific coast," Renny complained.
"I have a scheme to remedy that!" Doc assured him.
The afternoon was young when they took off in Doc’s speed plane. This craft was a latest design, tri-motored, low-wing job. The landing gear folded up into the wings, offering little air resistance. It had a cruising speed of about two hundred miles an hour.
It was the final word in aircraft.
The ship climbed rapidly. At sixteen thousand feet, it found a favorable air current. The Appalachian Mountains squirmed below. Later, clouds cracked open to give a sight of Pittsburgh.
The passengers rode in comfort. The fireproof cabin permitted them to smoke. The cabin was also soundproofed. The all-metal ship had a gasoline capacity that, in an emergency, could take it nonstop across the Atlantic.
Doc flew. He was as accomplished at flying as at other things. His five friends were also pilots of better than average ability.
At Wichita, Kansas, Doc landed to refuel, and to telephone long-distance to the San Francisco office of the shipping firm which owned the Sea Star, the liner which Kar’s men had boarded.
The Sea Starwas already some hundreds of miles offshore, the owners informed him.
It was night when they swooped down upon an airport near Los Angeles.
"This is what I call traveling!" Oliver Wording Bittman said admiringly.
They took on sandwiches. Monk purchased a can of tobacco and cigarette papers. The fuel tanks were filled to capacity with high test. Bittman went off with the word he was going to shop for some medicine effective against air sickness.
In the meantime, workmen had been supplanting the plane’s wheels with long floats. A tractor hauled it to the water. Doc had purposefully selected a flying field near the shore. The whole thing required less than two hours.
Taking the air, Doc nosed straight out into the Pacific.
"Good Lord!" Bittman gulped. "Are we going to fly the ocean?"
"Not unless Renny has forgotten how to navigate, and Long Tom can’t take radio bearings," Doc replied. "We’re overtaking the Sea Star."
"But the plane — "
"The owners of the Sea Star, at my request, radioed the captain to lift the plane aboard his craft."
Long Tom worked continuously over the radio equipment, his pale fingers flying from dial to dial. Periodically, he called to Renny the exact direction from which the Sea Star’sradio signals came, as disclosed by the directional loop aлrial he was using. It was ticklish business, flying directly to a ship so far out to sea.
DAYLIGHT had come again before they sighted the Sea Star. The liner was steaming in a calm sea.
Doc landed near by. He taxied expertly into the lee of the massive hull. A cargo boom swung over. Lines dropped from its end. Doc secured these to stout steel eyes which had been built — with thought of this very purpose — into the speed plane.
Passengers crowded the rails and cheered as the plane was hoisted aboard the liner. Curious speculation was rife. Doc’s bronze, giant figure created the sensation it always did.
After seeing his plane lashed down on the forward deck, Doc closeted himself with the Sea Star’smaster.
"You have four desperate men aboard," he explained. "Here are their pictures." Doc exhibited the telephoto copies of the passport photographs of Kar’s four men.
The ship captain eyed them. He gave a gasp of surprise.
"Those four men transferred to a small, but very speedy and seaworthy yacht which overhauled us yesterday!" he declared.
"Then we’re out of luck for the time being," Doc murmured, his powerful voice showing none of the disappointment he felt.
Doc now described Gabe Yuder — repeating Bittman’s word-picture of the man. "Is such a fellow aboard?"
"I do not believe so," replied the commander. "There is no one by the name of Gabe Yuder, or Kar, and no one answering the description you have just given me."
"Thank you," replied Doc.
He left the captain’s cabin slowly and conveyed the bad news to his companions.
"But how on earth did they know we were coming?" Oliver Wording Bittman murmured, twirling the watch-chain scalpel about a forefinger.
"Yes — how did they know?" Monk growled.
"Kar must have had some one in New York shadowing us," Doc offered. "When we took off by plane, Kar received the news and put two and two together. Possibly the fast yacht which took his men off was a rumrunning vessel he got in contact with through underworld channels."
"Well, what do we do about it?" Renny inquired.
"The only thing left to do — tangle with Kar on Thunder Island."
THE following days aboard the Sea Starwere nothing if not monotonous. Doc and his friends had rambled the world too much for an ordinary ocean voyage to prove interesting.
They did not know what Kar might be doing. Further conversation with the master of the Sea Starconvinced Doc the yacht which had taken Kar’s men aboard was very fast indeed — speedier even than the liner!
"The fiend may be ahead of us!" Bittman wailed.
"Probably is," Doc admitted.
When some hundreds of miles from New Zealand, Doc could have taken a short cut by transferring to the air. But at the moment the Sea Starwas bucking a South Sea gale, a thing of whistling winds filled with shotty spray, and gigantic waves which all but topped the bridge.
The plane was fortunate to exist, lashed down on the forward deck. It could not possibly have been lowered over-side, so as to take off. And the Sea Starwas not equipped with catapults for launching planes, as are some modern ocean greyhounds.
So Doc remained aboard.
Auckland, the Sea Star’sport of call in New Zealand, was a welcome sight. The water was calm enough in the harbor to permit the unloading of Doc’s plane, although the gale still raged.
Johnny, the geologist, visited various local sources of information and dug up what he could on Thunder Island.
"It’s a queer place," he reported to Doc. "It’s the cone of a gigantic active volcano. Not a speck of vegetation grows on the outside of the cone. It’s solid rock."