Across the Caribbean to Belize, their destination on the Central American mainland, was somewhat over five hundred miles. It was an all-water hop.
To avoid a head wind for a while, Doc flew quite near the sea, low enough that at times he sighted barracudas and sharks. There was an island or two, flat, white beaches bared to the lambent glory of a tropical moon that was like a huge disk of rich platinum.
So stunningly beautiful was the southern sea that he awoke the others to observe the play of phosphorescent fire and the manner in which the waves creamed in the moonlight, or were blown into faintly jeweled spindrift.
They thundered across Ambergris Cay at a thousand feet, and in no time at all were swinging wide over the flat, narrow streets of Belize.
Chapter 8. PERSISTENT FOES
The sun was up, blazing with a wild revelry. Away inland, the jungle was lost in a horizon infinitely blue.
Doc slanted the big plane down and patted the pontoons against the small waves. Spray fanned up and roared against the idling propellers. He taxied in toward the mud beach.
Renny stretched, yawned. The yawn gave his extremely puritanical face a ludicrous aspect.
"I believe that in the old pirate days they actually built a foundation for part of this town out of rum bottles," Renny offered. "Ain't that right, Johnny?"
"I believe so," Johnny corroborated from his wealth of historical lore. Plink!
The sound was exactly like a boy shooting at a tin can with a small air rifle.
Plink! It came again.
Then bur-r-r-rip! One long roar!
"Well, for " Monk swallowed the rest and sat down heavily as Doc slammed the engine throttles wide open.
Engines thundering, props scooping up water and turning it into a great funnel of mist behind the tail, the plane lunged ahead straight for the mud beach.
"What happened?" demanded Ham.
"Machine gun putting bullets through our floats!" Doc said in a low voice. "Watch the shore! See if you can get a glimpse of whoever it was!"
"For the love of mud!" muttered Monk. "Ain't we never gonna get that red-fingered guy out of our hair?"
"No doubt he radioed ahead to some one he knows here!" Doc offered.
Distinctly audible over the bawl of the motors came two more metallic plinks. then a series. The unseen marksman was doing his best to perforate the pontoons and sink the craft.
All five of Doc's men were staring through the cabin windows, seeking trace of the one who was shooting.
Abruptly bullets began to whiz through the plane fuselage itself. Renny clapped a hand to his monster left arm. But the wound was no more than a shallow scrape. Another blob of lead wrought minor havoc in the box that held Long Tom's electrical equipment.
It was Doc who saw the sniper ahead of all the others, thanks to an eye of matchless keenness.
"Over behind that fallen palm!" he said.
Then the rest perceived. The sharpshooter's weapon projected over the bole of a fallen royal palm that was like a pillar of dull silver.
Rifles leaped magically into the hands of Doc's five men. A whistling salvo of lead pelted the palm log, preventing the sniper from releasing further shots.
The plane dug its pontoons into the mud beach at this point. It was not a moment too soon, either. They were filling rapidly with water, for some of the bullets, striking slantwise, had opened sizable rips. Indeed, the floats were hopelessly ruined!
Swiftly, grim with purpose, three men bounded out of the plane. They were Doc, Renny, and Monk. The other three, Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham, all excellent marksmen, continued to put a barrage of rifle lead against the palm log.
The log lay on a finger of land which reached out toward a very small cay, or island. Between cay and the land finger stretched about fifty yards of water.
The sniper tried to reach the mainland, only to shriek and drop flat as a bullet from the plane creased him. Meantime Doc, Renny, and Monk had floundered to solid ground and doubled down in the scrawny tropical growth. The smell of the beach was strong in their nostrils sea water, wet logs, soft-shell crabs, fish, kelp, and decaying vegetation making a conglomerate odor.
To the right of the friends lay Belize, with scraggly, narrow streets and romantic houses with protruding balconies, brightly painted doorways, and every window as becrossed with iron bars as if it were a jail.
The sniper knew they were coming upon him. He tried again to escape. But he had not reckoned with the kind of shooting that was coming from the plane. He couldn't make it to the mainland.
Desperately, the fellow worked out toward the end of the land finger. Stunted mangroves offered puny shelter there. The man shrieked again as he was creased.
In his circle of acquaintances, it must have been customary to shoot prisoners give no quarter because he didn't offer to surrender. Evidently he was out of ammunition.
Wild with terror, he leaped up and plunged into the water. He was going to try to swim to the little island.
"Sharks!" grunted Renny. "These waters are full of the things!"
But Doc Savage was already a dozen yards ahead, leaping out on the land finger.
The sniper was a squat, dark-skinned fellow but his features did not resemble those of the Mayan who had committed suicide in New York. He was a low specimen of the Central American half-breed.
He was not a good swimmer, either. He splashed a great deal. Suddenly he let out a piercing squawl of terror. He had seen a dark, sinister triangle of fin sizzling through the water toward him. He tried to turn and come back. But so frightened was he that he hardly moved for all his slamming of the water with his arms.
The shark was a gigantic man-eater. It came straight for its prospective meal, not even circling to investigate. The mouth of the monster thing was open, revealing the horrible array of teeth.
The unfortunate sniper let out a weak, ghastly bleat. It seemed too late for anything to help the fellow. Renny, in discussing the affair later, maintained Doc purposely waited until the last minute so that terror would teach the sniper a lesson show the man the fate of an evil-doer. If true, Doc's lesson was mightily effective.
With a tremendous spring, Doc shot outward and cleaved head-first into the water.
The dive was perfectly executed. And Doc, curving his powerful bronze body at the instant of impact with the water, seemed to hardly sink beneath the surface.
It looked like an impossible thing to do, but Doc was beside the unfortunate man even as the big shark shot in with a last burst of speed. Doc put himself between the shark's teeth and the sniper!
But the bronzed, powerful body was not there when the needled teeth slashed. Doc was alongside the shark. His left arm flipped with electric speed around the head of the thing, securing what a wrestler would call a strangle hold.
Doc's legs kicked powerfully. For a fractional moment he was able to lift the shark's head out of the water. In that interval his free right fist traveled a terrific arc and found the one spot where his vast knowledge told him it was possible to stun the man-eater.
The shark became slack as a kayoed boxer.
Doc shoved the sniper ashore. The breed's swarthy face was a study. He looked like some one had jerked the cover off hell and let him see what awaited men of his ilk.
Now that the shark was atop the water, where rifle bullets could reach it, Renny and Monk put the finishing touch to the ugly monster.
"Why did you fire upon us?" Doc asked the breed, couching the words in Spanish. Doc spoke Spanish fluently, as he did many other tongues.
Almost eagerly, so grateful was he for what Doc had done, the breed made answer:
"I was hired to do it, senor. Hired by a man in Blanco Grande, the capital of Hidalgo. This man rushed me here during the night in a blue airplane."