One thug even backed away so hastily he fell overboard. He squealed like a rat in the icy water until he was hauled back on deck.
Not a minute could be wasted. Doc hardly touched the steel deck before he was gliding through the intricate insides of the submarine.
Doc worked swiftly at replacing the valve.
Ben O'Gard's men flocked around him like children. They already had the deck hatches closed in readiness.
Even Ben O'Gard himself came fawning up with a wrench to assist in the work. But Doc waved him aside. His bronze fingers were more speedy than any wrench and they could tighten a tap just about as snugly.
"All clear!" Doc called at last. "Fill the main tanks!"
The crew flocked to station. The electric motors started. With a windy gurgle that was nothing if not joyful, the Helldiver eased down out of the fearsome blue jaws of ice.
Doc watched the valve for a moment. Satisfied it was not going to leak, he turned away.
At that instant, the steel door of the compartment in which he crouched clanged shut. The dogs which secured it rattled fast.
He was imprisoned!
Chapter 12
ICE TRAP
DOC SHRUGGED. He sat down on a convenient pipe. He was not worried. He was armed.
True, Ben O'Gard and his crew probably had guns themselves, by now. The weapons they had thrown overboard so profanely at Doc's request had hardly comprised their entire armament. They were too wily for that.
But Doc had the explosive he always carried in his pair of extra molars. With it, he could speedily blast open the bulkhead.
And once the sub came to the surface, he had simply to unscrew the valve and he would have the gang at his mercy again.
The electric motors set up a musical vibration. The Helldiver had slanted down steeply in its hurried dive. Now it trimmed level. After a time, it sloped upward perceptibly. There came a jar as it touched the underside of the ice pack.
Other crunching shocks ensued. They were of lesser violence. The submarine was feeling blindly for another spot free of ice. This continued interminably. Open leads seemed to be very scarce.
Doc got up and rapped tentatively on the thick steel bulkhead.
He was cursed. He was told he would be killed if he didn't behave. He was promised all kinds of dire fates.
This didn't worry him much. Danger seldom worried Doc. A telegraph operator in a great relay office becomes accustomed to the uproar of instruments about him. A structural steel worker comes to think nothing of the fact that a single misstep means sudden death.
By the same token, Doc Savage had haunted the trails of those who sought his violent end for so long that he took danger as a matter of course.
More than an hour passed. Doc became impatient.
Finally, the submarine arose to the surface. The stopping of the electric motors and the starting of the oil-burning Diesel engines showed that.
Doc promptly removed the all-important valve.
Through the steel bulkhead, he informed Ben O'Gard what he had done.
He got a surprise. Ben O'Gard gave him the horse laugh.
Doc was puzzled. He had thought he held an ace. But the missing valve seemed to worry his enemies not at all. There was but one explanation.
They had found a snug harbor on the uncharted coast! Doc settled down to await developments. They came twenty minutes later.
There reached his ears a sound like six or seven hard hailstones tapping the submarine hull.
Doc knew what it was.
Machine-gun bullets.
Were his friends starting hostilities? He hoped not. They'd fool around and get themselves shot out of the air. The old seaplane was no battle wagon.
With a jarring bedlam, the Diesel engine sped up. The mad race of the vertical-trunk pistons vibrated the whole submarine. The Helldiver lunged away soggily.
Next instant came a shock which, catching Doc by surprise, piled him against a bulkhead.
The Helldiver had gone aground.
Men yelled. They sounded like chicks cheeping in an incubator. A machine gun cut loose on deck. Another joined it. Their clamor was hollow, like crickets shut up in a can.
This continued for the space of time it would take a man to count to several hundred.
Wham! The sub all but rolled completely over. The plates shrieked. Loose tools jumped about as beans in a shaken box.
Doc picked himself up.
"I'd better hold onto something," he remarked to no one in particular.
A bomb had just exploded in the water near the submarine. Doc shook his head slowly. His friends had no bombs! Ben O'Gard's bellow penetrated the bulkhead. "Come out!" he boomed. "You gotta help us!"
"Go take an ice bath!" Doc suggested.
Ben O'Gard spewed profanity hot enough to melt the steel bulkhead.
"Rust my anchor, matey!" he yelled at last. "You've got the upper hand on us again. We'll do anything you say, only you gotta help us."
"It sounds like you're aground," Doc told him. "My replacing the valve won't help any now."
"T' hell wit' the valve!" roared Ben O'Gard. "Ain't none of us swabs can fly the foldin' seaplane. You gotta take the sky hooker up an' fight off them buzzards that's bombin' us!"
"Who's bombing you?" Doc questioned.
"Keelhaul de Rosa's gang the dirty deck lice."
DOC DIGESTED this. It was an entirely new development. Since the Helldiver had left New York, there had been nothing to show Keelhaul de Rosa still existed upon the earth. Now the explanation for that was plain.
Keelhaul de Rosa had one of the treasure maps. He had secured a plane and flown to the wreck of the liner Oceanic. And now he was seeking to wipe out his rivals.
"Stand away from the door," Doc ordered. "I'll come out." The dogs securing the steel panel clanked free. Doc swung the panel open. Several of Ben O'Gard's villains faced him. But not a gun was turned in his direction. They were a scared lot.
"Four of me hearties was swept overboard an' drowned by that bomb." Ben O'Gard roared. "The swabs are in Davy Jones's locker."
The thugs split like butter before a hot knife as Doc went through them. A vault, and he was out on deck. He had his valve along.
Ben O'Gard's men were frantically assembling the folding seaplane.
Doc scanned the skies.
"Where's the plane?" he demanded.
"Figure it went back after another load of bombs," boomed Ben O'Gard. "Rust my anchor, matey. We gotta shake a mean leg, or it'll be back 'fore you set sail in the air."
The Helldiver was indeed aground. The bow canted half out of the water. The stern portion of the deck slanted down beneath the surface.
Around about was a glacier-walled cove. Ordinarily, it would have been a snug-enough harbor. But the attack from the air had turned it into a trap.
Doc scrutinized the heavens once more. His strange golden eyes sought everywhere for the shabby plane flown by his friends. There was no sign of it.
Doc juggled the all-important valve. Some of Ben O'Gard's men eyed it enviously. Doc had no idea of surrendering it, though.
"What became of my friends?" he questioned.
Ben O'Gard shrugged his walrus shoulders.
"The last of 'em I saw, they was fightin' Keelhaul de Rosa's sky tub." He leveled an arm which was a cone of beef. "The fracas wandered off down that way."
He was pointing down the glacial coast of the uncharted land.
No line changed on Doc Savage's firm bronze features. But inside, his feelings were far from pleasant. The shabby old seaplane flown by his friends was no fighting craft. An Immelman or a tight loop would pull her wings off.
The tiny folding seaplane was now ready for the air.
"Take 'er off, matey," howled Ben O'Gard. "Rust my " He fell silent. The drone of a plane had come to their ears. "That's Keelhaul de Rosa comin' back," bawled the walrus. "Hurry, matey. Our lives is in your hands."
"I wish they were," Doc said under his breath. Then, aloud: