Came a blinding flash! The glacier seemed to jump six feet straight up. A terrific, slamming roar blasted against eardrums. Then a rush of air slapped them skidding across the ice like an unseen fist.
There had been a powerful explosive in the little cylinder Doc hurled at his enemies.
Awful quiet followed the blast. The very blizzard seemed to recoil like a beaten beast.
A chorus of agonized squealings and bleatings erupted. Some of the enemy had been incapacitated. They were all shocked. The Eskimos felt a vague, unaccountable terror.
"Up an' at 'em, mateys!" shrilled a coarse tone. "Keelhaul me, but we ain't gonna let 'em get away from us now!"
It was Keelhaul de Rosa's voice. He, at least, had not been damaged.
More lead searched the knobby glacier surface. None of it came dangerously near Doc and his fair companion. They had gotten far away in the confusion.
Doc suddenly jammed the young lady in a handy snowdrift. He wasn't exactly rough about it, but he certainly didn't try to fondle her, as a man of more ordinary caliber might have been tempted to do. And it wasn't because the ravishing young woman would have objected to the caresses. All signs pointed to the contrary.
The big bronze man had long ago decided a life of domestication was not for him. It would not go with the perils and terrors which haunted his every step. It would mean the surrendering of his goal in life the shunning of adventure, the abandoning of his righting of wrongs, and punishing of evildoers wherever he found them.
So Doc had schooled himself never to sway the least bit to the seductions of the fairest of the fair sex.
"Stay here," he directed the entrancing young lady impassionately. "And what I mean stay here! You can breathe under the snow. You won't be discovered."
"Whatever you say," she said in a voice in which adoration was but thinly veiled.
She was certainly losing no time in falling for Doc.
The giant bronze man smiled faintly. Then the storm swallowed him.
KEELHAUL DE ROSA was in a rage. He was burning up. He filled the blizzard around about with salty expletives.
"Ye blasted swabs!" he railed at the Eskimos, forgetting they did not understand English. "Keelhaul me. The bronze scut was right in yer hands, an' ye didn't wreck 'im!"
"I tell ya dat guy is poison!" muttered a white gunman. "He ain't human! From de night he tied into us outside de concert hall in de big burg, we ain't been able ter lay a hand on 'im!"
Another white man shivered. He was fatter than Keelhaul de Rosa or the other gunmen. It was to be suspected he had some Eskimo b!lood in his veins.
As a matter of fact, this fellow was a crook recruited in Greenland. He knew the arctic. It was he who served interpreter in all discussions with the Eskimos.
"Dat bane awful explosion a minute ago." this man whined. "Aye sure hope we bane get dat feller damn quick."
"Scatter!" rasped Keelhaul de Rosa. "We'll get the swab!" The Eskimos spread out widely. The white men kept in a group for mutual protection.
One Eskimo in particular rambled a short distance from the others. He floundered through a snowdrift.
He did not see a portion of the drift seemingly rise behind him. No suspicion of danger assailed him until hard, chill bronze fingers stroked his greasy cheek with a caress like the fingers of a ghost. Then it was too late.
The Innuit collapsed without a sound.
Doc pounced upon the inert Eskimo. From his lips came a loud shout-words couched in the tongue of the native.
Excitement seized the white man who understood the Eskimo lingo, and he listened intently to the distant voice.
"Dat Eskimo bane kill the bronze feller!" he shrieked. "He bane say come an' look!"
Three men sprinted for the voice they had heard.
The interpreter glimpsed two figures. One was prone, motionless. The second crouched on the first. That was about all Doc Savage could see in the flying gale.
"There they bane!" he howled.
They charged up. Two of them prepared to empty their guns into the prone form. just to make sure.
The crouching man heaved up. Strikingly enough, he seemed to grow to the proportions of a mountain. Two Herculean bronze fists drove accurate blows. Both gunmen described perfect flip-flops in mid-air unconscious before their feet left the glacier.
The interpreter whirled and ran. He knew death when he saw it. And big Doc Savage was nothing less.
Doc did not follow him. For to the bronze man's sensitive ears came a stifled cry.
Roxey Vail was being seized!
EVEN AS he raced toward where he had left her, Doc fathomed what had occurred. She had disobeyed his injunction to stay hidden. The reason she had heard the shouted information that Doc was dead. She had started out with some desperate idea of avenging him.
Doc appreciated her good intentions. But at the moment, he could have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of turning her over his knee and paddling her.
A bullet squeaked in Doc's ear. He folded aside and down. A machine gun picked savagely at the ice near him. He traveled twenty feet on his stomach, with a speed that would have shamed a desert lizard.
"Take the hussy to the boat!" Keelhaul de Rosa's coarse voice rang. "Step lively, me lads!"
Doc tried to get to the hideous voice. Murderous lead drove him back.
He was forced to skulk, dodging bullets while Roxey Vail was taken aboard the ice-coated hulk of the lost liner.
More Eskimos soon arrived. Keelhaul de Rosa was arming some of them with guns. The interpreter instructed the Innuits on how to operate the unfamiliar firearms.
The natives were far from effective marksmen. More than one greasy eater of blubber dropped a big pistol after it exploded in his hand and ran as though the worst tongak, or evil spirit, were hot on his trail. But the guns made them more dangerous, for wild shots were almost as liable to hit the elusive figure of Doc Savage as well-aimed ones. In fact, they were worse. Doc couldn't tell which way to dodge.
The heat of the hunt finally drove Doc to the remote reaches of the glacier and rock crest of the land.
There he replenished his vast reservoir of strength by dining on frozen, raw steaks he wrenched with his bare, steel-thewed fingers, from the polar bear he had slain.
The mighty bronze man might have been a terrible hunter of the wild as he crouched there at his primeval repast. But no such hunter ever possessed cunning and knowledge such as Doc Savage was bringing to bear upon the problem confronting him.
But caution remained uppermost in his mind. He had been crouching with an ear pressed to a pinnacle of rock. The stone acted as a sounding board for any footsteps on the surrounding glacier.
Noise of men passing in the blizzard reached Doc. There seemed to be four or five in the group.
Doc fell in behind them. He followed as close as was possible without discovery. Growled words told him they were white men.
"De skipper says for us to take de stern of de liner, mateys," one said. "Our pals will join us dere. Everybody's helpin' in dis party, even de cook."
"We'd better throw out an anchor," another grunted. "Keelhaul an' his whole bloody crew, together wit' de Eskimos, is movin' bag an' baggage onto de liner. We wanta give 'em time to get settled."
Doc Savage sought to get even closer. He was not three yards away as the group of men came to a stop in the shelter of a rock spire. There were five of them.
What he was hearing was most interesting!
ONE OF the five men laughed nastily.
"De bronze guy has just about got Keelhaul de Rosa's goat!" he chuckled. "To say nothin' of de panic de Eskimos are in. Dat's why they're all movin' onto de liner. Dey figure dey can fight 'im off better."
Another man swore.