He sprinted out of the room. One of the pair who had been holding the young woman followed him.
Roxey Vail promptly engaged in combat with the single rat who now pinioned her arms. She stamped his toes through his soft mukluks. She did her best to bite him.
Although strong and agile for a woman, Roxey Vail would have been overpowered by the man.
But from the spot where that great voice had first roared a warning, there glided a form that might have been liquid bronze. Nearing the struggling man and girl, this became a giant, Herculean man of hard metal. Hands floated out.
They were hands which could have plucked the very head from the rat now belaboring the poor girl with his fists. Yet those hands barely stroked the man's face.
The thug fell senseless.
ROXEY VAIL stared at her rescuer. It was apparent she could hardly believe her eyes.
"You oh, thank "
"Listen here's what you're to do!" Doc interrupted. He didn't like the tearful business of receiving thanks from young women whether they were pretty or not.
"You are to go and get your mother!" Doc told her. "You know where the finger of land juts into the sea half a mile to the north of this spot?"
"Yes."
"Take your mother there. The storm left a floe of ice attached to the point. It is long and narrow. It protrudes out into the sea fully half a mile. The tip is rather rough where ice cakes were piled upon it by the force of the gale. You are to hide, with your mother, among those ice cakes."
Roxey Vail nodded. But she wanted to know more.
"What "
"No time to explain!" Doc waved an arm in the general direction of the stern. A bloody fight was going on back there, judging from the bedlam.
Doc now grasped the girl. He shook her like a child but not very hard.
"Now get this!" he said sharply. "I don't want any more disobeying my orders just because you think something has happened to me!"
She sniffed at him. Tears were in her eyes.
"I won't," she said. "But my father is "
"I'll attend to him." Doc gave her a shove. "Scoot, Roxey. And be on the end of that ice neck with your mother as soon as possible. Things are going to happen fast around here."
Obediently, the young woman raced for the bows. These were deserted, due to the fight at the stern. She should have no trouble escaping.
Doc disappeared down a companionway as though in the grip of a great suction. He knew where he was going. He had overheard a chance remark, while skulking aboard the lost liner a few minutes ago, which told him where to look.
He shoved a stateroom door inward. A long leap and he was working over tough walrus-hide thongs which bound Victor Vail.
"They told me you were dead!" Victor Vail choked.
"Have you seen your daughter yet?" Doc grinned.
Victor Vail's long, handsome face now became a study in emotions. His lips trembled. Big tears skidded down his cheeks. His throat worked convulsively.
"Isn't she a wonderful girl" he gulped proudly.
He had seen her, all right.
"She's swell," Doc chuckled. "She's gone to get her mother. They'll meet us."
At this, Victor Vail could not restrain himself. He broke into open sobs of delight and gratitude and eagerness.
It would be a strange reunion, this of father and mother and daughter, after more than fifteen years. It would be something, in itself alone, worth all the perils and hardships Doc Savage had undergone.
The fight astern was coming closer. Automatics hammered fiercely. Machine guns tore off long strings of reports. Men shrieked in the frenzy of combat. Not a few of them were screaming from their hurts, too.
"We'd better drift away from here!" Doc declared.
They ran down a passage.
An amazing thing happened to a stateroom door ahead of them.
The panel jumped out of the door, literally exploding into splinters. An object came through which resembled a rusty keg affixed crosswise to the end of a telephone pole.
Such a hand and fist could belong to only one man on earth.
"Renny!" Doc yelled.
Big Renny leaped out, somber face alight.
A GREASY Eskimo now popped through the shattered door. His eyes were wells of terror, and his mouth was a frightened hole. He headed down the passage. He made two jumps.
Through the door after him came two hundred and sixty pounds of red-fuzzed man-gorilla.
Monk! He overhauled the Innuit as though the greasy bag of fright were standing still. Both his hands grasped the Eskimo and yanked backward. Simultaneously, his knee came up. The Innuit landed on his back across that knee. He all but broke in halves.
Doc looked into the stateroom.
Ham, not quite the fashion plate he usually presented, was there. Long Tom was astride another Eskimo. The oily native was twice the size of the pale electrical wizard. But he was getting the beating of his life.
Johnny, the gaunt archaeologist, was dancing around with his glasses, which had the magnifying lens on the left side, askew on his bony face.
Doc groped for something that would express his happiness, for he had given these five friends of his up as dead men. The proper words refused to come. His throat was cramped with emotion.
"What a bunch of bums!" he managed to chuckle at last.
"We've been praying for the sun to come out," said Ham. He pointed at a porthole. A strong beam of sunlight slanted through it. "Johnny used that magnifying lens to burn his bonds apart. It's lucky for us our captors stink like they do they can't smell anything but themselves. They couldn't smell the smoke from the thongs as Johnny burned them through."
The group ran for the stern. Renny secured an automatic pistol from the Eskimo whom Ham had skewered with his sword cane. Long Tom carried another he had seized from his opponent. Monk had obtained a third from his own victim.
"I had written you guys off my books," Doc's expressive voice rumbled pleasantly. "How'd you escape from that burning plane?"
"What d'you think we had parachutes for?" Monk inquired in his tiny murmur.
"But I flew over the ice, and saw no sign of you," Doc pointed out.
Monk grinned widely. "I'm tellin' you, Doc, we didn't linger after we landed. We come down in the middle of a gang of wild and woolly Eskimos. They started throwin' things at us harpoons mostly. Our ammunition was gone. We'd wasted it all on the plane that shot us down. So we made tracks. We thought the Eskimos was cannibals, or somethin'."
Ham scowled blackly at Monk.
"And you, you missing link, suggested leaving me behind as a sort of pot offering!" he said angrily.
Ham wasn't mad, though. It was just the old feud starting again. Things were back to normal.
"Listen, you overdressed little shyster!" Monk rumbled. "You were knocked cold when your parachute popped you against an iceberg, and I had to carry you. Next time, I'll sure-enough leave you!"
"The Eskimos set a trap for us," Renny finished the story for Doc. "They were too many for us. They finally got us."
THE BOW of the lost liner Oceanic was deserted. The fight at the stern had drawn everybody. And a bloody fray that was, for the noise of it had become more violent.
Doc halted near an ice-crusted, dangling cable which offered safe, if somewhat slippery, transit to the ice below.
"Half a mile north of here, an ice finger juts out into the sea," Doc said rapidly. "Go there, all of you! Roxey Vail and her mother should be there already. Wait for me."
"What are you going to do?" Ham questioned.
"I'm staying behind for a short time," Doc replied. "Over the side with you, brothers!"
Rapidly, they slid over the rail.
Monk was last. His homely face showed concern over Doc's safety. He tried to put up an argument.
"Now listen, Doc," he began. "You better "
Doc smiled faintly. He picked up the argumentative two hundred and sixty pounds of man-gorilla by the slack of the pants and the coat collar, and sent him whizzing down the icy cable.