DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (25 page)

HOURS passed. The night was cooling down appreciably.

No sounds drifted from inshore; soft murmurings which the lapping waves made were lulling, peaceful, and conducive of sleep.

A scrawny Chinese crewman at the bow was having difficulty keeping his sleepy eyes awake. He had to pinch himself several times lest he doze off at his post.

He was known as Fragrant Fung, for he rarely bathed. Fung had been with Wah Chan a very long time. Men of Wah Chan who dozed on duty were often beheaded. He did not wish to trade his head and all that it contained for a few hours of sleep. So he fought the drowsy feeling that kept stealing over him.

From time to time, the tiny squeakings of bats could be heard as they dived into clouds of flying insects for food. They avoided passing over the deck, for bat soup was a Chinese delicacy, and bats were easily brought down by rifle shot.

Distracted by the busy flying mammals, Fragrant Fung failed to detect a faint dripping sound not many rods below his post.

The gurgle of cove water covered some of these watery sounds. Too, they were faintly stealthy.

Junks ride high in the water, much like the caravels of old, so the idea of a man scaling the rust-caked anchor chain while dripping water was a little fantastic.

But one man
was
attempting the difficult feat.

The invader climbed hand over hand, pausing, not to rest, but rather to listen for breathing noises above. Also, he took time for water to drain from his trouser legs.

This man was huge, after the fashion of the Mongols of the north. His burly muscles bunched and writhed, proved more than equal to the feat of ascending the heavy anchor chain.

After another pause, he continued to climb.

Moonlight revealed his face. It was an unlovely visage. Scars crossed his cheeks. One ear was a mass of gristle. As if all those scars were not enough, he wore an eyepatch of beaten silver over his left orb.

Every finger was decorated with a heavy ring—more rings than any man would need to wear. They resembled booty, those rings, as if they had been plucked from the fingers of countless victims.

Possibly those heavy gold rings helped the stealthy one climb up the rusty anchor chain. One great golden hoop dangled from an ear. It danced with his every move.

When the man’s head topped the rail, he peered about carefully.

Darkness clotted the barn-like superstructure. Deck hands were sleeping by a fold of the matting sail, which had been lowered, allowed to slat down on the deck, probably as a shelter from the chill night breeze. Some snored. Otherwise, they did not stir.

Cigarette smoke carried to his nostrils. One eye sought its source, discerned the burning coal of a cigarette as it was pitched into the drink.

Only then did the massive one climb over the teak rail and move in the direction of the lone guard, Fragrant Fung. He paused beside an overturned rowboat, hunkering down in an effort to avoid detection.

Fung chanced to be looking inland, thinking how good it would be to stand on dry land once more, and possibly patronize a fan-tan gambling parlor, when great copper hands seized his head in its entirety.

The grip of his assailant was like a vise, the many gold rings adding to that fearsome impression.

The guard attempted to cry out, but his lips were crushed beneath the iron-tendoned fingers. He could not utter a singsong syllable.

The big attacker gave a wrench and a twist. While the hapless Fung struggled to breathe, he was lowered to the deck, still fighting the insanely strong man who had overmastered him.

At length, his breathing ceased. Whether entirely or not was difficult to tell. No one stood near enough to tell.

The big boarder worked his way to a companionway and slipped below, unseen. His buskin-clad feet must have been soled with gum, for he made no sound.

He crept along the narrow corridors that honeycombed the junk’s substructure, and found his way to the forward hold without rousing the slumbering crew.

There was a door. It was a ponderous affair of planks fitted together with wooden dowel pins. An iron bar served as a makeshift lock.

The intruder lifted this, and crept within.

The hold interior was so black it might have been a solid substance. The junk was well maintained. No chink in its hull permitted moonlight to penetrate. The air was heavy with some pungent incense mixed with the foul, fleshy odor of unwashed bodies.

Light flicked out in the lurid darkness—a thin beam of radiance that might come from a pencil flashlight.

It quested about, disclosed cobwebbed rafters of teak over a chamber that was almost bare except for an inch-deep mass of refuse in one corner. The tongue of light came to rest on the huge lion-like Fu-Dog stove that had previously been stationed on deck.

The intruder went over this carefully with his fingertips, noting its construction involved caulking any chinks in the iron form with pitch, paying special attention to the great porcelain-handled lever that actuated the baffles that concealed the unseen thing within.

No attempt was made to throw the lever, or open the makeshift contraption in any way. Evidently the intruder was sufficiently familiar with the contents to avoid creating a calamity by doing so.

His inspection accomplished, the big Mongol returned topside. He exited warily, single jet eye searching for signs that the felled guard had been discovered. He had not.

Reconnoiter compete, the be-ringed one made his way back to the forward starboard rail and slipped overboard.

No one saw or heard his going any more than they did his coming. His silence was sepulchral.

The wet footprints that he left behind were already drying in the cool night breeze. Before many minutes, they would be gone, leaving no discernible sign that anyone had trod the deck who should not have.

An hour later, Fragrant Fung snapped awake with a start. He jerked to his feet, felt of his neck and was amazed to discover himself breathing.

Peering about the superstructure, Fung saw that all was well. Just to make certain, he made a quick promenade of the forward deck.

All was as it should have been. Fung spotted a solitary moist footprint on the steps leading below.

Slipping down, he investigated, saw and heard nothing untoward. He prudently decided to return to his post forthwith. There were no other footprints similar to the single one to be found anywhere.

“I will say nothing of this,” Fragrant Fung muttered to himself, again feeling of his throat. The sensation of being choked was still with him vividly. It was too much remindful of hanging to risk doing otherwise.

DAWN BROKE WITH a garish splendor.

The crew of the Red Dragon junk roused itself and got down to the morning’s business, hauling anchor, unfurling sail and making ready to depart for the open sea.

They were attired in shapeless trousers which resembled the lower halves of pajamas. One or two wore skirt-like garments which hung down outside their pants. Most wore the conical rattan hats that marked the Asiatic seafaring class.

While the scarlet sun burned off the last of the morning haze, they accomplished their tasks, thanks to the ease with which the brown four-cornered sails could be lowered by just a few junk-men hauling on halyards.

Wah Chan strode the deck, refreshed from slumber. He wore a cartridge belt high above his waist, held in place by suspender-like straps. A spike-nosed automatic hung at his side.

“Make ready to sail!” he thundered.
“K’wai-k’wai!
Make haste.”

Long bamboo poles were hauled out of deck storage and employed to push off from shore. This was accomplished with lean-muscled efficiency, for the Red Dragon junk was a flat-bottomed vessel, called a “sand boat,” capable of navigating inland rivers and the high seas with equal aplomb.

Laboriously, the riotous junk of war worked out of the mud-yellow delta toward the wrinkled blue-green of open ocean.

The sea air stretching his reviving lungs, Wah Chan felt good. The uneasy thoughts of the previous evening were dissolved by the sun’s splintery rays, the tang of salt air, and the freedom of open water.

The emergence of the monk Tang from his austere sleeping cubicle below did not entirely dispel those dark misgivings from the Generalissimo’s thoughts.

“The Buddha hungers for fresh souls,” Tang intoned. He wore his habitual maroon robe favored by Buddhist monks throughout Asia.

“And he will receive them,” Wah Chan returned. “Receive them in great numbers.”

They set out, sails belling in the freshening morning breeze as the great ship made its way through the jumble of fishing junks, flower boats, and covered sampans that crowded the inland waterway. Numerous holes made the batting-reinforced sails look moth-eaten.

But looks are deceptive.

Once out in the Yellow Sea, the helmsman at the tiller pointed her dragon prow north. The junk dug her armored nose into the fast-running seas, dividing discolored swells with startling efficiency. With her poop deck riding high, she gave the impression of a craft about to knife into the lower deeps. This was an illusion that junk-type vessels present to the eye. In reality, they were amazingly stable craft.

The crew kept a weather eye for other traffic. The Japanese did not venture this far south, but with three cruisers falling into misfortune, there was no telling what they would do in response. Cruisers are expensive. And the loss of a crew did not have to mean the loss of a ship.

No doubt the sons of the Rising Sun would be sending aloft reconnaissance planes to search for those abandoned cruisers—or dispatch gunboats to put off fresh crews to replace the old.

Wah Chan hoped to encounter such craft, whether they went by air or sea.

The Red Dragon junk encountered only normal maritime traffic, however. Trade and fishing junks and covered sampans predominated.

Among the vessels plying these waters was a junk of unusual lines. Its lean hull and sails were as black as the wings of a night-flying bat. Round white eyes with black centers were painted upon the narrow bows, unsettlingly remindful of goggling octopus orbs.

A man with an eye for good sailing vessels, Wah Chan trained a spyglass on the lumbering vessel. He almost whistled in admiration. It was a good craft. Sturdy. It was on ships such as these that Chinese navigators had sailed from Cathay to as far as the Cape of Good Hope in ancient days.

While a sailing junk may look awkward to the unappreciative eye, they are fast for their size and formidable enough to range the vast Pacific. This one, Wah Chan saw, was rigged for navigating the prevailing winds of the South China Sea, which favored a port tack when sailing close-hauled. Thus the lugsails were hung to starboard of the mast for maximum efficiency.

Dropping his glass, Wah Chan returned to his objective, which was to tack north in search of proper prey.

He paid no more attention to the black-hulled junk, until possibly an hour later, when he noticed it was sailing behind them, off to the port stern, throwing up spume from either bow.

Mounting the poop deck, the Generalissimo brought his glass to bear upon it.

The pepper-hued junk was well manned. He could see a number of lean-limbed junk-men and conical-capped coolies going about their business. None looked Japanese, which was his only concern.

For Wah Chan did not put it past the Japanese Navy to commandeer a fishing junk and man it with disguised soldiers and sailors in hopes of overhauling him.

A great figure stood in the bow, like a sea rover of old.

Tall he was, and broad of shoulder. He might have been a figure plucked from the days of Genghis Khan, the former ruler of half the known world. His clothes, from coat to buskins, were Mongolian. His face had that wind-burned gleam of copper that bespoke of the Gobi Desert. Numerous knife scars crisscrossed a face that was bold and full of unbridled humor. The silver eyepatch detracted not a whit from that impression. His good eye resembled an ebony pearl plucked from a treasure chest.

Here, thought Wah Chan, was a man cut from similar sailcloth to my own.

The master of the trailing junk must have had very good vision in his surviving eye. He spotted Wah Chan scrutinizing him and gave back a hearty wave. Gold teeth shone in the morning sunlight and he burst forth with a laugh that boomed across the waves.

Wah Chan did not wave back. He had bloody business to conduct.

The junk of the Red Dragon was flying under half-sail. She was equipped with marine motors, but these were kept in reserve for pursuit and escape. Petroleum was not cheap or easily obtained along the Chinese coast. Not even if one were a reformed bandit chief turned enlightened freedom fighter.

Over time, the sepia-hulled junk, also under sail, crept up on Wah Chan’s vessel.

Prevailing winds were favorable. Sails filled, stiffened. Sea-foam churned on either side of plunging bows. Soon it was a race.

The Red Dragon junk was larger, and possessed more sail, while the black vessel was smaller, more nimble. Her lean prow cut the waves like a plow. She began to gain headway.

The air was cool; the sun made a brilliant glare, but little heat. Despite that, Wah Chan began to perspire freely. He fell to studying the overhauling junk, and noticed a peculiar something about the construction of the thing. Junks, he full well knew, were slow craft, built like scows.

This one was different. The upper portion was unwieldy enough, but a foot or so above the waterline, the appearance of clumsiness vanished. It was plain that, under water, the craft had raking, fleet lines.

A frown roosted upon the Generalissimo’s square face, and remained there unchanged.

Tang put in another appearance at this time, hands clasped inside the merged sleeves of his maroon robes. His eyes were squeezed into slits until they resembled walnut seams.

“Who are they?” he demanded.

“They have the look of river pirates,” grunted Wah Chan.

“They should display their colors less boldly,” spat Tang.

“They are nothing to us,” retorted Wah Chan. Turning to his first mate, he called out, “Li! More sail!”