Ham closed with a slant-eyed man who wielded a table leg. He fenced briskly, warding off terrific blows with deft parries of his bared sword cane. An instant later the yellow man sprang back, the ligaments in his wrist severed. Squawling for mercy, he shrank into a corner.

Renny pulped a nose with one of his monster fists. Long Tom and Johnny closed with respective opponents. They did not use their guns again. Bare-handed, they were more than a match for the pirates.

The fray ended as suddenly as it had started. The corsairs lost their nerve, shoved their arms in the air, and joined Ham's victim in screeching for quarter.

"A fine gang of yallerhammers!" Monk complained. "Can't even fight enough to get a man warmed up!"

He picked up the Mongol he had struck. The fellow was the only one of the three messengers now alive.

"So you thought the gas got us, eh?" Monk growled. "Well, it didn't! You turned the stuff loose in the jungle so the wind would blow it toward us. We heard birds dropping dead. That warned us. So we dived overboard. It was dark enough so that we didn't have no trouble gettin' away! Then we hung around listenin' to you guys talk."

The Mongol only rolled his slitty eyes.

"We heard enough talk to learn Tom Too was gonna hole up here!" Monk continued fiercely. "So we made a raft out of two logs and paddled over. We been holdin' your pals here, hopin' Tom Too would turn up."

Ham swung over, sword cane poised ominously.

"This is the bird who bragged he was carrying a piece of Doc's burned skeleton!" he said grimly. "Let's see it!"

Monk searched the prisoner and soon brought the charred bit of bone to light.

Johnny, the gaunt archaeologist, took one look at it — and laughed loudly as he turned the bone in his hand.

"That's a hunk of ordinary soup bone — off the leg of a cow!"

Knowing bones was part of Johnny's business. He could look at a skeleton from a prehistoric ruin and tell some remarkable things about the ancient to whom it originally belonged.

"Then Doc ain't dead, after all!" Monk grinned.

"That's fair guesswork," said Doc Savage from the doorway.

A ROAR of pleasure greeted Doc's appearance.

"How'd you work it?" Monk wanted to know.

"Used the old magician's stunt with mirrors to make it seem that I had been stabbed," Doc told him. "One of the pirates was in on the trick and swung the sword. I paid him plenty. The sword blade ran through a wad of cloth soaked with red ink instead of my body."

"Hey!" Monk interrupted. "How'd you get out of the tent?"

"The tent was set on fire. I had sprinkled chemicals on it so there would be a great deal of smoke. Overhead was a large tree branch. I had previously rigged a silk cord, small enough not to be noticeable, over the limb so a stout wire could be drawn up. I climbed that, concealed by the smoke, taking my mirrors along. It was not hard to get to other trees and away."

Doc nodded at the survivor of the Mongol trio. "This chap and his two companions went to a junk and prepared to communicate with Tom Too by radio. I broke off a bit of the wire cable with which I had climbed the tree limb, tossed it onto a couple of switches without being noticed, and put the apparatus out of commission. I figured they'd go to Toni Too in person.

"It was necessary to throw a knife at them to decoy them away from their sampan long enough for me to get aboard and find a place to hide under the sail."

Doc fell silent and let his eyes rove over the room. It was not often that he went into such detail in describing his methods. But finding his five friends alive had made him a bit talkative.

Long Tom whipped aside the curtain behind which he and the others had been concealed for a time. This disclosed an army type portable radio transmitter and receiver.

"This is undoubtedly the set the Mongols intended to communicate with from the junk," he declared. "But where's Tom Too?"

"Did he have a chance to dodge you?" Doc asked.

Ham tapped his sword cane thoughtfully. "He might have. We met two of the pirates on the bay shore, had a little fight, and the others came to see what it was about. Tom Too might have remained behind, seen we had cleaned up on his gang, then skipped out."

"He hasn't had a chance to leave the island!" Monk grunted. "We searched the shore line. There wasn't a boat around. And one man couldn't navigate by himself the log raft we came over on."

Countless times Doc's ability to observe any movement about him, however slight, had proved invaluable. It served again now.

His mighty form whipped aside and down, flaky golden eyes fixed on the door.

Lead shrieked through the space he had vacated. A pistol, firing from the jungle, made stuttering clamor.

"Tom Too!" Renny boomed.

Chapter 20

THE TIGHTENING NET

THE shot echoes were still bumping around over the island when Doc's five men turned loose with the little machine guns. The weapons poured bullet streams that were like rods of living metal. The slugs razored off leaves, twigs, branches the thickness of Monk's furry wrist.

After one volley they ceased firing.

Loud crashings reached their ears over the caterwauling of disturbed birds.

"He's beating it!" Renny shouted.

Doc and his men dived out of the room, leaving the cowering prisoners to their own devices. They weren't important game, anyway.

"Did you get a look at Tom Too's face, Doc?" Ham demanded.

"No. Only his gun shoving out through the leaves. I didn't even get the color of his skin. He was wearing gloves."

They spread out in a line, in the order of their running ability. Doc was far in the lead. Next was Johnny, gaunt and bony, but a first-class foot racer. Monk and Renny, the two giants, trod Johnny's heels. Ham and Long Tom were last, pretty evenly matched, with Ham the hindermost because he was trying to keep thorns from tearing his clothes. Ham was always jealous of his appearance.

"He's heading for the sampan!" Doc called.

An instant later they heard the outboard motor on the sampan start.

Doc reached the pondlike bay just in time to glimpse the stern of the sampan vanishing beyond the curtain of vines which screened the tiny harbor from the sea.

His men came up. They drove a few rasping volleys of lead at the drapery of creepers. Then they ran around the bay. This consumed much precious time.

The sampan was nearly three hundred yards distant, traveling like a scared duck:

If they had hoped to glimpse Tom Too's features, they were disappointed. The pirate leader was not in sight.

"Lying in the bottom of the boat to be out of the way of bullets!" Renny said grimly, and took a careful bead on the distant sampan.

His gun moaned deafeningly. The others joined him. Their bullets tore splinters off the sampan stern and scraped the sea all about the craft. But the range was long, even for a rifle, and they did not stop the fleeing boat.

"Where is the raft you fellows came over on?" Doc demanded.

"Up the beach!" rapped Ham, and led the way.

The furry Monk lumbered alongside Ham. They came to a spot where mud was underfoot, slimy and malodorous. In the middle of this Ham suddenly fell headlong. He floundered, then bounced up, smeared with the smelly goo from head to foot. He waved his sword cane wrathfully.

"You tripped me, you hairy missing link!" he howled at Monk. "Bugs to you!" leered Monk. "Can I help it if you fall over your own feet?"

However, Monk was careful to keep out of Ham's reach for the next few minutes.

Nobody had seen Monk do the tripping, but there was no doubt about his guilt. He had done worse things to Ham. And it was also certain that Ham would return the favor with interest. The going seldom got so hot that these two forgot to carry on their good-natured feud.