Chapter 21

SEA CHASE

DOC and his men piled out. A few rifle slugs made chopping noises in the tangled jungle growth. Doc eyed the belts and bulging pockets of his men.

"Got plenty of ammunition?" he questioned.

Monk grinned wryly. "Not as much as I'd like to have. We've got a couple or three hundred rounds apiece. That was about all we could swim with when we left the plane last night."

"Latch the guns into single-shot fire," Doc directed.

Each man flipped a small lever on his compact little machine gun. The weapons now discharged only a single bullet for each pull of the trigger.

Using a sampan paddle as a spade, Doc set to work digging a shallow rifle pit. He located it slightly within the jungle, so he could quit it without being observed.

The others followed his example, saying no word.

Straight toward the beach plunged the pirate boats. The launches, being more speedy, were far in the lead. The pirates had erected small shields of sheet steel in the craft — their usual precaution, no doubt, when going into battle.

Prows scooping foam, they approached to within two hundred yards. Then a hundred! Their speed did not slacken. A machine gun in the bow of one began to cough bullets through a slit in a metal shield. The lead hissed and screamed and tore in the jungle about Doc and his men.

"Let the first one land!" Doc commanded.

An instant later the leading speed boat hit the beach. It was traveling fast enough to skid high and dry out of the water. The slant-eyed killers, braced for the impact though they were, nevertheless slammed against thwarts and bulkheads.

"Now!" Doc clipped. "Get 'em in the legs and arms!"

His gun spat. The weapons of his men rapped a multiplied echo. They were crack marksmen, these men. They took their time and planted bullets accurately.

Two yellow men fell out of the launch almost together, bit in the legs. Pain made them squall noisily. Others cackled in agony as slugs, placed with uncanny precision, took them in the hands and arms.

There was psychology behind Doc's command not to kill. One wounded Oriental, yelling bloody murder, could do more to spread fear among his fellows than three or four killed instantly.

Bedlam seized the launch occupants. They could not even see Doc and his men. A tight group, they sought to charge. Those in the lead went down, legs drilled.

Howling, the gang ran back and tried to shove the launch into the water. They were not sufficient in number for the job. In remorseless succession, these also fell.

"Now — the other launches!" Doc ordered.

The volley he and his men fired sounded ragged, scattered. But hardly a bullet went wild.

The nearer launches, four in number, could not hold up before shooting like this. One careened about madly, the helmsman pawing a drilled shoulder, and barely missed crashing another craft. Then all four sheered off, the occupants expressing their opinion of Doc and his men in assorted tongues.

They were going to await the arrival of the heavier junks and sampans.

Monk, flattened in the pit he had scooped, asked Doc:

"What now?"

Doc's pit was in the jungle to the right. No answer came from the spot. Puzzled, Monk squirmed up to look.

Doc was gone. He had vanished silently the instant the fight was over.

NO more than a minute passed before Doc returned. He bore a bulky object — the army-type portable radio transmitter and receiver which Tom Too had left in the island cabin.

Doc gave a short gesture of command. The men plunged out of the jungle and leaped for the speed boat stranded on the beach.

A wounded pirate shot at them, but he was wounded in the arm, and missed. Doc fired a single bullet, and the corsair shrieked as the lead mangled his hand. The other yellow men fled, dragging themselves along or running furiously, depending on where they were hit.

Doc and his five aids laid hands on the launch, strained, and ran it back into the surf.

Out to sea, the pirates suddenly saw the purpose of Doc's strategy in permitting the most speedy craft to land. He was seizing the fast little vessel!

The slant-eyed buccaneers headed for the island again.

Machine guns cackled from their boats, rifles whacked spitefully.

Doc shoved the nose of their own launch around whi]e his men sprang aboard. Renny worked over the motor. The propellers had not been damaged by the forcible beaching.

Lead clanged on the sheet-steel shield, chewed splinters off the gunwales, and, hitting in the water near by, dashed spray over them.

Doc and the others returned the fire with slow precision while Renny fought the motor. The engine caught with a blubbery roar. The light hull surged forward, the propellers flinging water up behind the stern.

At the tiller, Doc sent the boat parallel to the beach. In a moment they were stern-on to their enemies, rendering the steel bullet shield useless.

Doc wrenched the shield from its mounting. "Put it up in the stern."

Monk did that job. He howled wrathfully as lead hit the metal plate, transferring a sting to his hands. Renny lunged to help him, then grunted loudly and clapped a hand to the upper part of his left arm. He had been hit. He tore off the sleeve of his shirt with a single wrench.

"Missed the bone an inch!" he decided.

"We're going to make it!" Ham yelled. He was using the tip of his sword cane to jam a wadded handkerchief into a bullet hole in the launch hull near the water line.

Doc put the rudder hard over. The launch veered to the right — and was suddenly sheltered by the tip of the island. Bullets no longer came near them.

Setting a course toward the distant coast of one of the larger islands of the Luzon Union, Doc held the throttle wide. The boat, traveling at tremendous speed, jarred violently as it slammed across the tops of the choppy waves.

The corsair craft heaved around the end of the island. Once more bullets whistled about them. But they had gained considerably. Doc's men did not waste lead returning the fire.

Fifteen minutes of flight put them out of rifle shot.

Doc cut their speed.

"Hey!" Monk grunted. "We low on gas or somethin'? Those birds aren't giving up the chase!"

"Plenty of gas," Doc told him, and fell to watching their pursuers.

IT was a weird-looking flotilla which followed them. Behind the fast launches were the sampans. Then came the junks, such of them as were fitted with engines in addition to sail power. They strung out for miles. The most sluggish of the sailboats were hardly outside the corsair bay on Shark Head Island.

One launch began to draw ahead of the others.

Doc opened the throttle, spun their speed boat about, and raced for the boat which had left the others behind. But not a single bullet was exchanged. Their quarry dropped back with the other pirates.

Continuing their flight, Doc turned the controls over to Monk.

Working swiftly, Doc tugged bundle after bundle of soggy papers, loose-leaf notebooks and cards from his shirt front — the stuff Tom Too's brief case had held! He studied it with much interest.

"Anything worth while there,?" Ham asked.

Elated little lights glowed in Doc's flaky golden eyes.

"Tom Too's organization was too large to keep track of without written records," he explained. "These are the records."

"A break, gettin' 'em, huh?" Monk grinned.

Not answering, Doc bent over the portable radio apparatus. He adjusted the dials. The tiny key was of the variety known as a sideswiper, requiring experience to manipulate. Doc fingered dots and dashes out of it with machinelike precision, then twirled the receiver dials, the headset pressed over his ears.