Читать книгу The Terror in the Navy: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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Navy men are well trained, and it was natural that some one should immediately take a sounding. The cry of the one who had dropped the lead overboard came from forward.

“By the mark, two!” the voice yelled. “Solid rock!”

Lieutenant Toy gulped, “Only two fathoms of water under the stern, and a rock bottom! That’s impossible! Our course was ten miles offshore!”

The steersman gasped, “I tell you, a thing had this ship!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped the navigating officer.

The steersman said, sullenly, “I could feel the pull of the thing! It was drawing the ship through the water! I fought it. I put the wheel hard over half a dozen times, but the vessel simply wouldn’t respond. I tell you, there was a thing!”

Lieutenant Toy heard that, and his eyes came wide and seemed about to pop out of his head. “It struck this destroyer first!” he shrieked. “It’s real! It can destroy ships!” A moment of terrible silence followed.

“Those men—the two sailors I overheard talking under the awning—they know about it!” Toy howled. “Grab them before they can get away! Get them! Quick, I’ll point them out and tell——”

The rest of his howl was lost in a terrific crash alongside. There was a rending and grinding noise. There was that peculiar, uncanny screech made by steel plates being ripped apart. Men shouted wildly.

Lieutenant Toy grabbed a brass stanchion, and a ghastly expression came over his face.

“The other boats are hitting!” he gasped.

A second crash came, followed shortly by a third. A scraping rumble stopped Toy’s forthcoming groan. It came from farther away. The last destroyer had piled on the rock.

Rockets, parachute flares, began going up, and their light illuminated a confused scene. Five sleek gray war craft with their bellies torn out on hard rock. They rolled as big, greasy swells nudged them about, and there was an almost steady grinding of steel hull plates on stone.

Officers on the boats’ bridges megaphoned profanely at each other. They blamed the lead destroyer for what had happened.

The confusion became more orderly. Rockets got answers from shore, obviously not more than half a mile distant. The radio apparatus was used to secure radio compass bearings, and from this it was ascertained that the five war craft were piled up on a long, narrow reef which had deep water on each side.

Within fifteen minutes, one destroyer slid off the reef and sank. One sailor was drowned. The others got away in lifeboats.

It became evident that the big swell was going to jar the other unlucky vessels around until they also slid off the reef and sank. And it was not going to be long before this happened.

Other navy boats and two passenger steamers were heading for the scene of the holocaust at full speed, but they stood little chance of arriving on time.

Officers on the wrecked destroyers gave hurried orders. Lifeboats were launched, and the destroyers abandoned.

Lieutenant Bowen Toy was ignored in the excitement. No one had time to ask him questions. He moved about, doing his share, but all the time he kept a sharp watch, and his gun convenient.

When he got into a lifeboat, Lieutenant Toy sat in the bow, where no one was at his back. The lifeboat lunged into the surf breaking over the reef.

It was one of the two lifeboats which were unfortunate enough to be overturned in the surf.

Lieutenant Toy was a strong swimmer. The shore was not more than half a mile distant. The remaining lifeboats were full. Toy swam.

Flares had burned out by now, and the darkness was rather dense. Along the shore, automobile lights and regulation marine flares were making a prominent display.

The next thing heard of Lieutenant Bowen Toy was when a man—he happened to be the helmsman of the leading destroyer—came rushing madly to his superior officer, who stood on the beach swearing at what had happened.

“I felt it again!” the helmsman shrieked. “I felt it, I tell you! It was something you couldn’t see and couldn’t touch, but it pulled you!”

The man’s superior officer sprang upon the gibbering helmsman, grabbed his arms and held him tightly, shouting at other sailors, “Help hold this man! He’s gone off his nut!”

The helmsman screeched, “I’m not mad, I tell you! It got Toy! It grabbed Lieutenant Toy and pulled him under! I felt it!”

“You what?”

“I felt it’s pull!” screamed the helmsman. “It drew Toy under! It was something you couldn’t see! Oh, I know you don’t believe me!”

Nor did they believe him, even after they found Lieutenant Bowen Toy. But his story sounded a little more credible after they found Lieutenant Toy.

Toy had been drowned.

Of course, there was a hullabaloo along the beach, and a great crowd of landlubbers came to see the wrecked warships and look at the wet, excited, dazed sailors. Newspaper reporters arrived and began to ask the sailors questions about what had happened, and to snort unbelievingly at the answers they got.

But long before anything about the disaster was put in print, two men in navy uniforms—uniforms of common seamen—made their way ashore and skulked to a telephone.

They were the same two to whose furtive conversation Lieutenant Toy had eavesdropped.

They called a long-distance number in New York.

“Chief?” one asked.

“Yes,” said a dry voice.

“Lieutenant Toy sent a message to Doc Savage,” said one of the sailors. “We weren’t able to stop the message or even get a look at it.”

“This message went to whom?” the voice asked.

“Doc Savage. Ever hear of him?”

The “Chief” swore.

“I’ve heard entirely too much about him! How was this message sent?”

“Radio. It’ll reach New York as a regular commercial message.”

“Thanks,” said the distant speaker. “We’ve got to do things fast.”

He hung up.